April 28, 2009
Greetings!
WORKERS AND IMMIGRANTS
WILL MARCH ON MAY DAY
Yes, workers and immigrants will march again throughout the U.S. on MAY DAY, May 1st. This is known as the International Workers' Day, but little celebrated in the U.S., at least until the great diversity of immigrants took to the streets in 2006 to advocate oppostion to the anti-immigrant legislation HR4437, and subsequent years to advocate for fair and humane immigration reform. This budding movement of workers and families has resulted in reviving this important and historic date, recognized internationally in memory of the struggle for the eight-hour day more than one hundred years ago in this country. Ironically, it was immigrant workers of European origin who led the fight for reducing the work-day, establishing unions, and fighting to improve working and living conditions of the laboring classes.
It is in this same spirit that immigrant and native-born workers march today to demand a stop to ICE raids, the forced separation of families and their deportation; legalization for all those currently undocumented in the U.S.; absolutely no new bracero-type programs, which merely constitute modern-day indentured servitude; approval of the Employee Free Choice Act, which will facilitate the right of all workers to form their free associations - unions - in their work-place with virtually little intimidation; and, ultimately, a fair and humane immigration reform of our current system, policies, and practices. Today, working communities are facing incredibly unsettling problems of unemployment, home foreclosures, declining wages, consumer debt, increased tuition for education, loss of or complete absence of healthcare, and a dimming economic future. These are challenging times.
Bert Corona used to say that we don't have far to fall when we have already been pushed off the bed and are lying on the floor. Once again we must stand together, march together, and demand a fair share of the wealth that we create for society. This is truly possible in our time!
Saludos on this MAY DAY from MAPA and Hermandad Mexicana Latinoamericana, and the Hermandad General de Trabajadores Union Internacional/General Brotherhood of Workers International Union
Nativo Lopez-Vigil
National President
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Friday, April 24, 2009
Wintu Tribe sues the Federal Government
Winnemem Wintu Tribe Holds War Dance Before Launching Federal Lawsuit
By Dan Bacher
Arrayed in traditional regalia, over two dozen members of the Winnemem Wintu Tribe held a war dance along the banks of the American River on the evening of April 19 and morning of April 20 to bring attention to decades of injustice and destruction of their cultural sites by the federal government.
Male dancers in traditional feathered headdresses, accompanied by female singers in white dresses, performed the ancient ceremony around a sacred fire to the steady beat of a wooden drum.
After the ceremony, Caleen Sisk-Franco, the tribe’s spiritual leader, and Mark Franco, the tribe’s headman, and their pro bono lawyers filed a lawsuit at the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California.
The suit against six federal agencies and two current federal agency heads alleges that their actions have resulted in the “destruction or damage” to the Tribe’s sacred cultural sites in Shasta County, California. The Winnemem are seeking declaratory and injunctive relief, as well as monetary damages.
“We are a traditional people and have continued our traditional ways throughout the written history of the state of California,” said Sisk-Franco. “We hope this lawsuit and War Dance will protect our basic quality of life and ensure our freedom to maintain our traditions and culture.”
The ceremony was a continuation of the war dance that they launched against the federal government’s proposed raising of Shasta Dam in September 2004. The proposal to raise the dam anywhere from 6 to 200 feet threatens to flood the tribe’s remaining sacred sites vital for preserving their culture, including Puberty Rock where coming-of-age ceremonies are traditionally performed.
The tribe has been forefront in the battle to restore Central Valley salmon populations, now in an unprecedented state of collapse, and the California Delta. They have been outspoken opponents of proposals by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, Senator Diane Feinstein and corporate agribusiness to build a peripheral canal to export more water out of an imperiled estuary.
The tribe was also one of the plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the federal government that successfully challenged a biological opinion by the National Marine Fisheries Service under the Bush administration that concluded that proposed state and federal government water operations would provide “no jeopardy” to winter run Chinook salmon, spring run Chinook salmon, Central Valley steelhead and green sturgeon.
The Tribe held a rally at the State Capitol, attended by members of the Miwok, Hoopa Valley and other Indian Tribes, environmental justice advocates, and local activists, to call attention to the filing of its longstanding grievances against the federal government that began with the construction of Shasta Dam and continue until this day.
California Assembly Members Jared Huffman (D-San Rafael) and Fiona Ma (D-San Francisco) expressed their solidarity with tribe’s efforts at the rally. Huffman was the author of AJR 39, passed by the Assembly and signed by the Governor last year, that supports the restoration of federal recognition. In 1980’s, the tribe was inexplicably dropped from the list of federal recognized tribes in California.
“We all know that tribal recognition matters,” said Huffman. “The tribe was recognized until the 1980’s. Hopefully, with the new administration and Congress, we will be able to right this historic wrong.”
Assembly Member Fiona Ma emphasized that the Winnemen Wintu’s plight occurs within the larger context of the lack of federal recognition to member of Indian Tribes in California.
“Only 38,000 tribal members are recognized in California, while 400,000 tribal members still aren’t,” she said. “It’s important that the federal government bring you the dignity and justice that you deserve – you were living here before us.”
A court decision in the 1980’s forced the Bureau of Indian Affairs to give American Indian tribes throughout the country the right to decide whom their members are. However, the federal government maintained the right to determine who the federally recognized tribes are, according to Sisk-Franco.
“This decision has been devastating in California for Indians who have denied federal recognition,” said Sisk-Franco. “It has made historic tribes into non-people – and tribal members became non-Indians.”
As a consequence, the Winnemem Wintu aren’t protected under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, the American Religious Freedom Act and other state and federal laws that protect federally recognized tribes.
“Federal recognition of our tribe will strengthen our position by establishing formal government to government relations between our tribe and the federal government,” said Sisk-Franco. “It will allow us allow use to take advantage of resources to do scientific studies, such as those necessary to reintroduce Chinook salmon to the McCloud River. By keeping us unrecognized, the government is holding us in a handicapped position.”
The Tribe would like to reintroduce the McCloud River’s native strain of Chinook salmon, barred from running up the river since the construction of Shasta Dam in the 1940s, to once again ascend the river.
Mark Franco has talked to fishery officials in New Zealand, where the McCloud River strain of Chinook was successfully introduced in the early 1900s, about bringing the fish back from New Zealand to the McCloud. The salmon could be reintroduced to the McCloud by building a channel extension to Dry Creek, a tributary of Shasta Lake, to enter Cow Creek or another tributary to the Sacramento River below the dam.
Jayne Fleming, Pro Bono Counsel and Human Rights Team Leader at Reed Smith LLP, one of the 15 largest law firms in the world, filed the lawsuit on behalf of the tribe. Other members of the team include Heather B. Hostelry, Cheryl B. Kahn, Eugenia S. Churn and Kevin L. Jayne.
“Numerous federal laws and policies require federal agencies to consider environmental and cultural values when they assess proposed government projects,” said Fleming. “These laws also require federal agencies to consult with and fully disclose all the relevant information about their proposed actions to potentially affected individuals, as well as to use all possible means to preserve important historic, cultural and natural aspects of our national heritage. In dealing with the Winnemem Wintu, the defendants have blatantly ignored and violated these requirements, and they continue to do so, to the detriment of the Tribe's history and culture.”
“By holding the war dance and filing the lawsuit, we are hoping the people in power at the Capitol and the federal government take notice of our situation,” summed up Michael Preston, one of the war dancers. “We are doing this because they haven’t paid attention to us as an unrecognized tribe for decades.”
The Lawsuit:
Defendants include the U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Reclamation, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Forest Service; and U.S. Department of Agriculture, as well as the current Secretary of the Interior Kenneth Salazar and the current Secretary of Agriculture Thomas Vilsack. The cabinet members are being sued in their official and individual capacities.
The Complaint details numerous U.S. government actions that have forced the Winnemem to retreat from their ancestral homeland on the McCloud and lower Pit Rivers and lose critical elements of their culture.
These actions include:
• Interfering with the Tribe’s own sacred burial sites
• Destroying medicinal grapevines and dumping dirt at the Nosoni Creek Cultural Site
• Bulldozing and filling a vegetated area at Nosoni Creek used for ceremonial storytelling
• Interfering with the Tribe’s use of an ancient fire pit at Dekkas Cultural Site; allowing trespassing at the Dekkas Cultural Site
• Destroying ancient Manzanita trees used for sacred fire pit ceremonies at Dekkas
• Ordering removal of the Tribe’s sacred ceremonial rocks from Dekkas; allowing trespassing at the Coonrod Cultural Site at Ash Creek
• Destroying ceremonial and medicinal plants at the Gilman road Cultural Site
• Placing a public bike trail through the Tribe’s Buck Saddle sacred prayer site.
According to the tribe’s lawyers, “These and other actions violate numerous federal laws and policies, including the National Environmental Policy Act, the American Antiquities Act of 1906, the Archeological and Historic Preservation Act, the Historic Sites, Buildings and Antiquities Act, the National Historic Preservation Act, the Archeological Resources Protection Act, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, the American Religious Freedom Act, and several similar California statutes.”
The Complaint details causes of action for negligence, trespass, public nuisance, private nuisance, conversion, emotional distress, invasion of privacy, declaratory relief and injunctive relief. It demands a declaratory judgment, as well as injunctive relief and mandamus, and damages against all defendants.
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Summit of the Americas
Warning Signs: Mexico and Colombia
Obama's visit to Mexico was a message that U.S. military
allies on the right will remain just that, even with renewed
good relations in the rest of the hemisphere. Pluralism is
fine, but the basis of the relationship with the Mexican and
Colombian right-wing governments poses a threat to the
expressed strategy of non-intervention. Under Plan Colombia
and Plan Mérida, the U.S. military and intelligence agencies
have established a level of intervention and influence in
sovereign affairs that contradicts the promise of "equal
partners" Obama presented at the summit.
These two nations also receive the lion's share of U.S. aid,
most of it military. In addition, the U.S. government has
traditionally overlooked grave human rights violations in
these countries in order to preserve special alliances, while
severely punishing perceived violations in countries less
ideologically aligned. To be consistent with the "new era"
announced at the summit, aid and alliances must be based on
transparent and equitable criteria.
During the summit, U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk met
with Colombian president Álvaro Uribe to discuss the proposed
free-trade agreement (FTA) between the two nations. Obama has
objected to the agreement based on Colombia's record of
assassination of union leaders. Conceding to an FTA with
Colombia would violate both the commitment to human rights in
the hemisphere and to "bottom-up development," supported by
thousands of indigenous and poor Colombians who oppose the
agreement.
The Obama administration has a chance to build solid and
truly beneficial relations with both countries. But the
foundation of the relationships would need to shift to be
consistent with the values the president expressed at the
summit. This depends on both the Obama administration's next
moves, and the mobilization of U.S. and Colombian civil
society groups.
Rhetoric or Reality
There are many skeptics among U.S. progressives, who argue
that all this is empty rhetoric. But here, perhaps, we have
something to learn from the right. When President George W.
Bush announced his new national security doctrine, who among
the hawks and neocons complained that it was mere posturing
and that Bush would never really carry out the plan to
project the United States as a global hegemon, defending the
use of unilateral action, first-strikes, and torture? Very
few, as they would have been shooting themselves in the foot.
Instead, by providing Bush with meticulously thought-out
documents and organizing public opinion, they converted a
president who entered the office saying the United States
would play a more modest role on the international scene into
an unabashed champion of planetary empire.
Progressive forces are far from the compact group of powerful
interests and economic elites that created the disastrous
Bush era. And it goes without saying that no principled
person would advocate employing the lies and manipulation of
tragedy that went into selling the Bush Doctrine.
But with an immensely popular president, backed up by
mobilized new sectors of the population throughout the
country willing to work for change, it's sensible to begin by
taking him at his word.
Barack Obama's words at the Summit of the Americas charted a
new course for U.S. foreign policy. They reflected, in many
ways, the directions progressives have been trying to move in
for years.
Next Steps
If we really want to see the country move in these
directions, it makes much more sense to push for follow-
through than to sit back and speculate on what the
administration will do. Taking Obama at his word does not
mean we should be complacent. A few examples from his speech
illustrate ways in which we can take action:
Bottom-up development: Free-trade agreements don't create
bottom-up development. This is why the poor are nearly
unanimously opposed to them, as seen in Colombian "minga" [7]
demonstrations against the free trade agreement and the
Mexican 2006 elections. U.S. citizens should oppose the
Colombian FTA [8] based not only on labor rights but also
because it's the wrong kind of development, particularly in
times of crisis. NAFTA should be renegotiated to create a
more equitable distribution of wealth in Mexico and enhance
labor rights, and a moratorium on free trade agreements [9]
should be established, pending a full review of impact and
reforms of the NAFTA model.
Reform multilateral financial organizations: If these
institutions are recapitalized as major actors in confronting
the crisis, they must be reformed to prevent the errors of
the past. Fixing problems of skewed representation,
conditionality, and negative lending priorities will be a
huge task. U.S. citizen groups can join [10] with Latin
American organizations to make a difference.
