Ideas and Opinions

Have you had enough? New Party on the horizon

2011-11-01T20:53:00.002-05:00

Rocky Anderson

418 Douglas Street

Salt Lake City, UTAH 84102

E-mail: rockyandersonrocky@yahoo.com

Press Release - October 21, 2011

Have you had enough?

New Party on the horizon

The former Mayor of Salt Lake City and Executive Director of High Road for Human Rights, Rocky Anderson, calls for the formation of a new political party and a sustained movement committed to the public interest.

Two months ago, Anderson “divorced himself” from what he referred to as “the spineless, gutless Democratic Party.” Responding to an email from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which showed as the subject, “Standing strong,” Anderson wrote: “How dare you send an email with the subject line ‘Standing strong.’ You didn’t do it on Iraq, you didn’t do it on torture, you didn’t do it on signing statements, you haven’t done it onAfghanistan, you haven’t done it on defense spending, you haven’t done it on real health care reform, you haven’t done it on the debt ceiling fiasco.”

(Rolly: Rocky Anderson says adieu to the Democratic Party,” The Salt Lake Tribune, August 12, 2011.)

Anderson continued: “I’m done with the Democratic Party… I think the answer is a new political party that actually will advocate for and promote the interests of the public rather than the narrow interests of the wealthy who bought and paid for not only Congress but the White House… The Constitution has been eviscerated while Democrats have stood by with nary a whimper. It is a gutless, unprincipled party, bought and paid for by the same interests that buy and pay for the Republican Party.”

(Romboy, “Former S.L. mayor Rocky Anderson divorces himself from ‘gutless’ Democratic Party,” Deseret News, August 13, 2011.)

This country needs a new, powerful party that can win elections, according to Anderson. “The pensions and other savings accounts of the middle class in this country have been decimated. The only way out is another party. I would call it, frankly, a second party that actually represents the interests of the American people. There isn’t a real opposition force in Washington, D.C., any more, and we the people have the capacity to change that -- and we must if our republic is going to survive. I consider myself an Independent, but I would be very pleased to work with others to form not just a political party to run another campaign, but to launch a sustained movement for major change in this country.”

(“Rocky: Not a Democrat,” (Interview with Rocky Anderson by Lexie Levitt), City Weekly,September 26, 2011.)

Anderson said that people are fed up with the Democratic and Republican parties, Congress, and the Obama administration to the point of being ready to support a new party that rejects the corporatism and militarism of the two “Wall Street lap-dog” major parties.

The polls support Anderson’s view that the people of the United States are desirous of a new party, and bold, new leadership, like never before. Patrick Caddell and Douglas Shoen have written:

“The United States is in the midst of what we would both call a pre-Revolutionary moment, and there is widespread support for fundamental change in the system. An increasing number of Americans are now searching beyond the two parties for bold and effective leadership.”

(Caddell and Schoen, “Expect a Third-Party Candidate in 2012,” The Wall Street Journal, August 25, 2011.)

"Have you had enough?" asks Anderson. “Would you support the formation of a new party that will commit to:

affordable universal health care;
an end to the wars;
a significant reduction in the military budget and an end to the military-industrial-congressional complex;
investigation of illegal conduct, including war crimes, by executive officials during the current and prior administrations;
investigation of the events on 9/11 to answer significant questions that have been raised;
prosecution for illegal conduct leading to the economic melt-down;
disincentives for U.S. companies to send jobs overseas;
employee and environmental safeguards in trade agreements;
implementation of major domestic jobs and infrastructure programs;
an end to the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy;
campaign finance reform to end the corrupting influence of money in politics;
treat substance abuse within a public health framework rather than as a criminal matter;
repeal the PATRIOT Act;
compassionate and rational immigration reform;
marriage equality;
an end to subsidies for oil and gas companies;
a ban on a Canada-to-Mexico tar sands pipeline;
air quality protection, including stricter ozone limits; and
aggressive action and leadership on the climate crisis and the environment?”

Rocky Anderson has been in the process of contacting some of America’s leading social, environmental and political activists with the goal of creating a powerful, broad-based political alternative to the increasingly unpopular Republican and Democratic Parties. He intends that the new party will have candidates in local, state, and federal races throughout the nation.

Anderson plans on hosting a meeting soon between leaders in various sectors of the country in order to draft a new platform and a long-term strategy capable of attracting a majority of voters, including millions of dissatisfied Democrats and Republicans who, until now, had nowhere else to go.

Anderson has stated his intention to do what is possible to get on the ballots in all 50 states and to campaign for candidates aggressively in all states. "The Democratic and Republican Parties have acted as if voters have no other real options. The people of this country will demonstrate that we, indeed, have another option - a party that will work in the public interest, rather than for the defense contractors, the health insurance companies, and the rapacious financial institutions that have caused such economic havoc in our nation and the world."

Anderson anticipates a broad-based coalition, similar to the one built by the New Democratic Party of Canada (NDP), which won impressive political gains in the Canadian federal elections last May. The NDP is the political party that brought universal health care to the Canadian people.

Press info: Mackenzie Scott - Tel. 801-520-0491

Rocky Anderson - Tel. 801-557-9007

E-mail: rockyandersonrocky@yahoo.com

Labor Day 2011; State of Today’s Unions

2011-08-02T08:53:00.002-05:00

Labor Day 2011; State of Today’s Unions

By Pancho Valdez

“All that serves labor serves the nation. All that harms labor is treason. If a man tells you he trusts America, yet fears labor, he is a fool. There is no America without labor and to fleece the one is to rob the other.”- Abraham Lincoln, Former president of the United States

This past Spring the nation witnessed an attack on organized labor unlike any other in the past 30 years. Public workers in Wisconsin, Illinois, Ohio, New Jersey, Missouri, Michigan and Minnesota have been made the scapegoat of their state’s economic crisis which is as phoney as a three dollar bill given the fact that the crisis was not only caused by Wall Street, but also profited Wall Street as well. Another major factor to our nation’s economic woes that seldom is mentioned is the huge war budget wasted on the unjustified wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and now Libya.

