The legacy of Cesar Chavez and the budget crises of today

 César Chávez:

By  Duane E. Campbell

On March 31, 2011, California and seven other states will celebrate the life and work of labor organizer Cesar Chavez.  State workers will have the day off.  Ironically, however, farm workers will not.  It is interesting that these states take a day off to recognize the contributions of a labor leader while cutting vital services for poor people.   Meanwhile the spirit of Cesar Chavez lives on in the struggle for union rights and justice in the fields of California, Ohio, and Florida as well as  in the struggles for union rights and workers dignity in Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana and Pennsylvania.  What can we learn from the creation of the UFW that is useful today?

 Along with Dolores Huerta, Philip Vera Cruz, and others, César created the United Farm Workers  (UFW) the first successful union of farm workers in  U.S. history.  There had been more than ten prior attempts to build a farm workers union.

            Each of the prior attempts to organize farm worker unions were destroyed by racism and corporate power. Chávez chose to build a union that incorporated the strategies of social movements and community organizing  and allied itself  with the churches, students,  and organized labor.  The successful creation of the UFW changed the nature of labor organizing  in the Southwest  and contributed significantly to the growth  of Latino politics in the U.S. The UFW has shown unions that immigrants can  and must be organized.   

        César Chavez, Dolores Huerta,  Philip Vera Cruz, and others deliberately created a multiracial organization, Mexican immigrants,  Mexican American, Filipino, African-American, Dominican, Puerto Rican and Arab workers, among others, have been part of the UFW.  This cross racial organizing  was necessary in order to combat the  prior divisions and exploitations of workers based upon race and language. Dividing the workers on racial, language lines and immigration status  always left the corporations the winners.

Latin America and U.S. policy

Letter to President Obama on U.S.-Latin America Policy

The Honorable Barack Obama
The President
The White House
Washington, D.C. 20500

Dear Mr. President,

We, the under signers, leaders of prominent national Latino and Latin American/Caribbean immigrant organizations in the U.S., are writing to you in light of your current trip to Brazil, Chile and El Salvador.

First of all, we want to commend your Administration for the initiative to bring attention back to Latin America and the Caribbean, a region of the world with which the United States of America has had a long, often troublesome, relationship. Your victory in 2008 stimulated hope among Latin American societies that long for normalization of U.S.-Cuba relations; an end to the so called "war on drugs"; a recalibration of U.S. trade and investment policies; and a firm commitment to nonintervention and respect for sovereignty in the region.

The choice of Brazil, Chile and El Salvador for your visit is poignant. The U.S. has a large moral debt to these countries: In each case past Administrations (early 1960'S through early 1990's) supported directly or indirectly the ascent and continuation in power of brutal dictatorships and later, in the case of Chile and El Salvador, U.S.-client states-regimes. The current Salvadoran and Chilean-origin populations in the U.S. are essentially creations of massive refugee-flows caused by gross and wide-spread human rights violation and political repression carried out by U.S.-supported regimes.

Indeed, given the fact that most of the foreign born population now residing in the U.S. happen to be people born in Latin America and the Caribbean, we believe that U.S.-Latin America relations should have a much higher level of priority than it has been given so far.

As you visit the three countries mentioned above, we would like to bring to your attention some of the most important changes in Latin America and the Caribbean, which in our opinion should be taken into account as your Administration considers new policy approaches towards Latin America and the Caribbean:

Tunisian Labor Leaders call for support of Libyan Revolution

By Duane Campbell 

  Leaders in the Tunisian Federation of Labor, themselves organizers

organizers of the mass mobilization that led to the overthrow the Tunisian Dictator called for support of the Libyan revolution and for support of Tunisian unions and the  Egyptian Democracy Movement  at a solidarity dinner held by  the Sacramento Central Labor Council and the California Labor Federation  in Sacramento on March 20, 2011.  Delegates and members of community based organizations heard a direct report from the leaders of the labor side of the mass mobilizations.  The Tunisian revolution was the first of the over 6 major revolutions presently changing the nature of politics and freedom in the Middle East.  The success of the Tunisian revolution sparked the hopes and encouraged the other revolutions.

             As of today, the Libyan revolution is still being resisted by the armed forces of Colonel Gadaffi with planes, tanks and guns.  Non violent  revolutions are shaking Yemen and Bahrain (where oil workers are on strike), among others.  The revolutionary movement in Egypt has won initial success, by toppling the Murbarak dictatorship,  but consolidation of the revolution is still precarious.