Regulation: The Obama government didn't emerge as a champion
of regulation at the recent G-20 meeting [11]. U.S. citizens
must organize to insist on regulation to avert future crises
and curtail illicit fortunes made off speculation. One place
to start is by regulating commodity speculation [12] that led
to the food crisis.
The Fifth Summit of the Americas showed a tenuous coming to
terms among nations in a new political and economic context,
reflected in the fact that the obsolete declaration was
signed only by the host country. But Latin American countries
were willing to give the new U.S. president the benefit of
the doubt, and prepare to engage in tough political
negotiation and dialogue. Their response to this "new era" in
hemispheric relations serves as a good lesson in strategy for
advocates of U.S. foreign policy reform in the United States.
It's important to remember too that timing is a crucial part
of politics. Most of the reforms proposed are vague, fall
short of what is needed, or are even counter-productive. At a
time of economic crisis in the United States, this doesn't
mean abandoning pressure for needed reforms, but we do need
to understand the support among the public is an essential
aspect of reform. That is a job for the citizen groups that
have so long fought for a new U.S. foreign policy.
These actions would form a much more constructive strategy
than naysaying and sterile debates over whether or not the
three-month-old Obama administration is sincere.
© 2009 Foreign Policy In Focus
[Laura Carlsen (lcarlsen(at) ciponline.org) is director of the
Americas Policy Program (www.americaspolicy.org [13]) in
Mexico City, where she has been an analyst and writer for two
decades. She is also a Foreign Policy In Focus [14]
columnist.]
Obama's visit to Mexico was a message that U.S. military
allies on the right will remain just that, even with renewed
good relations in the rest of the hemisphere. Pluralism is
fine, but the basis of the relationship with the Mexican and
Colombian right-wing governments poses a threat to the
expressed strategy of non-intervention. Under Plan Colombia
and Plan Mérida, the U.S. military and intelligence agencies
have established a level of intervention and influence in
sovereign affairs that contradicts the promise of "equal
partners" Obama presented at the summit.
These two nations also receive the lion's share of U.S. aid,
most of it military. In addition, the U.S. government has
traditionally overlooked grave human rights violations in
these countries in order to preserve special alliances, while
severely punishing perceived violations in countries less
ideologically aligned. To be consistent with the "new era"
announced at the summit, aid and alliances must be based on
transparent and equitable criteria.
During the summit, U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk met
with Colombian president Álvaro Uribe to discuss the proposed
free-trade agreement (FTA) between the two nations. Obama has
objected to the agreement based on Colombia's record of
assassination of union leaders. Conceding to an FTA with
Colombia would violate both the commitment to human rights in
the hemisphere and to "bottom-up development," supported by
thousands of indigenous and poor Colombians who oppose the
agreement.
The Obama administration has a chance to build solid and
truly beneficial relations with both countries. But the
foundation of the relationships would need to shift to be
consistent with the values the president expressed at the
summit. This depends on both the Obama administration's next
moves, and the mobilization of U.S. and Colombian civil
society groups.
Rhetoric or Reality
There are many skeptics among U.S. progressives, who argue
that all this is empty rhetoric. But here, perhaps, we have
something to learn from the right. When President George W.
Bush announced his new national security doctrine, who among
the hawks and neocons complained that it was mere posturing
and that Bush would never really carry out the plan to
project the United States as a global hegemon, defending the
use of unilateral action, first-strikes, and torture? Very
few, as they would have been shooting themselves in the foot.
Instead, by providing Bush with meticulously thought-out
documents and organizing public opinion, they converted a
president who entered the office saying the United States
would play a more modest role on the international scene into
an unabashed champion of planetary empire.
Progressive forces are far from the compact group of powerful
interests and economic elites that created the disastrous
Bush era. And it goes without saying that no principled
person would advocate employing the lies and manipulation of
tragedy that went into selling the Bush Doctrine.
But with an immensely popular president, backed up by
mobilized new sectors of the population throughout the
country willing to work for change, it's sensible to begin by
taking him at his word.
Barack Obama's words at the Summit of the Americas charted a
new course for U.S. foreign policy. They reflected, in many
ways, the directions progressives have been trying to move in
for years.
Next Steps
If we really want to see the country move in these
directions, it makes much more sense to push for follow-
through than to sit back and speculate on what the
administration will do. Taking Obama at his word does not
mean we should be complacent. A few examples from his speech
illustrate ways in which we can take action:
Bottom-up development: Free-trade agreements don't create
bottom-up development. This is why the poor are nearly
unanimously opposed to them, as seen in Colombian "minga" [7]
demonstrations against the free trade agreement and the
Mexican 2006 elections. U.S. citizens should oppose the
Colombian FTA [8] based not only on labor rights but also
because it's the wrong kind of development, particularly in
times of crisis. NAFTA should be renegotiated to create a
more equitable distribution of wealth in Mexico and enhance
labor rights, and a moratorium on free trade agreements [9]
should be established, pending a full review of impact and
reforms of the NAFTA model.
Reform multilateral financial organizations: If these
institutions are recapitalized as major actors in confronting
the crisis, they must be reformed to prevent the errors of
the past. Fixing problems of skewed representation,
conditionality, and negative lending priorities will be a
huge task. U.S. citizen groups can join [10] with Latin
American organizations to make a difference.
Regulation: The Obama government didn't emerge as a champion
of regulation at the recent G-20 meeting [11]. U.S. citizens
must organize to insist on regulation to avert future crises
and curtail illicit fortunes made off speculation. One place
to start is by regulating commodity speculation [12] that led
to the food crisis.
The Fifth Summit of the Americas showed a tenuous coming to
terms among nations in a new political and economic context,
reflected in the fact that the obsolete declaration was
signed only by the host country. But Latin American countries
were willing to give the new U.S. president the benefit of
the doubt, and prepare to engage in tough political
negotiation and dialogue. Their response to this "new era" in
hemispheric relations serves as a good lesson in strategy for
advocates of U.S. foreign policy reform in the United States.
It's important to remember too that timing is a crucial part
of politics. Most of the reforms proposed are vague, fall
short of what is needed, or are even counter-productive. At a
time of economic crisis in the United States, this doesn't
mean abandoning pressure for needed reforms, but we do need
to understand the support among the public is an essential
aspect of reform. That is a job for the citizen groups that
have so long fought for a new U.S. foreign policy.
These actions would form a much more constructive strategy
than naysaying and sterile debates over whether or not the
three-month-old Obama administration is sincere.
© 2009 Foreign Policy In Focus
[Laura Carlsen (lcarlsen(at) ciponline.org) is director of the
Americas Policy Program (www.americaspolicy.org [13]) in
Mexico City, where she has been an analyst and writer for two
decades. She is also a Foreign Policy In Focus [14]
columnist.]
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Obama's Dinosaur in Trinidad
By Tom Hayden
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tom-hayden/obama-and-his-
dinosaur-in_b_188729.htmle
It's becoming a pattern: whenever Barack Obama
implements a campaign pledge, the dinosaurs used to
running things push back. The latest dinosaur to
undercut the president's gestures is Jeffrey Davidow,
US coordinator of the Trinidad meeting, who claimed
that Hugo Chavez wanted a photo with Obama to polish
his reputation with Venezuelans.
Obama is more popular than Chavez in Venezuela, Davidow
added, which explains his rushing photos of their
handshake to the Venezuelan government's website. [ABC
News, April 18] He also managed to disparage Chavez's
presentation of a book by Eduardo Galleano to Obama as
unnecessary since the president already was familiar
with Latin American grievances.
While Obama was pressing for a new diplomacy, Davidow
was practicing the old. He added for good measure that
Brazil, Chile, Peru and Colombia are "forward-looking,
not backward-looking" Latin American countries, and
described the unanimous demand for normalization of US
ties to Cuba as "part of the historical baggage that
Latin America carried with it and is almost a reflexive
suspicion or anti-Americanism."
If Davidow was hoping to provoke an unproductive
reaction from the Venezuelans, he failed, at least on
Saturday. But his spoiler comments were in stark
contrast to a president pledged to listening, dialogue
and respect. Obama's modest relaxation of restrictions
on travel and remittances to Cuba, combined with his
Justice Department's prosecution of the anti-Castro
terrorist Luis Posades Carrillo, has unleashed a
momentum for policy change that may be unstoppable.
Who is Jeffrey Davidow? It might be fair to ask, who
really knows? He was a political officer at the US
embassy in Chile from 1971-74, during the carrying out
of the coup and repression against the democratically-
elected government of Salvador Allende. In a March 3,
1974 memo, later declassified, Davidow wrote to Chilean
officials of a "conspiracy on the part of the enemies
of Chile to paint the junta in the worst possible
terms." [Boston Phoenix, Dec. 16-23, 1999]
Later Davidow was ambassador to Mexico during the
Chiapas crisis, where he told the Mexican media "we
don't know of any [right-wing] paramilitary groups in
Chiapas." [Boston Phoenix, Dec. 16-23, 1999].
Davidow was ambassador to Venezuela from 1993 to 1996,
defending the social order which fell to the Chavez
political revolution two years later.
He retired from government in 2003 to head the
Institute of the Americas, which describes itself as
being "recognized as a leader in promoting regional
integration, economic development and efficient
government in the western hemisphere." The Institute's
board is heavy with energy firms, real estate
investors, and San Diego-based research entities,
including Chevron, Sempra LNG, Skanska [pipelines], the
Barrick Gold Corporation [Canada], J.P. Morgan,
Petrobras Energy [Argentina], and the Oil Industry
Association of Ecuador.
In September 2007, Davidow chaired the regional meeting
of the Trilateral Commission in Cancun, where he
criticized what he called the "creeping coup" happening
through the democratic election of Chavez in Venezuela.
It was a strange turn of phrase since Chavez had been
the target of an actual coup in earlier years. In
moderating a panel, Davidow explained the democratic
election of Chavez as a "creeping coup" as follows:
"What do other countries do when a country votes itself
out of democracy? It's an interesting question. At
least it's interesting to me."
He also warned of the dangerous threat to future oil
supplies from Venezuela resulting from the "creeping
coup":
"What does it mean when the previous principle
providers of petroleum to the US suffer declines in
their production levels?"
Davidow added the question of what to do with a
democratic country which also has become "a major
transshipment point for drugs to the US and Europe", a
claim meant to insist on the "integration" of American
Drug Enforcement Agency operatives on the ground in
Venezuela.
These were explosive questions, all but suggesting the
need for a Cold War against Caracas, in not regime
change. Why Obama named Davidow to head the US presence
at Trinidad remains to be explored. But it suggests a
trademark Obama approach, to reassure the old guard and
seek their approval of and participation in his
proposed new directions. Seeming defensive about his
role, Davidow tried to wrap himself in the pages of the
once-liberal Washington Post in an exchange with Steve
Clemon of the New America Foundation on April 10:
"And lest you think, and I'm sure some of you do, that
I am some sort of ideologue on this, take a look at the
lead editorial in today's Washington Post.Maybe you
think they are a bunch of ideologues as well, but I
think they say it much better than I do. [Talk Left,
April 10]
[Tom Hayden is the author of Writings for a Democratic
Society: The Tom Hayden Reader, published by City
Lights Books, www.citylights.com ]
_________________________
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tom-hayden/obama-and-his-
dinosaur-in_b_188729.htmle
It's becoming a pattern: whenever Barack Obama
implements a campaign pledge, the dinosaurs used to
running things push back. The latest dinosaur to
undercut the president's gestures is Jeffrey Davidow,
US coordinator of the Trinidad meeting, who claimed
that Hugo Chavez wanted a photo with Obama to polish
his reputation with Venezuelans.
Obama is more popular than Chavez in Venezuela, Davidow
added, which explains his rushing photos of their
handshake to the Venezuelan government's website. [ABC
News, April 18] He also managed to disparage Chavez's
presentation of a book by Eduardo Galleano to Obama as
unnecessary since the president already was familiar
with Latin American grievances.
While Obama was pressing for a new diplomacy, Davidow
was practicing the old. He added for good measure that
Brazil, Chile, Peru and Colombia are "forward-looking,
not backward-looking" Latin American countries, and
described the unanimous demand for normalization of US
ties to Cuba as "part of the historical baggage that
Latin America carried with it and is almost a reflexive
suspicion or anti-Americanism."
If Davidow was hoping to provoke an unproductive
reaction from the Venezuelans, he failed, at least on
Saturday. But his spoiler comments were in stark
contrast to a president pledged to listening, dialogue
and respect. Obama's modest relaxation of restrictions
on travel and remittances to Cuba, combined with his
Justice Department's prosecution of the anti-Castro
terrorist Luis Posades Carrillo, has unleashed a
momentum for policy change that may be unstoppable.