Workers belonging to such unions as the American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees, the American Federation of Teachers, the National Education Association and the public sector division of the Communications Workers were the target of a well planned, vicious assault by the Tea Party and other Republican extremists using the falsehood of “balancing the state budgets”. As was shown in Wisconsin and elsewhere the real reason for the anti-union attacks was to weaken and/or destroy public worker unions and their right to collective bargaining. The state budget of these states not unlike the state budget of Texas could have been balanced by means of taxing the profits of large corporations and the incomes of the wealthy. Of course such a move requires that state legislators to have courage and the wisdom to do so. As has been shown, most elected officials lack these essential qualities!

In light of a concerted attempt to weaken or destroy public sector unions we must take into account the percentage of organized workers in the private sector, which is now around a dismal 7%! With such a low number of organized workers it is very clear that the working class of the U.S. is in for more hard times. When one sees the small percentage of private sector workers that are organized, one must ask; Why? There are several pertinent factors for this. 1) Many (if not most) jobs in the basic industries such as auto, steel, electrical appliances, garment, shoe and rubber have been off shored to such places as S. Korea, China, India, Pakistan, Mexico, Costa Rica, Haiti, Honduras and other Third World countries. The number one factor for this is cheap labor, weak or controlled unions even weaker than the U.S. trade unions or labor laws that are seldom enforced by right wing governments friendly to the U.S. and the corporations. 2) Another factor that comes to play a vital role in keeping the U.S. labor force non-union is the fact that under current labor laws, employers have had a free reign to harass, intimidate and fire workers who expressed interest in organizing. Along with weak enforcement of vital labor laws, other laws passed in the late 1940’s and early 1950’s forbid unions from engaging in such militant acts as sit-down strikes, secondary boycotts and other effective tactics utilized by the CIO during the 1930’s when the American labor movement had it’s greatest growth. It could be said with accuracy that U.S. labor unions grew at a faster rate when we had no federal laws to “protect” us as compared to today with laws in place!

One other major factor is the fact that today’s labor unions appear reluctant to use strikes as a means of offensive strategy. In the past decade labor strikes have averaged only 20 per year as compared to 350 per year in the 1950’s. While I have yet to see or hear any official reason from labor leaders for this decline in strikes, my guess is that the use of strikes has been put on hold due to weak enforcement of labor laws which basically give employers an open door to replace strikers with scabs ( common word describing strikebreakers). One factor that should be discussed is the mindset of “cooperation” that was prevalent in the middle 1970’s and early 1980’s. This way of thinking promoted “labor peace and harmony” as a means of settling contractual disputes. I can remember several unions that were big on this idea that included the United Steelworkers, the United Autoworkers and the Transport Workers Union, a public transit and airline industry union. This absurd policy resulted in weaker contractual gains, demoralized memberships and did not

prevent employers such as Ford, GM, United Steel, Bethlehem Steel from shutting down mills and factories in the U.S. and moving operations to the aforementioned Third World countries. At the time of this revolutionary concept labor leaders were counting on bosses not to de-certify unions, or shut down operations. It doesn't take a PhD. in Industrial Relations to see that such a lame idea puts workers at a distinct disadvantage and gives employers the signal that it’s ok to do whatever it takes to cut down labor costs! Anytime a labor organization goes into negotiations from a point of weakness, quite naturally the employer will go on the offensive and attack without mercy! In an attempt to impress upon the employers, the news media and the government that labor believed in the concept of “what’s good for GM is good for America” it weakened itself into the present day situation.

One is probably asking; why would any competent labor leader ever agree to such nonsense? The reason is quite simple. When worker’ organizations fail to see or comprehend the difference between the interests of capital and the interests of labor there will be serious errors made and grave consequences to face. This failure on the part of organized labor’s true role is the direct result of the shameful purge of communists and socialists from labor’s ranks during the McCarthy era. Without the presence of strong working class ideology organized labor opened itself up to be used and abused by the ruling class. It also gave a free ticket to social democrats to assume “leadership roles” and reward themselves to lucrative salaries for themselves, their friends and relatives. Such corruption along with mob control of many local unions of the Teamsters, International Longshoremen’s Association, some local unions of the Hotel & Restaurant Employees, the Laborers International Union and others resulted in sweetheart deals and reduced the organizations to being merely “paper tigers!” While employers prefer NO union at all, they will settle for one that is mob controlled as the workers have no democracy in these organizations. Sweetheart agreements are about as good as it’s going to get and even in local unions not corrupted by the mob, workers ownership of their unions was taken away as union leadership chose a top down approach in running their organizations. When workers have little if any control over their unions, participation is very shallow and in the event of an employer turning on its workers, the members are ill prepared for an effective and successful defense.

Today’s labor organizations have become far too dependent on utilizing attorneys,

mediators, arbitrators and administrative hearing to resolve disputes. Gone are the times when a group of workers would engage in old fashioned “get in your face” tactics. While labor and governmental bureaucrats along with attorneys are all in favor of this change of strategies, it does nothing to build a strong and militant labor movement in the U.S. Many younger workers today are reluctant to join a union not willing to fight for it’s members.