            A delegation of union leaders from  Tunisia praised the role of the youth movements and  described their own  role of the union movement in organizing and assisting the Tunisian revolution of Jan. 14 to overthrow the dictatorship.  A general strike had been called for Jan.14,  and began at the labor offices on the day when the revolutionary movement won control of the country and the dictator and his family fled.

The union activists from the Women’s Federation, the Professors Union, and the Public Workers unions are a delegation traveling in the U.S. as guests of the  staff of AFL-CIO solidarity house.  They asked for unions to support them in two ways: support a moratorium on repayments of the debt  to the I.M.F. and the World Bank ( accumulated by the dictatorship), and asking the U.S. to freeze the  U.S. assets of the former dictator and his family.

The life of migrant school children

March 12, 2011

By PATRICIA LEIGH BROWN: New York Times.

SALINAS, Calif. — A girl in Oscar Ramos’s third-grade class has trouble doing homework because six relatives have moved into her family’s rusted trailer and she has no private space.

A boy has worn his school uniform for two weeks straight because his parents are busy with harvest season.

And while Mr. Ramos patiently explains the intricacies of fractions, he is attuned to the student who confides, “Teacher, on Saturday the cops came and took my brother.”

“I know you still love your brother,” Mr. Ramos gently told him. “But let’s talk about your vision for your future.”

In the clattering energy of Room 21 at Sherwood Elementary here, Mr. Ramos, 37, glimpses life beneath the field dust. His students are the sons and daughters of the seasonal farmworkers who toil in the vast fields of the Salinas Valley, cutting spinach and broccoli and packing romaine lettuce from a wet conveyor belt: nearly 13 heads a minute, 768 heads an hour, 10 hours a day.

One-third of the children are migrants whose parents follow the lettuce from November to April, Salinas to Yuma, Ariz. Some who leave will not return.

Arizona, bigots, and racism

Sometimes columns just seem to write themselves. The world is aflame, particularly in North Africa and the Middle East, and as a result, extremist Arizona legislators seem to be getting a complex… nobody seems to be paying as much attention to them compared to just several weeks ago. Even Wisconsin has managed to upstage the rogue Arizona legislators. Utah too. As such, theArizona rogue legislators have stepped forward to once again capture the 19th century spotlight.

Arizona put itself on the map last year for passing several bills that appear to send out the message that brown people are not welcome. The bill, SB 1070, the one that compels local police to seek out the legal status of suspects based on the nebulous concept of “reasonable suspicion,” is as close to official ethnic cleansing as one can get. Because the “migra” or immigration services have long had that power, on the streets, “reasonable suspicion” translates to brown skin and the use of the Spanish language.

The HB 2281 bill is an attempt to deny the teaching of Ethnic Studies in Arizona. Its first target is Tucson’s highly successful Mexican American Studies K-12 program. The attack on this program amounts to cultural genocide, though many people bristle at that description. Yet, how else to describe an attempt to forcefully assimilate any population?

But all that is so 2010.

2011 in Arizona began with not simply declaring Mexican American Studies illegal – with an April 18 deadline to dismantle the program – but with a flurry of bills that make both of these bills seem Mexican-friendly.

The following will give you an example of the environment we are living – this, in the midst of a huge nationwide state-by-state budget crisis in which Mexicans always become convenient scapegoats.

Save Ethnic Studies in Arizona

For the past four years, Arizona Superintendent of Public Schools,

Tom Horne, and the Arizona State Legislature have relentlessly attacked the Tucson Unified School District’s (TUSD) Mexican American Studies Department (MASD). Tom Horne and the Arizona State Legislature have accused that Mexican American Studies classes are: “promoting the overthrow of the United States Government; promoting resentment toward a race or class of people; designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group; and advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals ”

This past May 11, 2010, AZ Governor Jan Brewer, signed into law AZ HB 2281, the anti-Ethnic Studies law, which will in effect eliminate TUSD’s MASD on December 31, 2010. A major provision of the law calls for a 10% withholding of the State of Arizona’s monthly allotment to TUSD if MASD continues to teach Chicano Studies classes.  Speakers for the teachers, Sean Arce and Curtis Acosta said  after exhausting our efforts through lobbying, community activism, and public relations, we are left with no other option than to 

 file a federal injunction in the Federal District Court in Arizona to stop AZ HB 2281.  They are currently suing the state and the school district. (photo. Curtis Acosta)

The Ethnic Studies program in Tucson was developed with the input of university students, community members and local teachers.  Together they developed a Mexican American studies curriculum focusing on culturally relevant and historically relevant materials to overcome the persistent high drop out rates and the lack of college going by Raza students.   This program has become the largest Mexican American studies program at a high school level in the U.S. And, it is under attack by Republicans in Arizona.