Who is Jeffrey Davidow? It might be fair to ask, who
really knows? He was a political officer at the US
embassy in Chile from 1971-74, during the carrying out
of the coup and repression against the democratically-
elected government of Salvador Allende. In a March 3,
1974 memo, later declassified, Davidow wrote to Chilean
officials of a "conspiracy on the part of the enemies
of Chile to paint the junta in the worst possible
terms." [Boston Phoenix, Dec. 16-23, 1999]
Later Davidow was ambassador to Mexico during the
Chiapas crisis, where he told the Mexican media "we
don't know of any [right-wing] paramilitary groups in
Chiapas." [Boston Phoenix, Dec. 16-23, 1999].
Davidow was ambassador to Venezuela from 1993 to 1996,
defending the social order which fell to the Chavez
political revolution two years later.
He retired from government in 2003 to head the
Institute of the Americas, which describes itself as
being "recognized as a leader in promoting regional
integration, economic development and efficient
government in the western hemisphere." The Institute's
board is heavy with energy firms, real estate
investors, and San Diego-based research entities,
including Chevron, Sempra LNG, Skanska [pipelines], the
Barrick Gold Corporation [Canada], J.P. Morgan,
Petrobras Energy [Argentina], and the Oil Industry
Association of Ecuador.
In September 2007, Davidow chaired the regional meeting
of the Trilateral Commission in Cancun, where he
criticized what he called the "creeping coup" happening
through the democratic election of Chavez in Venezuela.
It was a strange turn of phrase since Chavez had been
the target of an actual coup in earlier years. In
moderating a panel, Davidow explained the democratic
election of Chavez as a "creeping coup" as follows:
"What do other countries do when a country votes itself
out of democracy? It's an interesting question. At
least it's interesting to me."
He also warned of the dangerous threat to future oil
supplies from Venezuela resulting from the "creeping
coup":
"What does it mean when the previous principle
providers of petroleum to the US suffer declines in
their production levels?"
Davidow added the question of what to do with a
democratic country which also has become "a major
transshipment point for drugs to the US and Europe", a
claim meant to insist on the "integration" of American
Drug Enforcement Agency operatives on the ground in
Venezuela.
These were explosive questions, all but suggesting the
need for a Cold War against Caracas, in not regime
change. Why Obama named Davidow to head the US presence
at Trinidad remains to be explored. But it suggests a
trademark Obama approach, to reassure the old guard and
seek their approval of and participation in his
proposed new directions. Seeming defensive about his
role, Davidow tried to wrap himself in the pages of the
once-liberal Washington Post in an exchange with Steve
Clemon of the New America Foundation on April 10:
"And lest you think, and I'm sure some of you do, that
I am some sort of ideologue on this, take a look at the
lead editorial in today's Washington Post.Maybe you
think they are a bunch of ideologues as well, but I
think they say it much better than I do. [Talk Left,
April 10]
[Tom Hayden is the author of Writings for a Democratic
Society: The Tom Hayden Reader, published by City
Lights Books, www.citylights.com ]
_________________________
d AFL-CIO Unveil Unified Immigration Reform Framework
Roadmap Lays the Groundwork For an Immigration System that Works For America’s Workers; United labor movement shows importance of addressing issue during 111th Congress
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Joseph T. Hansen, International President of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW) and chair of the Change to Win Immigration Task Force, and John Sweeney, International President of the AFL-CIO, today unveiled a unified framework for comprehensive immigration reform legislation.
The joint announcement and proposal is a critical sign of support for the Administration and Congress to address immigration reform – and to ensure that it remains a priority on the legislative calendar. It is also an important sign that immigration reform is an important part of economic recovery.
“We need an immigration system that works for America’s workers,” said President Hansen. “For too long, our nation’s immigration system has fueled discrimination and exploitation of workers. It has driven down wages and working conditions. And it has failed to live up to our nation’s values. We now have an opportunity to change course. This framework is a roadmap toward real reform—reform that addresses the needs of our nation’s workers, families and communities. This framework is about moving America forward. We are a nation that respects hard work, family and the pursuit of the American Dream. Our immigration system must hold true to these principles.”
"Our nation's broken immigration system isn't working for anybody --not immigrant workers who are routinely exploited by companies and not U.S. born workers whose living standards are being undermined by the creation of a new "underclass." As a part of broad-based economic recovery, we need a comprehensive solution -- and soon. The development of a unified labor position, a position centered on workers' rights, puts us on the path to a legislative solution," said President Sweeney. “The labor movement will speak in one voice to address this pressing issue with Congress and the White House to create a system that protects all workers -- those who work in our shadow economy and those who have full rights.”
Sweeney and Hansen also were joined by Eliseo Medina, Executive Vice President of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), and Arturo Rodriquez, President of the United Farm Workers (UFW) in making the announcement. Both Medina and Rodriguez have been national leaders on immigration reform and played a key role in the formation of the immigration framework.
“As we face the most serious recession since the Great Depression—as healthcare costs skyrocket, income disparity grows, and the middle class continues to shrink—the American public wants fundamental reform of economic and social policies that have benefited the few at the expense of the working majority,” said Medina “Immigration reform is no exception. Today’s unified agreement is a major step forward that will, combined with the continued leadership of President Obama, Vice President Biden and bipartisan leadership in Congress, profoundly improve the future of all workers and build a stronger American economy for our children and grandchildren.”
“Today’s unity statement is a recognition of the dire need to have immigration laws that work and work for all workers,” said President Rodriguez. “Too many workers – both U.S. and immigrant are exploited by the current system and that needs to change. The United Farm Workers, Change to Win and the AFL-CIO came together because we can no longer be delayed.”
President Obama recently reiterated his support for immigration reform and stated that real reform cannot be completed in a piecemeal fashion.
The Unity Framework, which was developed in consultation with Former Secretary of Labor Ray Marshall and the Economic Policy Institute, provides a comprehensive plan for addressing immigration reform.
The plan adheres to the Administration’s goals by creating a framework that deals with the critical components of reform and does it through interconnected initiatives. The proposal calls for: (1) an independent commission to assess and manage future flows, based on labor market shortages that are determined on the basis of actual need; (2) a secure and effective worker authorization mechanism; (3) rational operational control of the border; (4) adjustment of status for the current undocumented population; and (5) improvement, not expansion, of temporary worker programs, limited to temporary or seasonal, not permanent, jobs.
In the coming weeks, representatives from labor will be meeting with key Congressional and Administration staff to discuss the framework and how best to move the issue forward. The groups have also briefed key activists and advocates about the framework and will be working closely with these vital allies in the coming months.
** NOTE: To schedule an interview with Change to Win leaders, please contact Noreen Nielsen at noreen.nielsen@changetowin.org. Text of the Unity Framework follows. **
Roadmap Lays the Groundwork For an Immigration System that Works For America’s Workers; United labor movement shows importance of addressing issue during 111th Congress
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Joseph T. Hansen, International President of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW) and chair of the Change to Win Immigration Task Force, and John Sweeney, International President of the AFL-CIO, today unveiled a unified framework for comprehensive immigration reform legislation.
The joint announcement and proposal is a critical sign of support for the Administration and Congress to address immigration reform – and to ensure that it remains a priority on the legislative calendar. It is also an important sign that immigration reform is an important part of economic recovery.
“We need an immigration system that works for America’s workers,” said President Hansen. “For too long, our nation’s immigration system has fueled discrimination and exploitation of workers. It has driven down wages and working conditions. And it has failed to live up to our nation’s values. We now have an opportunity to change course. This framework is a roadmap toward real reform—reform that addresses the needs of our nation’s workers, families and communities. This framework is about moving America forward. We are a nation that respects hard work, family and the pursuit of the American Dream. Our immigration system must hold true to these principles.”
"Our nation's broken immigration system isn't working for anybody --not immigrant workers who are routinely exploited by companies and not U.S. born workers whose living standards are being undermined by the creation of a new "underclass." As a part of broad-based economic recovery, we need a comprehensive solution -- and soon. The development of a unified labor position, a position centered on workers' rights, puts us on the path to a legislative solution," said President Sweeney. “The labor movement will speak in one voice to address this pressing issue with Congress and the White House to create a system that protects all workers -- those who work in our shadow economy and those who have full rights.”
Sweeney and Hansen also were joined by Eliseo Medina, Executive Vice President of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), and Arturo Rodriquez, President of the United Farm Workers (UFW) in making the announcement. Both Medina and Rodriguez have been national leaders on immigration reform and played a key role in the formation of the immigration framework.
“As we face the most serious recession since the Great Depression—as healthcare costs skyrocket, income disparity grows, and the middle class continues to shrink—the American public wants fundamental reform of economic and social policies that have benefited the few at the expense of the working majority,” said Medina “Immigration reform is no exception. Today’s unified agreement is a major step forward that will, combined with the continued leadership of President Obama, Vice President Biden and bipartisan leadership in Congress, profoundly improve the future of all workers and build a stronger American economy for our children and grandchildren.”
“Today’s unity statement is a recognition of the dire need to have immigration laws that work and work for all workers,” said President Rodriguez. “Too many workers – both U.S. and immigrant are exploited by the current system and that needs to change. The United Farm Workers, Change to Win and the AFL-CIO came together because we can no longer be delayed.”
President Obama recently reiterated his support for immigration reform and stated that real reform cannot be completed in a piecemeal fashion.
The Unity Framework, which was developed in consultation with Former Secretary of Labor Ray Marshall and the Economic Policy Institute, provides a comprehensive plan for addressing immigration reform.
The plan adheres to the Administration’s goals by creating a framework that deals with the critical components of reform and does it through interconnected initiatives. The proposal calls for: (1) an independent commission to assess and manage future flows, based on labor market shortages that are determined on the basis of actual need; (2) a secure and effective worker authorization mechanism; (3) rational operational control of the border; (4) adjustment of status for the current undocumented population; and (5) improvement, not expansion, of temporary worker programs, limited to temporary or seasonal, not permanent, jobs.
In the coming weeks, representatives from labor will be meeting with key Congressional and Administration staff to discuss the framework and how best to move the issue forward. The groups have also briefed key activists and advocates about the framework and will be working closely with these vital allies in the coming months.
** NOTE: To schedule an interview with Change to Win leaders, please contact Noreen Nielsen at noreen.nielsen@changetowin.org. Text of the Unity Framework follows. **
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Journey to Justice, Sacramento : Part Two
WINNEMEM WINTU TRIBE SUES FEDERAL AGENCIES, OFFICIALS
Court Filing Prefaced by Ceremonial War Dance, March and Capitol Rally
For more information, contact Jamie Moss, newsPRos, 201-493-1027 or Brad Wise, 510-466-6229
(April 20, 2008, Sacramento, CA) – The Winnemem Wintu, a traditional California Tribe, filed a Complaint in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California Monday against six federal agencies and two current federal agency heads alleging their actions have resulted in the destruction or damage to the Tribe’s cultural sites in Shasta County, California. The Winnemem are seeking declaratory and injunctive relief, as well as monetary damages.
The Tribe held a Rally at the State Capitol at noon to call attention to the filing of its longstanding grievances against the federal government that began with the construction of Shasta Dam and continues to this day. This event followed three-days of intensive tribal preparation that included ceremonial prayers and fires, including a ceremonial war dance Sunday night and Monday morning. It is the culmination of the ceremony begun in 2004 at Shasta Dam.
“We are a traditional people and have continued our traditional ways throughout the written history of the state of California,” said Caleen Sisk-Franco, the Tribe’s spiritual leader. “We hope this lawsuit and War Dance will protect our basic quality of life and ensure our freedom to maintain our traditions and culture.”
California Assembly Members Jared Huffman (D-San Rafael) and Fiona Ma (D-San Francisco) addressed the rally at noon. Immediately following, Jayne Fleming, Pro Bono Counsel and Human Rights Team Leader at Reed Smith LLP, one of the 15 largest law firms in the world, addressed the Tribe and its supporters at the noon event. Finally, Caleen Sisk-Franco addressed the rally.
The Winnemem and its members are represented pro bono in the court case by a team of attorneys from Reed Smith led by partner James C. Martin. Other members of the team include Heather B. Hoesterey, Cheryl B. Kahn, Eugenia S. Chern and Kevin L. Jayne.
According to Ms. Fleming, “numerous federal laws and policies require federal agencies to consider environmental and cultural values when they assess proposed government projects. These laws also require federal agencies to consult with and fully disclose all the relevant information about their proposed actions to potentially affected individuals, as well as to use all possible means to preserve important historic, cultural and natural aspects of our national heritage. In dealing with the Winnemem, the defendants have blatantly ignored and violated these requirements, and they continue to do so, to the detriment of the Winnemem’s history and culture.”
Defendants include the U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Reclamation, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Forest Service; and U.S. Department of Agriculture, as well as the current Secretary of the Interior Kenneth Salazar and the current Secretary of Agriculture Thomas Vilsack. The cabinet members are being sued in their official and individual capacities.