While organized labor in the U.S. has its flaws, it would be unfair to describe only those without mentioning its strengths. Within the past 30 years the AFL-CIO has begun supporting the call for progressive immigration reform. The labor federation has learned that many of the immigrants from Mexico and other Latin American nations have extensive labor and political experiences that make them good union activists here in the U.S. Undocumented factory, building service, meat processing and hospitality industry workers have all stepped up and joined organizing campaigns with some degree of success. Other areas where organized labor has shown willingness to open up and become more progressive are in the areas of women trade unionists, African American, Asian American and Latino trade unionists as well as an organization for gay and lesbian trade unionists.

Before viable solutions to this present day situation are discussed, it is important to know that not all labor organizations fall into the above mentioned categories. In San Antonio and across the nation UNITE HERE is organizing hospitality workers and has no problem using mass picketing as well as civil disobedience to protest unsafe and unfair working conditions. Unions like the independent United Electrical Workers and the west coast International Longshore & Warehouse Union (ILWU) are examples of two left led labor organizations that also use much more militant and confrontational tactics with a great deal of success. Recently the ILWU locals in Oakland and San Francisco refused to unload cargo that was from Israel in a show of solidarity with the struggle of the Palestinians in Gaza! This is reminiscent of their refusal to unload or load ships either from or headed to S. Africa during the struggle against apartheid. The UE is the union that got national attention when it took over a small factory in Chicago when workers were laid off without proper notice and denied their pay. At that time even the president expressed support for these workers who through their action received the unpaid checks and the factory was reopened with a new owner making a different product.

A more recent and surprising development is the AFL-CIO participating and helping to organize May Day events across the nation. May Day was abandoned as the official Labor Day in the height of the McCarthy era to appease right wing politicians who were hell bent in destroying anyone with Left wing tendencies.

While all is not where it could or should be within the American labor movement, it has progressed since the days of George Meany who bragged that he never walked a picket line! Meany was also against racial equality and a big proponent of the Vietnam war.

There are solutions to help improve the situation within the labor movement which would include assuring that all affiliated local unions are democratic whereby workers have the right to approve or disapprove contractual agreements. Workers should also have the right to run reform candidates without fear of beatings, killings, expulsion from their union and retaliation from their employers.

Another major reform idea would be for the labor movement to seriously begin working on organizing and building a worker based political party as a viable alternative to the Democratic or Republican parties. This party would include civil rights, civil liberty, environmental, gay and lesbian, peace activists and others who feel disenfranchised from the electoral system as both major parties are controlled by corporate bribes disguised as “campaign donations.” An important factor of this new party would be full support and adherence to our nation’s Constitution.

Another change would be for organized labor to depend less on federal agencies, attorneys, arbitrators and mediators to resolve disputes. Adoption of the proven and far more militant tactics of the CIO are in definite order. Laws and regulations designed solely to protect the interests of the bosses should be ignored and broken whenever possible. A union that is afraid to fight is a union that does not deserve to collect dues from its members!

A step in this direction will help make the U.S. trade union movement a force to be reckoned with by elected officials and employers alike. It may sound like wishful thinking, but it can be done. Doing it depends on our willingness to make it happen!

-Pancho Valdez is a member of Laborers Local 1095 and has been active in the movement for justice since 1965. He can be reached at: 210-882-2230 or mestizowarrior210@yahoo.com

Enough!

2011-05-26T11:50:00.001-05:00

Enough!

Governor Dayton,

First of all I want to say that I agree with the above comment about saving the wild rice because by saving the wild rice from destruction we are protecting human health and saving ourselves, too. Plus, you and the DFL talk a lot about "jobs, jobs, jobs" and "business, business, business;" yet, in the wild rice there are many jobs being created through environmentally friendly real "green" businesses. I think it is deplorable you have not publicly scolded DFL State Senator Tom Bakk for tacking on this racist, anti-jobs, anti-small business environmentally irresponsible rider to this legislation that is part and parcel of a long-standing campaign of genocide against First Nations Peoples. You call yourself a liberal, Governor Dayton. Do what a good liberal would do and show some leadership in standing up to racism, for jobs and for a "green" economy.

Now---

Run this by the tax-cutting, anti-tax, "fiscally responsible" Republicans, the DFL business caucus and the DFL Summit Hill Club:

When people are unemployed they shouldn't have to pay any taxes--- income taxes, property taxes, sales taxes, gas taxes. A government that can't organize a full-employment economy while there is so much needed to be done doesn't deserve the support of unemployed workers.

Tell the Republicans to forgo their legislative salaries and become "volunteers."

Get on the phone to Obama and tell him to end these dirty wars and send the money to Minnesota.

Tax the casinos to resolve the state's debt.

Come on, man, stand up for your liberal ideals. Get a back-bone.

These budget battles are a reflection of our true priorities.

End the wars; don't just tax-the-rich--- tax-the-hell out of the rich.

Stop playing games with these Republicans and business Democrats from the DFL Business Caucus and the Summit Hill Club.

Gather together a "People's Lobby" in support of a "People's Budget."

Get the Minnesota AFL-CIO to get people on buses from every county... bring in liberal, progressive and left-minded Minnesotans to deck these Republicans and the wealthy elite of the Democratic Party.

Stand up and fight for your liberal beliefs; no compromises with these greedy pigs who want to feed at the public trough and then cry about "fiscal responsibility."

There is only one way Minnesotans are going to get jobs and that is when you turn the State of Minnesota into the employer of first choice putting the unemployed to work solving the pressing problems of the people.

You also might consider joining with those of us looking for a working class based peoples party as an alternative to the thoroughly rotten and corrupt Minnesota Democratic Farmer-Labor Party.

By the way; why was Ken Martin, the head of the Minnesota DFL, in Iowa campaigning against Tim Pawlenty when he should have been right here in Minnesota standing at your side mobilizing to defeat the filthy rich?