The program is the focus of a soon to be released film, “Precious Knowledge.” Teachers from the school program are available for speaking opportunities around the nation.  The two speakers at the Sacramento event –Sean Arce and Curtis Acosta-  were clear, articulate, knowledgeable, inspiring and engaging.  

Latin America and China trade

Kevin Gallagher
guardian.co.uk
Monday 7 March 2011 16:38 GMT

Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos sent shockwaves through Washington when he told the Financial Times that his nation is holding negotiations with China to build a multibillion dollar "dry canal" that would compete with the Panama Canal. After all, Santos said, China is "the new motor of the world economy".

This deal is charged with politics. Colombia is trying to get the US to pass a long-stalled trade deal. And let us not forget that the original canal was to be the result of an agreement between the US and Colombia. When the Colombians didn't like the deal the US had on offer and threatened to squelch it, Washington supported Panamanian separatist movements and got itself a new country to build a canal with.

But that's all water under the isthmus. Or so we thought.

Whether or not this deal goes through, it highlights the stark contrast between China's foreign economic ventures and those of the United States.

For 30 years, Washington has been shopping a trade-not-aid based economic diplomacy across Latin America and beyond. According to what is generally known as the "Washington consensus", the US has provided Latin America loans conditional on privatisation, deregulation and other forms of structural adjustment. More recently, what has been on offer are trade deals such as the US-Colombia Free Trade Agreement: access to the US market in exchange for similar conditions.

The 30-year record of the Washington consensus was abysmal for Latin America, which grew less than 1% per year in per capita terms during the period, in contrast with 2.6% during the period 1960-81. East Asia, on the other hand, which is known for its state-managed globalisation (most recently epitomised by China), has grown 6.7% per annum in per capita terms since 1981, actually up from 3.5% in that same period.

Latino Organizations unite to oppose attacks on working people

 

NINETEEN LEADING NATIONAL LATINO ORGANIZATIONS UNITE TO OPPOSE GROWING ATTACKS AGAINST WORKERS' RIGHTS

 

WASHINGTON, DC-  As working families struggle to stay afloat in this economic downturn, a wave of state-led attacks are threatening workers and the basic structure that protects their rights on the job. Attempts to destroy the right of workers to bargain collectively raise grave concerns about job quality and economic security for working families and vulnerable segments of our populations including Latinos and low-income families. Poor quality jobs, limited access to health care, pensions combined with high rates of wage violations, injuries and fatalities in the workplace are grave issues that disproportionately affect the Latino community.  In the absence of unions, attacks on workers' rights and declining job quality will go unabated for all workers; exacerbating these risks among vulnerable populations.

Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Tennessee, Iowa and Florida are among a growing number of states with legislatures proposing bills to destroy workers' right to bargain collectively in the workplace.  In light of these attacks on workers and labor unions, nineteen leading national Latino organiz! ations united to call on lawmakers to oppose legislation that limits the power of workers to negotiate for quality jobs, good wages, benefits, safe working conditions and job security.

Across the country, tens of thousands of workers and their supporters are gathering to oppose legislative measures targeting the rights and pockets of public sector workersas the means to address budget shortfalls.

Hundreds of thousands of state, county and local employees are battling proposals in Wisconsin, Indiana, Iowa, Tennessee, Michigan and Florida that seek to: revoke "prevailing wage" laws; restrict or destroy collective bargaining rights; terminate union negotiated contracts; remove required binding arbitration; and prevent unions from collecting dues from their members.