The Complaint details numerous U.S. government actions that have forced the Winnemem to retreat from their ancestral homeland on the McCloud and lower Pit Rivers and lose critical elements of their culture. These actions include interfering with the Tribe’s own sacred burial sites; destroying medicinal grapevines and dumping dirt at the Nosoni Creek Cultural Site; bulldozing and filling a vegetated area at Nosoni Creek used for ceremonial storytelling; interfering with the Tribe’s use of an ancient fire pit at Dekkas Cultural Site; allowing trespassing at the Dekkas Cultural Site; destroying ancient Manzanita trees used for sacred fire pit ceremonies at Dekkas; ordering removal of the Tribe’s sacred ceremonial rocks from Dekkas; allowing trespassing at the Coonrod Cultural Site at Ash Creek; destroying ceremonial and medicinal plants at the Gilman road Cultural Site; and, placing a public bike trail through the Tribe’s Buck Saddle sacred prayer site.
According to the Winnemem’s lawyers, these and other actions violate numerous federal laws and policies, including the National Environmental Policy Act, the American Antiquities Act of 1906, the Archeological and Historic Preservation Act, the Historic Sites, Buildings and Antiquities Act, the National Historic Preservation Act, the Archeological Resources Protection Act, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, the American Religious Freedom Act, and several similar California statutes.
The Complaint details causes of action for negligence, trespass, public nuisance, private nuisance, conversion, emotional distress, invasion of privacy, declaratory relief and injunctive relief. It demands a declaratory judgment, as well as injunctive relief and mandamus, and damages against all defendants.
Court Filing Prefaced by Ceremonial War Dance, March and Capitol Rally
For more information, contact Jamie Moss, newsPRos, 201-493-1027 or Brad Wise, 510-466-6229
(April 20, 2008, Sacramento, CA) – The Winnemem Wintu, a traditional California Tribe, filed a Complaint in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California Monday against six federal agencies and two current federal agency heads alleging their actions have resulted in the destruction or damage to the Tribe’s cultural sites in Shasta County, California. The Winnemem are seeking declaratory and injunctive relief, as well as monetary damages.
The Tribe held a Rally at the State Capitol at noon to call attention to the filing of its longstanding grievances against the federal government that began with the construction of Shasta Dam and continues to this day. This event followed three-days of intensive tribal preparation that included ceremonial prayers and fires, including a ceremonial war dance Sunday night and Monday morning. It is the culmination of the ceremony begun in 2004 at Shasta Dam.
“We are a traditional people and have continued our traditional ways throughout the written history of the state of California,” said Caleen Sisk-Franco, the Tribe’s spiritual leader. “We hope this lawsuit and War Dance will protect our basic quality of life and ensure our freedom to maintain our traditions and culture.”
California Assembly Members Jared Huffman (D-San Rafael) and Fiona Ma (D-San Francisco) addressed the rally at noon. Immediately following, Jayne Fleming, Pro Bono Counsel and Human Rights Team Leader at Reed Smith LLP, one of the 15 largest law firms in the world, addressed the Tribe and its supporters at the noon event. Finally, Caleen Sisk-Franco addressed the rally.
The Winnemem and its members are represented pro bono in the court case by a team of attorneys from Reed Smith led by partner James C. Martin. Other members of the team include Heather B. Hoesterey, Cheryl B. Kahn, Eugenia S. Chern and Kevin L. Jayne.
According to Ms. Fleming, “numerous federal laws and policies require federal agencies to consider environmental and cultural values when they assess proposed government projects. These laws also require federal agencies to consult with and fully disclose all the relevant information about their proposed actions to potentially affected individuals, as well as to use all possible means to preserve important historic, cultural and natural aspects of our national heritage. In dealing with the Winnemem, the defendants have blatantly ignored and violated these requirements, and they continue to do so, to the detriment of the Winnemem’s history and culture.”
Defendants include the U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Reclamation, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Forest Service; and U.S. Department of Agriculture, as well as the current Secretary of the Interior Kenneth Salazar and the current Secretary of Agriculture Thomas Vilsack. The cabinet members are being sued in their official and individual capacities.
The Complaint details numerous U.S. government actions that have forced the Winnemem to retreat from their ancestral homeland on the McCloud and lower Pit Rivers and lose critical elements of their culture. These actions include interfering with the Tribe’s own sacred burial sites; destroying medicinal grapevines and dumping dirt at the Nosoni Creek Cultural Site; bulldozing and filling a vegetated area at Nosoni Creek used for ceremonial storytelling; interfering with the Tribe’s use of an ancient fire pit at Dekkas Cultural Site; allowing trespassing at the Dekkas Cultural Site; destroying ancient Manzanita trees used for sacred fire pit ceremonies at Dekkas; ordering removal of the Tribe’s sacred ceremonial rocks from Dekkas; allowing trespassing at the Coonrod Cultural Site at Ash Creek; destroying ceremonial and medicinal plants at the Gilman road Cultural Site; and, placing a public bike trail through the Tribe’s Buck Saddle sacred prayer site.
According to the Winnemem’s lawyers, these and other actions violate numerous federal laws and policies, including the National Environmental Policy Act, the American Antiquities Act of 1906, the Archeological and Historic Preservation Act, the Historic Sites, Buildings and Antiquities Act, the National Historic Preservation Act, the Archeological Resources Protection Act, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, the American Religious Freedom Act, and several similar California statutes.
The Complaint details causes of action for negligence, trespass, public nuisance, private nuisance, conversion, emotional distress, invasion of privacy, declaratory relief and injunctive relief. It demands a declaratory judgment, as well as injunctive relief and mandamus, and damages against all defendants.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Journey to Justice, Sacramento
Tribal War Dance and March Next Steps in Winnemem Wintu Tribe’s Journey to Justice Ceremonies Initiate Federal Lawsuit on behalf of Tribe.
Who: The Winnemem Wintu Tribe, a traditional California Tribe. The Winnemem have been fighting for years to sustain their culture and address generations of broken promises by the federal government.
What: War Dance, march and press conference from Sacramento River to the State Capitol.
Winnemem war dancers and tribal leaders will perform a traditional ceremonial War Dance next to the Sacramento River and will then march to the State Capitol building. The march and War Dance initiate the federal lawsuit the Tribe is filing, asking for compensation for damages done by federal land management policies, including the construction of the Shasta Dam.
Schedule of events:
Sunday, April 19th: War Dance begins at 6:00 PM on Sacramento River
Monday, April 20th: Ceremony and address by Tribal leaders.
The place is Camp Pollock - street address is 1501 Northgate Blvd, Sacramento.
We have been asked if folks walking with us are to be in regalia or street clothes: if you have "Indian indicators" wear them, banners etc. fine. We are going to caravan to Old Sac (in the parking area) and then we will walk up to Capitol Mall (we are looking at the best routes now). This is an historic event in the history of the tribe and I am glad to share it with you all.
10:00 AM March from Camp Pollock to State Capitol.
12:00 to 1:00 PM Press Conference with Tribal leaders and community members State Capitol Location 27 West side of capitol building
More Information
The Winnemem Wintu Tribe is filing a lawsuit against Department of The Interior; Department of Agriculture; United States Forest Service; Bureau of Reclamation; Bureau of Indian Affairs; Bureau of Land Management; Ken Salazar, Secretary of The Interior; Assistant Secretary for Water and Science; Assistant Secretary for Fish and Wildlife and Parks in The Department of Agriculture; and Tom Vilsack, Secretary of Agriculture asking for redress for decades of injustices and harm related to federal land management policies which have destroyed Winnemem cultural practices and sacred places.
The Winnemem began a journey to justice in 2004 with a War Dance at Shasta Dam. Today we continue that journey with another War Dance and this lawsuit. Our people are a traditional people, steeped in our culture and traditional lifeways, who have continued our cultural practices throughout the written history of the state of California. With this lawsuit and War Dance, we continue our journey to ensure our basic quality of life and freedom to maintain our traditions and culture.
Winnemem Wintu Tribe
14840 Bear Mountain Road, Redding, CA 96003
530-275-2737 Office 530-275-4193 Facsimile
www.winnememwintu.us
winnemem@msn.com
Who: The Winnemem Wintu Tribe, a traditional California Tribe. The Winnemem have been fighting for years to sustain their culture and address generations of broken promises by the federal government.
What: War Dance, march and press conference from Sacramento River to the State Capitol.
Winnemem war dancers and tribal leaders will perform a traditional ceremonial War Dance next to the Sacramento River and will then march to the State Capitol building. The march and War Dance initiate the federal lawsuit the Tribe is filing, asking for compensation for damages done by federal land management policies, including the construction of the Shasta Dam.
Schedule of events:
Sunday, April 19th: War Dance begins at 6:00 PM on Sacramento River
Monday, April 20th: Ceremony and address by Tribal leaders.
The place is Camp Pollock - street address is 1501 Northgate Blvd, Sacramento.
We have been asked if folks walking with us are to be in regalia or street clothes: if you have "Indian indicators" wear them, banners etc. fine. We are going to caravan to Old Sac (in the parking area) and then we will walk up to Capitol Mall (we are looking at the best routes now). This is an historic event in the history of the tribe and I am glad to share it with you all.
10:00 AM March from Camp Pollock to State Capitol.
12:00 to 1:00 PM Press Conference with Tribal leaders and community members State Capitol Location 27 West side of capitol building
More Information
The Winnemem Wintu Tribe is filing a lawsuit against Department of The Interior; Department of Agriculture; United States Forest Service; Bureau of Reclamation; Bureau of Indian Affairs; Bureau of Land Management; Ken Salazar, Secretary of The Interior; Assistant Secretary for Water and Science; Assistant Secretary for Fish and Wildlife and Parks in The Department of Agriculture; and Tom Vilsack, Secretary of Agriculture asking for redress for decades of injustices and harm related to federal land management policies which have destroyed Winnemem cultural practices and sacred places.
The Winnemem began a journey to justice in 2004 with a War Dance at Shasta Dam. Today we continue that journey with another War Dance and this lawsuit. Our people are a traditional people, steeped in our culture and traditional lifeways, who have continued our cultural practices throughout the written history of the state of California. With this lawsuit and War Dance, we continue our journey to ensure our basic quality of life and freedom to maintain our traditions and culture.
Winnemem Wintu Tribe
14840 Bear Mountain Road, Redding, CA 96003
530-275-2737 Office 530-275-4193 Facsimile
www.winnememwintu.us
winnemem@msn.com
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Labor Accord on Immigration Bills
April 14, 2009
Labor Groups Reach an Accord on Immigration
By JULIA PRESTON and STEVEN GREENHOUSE
The nation’s two major labor federations have agreed for the first time to join forces to support an overhaul of the immigration system, leaders of both organizations said on Monday. The accord could give President Obama significant support among unions as he revisits the stormy issue in the midst of the recession.
John Sweeney, president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., and Joe T. Hansen, a leader of the rival Change to Win federation, will present the outlines of their new position on Tuesday in Washington. In 2007, when Congress last considered comprehensive immigration legislation, the two groups could not agree on a common approach. That legislation failed.
The accord endorses legalizing the status of illegal immigrants already in the United States and opposes any large new program for employers to bring in temporary immigrant workers, officials of both federations said.
“The labor movement will work together to make sure that the White House as well as Congress understand that we speak about immigration reform with one voice,” Mr. Sweeney said in a statement to The New York Times.
But while the compromise repaired one fissure in the coalition that has favored broad immigration legislation, it appeared to open another. An official from the United States Chamber of Commerce said Monday that the business community remained committed to a significant guest-worker program.
“If the unions think they’re going to push a bill through without the support of the business community, they’re crazy,” said Randel Johnson, the chamber’s vice president of labor, immigration and employee benefits. “There’s only going to be one shot at immigration reform. As part of the trade-off for legalization, we need to expand the temporary worker program.”
The common labor position is also unlikely to convince many opponents that an immigration overhaul would not harm American workers. When Obama administration officials said last week that the president intended to push Congress this year to take up an immigration bill that would include a path to legal status for the country’s estimated 12 million illegal immigrants, critics criticized the approach as amnesty for lawbreakers.
“In our current economic crisis, Americans cannot afford to lose more jobs to illegal workers,” said Representative Steve King, an Iowa Republican who sits on the House Judiciary subcommittee on immigration. “American workers are depending on President Obama to protect their jobs from those in America illegally.”
The two labor federations have agreed in the past to proposals that would give legal status to illegal immigrants. But in 2007 the A.F.L.-C.I.O. parted ways with the service employees and several other unions when it did not support legislation put forth by the Bush administration because it contained provisions for an expanded guest-worker program.
In the new accord, the A.F.L.-C.I.O. and Change to Win have called for managing future immigration of workers through a national commission. The commission would determine how many permanent and temporary foreign workers should be admitted each year based on demand in American labor markets. Union officials are confident that the result would reduce worker immigration during times of high unemployment like the present.
Mr. Hansen, who is president of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, said in an interview that the joint proposal was a “building block to go forward to get immigration reform up on the agenda in Congress” sometime this year.