You are now traveling across Minnesota talking with Minnesotans. Great! This is what Jeffersonian democracy is supposed to be all about.

Let me suggest that you ask each and every Minnesotan a very basic and fundamental question which you can convey their answers to your buddy, Barack Obama:

How is Barack Obama's Wall Street war economy working for you?

If you get as far north as Warroad, stop on in; the coffee is always on and there are some chocolate chip cookies my grand-kids made to munch on.

Maybe over coffee and cookies we can discuss why you have reneged on our agreement; we supported you, and you haven't fulfilled your end of the deal--- we need to know why; it's all about accountability. Between a "red" Finn and a good liberal I'm sure you understand what I am getting at.

Alan L. Maki
Director of Organizing,
Midwest Casino Workers Organizing Council

Richard Trumka sure opened the door wide for one hell of a discussion... we should all engage

2011-05-20T23:29:00.003-05:00

Some thoughts on Richard Trumka's heavily publicized speech to the National Press Club

by Alan L. Maki on Friday, May 20, 2011

A lot of people are ecstatic over Richard Trumka's speech to the National Press Club today. I have been following Trumka's speech, and his comments afterwards, very closely.

Some thoughts...

I would note something Trumka stated later, after his presentation, which I think needs to be stressed because it demonstrates just how two-faced and hypocritical he is. He has only repackaged and re-worded the longstanding positions of the AFL-CIO going back many decades to its conception and further back to when it was the AFL--- for about a decade or so the CIO had a real pro-worker stance on elections, supporting candidates and voting, and even running worker candidates.

But here is the most important point Trumka made TODAY which was not included in his remarks--- he had to be pressed knowing this was not going to be popular among working people after delivering a militant sounding speech:

"Later, Trumka said that President Obama was working for workers and that the AFL-CIO, the nation's largest labor group, would continue to support the president."
Link to statement- http://money.cnn.com/2011/05/20/news/economy/afl_cio_washington/?section=money_latest

Here are some other links to the National Press Club Luncheon:

http://press.org/events/npc-luncheon-richard-trumka

http://press.org/news-multimedia/news/union-leader-promises-fight-states-over-worker-rights

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/05/20/977808/-Trumka-denounces-Republicans,-declares-labor-independence

Here is a link to the official AFL-CIO website:

http://blog.aflcio.org/2011/05/20/trumka-working-people-want-a-strong-independent-labor-movement/

I would note that Richard Trumka does understand what working people want: political independence. But, when pressed as to whom the AFL-CIO will endorse for president Trumka says: Barack Obama--- this is not political independence from Wall Street in any way, shape or form. Nor has Barack Obama done a damn thing for working people justifying this endorsement; quite to the contrary, Obama has hurt working people and his wars are making us all poor.

Trumka has failed to grasp the very simple and basic understanding of these budget battles as articulated by my friend, Virg Bernero in Michigan: "Budgets are a reflection of our true priorities."

Trumka, at this late date, refuses to recognize what both liberal Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton has articulated along with Virg Bernero: We can't continue to squander our Nation's resources on wars and expect to have the resources to take care of the needs of the people. Again, a recognition of this Wall Street government's priorities when it comes to these budget battles. Why does Trumka refuse to ask the all important question of the working women and men whose dues pay has big, fat salary: How is Obama's Wall Street war economy working for you?

Check out Richard Trumka's complete speech. We need to ask: How is it that Trumka can make a speech like this and not one single mention of these dirty imperialist wars killing working people abroad and our own youth while working people and being forced into funding these wars abroad through austerity measures here at home as Wall Street coupon clippers fatten their bank accounts from profits derived from these wars as well as profiting directly from the austerity measures being imposed creating so much poverty resulting in untold misery; we need answers from Trumka as to why he is not properly formulating a response and call to action.

Also, I am sharing with all of you a website for what might be the beginnings of a national movement for a progressive political movement that has the potential to help us free ourselves from the two-party trap set for us by our Wall Street enemies.

I would encourage all of you to consider getting involved in any way you can. Please feel free to contact Anthony Noel--- his email is next to Mike's in the "To" line. Here is the link to the website: http://newprogs.org/

Also, I would like to make you aware of what is the most important book on progressive politics that you could possibly read--- bar none. The book is, "Keep True, a life in politics" by Howard Pawley who was elected and re-elected for almost twenty years to the Manitoba Provincial Legislature, having served about ten of those years as Manitoba's Premier (kind of like a state governor). The New Democratic Party government of Howard Pawley (during the 1980's) remains an example of the most progressive government in North America--- of course, with the exception of the Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party socialist governments of governors Floyd Olson and Elmer Benson. All joking aside, Pawley's government was a majority government a distinction the Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party governments never quite achieved since capturing majority control of the Senate was never achieved.

Here is a link to ordering Pawley's book: http://msupress.msu.edu/bookTemplate.php?bookID=4250

All too often U.S. progressives think there is nothing to learn from our northern neighbors. I can assure you we have much to learn from our northern neighbors when it comes to politics and if you read this book by Howard Pawley you will quickly find out a lot of what we have missed. Personally, I lived in Manitoba as the Pawley government fell because of a traitor inside of the NDP and I saw and experienced the sharp contrast in quality of life going from the most progressive government in North America to what was most definitely one of the most reactionary governments in North America. What we do in politics most definitely determines the quality of life working people have. Please, do yourself a favor and those you are politically engaged with a favor, by reading this most important book, "Keep True." For any political activist the purchase of this book will be the best money you have ever spent.

I also want to share with you an alternative to Obama's Wall Street agenda. This comes from my meetings and conversations with working people across Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan--- dozens of discussions in union halls, hundreds of meeting around kitchen tables and in living rooms and from conversations I have had with people after speaking at demonstrations, vigils and on picket-lines and at various protests...