Presidential Meeting Puts US-Mexico Relations Back on Track–In the Wrong Direction – CIP Americas

Presidential Meeting Puts US-Mexico Relations Back on Track–In the Wrong Direction – CIP Americas

Arizona and Raza Studies tour

CFA Latino/Latina Caucus

“Save Ethnic Studies” Tour Background Information

For the past four years, Arizona Superintendent of Public Schools,

Tom Horne, and the Arizona State Legislature have relentlessly attacked the Tucson Unified School District’s (TUSD) Mexican American Studies Department (MASD). Tom Horne and the Arizona State Legislature have accused that Mexican American Studies classes are: “promoting the overthrow of the United States Government; promoting resentment toward a race or class of people; designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group; and advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals ”

Tues. March 8.  University Union.  Sac State.   12 Noon.  Foothill Suite.
                          6 PM.  Sol Collective.  Sacramento

This past May 11, 2010, AZ Governor Jan Brewer, signed into law AZ HB 2281, the anti-Ethnic Studies law, which will in effect eliminate TUSD’s MASD on December 31, 2010. A major provision of the law calls for a 10% withholding of the State of Arizona’s monthly allotment to TUSD if MASD continues to teach Chicano Studies classes.  After exhausting our efforts through lobbying, community activism, and public relations, we are left with no other option than to file a federal injunction in the Federal District Court in Arizona to stop AZ HB 2281.

Eleven Critical Raza Educators have formed a campaign “Save Ethnic Studies”.  The Raza Studies educators will serve, independently from TUSD, as a collective of plaintiffs in filing an injunction in Federal District Court to stop AZ HB 2281 from going into effect. This legal effort will require an enormous amount of financial and human resources in order to be effective in legally challenging AZ HB 2281. As a consequence, we will be embarking on a national fundraising campaign to raise consciousness and resources for our “Save Ethnic Studies” Defense Fund to defeat AZ HB 2281.

The California Faculty Association will host a delegation from the “Save Ethnic Studies” organization in Spring 2011. The “Save Ethnic Studies” presentation will include an overview of the work that Critical Raza Educators in Tucson public schools and describe the struggle these educators have waged against Arizona’s Legislative attacks on the Critical Raza Educators of TUSD’s MASD. The presenters will also cover the status of the filed in the Federal District Court to fight AZ HB 2281; and if the film is produced by Spring 2010, the documentary film “Precious Knowledge,” will be shown. If the film is not ready by the Spring, the program will include the 10-minute video. 

Dismissal of Teachers Union Leadership in Puerto Rico

“We Will Not Be Intimidated”

 By Hugo J. Delgado-Martí

Bandera Roja - 2/21/11

 The Teachers Federation of Puerto Rico (FMPR) denounced in a press conference today the firing by the government of 11 members of the Executive Committee of their union and the revocation of those teachers' licenses.

"This unprecedented, brutally repressive measure is intended to strike a blow against the leadership of the Federation and to intimidate teachers from fighting the fascistic plans of the Fortuño government to privatize schools and rob the Teachers' Retirement System," said the president of the Teachers Federation of Puerto Rico, Rafael Feliciano Hernández.

The 11 teachers, who were sanctioned, worked for over 20 years and three of them have more than thirty (30) years of teaching experience. "They enjoy great prestige in their school communities and have always distinguished themselves as formidably dedicated fighters for the rights of teachers and public education," said Feliciano, who teaches in the Cayey School District.

Confessions of an Economic Hitman; John Perkins interview

King: All Labor Has Dignity

In light of the clash of wills in Wisconsin, we should remember the teachings of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. One of King’s slogans that we rarely hear is this one: “all labor has dignity.”

King spoke these words in Memphis on March 18, 1968, in the midst of a strike of 1,200 black sanitation workers that had lasted over a month. After rousing them to a fever pitch, King called for a general strike by all workers to shut the city down on behalf of the sanitation workers.

What was the demand of these workers? Improved wages and benefits, yes, but their key demand was that the City of Memphis grant collective bargaining rights and the collection of union dues, without which they knew they could not maintain their union.

These are the very two items that Wisconsin’s Gov. Scott Walker wants to take away from public employees. He knows, as did Mayor Henry Loeb in Memphis, that if you can kill union bargaining rights and dues collection, you can kill the union.

Also like Loeb, Walker is a fiscal conservative. As he cuts taxes for business he raises costs for workers and says ending union power will benefit the fiscal health of the state. Walker wants to end the right of public employees to bargain collectively, even though the workers have accepted a tripling of their health-care costs and a wage cut to help offset the state’s fiscal crisis.