Thousands of immigrant farm workers and other low-wage laborers come to the United States through seasonal guest-worker programs that are subject to numerical visa limits and have been criticized by employers as rigid and inefficient. Many unions oppose the programs because the immigrants are tied to one employer and cannot change jobs no matter how abusive the conditions, so union officials say they undercut conditions for American workers. Highly skilled foreign technology engineers and medical specialists also come on temporary visas.
Advocates for immigrants said a unified labor movement could substantially bolster their position as they push for legislation to restructure the ailing immigration system.
“It shows how important the issue is to the representatives of American workers,” said Frank Sharry, executive director of America’s Voice, an advocate group.
A.F.L.-C.I.O.. officials said they agreed with Change to Win leaders that, with more than seven million unauthorized immigrants already working across the nation, legalizing their status would be the most effective way to protect labor standards for all workers.
“We have developed a joint strategy with the approach framed around workers’ rights,” said Ana Avendaño, associate general counsel of the A.F.L.-C.I.O.
Labor leaders said that they would talk with other groups in coming weeks to nail down details of a common position, and that they would then would work in Congress and with the Obama administration to try to ensure that their proposal was part of any bill offered for debate.
Also supporting the compromise is Eliseo Medina, an executive vice president of the Service Employees International Union, a member of Change to Win with hundreds of thousands of members who are immigrants. The Change to Win federation was formed in 2005 with seven unions that broke away from the A.F.L.-C.I.O.
The plan for a labor commission to monitor and control levels of worker immigration was developed with help from Ray Marshall, a labor secretary under President Jimmy Carter. Over the past year, Mr. Marshall, at the request of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., has been consulting between the two federations and with a variety of Hispanic organizations and advocate groups for immigrants.
“All these groups understand that one of the main reasons they lost before was that they were not together,” Mr. Marshall said.
According to a list of principles the labor leaders will present on Tuesday, they are proposing a “depoliticized,” independent commission that “can assess labor market needs on an ongoing basis and — based on a methodology to be approved by Congress — determine the number of foreign workers to be admitted for employment purposes.”
Mr. Johnson, the Chamber of Commerce official, said, “A commission doesn’t get us there.”
Tamar Jacoby, president of ImmigrationWorks USA, a group that organizes businesses to support comprehensive immigration legislation, agreed that employers would have many questions about the approach.
“The question is, Will the commission work?” Ms. Jacoby said. “Will it be adequately attuned to and triggered by the labor market? A system that may — or may not — supply the workers that business will need in the future after the recession will be a cause of great concern to employers.”
=
UNITED LABOR GOOD FOR
IMMIGRATION REFORM
MAPA and Hermandad Mexicana Latinoamericana applauds the accord reached between the two national labor federations, AFL-CIO and Change To Win, on the basic tenets of federal immigration reform and their commitment to move the reform agenda this year with the U.S. Congress and President Barack Obama. While we haven't reviewed all the details of the agreement, labor's support for the full legalization of those currently in the U.S. and no expansion of contract-labor programs corresponds to the broad sentiment of the immigrant communities who have fought tenaciously for reform. A united approach between labor, church, and the communities of immigrants themselves is the key to a successful campaign. We will report more on this issue as the details are revealed.
Nativo Lopez-Vigil
National President
Labor Groups Reach an Accord on Immigration
By JULIA PRESTON and STEVEN GREENHOUSE
The nation’s two major labor federations have agreed for the first time to join forces to support an overhaul of the immigration system, leaders of both organizations said on Monday. The accord could give President Obama significant support among unions as he revisits the stormy issue in the midst of the recession.
John Sweeney, president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., and Joe T. Hansen, a leader of the rival Change to Win federation, will present the outlines of their new position on Tuesday in Washington. In 2007, when Congress last considered comprehensive immigration legislation, the two groups could not agree on a common approach. That legislation failed.
The accord endorses legalizing the status of illegal immigrants already in the United States and opposes any large new program for employers to bring in temporary immigrant workers, officials of both federations said.
“The labor movement will work together to make sure that the White House as well as Congress understand that we speak about immigration reform with one voice,” Mr. Sweeney said in a statement to The New York Times.
But while the compromise repaired one fissure in the coalition that has favored broad immigration legislation, it appeared to open another. An official from the United States Chamber of Commerce said Monday that the business community remained committed to a significant guest-worker program.
“If the unions think they’re going to push a bill through without the support of the business community, they’re crazy,” said Randel Johnson, the chamber’s vice president of labor, immigration and employee benefits. “There’s only going to be one shot at immigration reform. As part of the trade-off for legalization, we need to expand the temporary worker program.”
The common labor position is also unlikely to convince many opponents that an immigration overhaul would not harm American workers. When Obama administration officials said last week that the president intended to push Congress this year to take up an immigration bill that would include a path to legal status for the country’s estimated 12 million illegal immigrants, critics criticized the approach as amnesty for lawbreakers.
“In our current economic crisis, Americans cannot afford to lose more jobs to illegal workers,” said Representative Steve King, an Iowa Republican who sits on the House Judiciary subcommittee on immigration. “American workers are depending on President Obama to protect their jobs from those in America illegally.”
The two labor federations have agreed in the past to proposals that would give legal status to illegal immigrants. But in 2007 the A.F.L.-C.I.O. parted ways with the service employees and several other unions when it did not support legislation put forth by the Bush administration because it contained provisions for an expanded guest-worker program.
In the new accord, the A.F.L.-C.I.O. and Change to Win have called for managing future immigration of workers through a national commission. The commission would determine how many permanent and temporary foreign workers should be admitted each year based on demand in American labor markets. Union officials are confident that the result would reduce worker immigration during times of high unemployment like the present.
Mr. Hansen, who is president of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, said in an interview that the joint proposal was a “building block to go forward to get immigration reform up on the agenda in Congress” sometime this year.
Thousands of immigrant farm workers and other low-wage laborers come to the United States through seasonal guest-worker programs that are subject to numerical visa limits and have been criticized by employers as rigid and inefficient. Many unions oppose the programs because the immigrants are tied to one employer and cannot change jobs no matter how abusive the conditions, so union officials say they undercut conditions for American workers. Highly skilled foreign technology engineers and medical specialists also come on temporary visas.
Advocates for immigrants said a unified labor movement could substantially bolster their position as they push for legislation to restructure the ailing immigration system.
“It shows how important the issue is to the representatives of American workers,” said Frank Sharry, executive director of America’s Voice, an advocate group.
A.F.L.-C.I.O.. officials said they agreed with Change to Win leaders that, with more than seven million unauthorized immigrants already working across the nation, legalizing their status would be the most effective way to protect labor standards for all workers.
“We have developed a joint strategy with the approach framed around workers’ rights,” said Ana Avendaño, associate general counsel of the A.F.L.-C.I.O.
Labor leaders said that they would talk with other groups in coming weeks to nail down details of a common position, and that they would then would work in Congress and with the Obama administration to try to ensure that their proposal was part of any bill offered for debate.
Also supporting the compromise is Eliseo Medina, an executive vice president of the Service Employees International Union, a member of Change to Win with hundreds of thousands of members who are immigrants. The Change to Win federation was formed in 2005 with seven unions that broke away from the A.F.L.-C.I.O.
The plan for a labor commission to monitor and control levels of worker immigration was developed with help from Ray Marshall, a labor secretary under President Jimmy Carter. Over the past year, Mr. Marshall, at the request of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., has been consulting between the two federations and with a variety of Hispanic organizations and advocate groups for immigrants.
“All these groups understand that one of the main reasons they lost before was that they were not together,” Mr. Marshall said.
According to a list of principles the labor leaders will present on Tuesday, they are proposing a “depoliticized,” independent commission that “can assess labor market needs on an ongoing basis and — based on a methodology to be approved by Congress — determine the number of foreign workers to be admitted for employment purposes.”
Mr. Johnson, the Chamber of Commerce official, said, “A commission doesn’t get us there.”
Tamar Jacoby, president of ImmigrationWorks USA, a group that organizes businesses to support comprehensive immigration legislation, agreed that employers would have many questions about the approach.
“The question is, Will the commission work?” Ms. Jacoby said. “Will it be adequately attuned to and triggered by the labor market? A system that may — or may not — supply the workers that business will need in the future after the recession will be a cause of great concern to employers.”
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UNITED LABOR GOOD FOR
IMMIGRATION REFORM
MAPA and Hermandad Mexicana Latinoamericana applauds the accord reached between the two national labor federations, AFL-CIO and Change To Win, on the basic tenets of federal immigration reform and their commitment to move the reform agenda this year with the U.S. Congress and President Barack Obama. While we haven't reviewed all the details of the agreement, labor's support for the full legalization of those currently in the U.S. and no expansion of contract-labor programs corresponds to the broad sentiment of the immigrant communities who have fought tenaciously for reform. A united approach between labor, church, and the communities of immigrants themselves is the key to a successful campaign. We will report more on this issue as the details are revealed.
Nativo Lopez-Vigil
National President
Sunday, April 05, 2009
Wednesday, April 01, 2009
May Day 2009
Why Immigrant Workers Will Fill the Streets This May Day
Friday 27 March 2009
by: David Bacon, t r u t h o u t | Perspective
In a little over a month, hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions, of people will fill the streets in city after city, town after town, across the US. This year these May Day marches of immigrant workers will make an important demand on the Obama administration: End the draconian enforcement policies of the Bush administration. Establish a new immigration policy based on human rights and recognition of the crucial economic and social contributions of immigrants to US society.
This year's marches will continue the recovery in the US of the celebration of May Day, recognized in the rest of the world as the day recognizing the contributions and achievements of working people. That recovery started on Monday, May 1, 2006, when over a million people filled the streets of Los Angeles, with hundreds of thousands more in Chicago, New York and cities and towns throughout the United States. Again on May Day in 2007 and 2008, immigrants and their supporters demonstrated and marched, from coast to coast.
One sign found in almost every march said it all: "We are Workers, not Criminals!" Often it was held in the calloused hands of men and women who looked as though they'd just come from work in a factory, cleaning an office building or picking grapes. The sign stated an obvious truth. Millions of people have come to the United States to work, not to break its laws. Some have come with visas, and others without them. But they are all contributors to the society they've found here.
The protests have seemed spontaneous, but they come as a result of years of organizing, educating and agitating - activities that have given immigrants confidence, and at least some organizations the credibility needed to mobilize direct mass action. This movement is the legacy of Bert Corona, immigrant rights pioneer and founder of many national Latino organizations. He trained thousands of immigrant activists, taught the value of political independence, and believed that immigrants themselves must conduct the fight for immigrant rights. Most of the leaders of the radical wing of today's immigrant rights movement were students or disciples of Corona.
Immigrants, however, feel their backs are against the wall, and they came out of their homes and workplaces to show it. In part, their protests respond to a wave of draconian proposals to criminalize immigration status, and work itself for undocumented people. But the protests do more than react to a particular congressional or legislative agenda. They are the cumulative response to years of bashing and denigrating immigrants generally, and Mexicans and Latinos in particular.
In 1986, the Immigration Reform and Control Act made it a crime, for the first time in US history, to hire people without papers. Defenders argued that if people could not legally work they would leave. Life was not so simple.
Undocumented people are part of the communities they live in. They cannot simply go, nor should they. They seek the same goals of equality and opportunity that working people in the US have historically fought to achieve. In addition, for most immigrants, there are no jobs to return to in the countries from which they've come. Rufino Dominguez, a Oaxacan community leader in Fresno, California, says, "The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) made the price of corn so low that it's not economically possible to plant a crop anymore. We come to the US to work because there's no alternative." After Congress passed NAFTA, six million displaced people came to the US as a result.
Instead of recognizing this reality, the US government has attempted to make holding a job a criminal act. Some states and local communities, seeing a green light from the Department of Homeland Security, have passed measures that go even further. Last summer, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff proposed a rule requiring employers to fire any worker who couldn't correct a mismatch between the Social Security number the worker had provided an employer and the SSA database. The regulation assumes those workers have no valid immigration visa, and therefore no valid Social Security number.
With 12 million people living in the US without legal immigration status, the regulation would lead to massive firings, bringing many industries and businesses to a halt. Citizens and legal visa holders would be swept up as well, since the Social Security database is often inaccurate. Under Chertoff, the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement has conducted sweeping workplace raids, arresting and deporting thousands of workers. Many have been charged with an additional crime - identity theft - because they used a Social Security number belonging to someone else to get a job. Yet, workers using another number actually deposit money into Social Security funds, and will never collect benefits their contributions paid for.
The Arizona legislature has passed a law requiring employers to verify the immigration status of every worker through a federal database called E-Verify, which is even more incomplete and full of errors than Social Security. They must fire workers whose names get flagged. And Mississippi passed a bill making it a felony for an undocumented worker to hold a job, with jail time of 1-10 years, fines of up to $10,000, and no bail for anyone arrested. Employers get immunity.