The most important question, in my opinion, that we need to be asking people is:

"How is Barack Obama's Wall Street war economy working for you?"

After asking this question, we need to offer up some real alternatives like this:

A program for real change...

* Peace--- end the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya and shutdown the 800 U.S. military bases on foreign soil.

* A National Public Health Care System - ten million new jobs.

* A National Public Child Care System - three to five million new jobs.

* WPA - three million new jobs.

* CCC - two million new jobs.

* Tax the hell out of the rich and cut the military budget by ending the wars to pay for it all which will create full employment.

* Enforce Affirmative Action; end discrimination.

* Raise the minimum wage to a real living wage

* What tax-payers subsidize in the way of businesses, tax-payers should own and reap the profits from.

* Moratorium on home foreclosures and evictions.

* Defend democracy by defending workers' rights including the right to collective bargaining for improving the lives and livelihoods of working people.

* Roll-back and freeze the price of food, electricity, gas and heating fuels; not wages, benefits or pensions.

* Wall Street is our enemy.

Let's talk about the politics and economics of livelihood for a real change.

Don't forget, Cindy Sheehan talks in the Twin Cities this weekend (tomorrow) and there is a Fighting Bob festival in Wisconsin.

Yours in solidarity and struggle,

Alan L. Maki
(contact info at very bottom)

On Fri, May 20, 2011 at 6:45 PM, greenpartymike wrote:

President of the AFL-CIO warns Democrats, says workers want a more ‘independent’ labor movement
May 20th, 2011 · No Comments
From the Hill (H/T to Third Party and Independent Daily):
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said Friday that workers want an “independent” labor movement designed to help the working class, not a specific party or candidate…
“Our role is not to build the power of a political party or a candidate. It’s to improve the lives of working families and strengthen our economy, our country…”
In a question-and-answer session after his speech, the labor leader elaborated on how unions plan to change their political operations for the 2012 election cycle.
“We are actually redoing our entire political program and the way we do things,” Trumka said. “We will change the way we spend … the way we function in a way that creates power for workers.”
The AFL-CIO, which spends most of its funds on member education and get-out-the-vote efforts, wants to better coordinate with their affiliated unions that tend to make direct campaign contributions to candidates. In addition, the labor federation wants to mobilize its members year-round to campaign on issues dear to labor, instead of dismantling its political program after every election, which makes it harder to motivate workers when the next election comes around in two years, Trumka said.
Asked if labor will campaign against Democrats, Trumka responded, “Ask Blanche Lincoln.”

--
Alan L. Maki
Director of Organizing,
Midwest Casino Workers Organizing Council

58891 County Road 13
Warroad, Minnesota 56763

Phone: 218-386-2432
Cell: 651-587-5541

Primary E-mail: amaki000@centurytel.net
E-mail: alan.maki1951mn@gmail.com

Blog: http://thepodunkblog.blogspot.com/

Can Obama win in 2012?

2011-04-30T08:52:00.001-05:00

Once people feel they have been betrayed by a politician they don't go back.

If Obama remains in the race it simply means fewer people will be voting. Had people believed Obama and the Democrats were real opposition to the Republicans they would have turned out in droves for the 2010 Election.

In fact, you can talk to people anyplace--- where they are being robbed at the gas pumps, having their pockets picked at the local supermarket, walking down the cracked, crumbling and uneven sidewalks, at work, in community centers or the local union hall, sitting in their cold, unheated living rooms because they can't afford to heat their homes and pay the mortgage or in the state park camping--- no matter where you go these days, you are not going to find "happy campers."

If there are those who don't believe, just do your own survey by going to your local supermarket and stand at the meat cooler near the hamburger and say to someone: "Pretty soon we aren't going to afford to eat any more; these prices are ridiculous." Say this to ten people; let me know what they say. Then go to the fruits where the bananas are and say, "Look at the prices; can you afford these things?" Again, let me know what the first ten people say. Then take your voter survey out to the gas station and say to a few people, "When is this robbery at the pumps going to end?" Let me know how people respond.

Let's be clear-minded here and not influenced by the Democratic Party hacks who are working the social networking sites posing as real people using 40 or 50 phony names bullying, badgering and intimidating people with this crap like, "If you don't support Obama you are going to be saluting Donald Trump."

Most people never voted for Obama in the first place; they voted against the Republicans because their livelihoods were already deteriorating and they were war-weary and just plain fed-up. Does anyone really believe that people are happier today because their standard of living has improved? Are people any less war-weary? If you want to know the answer, just ask people:

"How is Obama's war economy working for you?"

Obama doesn't dare ask voters this question; his die-hard supporters and Democratic Party hacks just loathe this question being asked.

Yet, this question is the most honest and forthright question that can be asked of anyone in this country because the answers tell us exactly what people are thinking.

The fight between the Democrats and Republicans for votes will be for a share of fewer voters. The Republicans are relying on this although the Republicans have moved so far to the right many of their own people are not turning out to vote, either.

Also, Obama by his own admission, is no liberal.

I am not nit-picking terms here. It is important we understand where everyone is coming from ideologically because it pretty much tells us what we can expect from people and the organizations and movements they "lead."

Obama is a neo-liberal which makes him as reactionary as reactionary can be.

By his own admission, Obama is ideologically a "pragmatist" very typical of the Wall Street crowd, as is the labor leadership in this country; and, unfortunately, much of the leadership of the peace, civil rights, environmental and women's movements are ideological pragmatists making it virtually impossible for even the littlest of reforms to be won.