In nearby Ohio, Gov. John Kasich wants to take away the right to join a union for 14,000 state-financed child-care and home-care workers, among the most overworked and underpaid of public servants. In other states, Republicans want to adopt “right to work” (for less) laws that would take away the requirement that workers in unionized jobs pay union dues. This would undermine the unions while, in King’s words, providing “no rights and no work.”

Even in Midwest states that have been union strongholds, Republicans now have public-employee unions in their cross-hairs. This is the latest and potentially most deadly phase of government assault on unions. Ever since the Reagan counterrevolution, government policies joined with private sector profiteers have vastly worsened racial-economic inequalities, created a gambling casino on Wall Street and paved the way for the current economic crisis.

Conservatives rationalize their attacks on unions by saying unionized public workers are unfairly privileged. But they only look privileged by comparison to the rest of the working class, which is suffering economic catastrophe and has almost entirely lost the benefits of unionization. Yet class envy is an easy means to divide and rule.

Racism is another part of the Republican arsenal of divide and rule. Thanks to the destruction of manufacturing jobs and unions, black and Latino workers in manual occupations have disproportionately suffered high rates of poverty and incarceration as many of their families disintegrate. The one toe-hold many black and minority workers (and especially women among them) still have in the economy is in unionized public employment. Now, the Republicans want to take that away.

Thousands rally for Wisconsin- in Sacramento

Over 6000 union members and supporters rallied at the State Capitol in Sacramento in a candle light vigil to support the working people in Wisconsin in their struggle to defend their  union rights. The financial crisis that began  2007  is an assault on organized  labor, working people, and our democracy.  To date the corporate class is winning. 

While Wall Street has recovered and returned to profitability, working people continue to suffer  15 million unemployed with at least 10 million more under employed.   It is more than a crisis - the reality is that the financial class has looted the U.S. economy.  They took 13 trillion dollars  out of the economy and caused 4 million people to lose their homes and  another 4.5 million to fall into foreclosure.   Now they want you and I to pay for their greed by forcing budget cuts on the states. 

        

Wisconsin "Budget Repair Bill" Protest

Support Wisconsin Workers- Sacramento

Democracy in Egypt- Repression in Puerto Rico

Luisa (a pseudonym) has been receiving Rosenberg Fund for
Children (RFC, www.rfc.org) support since she was 15 years
old. She's now a student at the University of Puerto Rico
(UPR), the largest university in the Caribbean and the
premier Spanish-speaking institution of higher learning
under the control of the United States. Recently she's been
in touch with our staff and a Board Member because the
computer we purchased for her when she entered college three
years ago required repair. When our Board Member called her
last week to get details, he heard screaming in the
background when Luisa answered. Luisa said she couldn't talk
because she was running from pepper spray and police with
night sticks. (She got away....)

Since December hundreds of UPR students have been passively
occupying their campus to protest massive tuition increases
that have made it impossible for almost one third of the
undergraduates (5000 out of 16,000) to re-enroll in classes
this semester. The students have not been destructive, even
organizing brigades to keep the campus clean. But the
government decided to attack them. The parent of another RFC
beneficiary wrote on January 27th: "Levels of violence used
against Puerto Rican non-violent striking students have
risen exponentially. I strongly urge you to open the photos
and videos (available at http://pr.indymedia.org/) of
yesterday's actions, brought to you by the incredible press
people of Puerto Rico, who were also subject to direct
police threats ... [and] were physically attacked, just as
the students were."

Police attacks on the students and journalists echo those
that took place in Cairo, except none of the national
television networks in the United States chose to broadcast
the photos and videos of Puerto Rico that were readily
available to them. Repression in Cairo was headline news,
but similar attacks on non-violent students in our Puerto
Rican colony were swept under the rug. Videos from UPR show
police firing rubber bullets, tear gas, and pepper spray, as
well as applying pressure point holds to the non-resisting
students' necks to cause intense pain. Women's groups joined
the protests after videos were released of police groping a
female student's breasts.

Save Ethnic Studies in Arizona tour2

  March 8.    Foothill Suite 
12 Noon.  University Union.  Sacramento State. 