Many of these punitive measures were incorporated into proposals for "comprehensive immigration reform" that were debated in Congress in 2006 and 2007. The comprehensive bills combined increased enforcement, especially criminalization of work for the undocumented, with huge guest worker programs under which large employers would recruit temporary labor under contract outside the US, bringing workers into the country in a status that would deny them basic rights and social equality. While those proposals failed in Congress, the Bush administration implemented some of their most draconian provisions by executive order and administrative action.
Together, these factors have produced a huge popular response, which has become most visible in the annual marches and demonstrations on May Day. Nativo Lopez, president of both the Mexican American Political Association and the Hermandad Mexicana Latinoamericana, says "the huge number of immigrants and their supporters in the streets found these compromises completely unacceptable. We will only get what we're ready to fight for, but people are ready and willing to fight for the whole enchilada. Washington legislators and lobbyists fear the growth of a new civil rights movement in the streets, because it rejects their compromises and makes demands that go beyond what they have defined as 'politically possible.'"
The marches have put forward an alternative set of demands, which include a real legal status for the 12 million undocumented people in the US, the right to organize to raise wages and gain workplace rights, increased availability of visas that give immigrants some degree of social equality, especially visas based on family reunification, no expansion of guest worker programs, and a guarantee of human rights to immigrants, especially in communities along the US/Mexican border.
At the same time, the price of trying to push people out of the US who've come here for survival is that the vulnerability of undocumented workers will increase. Unscrupulous employers use that vulnerability to deny overtime pay or minimum wage, or fire workers when they protest or organize. Increased vulnerability ultimately results in cheaper labor and fewer rights for everyone. After deporting over 1,000 workers at Swift meatpacking plants, Homeland Security Secretary Chertoff called for linking "effective interior enforcement and a temporary-worker program.'' The government's goal is cheap labor for large employers. Deportations, firings and guest worker programs all make labor cheaper and contribute to a climate of fear and insecurity for all workers.
The May 1 actions highlight the economic importance of immigrant labor. Undocumented workers deserve legal status because of that labor - their inherent contribution to society. The value they create is never called illegal, and no one dreams of taking it away from the employers who profit from it. Yet the people who produce that value are called exactly that - illegal. All workers create value through their labor, but immigrant workers are especially profitable, because they are so often denied many of the union-won benefits accorded to native-born workers. The average undocumented worker has been in the US for five years. By that time, these workers have paid a high price for their lack of legal status, through low wages and lost benefits.
"Undocumented workers deserve immediate legal status, and have already paid for it," Lopez says.
On May 1, the absence of immigrant workers from workplaces, schools and stores demonstrates their power in the national immigration debate and sends a powerful message that they will not be shut out of the debate over their status. They have rescued from anonymity the struggle for the eight-hour day, begun in Chicago over a century ago by the immigrants of yesteryear. They overcame the legacy of the cold war, in which celebrations of May Day were attacked and banned. They are recovering the traditions of all working people for the people of the United States.
David Bacon is a writer and photographer. His new book, "Illegal People - How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants," was just published by Beacon Press.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Work Place Ice Raids
WORK-PLACE ICE RAIDS UNDER REVIEW
BY DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY
This is the long-sought news we have been waiting to hear with the beginning of the Obama administration and the naming of Gov. Janet Napolitano to the post of Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security - a change of policy and direction on immigration raids. It should not be lost on anyone that the steady pressure on a national level by pro-immigrant political forces - from the church, unions, community, students, and even business - directed towards President Obama and the U.S. Congress has had a positive effect. The pressure should conitnue to roll along until there is established a definitive policy to end the raids, the separation of families, the detention of children, and the mass deportations. We are especially concerned about the prospect of the deportation of 30,000 Haitian migrants who have been denied refugee or temporary protected status and could be removed in the coming weeks or months. We need to raise our voice to defend Haitian brothers and sisters no less vigorously than we do for our Mexican and Central American family members. We demand for the Haitian migrants the same policy applied to the Cuban migrants - and an end to discrimination of our immigration policies. SI SE PUDO!
Check out the new website of the SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA IMMIGRATION COALITION (SCIC) comprised of fifty organizations and local coalitions, and counting, which organized the march and rally last Saturday against the ICE raids. The SCIC is also sponsoring a FAMILY UNITY IMMIGRATION CONFERENCE on April 11, 2009 at the Santee Education Complex in Los Angeles. Click on www.immigrationcoalition.org for the details.
Nativo Lopez-Vigil
National President
MAPA
www.immigrationcoalition.org
By Spencer S. Hsu
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, March 29, 2009; 1:19 PM
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has delayed a series of proposed immigration raids and other enforcement actions at U.S. workplaces in recent weeks, asking agents in her department to apply more scrutiny to the selection and investigation of targets as well as the timing of raids, federal officials said.
A senior department official said the delays signal a pending change in whom agents at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement choose to prosecute -- increasing the focus on businesses and executives instead of ordinary workers.
"ICE is now scrutinizing these cases more thoroughly to ensure that [targets] are being taken down when they should be taken down, and that the employer is being targeted and the surveillance and the investigation is being done how it should be done," said the official, discussing Napolitano's views about sensitive law enforcement matters on the condition of anonymity.
"There will be a change in policy, but in the interim, you've got to scrutinize the cases coming up," the senior DHS official said, noting Napolitano's expectations as a former federal prosecutor and state attorney general.
Another DHS official said Napolitano plans to release protocols this week to ensure more consistent work- site investigations and less "haphazard" decision- making.
Napolitano's moves have led some to question President Obama's commitment to work-site raids, which were a signature of Bush administration efforts to combat illegal immigration. Napolitano has highlighted other priorities, such as combating Mexican drug cartels and catching dangerous criminals who are illegal immigrants.
Napolitano's moves foreshadow the difficult political decisions the Obama administration faces as it decides whether to continue mass arrests of illegal immigrant workers in sweeps of meatpackers, construction firms, defense contractors and other employers.
Critics say workplace and neighborhood sweeps are harsh and indiscriminate, and they accuse the government of racial profiling, violating due process rights and committing other humanitarian abuses.
The raids have enraged Latino community and religious leaders, immigrant advocates and civil liberties groups important to the Democratic base, who have stepped up pressure on Obama to stop them.
At a rally last week in Chicago, Cardinal Francis George, head of the archdiocese of Obama's home city, called on the government "to end immigration raids and the separation of families" and support an overhaul of immigration law. "Reform would be a clear sign this administration is truly about change," George said.
Also last week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D- Calif.) and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus made similar calls as the caucus met formally with Obama for the first time.
"Raids that break up families in that way, just kick in the door in the middle of the night, taking [a] father, a parent away, that's just not the American way. It must stop," Pelosi added at a Capitol Hill conference on border issues sponsored by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
But Obama also faces pressure from conservative lawmakers and many centrist Democrats, who say that workplace enforcement is needed to reduce the supply of jobs that attract illegal immigrants, and that any retreat in defending American jobs in a recession could ignite a populist backlash.
When the White House announced plans last week to move more than 450 federal agents and equipment to the border to counter Mexico's drug cartels, lawmakers warned Napolitano against diverting money from workplace operations.
Rep. Lamar Smith (Tex.), ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, said the administration "appears to be using border violence as an excuse" to undercut immigration enforcement in the nation's interior.
"It makes no sense to take funds from one priority (worksite enforcement) to address a new priority (the growth in border violence). This is just robbing Peter to pay Paul," Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.), the powerful chairman of the Senate Appropriations subcommittee for homeland security, said in an e- mail.
Led by Byrd, Congress this year ordered ICE to spend $127 million on workplace operations, $34 million more than President George W. Bush had requested. Reducing those amounts, even in ICE's overall $5 billion budget, would provoke a fight, senior aides in both parties said.
DHS officials categorically deny any reduction. Instead Napolitano has sought to chart a middle course by ordering a review of which immigrants are targeted for arrest. While a policy is still under development, Napolitano has said she intends to focus more on prosecuting criminal cases of wrongdoing by companies. Analysts say they also think ICE may conduct fewer raids, focusing routine enforcement on civil infractions of worker eligibility verification rules.
Former Bush administration officials said their raids were also targeted against supervisors, but that it took time to build complicated white-collar cases. In the meantime, they said, depriving companies of their workforces and in some cases filing criminal charges against illegal immigrant workers sent a clear message of deterrence to both management and labor.
Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which seeks to reduce immigration, said Obama aides are trying to manage the issue until an economic turnaround permits an attempt to overhaul immigration laws.
"I think their calculus is, how do they keep Hispanic groups happy enough without angering the broader public so much that they sabotage health care and their other priorities?" Krikorian said.
Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, an immigrant advocacy group, said that to the contrary, groups such as his support Obama's focus on going after bad employers and criminal illegal immigrants first -- or as he put it, prioritizing "drug smugglers, not window washers."
Within ICE, the front-office vetting of cases has led to some doubts. Last week, for example, ICE postponed plans to raid employers at a military-related facility in Chicago for which they had arranged to temporarily detain as many as 100 illegal immigrants, according to one official. A second official said Napolitano thought the investigative work was inadequate.
The raid would have been the second under the Obama administration. After the first, a Feb. 24 sweep of an engine-parts maker in Bellingham, Wash., that led to 28 arrests, Napolitano publicly expressed disappointment that ICE did not inform her beforehand and announced an investigation into agency communication practices.
In response, Leigh H. Winchell, the ICE special agent in charge in Seattle, wrote an e-mail to his staff -- subsequently leaked to conservative bloggers -- saying they had acted correctly. He also copied a statement from House Republicans calling Napolitano's review "beyond backwards."
"You did nothing wrong and you did everything right," Winchell wrote. "I cannot control the politics that take place with these types of situations, but I can remind you that you are great servants of this country and this agency."
washingtonpost.com
Monday, March 30, 2009
Sacramento Cesar Chavez march
More than 700 labor activists and youth marched through downtown Sacramento, California on Sat, March 28, in honor of Cesar Chavez and to demand passage of the Employee Free Choice Act and a fair immigration proposal.
California and 6 other states recognize and celebrate a Cesar Chavez holiday for workers on the anniversary of his death, March 31. The Sacramento event was organized by LACLAA ( Labor Council on Latin American Advancement), with the participation of dozens of additional unions and community groups including the Sacramento Progressive Alliance, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, and Sacramento Democratic Socialists of America.
After demonstrating for passage of the EFJA at the Federal Building, the marchers continued on to Cesar Chavez Park in Sacramento.
See Cesar Chavez: Presente at http://www.choosingdemocracy.blogspot.com
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Cesar Chavez Day
Francisco Reveles
“César Chávez decía que la educacíon era nuestro futuro pore so, hoy que se cumple un aniversario más, es importante recordarles que no se dejen vencer: debemos de continuar con su ejemplo de superación y lucha esa superación solo la vamos a obtener a trav´z de la educacion. “
“ Hasta a la fecha el sueño de César Chávez no se cumple, de que todos los jóvenes latinos tengan acceso a majores escuelas y mejores oportunidades, pero es responsabilidad de nosotros continuar con el espíritu de lucha de este líder para hacer que nuestros hijos tengan las mismas oportunidades que el resto de la comunidad.”
Candidato por el puesto de superintendente de escuelas de California.
March 21, 2009. Conferencia de Liderazgo Juvenil Cesar Chavez. Roseville, Ca.
Monday, March 23, 2009
Homeless in Sacramento : David Bacon
SACRAMENTO, CA - 19MARCH09 - On one side of the American River in downtown Sacramento, foundations and media organizations have comfortable offices with views of the water. On the other side, a homeless camp sits beside the railroad tracks next to the huge Blue Diamond almond processing plant. A biking and jogging trail winds past the camp, and over the bridge crossing the river. Runners and bicyclists in spandex and shorts pass by, hardly noticing the hundreds of people living in tents, under makeshift tarps, or simply sleeping on the ground. This community has mushroomed in the last few months as the economic crisis puts people out of homes and jobs, onto the streets, or in this case, into a field.
Salvador Orozco, a Mexican migrant from Michoacan, sleeps on a piece of cardboard under a bush next to the tracks. He came from Los Angeles, where he says police cleared out another camp of people living under tarps. "In some areas they're closing the shelters to single men, because they don't have enough room for families," he says. "More and more people are living in their cars with children, and they're kicking single people off welfare." The homeless are "frente de la batalla" - at the front of the attack Orozco says.
A religious man, he spends much of his day reading the Bible and Christian evangelist magazines. "While I was reading yesterday, the railroad police came and gave me a ticket and said I had to leave. But go where? This all comes from the anger that the world has at people like us.
For more articles and images, see http://dbacon.igc.org
Just out from Beacon Press:
Illegal People -- How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants
http://www.beacon.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=2002
See also the photodocumentary on indigenous migration to the US
Communities Without Borders (Cornell University/ILR Press, 2006)
http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/cup_detail.taf?ti_id=4575
See also The Children of NAFTA, Labor Wars on the U.S./Mexico Border (University of California, 2004)
http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/9989.html
Nearby the skeletal figure of a woman stands guard over the kitchen at the entrance to another settlement within the homeless camp. Residents of this small community call it Rancho Encasalotengo (a sarcastic comment meaning, "I have it at home.") The skeleton is a figure in Mexican culture popular on the Day of the Dead. This figure is the creation of artist Francisco Bernal, who sleeps in a tent here.