In my opinion the entire results of this election in 2012 will be determined by what the liberal-minded voters do; Obama has lost the majority of progressive and left voters for sure and he seems to pretty much have lost the liberal voters who are the most important block in this country when it comes to voting and building movements for progressive change which at this point includes the need to build an alternative party reflecting the aspirations of people who want a United States of America that is for peace, social and economic justice.

This is the very best time for liberals, progressive and the left to begin building a new party that offers a real alternative to Wall Street's two parties because we really don't have to worry about being called "spoilers" even though that tag shouldn't bother us because we have the right to vote for the kind of country we want; but, as things presently stand, it is those who continue to support Obama who are the real spoilers because they cling to Obama--- a loser.

While it is always possible in life for what appears to be impossible to happen, all common sense should tell us a President with three wars hanging around his neck as his major "accomplishments" with rapidly rising prices for food, gas, home heating fuels and electricity coupled with huge unemployment, massive home foreclosures and evictions and the freezing and reductions of wages and benefits is not going to be getting voted in again. Politically the odds of Obama getting elected again are virtually nil.

Unless you believe Obama can win without liberals, progressives and left voters turning out to vote for him on Election Day, Obama can't win. In fact, the election isn't even going to be close; Obama will be trounced and trampled at the polls.

Even if Obama can win on Election Day he deserves to have every liberal, progressive and leftist working to defeat him because he does not represent or reflect the kind of country we want.

Here is my choice for 2012:

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=82015215170

Cynthia McKinney and Cindy Sheehan might not be able to win on Election Day 2012; but, neither can Barack Obama... I will, however, be voting for the kind of country I want as a left-wing working class voter. And this is my right. I am not going to be badgered, bullied and intimidated into voting for a rotten Wall Street war-monger. I didn't tell Nixon to take his Vietnam war and shove it up his ass only to be bullied into voting for another warmonger--- Barack Obama.

Minnesota Public Radio... all the democracy corporate money can buy...

2011-04-12T16:30:00.000-05:00

I Am Attacked on Minnesota Public Radio by Kerri Miller and John McCarthy without the right of response

I called into a morning program on Minnesota Public Radio that featured as one of its guests John McCarthy, the rich white man who heads up the Minnesota Indian Gaming Association.

After making two points I was cut-off while making the third point at which time the host of the program opened the microphone up to John McCarthy to attack me until he was done with his lies.

If Minnesota Public Radio was the least bit interested in democracy and fairness I would have been provided the opportunity to respond to McCarthy and the viciously anti-labor and racist remark made by the program host that, "no one is forced to work in the casinos."

In fact, two circumstances by themselves and combined do force people to work in these loud, noisy, smoke-filled casinos at poverty wages and without a voice at work and without any rights under state or federal labor laws.

Circumstance #1:

The faltering economy. Tens of thousands of people are out of work. Economic necessity forces people to work in these casinos. Offer casino workers a job elsewhere at real living wages with good working conditions and their rights protected by state and federal labor laws and these casinos will be left without anyone to staff them.

Circumstance #2:

Racism. Racist hiring practices make it practically impossible for most Native American Indians to get jobs outside of the casino industry. The statistics and facts bear this out. In all the counties and their townships and cities in, near and around where the Indian Reservations of White Earth, Red Lake and Leech Lake are located, there are fewer than 20 Native American Indians employed in these public sectors out of thousands of workers. Because Affirmative Action is not being enforced in accordance with state and federal law, and the townships, cities and counties aren't even required to have Affirmative Action policies and programs in place, these racists don't have any Affirmative Action programs in any of these townships, cities or counties. Racism forces Native Americans to seek employment in these unhealthy smoke-filled casinos where they have no rights, receive poverty wages with no or little benefits and no voice in the workplace.

In fact, when it comes to Native American Indians they are forced to work in these casinos because Circumstance #1--- unemployment and Circumstance #2--- racism are both dominant and determining factors since unemployment rates on these three Indian Reservations range from a low of 60% to a high of 85%.

How can anyone be so arrogant and callous to argue with complete disregard for economic and racist factors that "no one is forced to work in these casinos?" Yet, this is just what Minnesota Public Radio's Mid-Morning host, Kerri Miller, argued. And then she proceeded to arrogantly and undemocratically not allow me to respond while turning the microphone over to John McCarthy to viciously attack me; again, without allowing me to respond.

Now, the facts are such that Minnesota Public Radio has intentionally ignored the plight of casino workers because the casino managements are now underwriting MPR programming to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.

And, where do these underwriting funds originate from? Indian Gaming revenues. Racist Indian Gaming which is controlled by a bunch of racist white mobsters who own the slot machines and table games and those like John McCarthy who dole out campaign contributions to the politicians who in return assure them of cheap labor.

John McCarthy and Kerri Miller refused to address the issues I raised:

1. Why don't these casino operations pay taxes as it just happens that if they were taxed like any other business Minnesota would not have any budget problems plus the Indian Nations would receive more than they are presently receiving from gaming revenues?

2. Why didn't John McCarthy or Kerri Miller respond to the fact that 41,000 casino workers are forced to work in loud, noisy, smoke-filled casinos at poverty wages without any rights under state or federal labor laws and without any voice at work. Why no explanation as to why this situation exists in the first place?

3. Why didn't John McCarthy or Kerri Miller address the fact that the Minnesota Indian Gaming Association spends tens of millions of dollars contributing to the campaigns of everyone except Native American Indians and there isn't one single Native American Indian sitting amongst Minnesota's more than two-hundred state legislators?

Of course, Kerri Miller, the host of Minnesota Public Radio's Mid-Morning Program did not ask John McCarthy about the ethics of him owning Tony Doom Enterprises, a big-business making millions in profits as a result of selling campaign advertising materials to the very politicians he funnels the campaign contributions to through the Minnesota Indian Gaming Association. If this isn't a racket I don't know what is.