CFA Latino/Latina Caucus

“Save Ethnic Studies” Tour Background Information

For the past four years, Arizona Superintendent of Public Schools,

Tom Horne, and the Arizona State Legislature have relentlessly attacked the Tucson Unified School District’s (TUSD) Mexican American Studies Department (MASD). Tom Horne and the Arizona State Legislature have accused that Mexican American Studies classes are: “promoting the overthrow of the United States Government; promoting resentment toward a race or class of people; designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group; and advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals ”

This past May 11, 2010, AZ Governor Jan Brewer, signed into law AZ HB 2281, the anti-Ethnic Studies law, which will in effect eliminate TUSD’s MASD on December 31, 2010. A major provision of the law calls for a 10% withholding of the State of Arizona’s monthly allotment to TUSD if MASD continues to teach Chicano Studies classes.  After exhausting our efforts through lobbying, community activism, and public relations, we are left with no other option than to file a federal injunction in the Federal District Court in Arizona to stop AZ HB 2281.

Eleven Critical Raza Educators have formed a campaign “Save Ethnic Studies”.  The Raza Studies educators will serve, independently from TUSD, as a collective of plaintiffs in filing an injunction in Federal District Court to stop AZ HB 2281 from going into effect. This legal effort will require an enormous amount of financial and human resources in order to be effective in legally challenging AZ HB 2281. As a consequence, we will be embarking on a national fundraising campaign to raise consciousness and resources for our “Save Ethnic Studies” Defense Fund to defeat AZ HB 2281.

Farmworkers suffer from Chile crisis

Perhaps no image captures New Mexico better than the chile pepper. Declared the state vegetable, celebrated in song and story and projected the world over in everything from glitzy photos to tourism brochures, the chile pepper in its myriad forms symbolizes the historical legacy and cultural essence of the New Mexican people.

For centuries the chile trade bound together the remote Hispano villages of northern New Mexico and southern Colorado, provided the culinary glue for fall family get-togethers and gave linguistic flavor to countless conversations on the topic of chile across the state.

In the late 20th Century, a large commercial chile industry boomed in the southern part of the state near the Mexican border, drawing in thousands of immigrant farmworkers who earned a seasonal if precarious living from hand-picking the spicy pods that delighted connoisuers everywhere.

Nowadays, the fortunes of New Mexico’s cherished chile crop are on the downside. Just ask Jose Rocha. A veteran farmworker with nearly four decades of experience in the fields of New Mexico and the US, Rocha says he once worked “first class fields” in a wide swath of the borderland chile-growing belt.

Today’s  farm is very different than the one before, according to Rocha. “Sometimes the land gives, sometimes it doesn’t,” the Mexico-born worker says. “There are bad (chile) rows and and good rows.” Nowadays, Rocha encounters slimmer pickings, job-killing machines that methodically pluck rows of ripe chile where humans once treaded and fewer dollars in his pocket.

Global trade and investment patterns, coupled with mechanization, are at the root of the troubles of Jose Rocha and his fellow workers.

Support Democracy in Egypt

Hany Khalil, who wrote the op-ed piece below, is a founding member of the War Times organizing crew. He wrote this piece especially for folks who may not be deeply informed about recent Egyptian history. If you've got friends and acquaintances who might get something from this view from an Egyptian American schoolteacher, please forward Hany's piece on to them.

 

To Support Democracy in Egypt, Suspend U.S. Military Aid

 

By Hany Khalil

(Photos of San Francisco Demonstration by Neal Cassidy)

 

As an Egyptian American, I welcome the Egyptian people’s call for President Mubarak to go. So should all of us, for democracy will be good for Egyptians and Americans both.

 

For thirty years Mubarak’s authoritarian government has held down the Egyptian people with an iron fist. Under emergency laws imposed in 1981, Egypt’s hated security police routinely violate basic civil liberties guaranteed in our own Bill of Rights. Freedom of assembly, freedom of expression, freedom from cruel and unusual punishment, the right to a speedy and fair trial – none are protected in Egypt. Dissent is rewarded with indefinite detention without charge, beatings, and torture.

 

For decades Mubarak’s party, the NDP, has rigged elections. In last fall’s elections, the NDP used restrictions on public campaigning, arbitrary arrests, violence, and ballot stuffing to push the opposition out of parliament. The result: The opposition’s share of seats in parliament dropped from 25% to 3%.

 

Until recently, President Mubarak had planned to hand over the reins of the government to his son Gamal, as if he were the head of a Pharaonic dynasty rather than an elected president.

 

Under Mubarak, connections and bribery decide who gets jobs, permits, contracts, and favorable treatment by government officials.