In a large open field next to the river a woman talks on her cellphone. Two friends, Eric Williams and Kieth Keele, live in this part of the homeless camp. So does Robert Burgins, a disabled worker. Burgins says he's been injured several times, but still has just enough unemployment benefits to keep him going for a few weeks longer. It wasn't enough to pay rent, though, which is why he's living in the homeless camp. Over a long life, Burgins worked as a mason, an auto mechanic and a machinist.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Stiglitz: Crisis empeorará
Stiglitz.
Crisis empeorará pese al plan de rescate de Obama: Nobel de Economía
"Es un paquete mucho mejor que el propuesto por Bush, pero no es suficiente", dijo Joseph Stiglitz.
AFP Publicado: 11/03/2009 12:12
Sao Paulo, Brasil. El paquete estadunidense de rescate económico del presidente Barack Obama de más de 700 mil millones de dólares es "mucho mejor que la respuesta de 2008", pero "no es suficiente y la crisis será peor", anticipó este miércoles el premio Nobel de Economía, Joseph Stiglitz.
"Debemos ver las cosas en perspectiva. (El presidente George W.) Bush estaba paralizado y las cosas empeoraban cada día sin que hiciera nada. Hoy tenemos un paquete mucho mejor que la respuesta de 2008. Pero no es suficiente y la crisis será peor", dijo Stiglitz en entrevista al diario O Estado de Sao Paulo.
Recordó que "muchos países emergentes se han convertido en víctimas inocentes de la crisis. La ironía es que mientras el gobierno estadunidense daba lecciones sobre reglas e instituciones en los países emergentes, sus políticas eran un fracaso total".
"A causa de eso, la crisis es hoy severa en todo el mundo y países como Brasil van a sufrir de verdad", señaló Stiglitz al diario, que lo consultó sobre la caída de 3.6 por ciento de la economía brasileña en el cuarto trimestre del año pasado, la más fuerte desde igual período de 1996, y divulgada el martes.
Alertó además que pese a que "hay un acuerdo global de no recurrir al proteccionismo" muchos paquetes de auxilio "tienen medidas proteccionistas en su base y quien más sufrirá serán los países en desarrollo".
"La realidad es que la Organización Mundial de Comercio es una decepción" porque incluso la conclusión de la Ronda Doha, que negocia la liberación del comercio mundial, "no traería ganancias sustanciales para los países emergentes", manifestó el Premio Nobel.
Por eso, añadió, "los países ricos deben abrir sus mercados unilateralmente para los más pobres del mundo" que "no tienen dinero para relanzar las actividades económicas".
"Muchos emergentes necesitarán ayuda para superar la crisis", y el FMI (Fondo Monetario Internacional) deberá auxiliarlos "sin condiciones", sin exigir "elevar intereses y cortar gastos (públicos)", lo cual "llevó a la recesión", expresó Stiglitz.
Crisis empeorará pese al plan de rescate de Obama: Nobel de Economía
"Es un paquete mucho mejor que el propuesto por Bush, pero no es suficiente", dijo Joseph Stiglitz.
AFP Publicado: 11/03/2009 12:12
Sao Paulo, Brasil. El paquete estadunidense de rescate económico del presidente Barack Obama de más de 700 mil millones de dólares es "mucho mejor que la respuesta de 2008", pero "no es suficiente y la crisis será peor", anticipó este miércoles el premio Nobel de Economía, Joseph Stiglitz.
"Debemos ver las cosas en perspectiva. (El presidente George W.) Bush estaba paralizado y las cosas empeoraban cada día sin que hiciera nada. Hoy tenemos un paquete mucho mejor que la respuesta de 2008. Pero no es suficiente y la crisis será peor", dijo Stiglitz en entrevista al diario O Estado de Sao Paulo.
Recordó que "muchos países emergentes se han convertido en víctimas inocentes de la crisis. La ironía es que mientras el gobierno estadunidense daba lecciones sobre reglas e instituciones en los países emergentes, sus políticas eran un fracaso total".
"A causa de eso, la crisis es hoy severa en todo el mundo y países como Brasil van a sufrir de verdad", señaló Stiglitz al diario, que lo consultó sobre la caída de 3.6 por ciento de la economía brasileña en el cuarto trimestre del año pasado, la más fuerte desde igual período de 1996, y divulgada el martes.
Alertó además que pese a que "hay un acuerdo global de no recurrir al proteccionismo" muchos paquetes de auxilio "tienen medidas proteccionistas en su base y quien más sufrirá serán los países en desarrollo".
"La realidad es que la Organización Mundial de Comercio es una decepción" porque incluso la conclusión de la Ronda Doha, que negocia la liberación del comercio mundial, "no traería ganancias sustanciales para los países emergentes", manifestó el Premio Nobel.
Por eso, añadió, "los países ricos deben abrir sus mercados unilateralmente para los más pobres del mundo" que "no tienen dinero para relanzar las actividades económicas".
"Muchos emergentes necesitarán ayuda para superar la crisis", y el FMI (Fondo Monetario Internacional) deberá auxiliarlos "sin condiciones", sin exigir "elevar intereses y cortar gastos (públicos)", lo cual "llevó a la recesión", expresó Stiglitz.
Monday, March 16, 2009
The Left wins in El Salvador
Mauricio Funes's election win means the rights of the country's indigenous people will at last be recognised and defended
Richard Gott
guardian.co.uk, Monday 16 March 2009
El Salvador is the most tragic and oppressed country in the Americas, yet today it wakes up to a new dawn of hope and anticipation, with the election victory of Mauricio Funes, the candidate of a historic leftwing party, the Farabundo Martm National Liberation Front (FMLN). Funes himself is a journalist, a former television presenter and a moderate social democrat, but his party is the heir to the principal radical tradition in the country established over the past 80 years, years of extreme conservatism punctuated by periods of excruciating violence unleashed on the population by the most reactionary landed oligarchy in the Americas. The 500-year struggle in Latin America between indigenous peoples and white settlers from Europe is finally being won, and El Salvador will now take its place beside Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador as a country where the rights of the continent's indigenous peoples are recognised and defended.
The party of Funes takes its name from Agustmn Farabundo Martm, a member of that first generation of communist leaders in Central America in the 1920s that included Augusto Cisar Sandino of Nicaragua, the inspiration of the Sandinistas. Farabundo Martm took part in the famous peasant uprising of 1932, sparked off by the global economic crisis that led to a collapse of the coffee price, the country's principal export earner. The crisis was crushed by the US-backed military dictator of the time, General Maximilian Martmnez, in what was called "La Matanza", or "slaughtering", in which 30,000 mostly indigenous people were killed.
Farabundo Martm was captured and shot, but his name was taken up by the guerrilla movement that emerged in the 1970s, to carry on the struggle against the successive military governments that dominated the country in the 20th century. That struggle, waged throughout the 1980s, was even more viciously crushed than "La Matanza" of the 1930s, and led to the deaths of more than 70,000 people. The war in El Salvador was one of the best-reported stories of its time in the international media, which highlighted the huge financial support provided by the Reagan government to the local military.
A particular feature of the war was the repression ordered by the army of the Catholic church, with the murder of Archbishop Oscar Romero in March 1980 and of four American churchwomen in December that year, and of six Jesuit teachers in November 1989. The war was finally brought to an end with a UN-brokered peace process in 1991, but although the FMLN was then able to participate in politics, the country has remained dominated by the ultra rightwing Arena party that had once fuelled the paramilitary militias and death squads of the 1980s. Until today. The Arena candidate, Rodrigo Avila, himself a former police chief, gracefully conceded on Sunday night that he had lost the election. As in the 1930s, El Salvador is feeling the effects of the global economic crisis, and the neoliberal model inflicted on Central America over recent decades is already being rejected in Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala. El Salvador is just the latest country to follow this trend.
Much was made during the election campaign of the possible leftist influence of Hugo Chavez of Venezuela or of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil, but the FMLN made considerable efforts to emphasise the national dimension of their ambitions. In an interview last year, Funes explained his modest aims:
We do not need to be close to Chavez, close to Lula or close to Bush in order for our institutions and democracy to work. What we need is to build a model of public management that responds to the needs of Salvadorans and that will resolve Salvadoran problems. We respect the process being followed in Venezuela, as well as we respect and closely watch the new society which Lula is building, and the one that the new President Fernando Lugo in Paraguay has promised to build. Those processes are a response to other circumstances. What we hope to build are relationships based on co-operation and solidarity with the people represented by each one of these countries. However, we are not going to follow the same recipe or model that might have worked in other countries, but has nothing to do with our reality.
The election campaign brought back many memories of the country's troubled and divided history, but today's FMLN is very different from the Marxist guerrilla movement that once sought to bring the Cuban revolutionary style to Central America. Yet another victory for the Latin America left is certainly a challenge for the new government in the United States. President Lula met President Obama in Washington on Saturday and suggested that he should create a relationship of "trust not interference", with Latin America. "What I said to President Obama, and I hope he will make it happen, is that there would be closer ties with Venezuela, closer ties with Cuba, closer ties with Bolivia," Lula told reporters. In April, when Obama travels to Trinidad for a meeting with Latin American presidents, he will have to explain where his new administration will stand.
www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/mar/16/el-salvador
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Lula: The Future of Human Beings is What Matters
Lula: The Future of Human Beings is What Matters
By Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva
President of Brazil.
Financial Times
March 9, 2009
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/4623a78e-0ce2-11de-a555-0000779fd2ac.html
For me, capitalism has never been an abstract concept.
It is a real, concrete part of everyday life. When I
was a boy, my family left the rural misery of Brazil's
north-east and set off for Sao Paulo. My mother, an
extraordinary woman of great courage, uprooted herself
and her children and moved to the industrial centre of
Brazil in search of a better life. My childhood was no
different from that of many boys from poor families:
informal jobs; very little formal education. My only
diploma was as a machine lathe operator, from a course
at the National Service for Industry.
I began to experience the reality of factory life,
which awoke in me my vocation as a union leader. I
became a member of the Metalworkers'
Union of Sao Bernardo, in the outskirts of Sao Paulo. I
became the union's president and, as such, led the
strikes of 1978-1980 that changed the face of the
Brazilian labour movement and played a big role in
returning democracy to the country, then under military
dictatorship.
The impact of the union movement on Brazilian society
led us to create the Workers' party, which brought
together urban and rural workers, intellectuals and
militants from civil society. Brazilian capitalism, at
that time, was not only a matter of low salaries,
insalubrious working conditions and repression of the
union movement. It was also expressed in economic
policy and in the whole set of the government's public
policies, as well as in the restrictions it placed on
civil liberties. Together with millions of other
workers, I discovered it was not enough merely to
demand better salaries and working conditions. It was
fundamental that we should fight for citizenship and
for a profound reorganisation of economic and social
life.
I fought and lost four elections before being elected
president of the republic in 2002. In opposition, I
came to know my country intimately. In discussions with
intellectuals I thrashed out the alternatives for our
society, living out on the periphery of the world a
drama of stagnation and profound social inequality. But
my greatest understanding of Brazil came from direct
contact with its people through the 'caravans of
citizenship' that took me across tens of thousands of
kilometres.
When I arrived in the presidency, I found myself faced
not only by serious structural problems but, above all,
by an inheritance of ingrained inequalities. Most of
our governors, even those that enacted reforms in the
past, had governed for the few. They concerned
themselves with a Brazil in which only a third of the
population mattered.
The situation I inherited was one not only of material
difficulties but also of deep-rooted prejudices that
threatened to paralyse our government and lead us into
stagnation. We could not grow, it was said, without
threatening economic stability - much less grow and
distribute wealth. We would have to choose between the
internal market and the external. Either we accepted
the unforgiving imperatives of the globalised economy
or we would be condemned to fatal isolation.
Over the past six years, we have destroyed those myths.
We have grown and enjoyed economic stability. Our
growth has been accompanied by the inclusion of tens
of millions of Brazilian people in the consumer market.
We have distributed wealth to more than 40m who lived
below the poverty line. We have ensured that the
national minimum wage has risen always above the rate
of inflation. We have democratised access to credit. We
have created more than 10m jobs. We have pushed forward
with land reform. The expansion of our domestic market
has not happened at the expense of exports - they have
tripled in six years. We have attracted enormous
volumes of foreign investment with no loss of
sovereignty.
All this has enabled us to accumulate $207bn in foreign
reserves and thereby protect ourselves from the worst
effects of a financial crisis that, born at the centre
of capitalism, threatens the entire structure of the
global economy.
Nobody dares to predict today what will be the future
of capitalism.