I leave it to people to draw their own conclusion as to whether I should have been allowed to respond to the anti-labor and racist response of Kerri Miller and the following vicious attack on me personally by John McCarthy who is such a coward he doesn't dare debate me on these issues but then goes on to attack me for "posting malicious, vicious and nasty things on my blog here" without substantiating one single one of his accusations.

Furthermore, John McCarthy told Kerri Miller that he "knows" me; another outright lie.

People should take a drive by John McCarthy's home and ask why he is living high on the hog as a direct result of his racist role in the impoverishment and ill-health of the Indian people. John McCarthy lives just outside of Bemidji, Minnesota in a two-million dollar estate at 8925Cove Drive NE, Bemidji, Minnesota. Take a drive out to see John McCarthy's estate and then drive through the Leech Lake, Red Lake and White Earth Indian Reservations to see how casino workers getting paid poverty wages have to live or check out the dirty, filthy, rat infested apartment complex in Warroad, Minnesota that Floyd Jourdain and the Red Lake Tribal Council reserve for the members of the Red Lake Nation who work in the Seven Clans Casino Red Lake who have to pay over half of their poverty wages to live there.

Why doesn't Minnesota Public Radio report on any of this? The reason is obvious; John McCarthy and the casino managements and the Minnesota Indian Gaming Association are bribing MPR into silence just like the politicians have been bribed to enable this horrendous and most disgraceful situation to come into existence and continue where poverty is the only thing that flourishes so a few mobsters owning the slot machines and table games can profit.

For those who don't care about the plight of casino workers and enjoy gambling and the cheap meals served, keep this in mind:

* The Minnesota Department of Public Safety who is supposed to be monitoring slot machine compliance checks fewer than 150 slot machines a year in all of Minnesota.

* Food served in the casinos is not inspected by federal or state inspectors nor is the condition of the places where the food is prepared.

* And for those staying in the casino hotels/motels there has been no building inspections by local or state building inspectors.

As for John McCarthy's claim made on Mid-Morning that all the casinos have been built and constructed by union workers this is an outright big fat lie. I challenge John McCarthy to produce the union contracts. In fact, union business agents and stewards are not even allowed on these construction sites.

And casino workers, like the 5,000 employed by Stanley Crooks at his Mystic Lake Casino empire are forced to sign statements stating that they agree, as terms of their employment, that they will not engage in union organizing knowing they will be fired.

In fact, Stanley Crooks has fired over 200 casino workers from his Mystic Lake Casino empire in the last three years simply for "blogging about working conditions." And not a peep of any of this from Minnesota Public Radio. How come Kerri Miller is allowed to voice her anti-labor and racist views from a radio network funded by tax-payers in addition to casino managements without any restrictions or retribution?

One would think that an industry created by politicians at tax-payer expense while generating tens of billions of dollars annually in profits would require a bit of scrutiny from Minnesota Public Radio but all this industry gets from MPR, its management, program hosts and reporters is unconditional praise.

Kerri Miller doesn't even ask one of Minnesota's leading politicians or John McCarthy who speaks for this dirty, corrupt and disgusting casino industry why it is that these casinos have been allowed to circumvent the ban on smoking applicable to all other places of employment in Minnesota.

How much is it costing Minnesota tax-payers to have 41,000 Minnesotans working in loud, noisy, smoke-filled casinos where casino workers are fired without compensation of any kind if they develop coughs and begin to lose their hearing?

Perhaps Kerri Miller should invite someone from the Indian Health Service, the Minnesota Heart and Lung Foundation or the American Cancer Society to explain the impact of second-hand smoke on casino workers' health and lives and the impact to their families.

John McCarthy is concerned about all the "nasty things" I have to say about him, the casino managements and the Minnesota Indian Gaming Association along with the politicians he bribes and then profits from, again, here on my blog... well, let's talk about the real nasty things John McCarthy brings to Minnesota--- smoke-filled workplaces, poverty and racism.

And if these nasty things and the nasty people like John McCarthy don't get talked talked about here on my popular blog, where do they get talked about? On Minnesota Public Radio? Ha!

Losing Our Way

2011-03-28T13:02:00.002-05:00

I would encourage everyone to photocopy this article and pass it it out at every demonstration across the country along with the unity program on the top of my blog. Post it on every union bulletin board and every break-room and lunch-room. Post it on every church bulletin board and in every school. This op-ed column should form the basis for discussion groups. It is unfortunate that this column is Bob Herbert's last column for the New York Times.

Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/26/opinion/26herbert.html?_r=1

Op-Ed Columnist New York Times

Losing Our Way

By BOB HERBERT

Published: March 25, 2011

So here we are pouring shiploads of cash into yet another war, this time in Libya, while simultaneously demolishing school budgets, closing libraries, laying off teachers and police officers, and generally letting the bottom fall out of the quality of life here at home.

Damon Winter/The New York Times

Bob Herbert

Welcome to America in the second decade of the 21st century. An army of long-term unemployed workers is spread across the land, the human fallout from the Great Recession and long years of misguided economic policies. Optimism is in short supply. The few jobs now being created too often pay a pittance, not nearly enough to pry open the doors to a middle-class standard of living.

Arthur Miller, echoing the poet Archibald MacLeish, liked to say that the essence of America was its promises. That was a long time ago. Limitless greed, unrestrained corporate power and a ferocious addiction to foreign oil have led us to an era of perpetual war and economic decline. Young people today are staring at a future in which they will be less well off than their elders, a reversal of fortune that should send a shudder through everyone.