As the governor of a great economy described as
'emerging', what I can say is what sort of society I
hope will emerge from this crisis. It will reward
production and not speculation. The function of the
financial sector will be to stimulate productive
activity - and it will be the object of rigorous
controls, both national and international, by means of
serious and representative organisations. International
trade will be free of the protectionism that shows
dangerous signs of intensifying. The reformed
multilateral organisations will operate programmes to
support poor and emerging economies with the aim of
reducing the imbalances that scar the world today.
There will be a new and democratic system of global
governance. New energy policies, reform of systems of
production and of patterns of consumption will ensure
the survival of a planet threatened today by global
warming.
But, above all, I hope for a world free of the economic
dogmas that invaded the thinking of many and were
presented as absolute truths. Anti-cyclical policies
must not be adopted only when a crisis is under way.
Applied in advance - as they have been in Brazil - they
can be the guarantors of a more just and democratic
society.
As I said at the outset, I do not give much importance
to abstract concepts.
I am not worried about the name to be given to the
economic and social order that will come after the
crisis, so long as its central concern is with human
beings.
__________________
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
N. Ireland, thousands oppose the killings
Thousands in Northern Ireland attend peace vigils after horrific murders
By Noel McAdam
Wednesday, 11 March 2009
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Getting tough now will only play into the hands of killers
After the deaths of three security force members in three days, trade union members and others were gathering in Belfast, Londonderry, Lisburn, Newry, Downpatrick and other centres to show their anger and disgust.
Wednesday, March 04, 2009
Who are you calling a socialist?
Who You Calling Socialist?
By Harold Meyerson
Wednesday, March 4, 2009; A15
"We are all socialists now," proclaims Newsweek. We are creating "socialist republics" in the United States, says Mike Huckabee, adding, on reflection, that "Lenin and Stalin would love this stuff." We are witnessing the Obama-era phenomenon of "European socialism transplanted to Washington," says Newt Gingrich.
Well! Even as we all turn red, I've still encountered just two avowed democratic socialists in my daily rounds through the nation's capital: Vermont's Sen. Bernie Sanders . . . and the guy I see in the mirror when I shave. Bernie is quite capable of speaking for himself, so what follows is a report on the state of actual existing socialism from the other half of the D.C. Senators and Columnists Soviet.
First, as we survey the political landscape, what's striking is the absence of advocates of socialism, at least as the term was understood by those who carried that banner during the capitalist crisis of the 1930s. Then, socialists and communists both spoke of nationalizing all major industries and abolishing private markets and the wage system. Today, it's impossible to find a left-leaning party anywhere that has such demands or entertains such fantasies. (Not even Hugo Chávez -- more an authoritarian populist than any kind of socialist -- says such things.)
Within the confines of socialist history, this means that the perspective of Eduard Bernstein -- the fin de siecle German socialist who argued that the immediate struggle to humanize capitalism through the instruments of democratic government was everything, and that the goal of supplanting capitalism altogether was meaningless -- has definitively prevailed. Within the confines of American history, this means that when New York's garment unions left the Socialist Party to endorse Franklin Roosevelt in 1936, they were charting the paradigmatic course for American socialists: into the Democratic Party to support not the abolition of capitalism but its regulation and democratization, and the creation of some areas of public life where the market does not rule.
But in the United States, conservatives have never bashed socialism because its specter was actually stalking America. Rather, they've wielded the cudgel against such progressive reforms as free universal education, the minimum wage or tighter financial regulations. Their signal success is to have kept the United States free from the taint of universal health care. The result: We have the world's highest health-care costs, borne by businesses and employees that cannot afford them; nearly 50 million Americans have no coverage; infant mortality rates are higher than those in 41 nations -- but at least (phew!) we don't have socialized medicine.
Give conservatives credit for their consistency: They attacked Roosevelt as a socialist as they are now attacking Obama, when in fact Obama, like Roosevelt before him, is engaged not in creating socialism but in rebooting a crashed capitalist system. The spending in Obama's stimulus plan isn't a socialist takeover. It's the only way to inject money into a system in which private-sector investment, consumption and exports -- the other three possible engines of growth -- are locked down. Investing more tax dollars in education and research and development is a way to use public funds to create a more competitive private sector. Keeping our banks from speculating madly with our money is a way to keep banking alive.
If Obama realizes his agenda, what emerges will be a more social, sustainable, competitive capitalism. His more intellectually honest and sentient conservative critics don't accuse him of Leninism but of making our form of capitalism more like Europe's. In fact, over the past quarter-century, Europe's capitalism became less regulated and more like ours, one reason Europe is tanking along with everyone else.
Take it from a democratic socialist: Laissez-faire American capitalism is about to be supplanted not by socialism but by a more regulated, viable capitalism. And the reason isn't that the woods are full of secret socialists who are only now outing themselves.
Judging by the failures of the great Wall Street investment houses and the worldwide crisis of commercial banks; the collapse of East Asian, German and American exports; the death rattle of the U.S. auto industry; the plunge of stock markets everywhere; the sickening rise in global joblessness; and the growing shakiness of governments in fledgling democracies that opened themselves to the world market -- judging by all these, a more social capitalism is on the horizon because the deregulated capitalism of the past 30 years has blown itself up, taking much of the known world with it.
So, for conservatives searching for the culprits behind this transformation of capitalism: Despite our best efforts, it wasn't Bernie and it wasn't me. It was your own damn system.
meyersonh@washpost.com
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/03/AR2009030303207.html
By Harold Meyerson
Wednesday, March 4, 2009; A15
"We are all socialists now," proclaims Newsweek. We are creating "socialist republics" in the United States, says Mike Huckabee, adding, on reflection, that "Lenin and Stalin would love this stuff." We are witnessing the Obama-era phenomenon of "European socialism transplanted to Washington," says Newt Gingrich.
Well! Even as we all turn red, I've still encountered just two avowed democratic socialists in my daily rounds through the nation's capital: Vermont's Sen. Bernie Sanders . . . and the guy I see in the mirror when I shave. Bernie is quite capable of speaking for himself, so what follows is a report on the state of actual existing socialism from the other half of the D.C. Senators and Columnists Soviet.
First, as we survey the political landscape, what's striking is the absence of advocates of socialism, at least as the term was understood by those who carried that banner during the capitalist crisis of the 1930s. Then, socialists and communists both spoke of nationalizing all major industries and abolishing private markets and the wage system. Today, it's impossible to find a left-leaning party anywhere that has such demands or entertains such fantasies. (Not even Hugo Chávez -- more an authoritarian populist than any kind of socialist -- says such things.)
Within the confines of socialist history, this means that the perspective of Eduard Bernstein -- the fin de siecle German socialist who argued that the immediate struggle to humanize capitalism through the instruments of democratic government was everything, and that the goal of supplanting capitalism altogether was meaningless -- has definitively prevailed. Within the confines of American history, this means that when New York's garment unions left the Socialist Party to endorse Franklin Roosevelt in 1936, they were charting the paradigmatic course for American socialists: into the Democratic Party to support not the abolition of capitalism but its regulation and democratization, and the creation of some areas of public life where the market does not rule.
But in the United States, conservatives have never bashed socialism because its specter was actually stalking America. Rather, they've wielded the cudgel against such progressive reforms as free universal education, the minimum wage or tighter financial regulations. Their signal success is to have kept the United States free from the taint of universal health care. The result: We have the world's highest health-care costs, borne by businesses and employees that cannot afford them; nearly 50 million Americans have no coverage; infant mortality rates are higher than those in 41 nations -- but at least (phew!) we don't have socialized medicine.
Give conservatives credit for their consistency: They attacked Roosevelt as a socialist as they are now attacking Obama, when in fact Obama, like Roosevelt before him, is engaged not in creating socialism but in rebooting a crashed capitalist system. The spending in Obama's stimulus plan isn't a socialist takeover. It's the only way to inject money into a system in which private-sector investment, consumption and exports -- the other three possible engines of growth -- are locked down. Investing more tax dollars in education and research and development is a way to use public funds to create a more competitive private sector. Keeping our banks from speculating madly with our money is a way to keep banking alive.
If Obama realizes his agenda, what emerges will be a more social, sustainable, competitive capitalism. His more intellectually honest and sentient conservative critics don't accuse him of Leninism but of making our form of capitalism more like Europe's. In fact, over the past quarter-century, Europe's capitalism became less regulated and more like ours, one reason Europe is tanking along with everyone else.
Take it from a democratic socialist: Laissez-faire American capitalism is about to be supplanted not by socialism but by a more regulated, viable capitalism. And the reason isn't that the woods are full of secret socialists who are only now outing themselves.
Judging by the failures of the great Wall Street investment houses and the worldwide crisis of commercial banks; the collapse of East Asian, German and American exports; the death rattle of the U.S. auto industry; the plunge of stock markets everywhere; the sickening rise in global joblessness; and the growing shakiness of governments in fledgling democracies that opened themselves to the world market -- judging by all these, a more social capitalism is on the horizon because the deregulated capitalism of the past 30 years has blown itself up, taking much of the known world with it.
So, for conservatives searching for the culprits behind this transformation of capitalism: Despite our best efforts, it wasn't Bernie and it wasn't me. It was your own damn system.
meyersonh@washpost.com
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/03/AR2009030303207.html
Monday, March 02, 2009
The Brain drain costs Mexico millions each year
El subsecretario de Educación Superior, Rodolfo Tuirán, dijo que 20 mil mexicanos calificados abandonan anualmente el país.
Karina Avilés y Notimex
Publicado: 02/03/2009 15:12
México, DF. El éxodo de talentos mexicanos al exterior -el cual asciende a 575 mil- ha costado al país más de 100 mil millones de pesos, que significan una cuarta parte del presupuesto que se destina a la Secretaría de Educación Pública (SEP), admitió el subsecretario de Educación Superior, Rodolfo Tuirán.
Al iniciar el seminario internacional “Fuga de cerebros, movilidad académica y redes científicas", el subsecretario añadió que las cifras van en ascenso, ya que 20 mil mexicanos calificados abandonan el país anualmente.
Tuirán detalló que de esos 575 mil mexicanos, en Estados Unidos viven 552 mil con estudios de licenciatura, maestría o doctorado, mientras que en la Unión Europea son 23 mil los connacionales en esa situación.
El subsecretario describió que la mitad de los estudiantes que salen al extranjero a estudiar maestrías o doctorados se queda en esos países debido a las ofertas laborales que reciben.
De acuerdo con la Encuesta Continua de Población, existen 811 mil mexicanos residentes en Estados Unidos que cursaron algún ciclo universitario, el cual no concluyeron, además de que existen 278 mil connacionales con título equivalente a profesional asociado o técnico superior universitario, comentó el subsecretario de la SEP.
Según Tuirán Gutiérrez, un estudiante en México representa una erogación anual de 45 mil pesos en una institución de estudios superiores, a lo cual "se debe agregar el costo que representa la primaria, la secundaria y la preparatoria".
Se trata de personas que fueron formadas en el país y que les costaron a todos los mexicanos, sobre todo porque muchos de ellos son egresados de escuelas públicas, por lo que "no sólo representa una sangría de capital humano sino también de inversiones generadas para formar a esos estudiantes", aseveró.
Karina Avilés y Notimex
Publicado: 02/03/2009 15:12
México, DF. El éxodo de talentos mexicanos al exterior -el cual asciende a 575 mil- ha costado al país más de 100 mil millones de pesos, que significan una cuarta parte del presupuesto que se destina a la Secretaría de Educación Pública (SEP), admitió el subsecretario de Educación Superior, Rodolfo Tuirán.
Al iniciar el seminario internacional “Fuga de cerebros, movilidad académica y redes científicas", el subsecretario añadió que las cifras van en ascenso, ya que 20 mil mexicanos calificados abandonan el país anualmente.
Tuirán detalló que de esos 575 mil mexicanos, en Estados Unidos viven 552 mil con estudios de licenciatura, maestría o doctorado, mientras que en la Unión Europea son 23 mil los connacionales en esa situación.
El subsecretario describió que la mitad de los estudiantes que salen al extranjero a estudiar maestrías o doctorados se queda en esos países debido a las ofertas laborales que reciben.
De acuerdo con la Encuesta Continua de Población, existen 811 mil mexicanos residentes en Estados Unidos que cursaron algún ciclo universitario, el cual no concluyeron, además de que existen 278 mil connacionales con título equivalente a profesional asociado o técnico superior universitario, comentó el subsecretario de la SEP.
Según Tuirán Gutiérrez, un estudiante en México representa una erogación anual de 45 mil pesos en una institución de estudios superiores, a lo cual "se debe agregar el costo que representa la primaria, la secundaria y la preparatoria".
Se trata de personas que fueron formadas en el país y que les costaron a todos los mexicanos, sobre todo porque muchos de ellos son egresados de escuelas públicas, por lo que "no sólo representa una sangría de capital humano sino también de inversiones generadas para formar a esos estudiantes", aseveró.
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