The U.S. has not just misplaced its priorities. When the most powerful country ever to inhabit the earth finds it so easy to plunge into the horror of warfare but almost impossible to find adequate work for its people or to properly educate its young, it has lost its way entirely.

Nearly 14 million Americans are jobless and the outlook for many of them is grim. Since there is just one job available for every five individuals looking for work, four of the five are out of luck. Instead of a land of opportunity, the U.S. is increasingly becoming a place of limited expectations. A college professor in Washington told me this week that graduates from his program were finding jobs, but they were not making very much money, certainly not enough to think about raising a family.

There is plenty of economic activity in the U.S., and plenty of wealth. But like greedy children, the folks at the top are seizing virtually all the marbles. Income and wealth inequality in the U.S. have reached stages that would make the third world blush. As the Economic Policy Institute has reported, the richest 10 percent of Americans received an unconscionable 100 percent of the average income growth in the years 2000 to 2007, the most recent extended period of economic expansion.

Americans behave as if this is somehow normal or acceptable. It shouldn’t be, and didn’t used to be. Through much of the post-World War II era, income distribution was far more equitable, with the top 10 percent of families accounting for just a third of average income growth, and the bottom 90 percent receiving two-thirds. That seems like ancient history now.

The current maldistribution of wealth is also scandalous. In 2009, the richest 5 percent claimed 63.5 percent of the nation’s wealth. The overwhelming majority, the bottom 80 percent, collectively held just 12.8 percent.
This inequality, in which an enormous segment of the population struggles while the fortunate few ride the gravy train, is a world-class recipe for social unrest. Downward mobility is an ever-shortening fuse leading to profound consequences.

A stark example of the fundamental unfairness that is now so widespread was in The New York Times on Friday under the headline: “G.E.’s Strategies Let It Avoid Taxes Altogether.” Despite profits of $14.2 billion — $5.1 billion from its operations in the United States — General Electric did not have to pay any U.S. taxes last year.

As The Times’s David Kocieniewski reported, “Its extraordinary success is based on an aggressive strategy that mixes fierce lobbying for tax breaks and innovative accounting that enables it to concentrate its profits offshore.”

G.E. is the nation’s largest corporation. Its chief executive, Jeffrey Immelt, is the leader of President Obama’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. You can understand how ordinary workers might look at this cozy corporate-government arrangement and conclude that it is not fully committed to the best interests of working people.

Overwhelming imbalances in wealth and income inevitably result in enormous imbalances of political power. So the corporations and the very wealthy continue to do well. The employment crisis never gets addressed. The wars never end. And nation-building never gets a foothold here at home.

New ideas and new leadership have seldom been more urgently needed.

•

This is my last column for The New York Times after an exhilarating, nearly 18-year run. I’m off to write a book and expand my efforts on behalf of working people, the poor and others who are struggling in our society. My thanks to all the readers who have been so kind to me over the years. I can be reached going forward atbobherbert88@gmail.com

Racism rears its ugly head at Bemidji State University

2011-02-24T09:52:00.000-06:00

Published February 23, 2011, 12:00 AM

Speaker compares Holocaust to American Indian reservation system

By: Patt Rall, Bemidji Pioneer

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Scholars, historians and people interested in the subject of American Indian tribal issues gathered together last night in Bemidji State University Thompson Recital Hall to hear Humanities scholar Clay S. Jenkinson.
Many of the same audience came to hear him because they remembered his appearance as Thomas Jefferson for the Bemidji Symphony Orchestra’s July 4 Concert.
“We saw him last summer and he just enchanted everybody and was so interested to hear what he had to say,” said attendees Bob and Sally Montibello.
Beverly Everett, music director of the Bemidji Symphony Orchestra, invited Jenkinson to speak as a prelude to the outreach program planned for May. “The Defiant Requiem,” written by Murry Sidlin, is the musical story of the performances of Verdi’s work in the Terezin Concentration Camp during World War II. The premise of Jenkinson’s talk was “Relating the Holocaust to Native American Issues.”
“In this part of the world we cannot talk about the Holocaust without bringing up the problem of our treatment of Native Americans,” said Jenkinson during an interview earlier in the day. “I don’t think that our treatment of Native Americans was ever identical with the purposes of the Holocaust. In other words, I don’t believe that it was the policy of the United States government to insist on a systematic extermination of the Native American population; in fact, it is just the opposite.”
Attendees Nadine Wade and her friend Linda Cabrales said, “This is the first time we heard the word because it’s usually genocide. There is a lot of history that has not been taught in the schools. It’s nice to have the real story told once in awhile.”
During his talk at the university, Jenkinson went on to explain what he has learned about the treatment of native populations. In the western territories, it was actually the people who were calling for the extermination of the native peoples, and the government held them back.
The general theme of Jenkinson’s talk was on the Europeanization of this land (America) which started with Christopher Columbus because it was clear that Europeans wanted to take over the continent as effortlessly as possible, but as bloodthirstily as necessary. That varied from place to place and culture to culture. There was no way that Europeans were going to let native populations stand in their way. In fact, there have been attempts throughout American history to create reservations of the kind that Oklahoma was meant to be. But the de facto policy of white Europeans was that Indians could not be allowed to get in the way of white people’s dreams. That theme played itself out, over and over again, with different variations, Jenkinson said.
Students Jen Froderman, a social work major, and her friend Christina Knutson came to the lecture for different reasons. Froderman because of her field of study and interest in Indian culture and Knutson because she is interested in history.
All this happened relatively late in the segment of time known as Imperialism. Printing presses and media would point out to the general public what was happening to the native population. The fact that this country was born of the Enlightenment meant that European settlers couldn’t just do this and hope that it would be forgotten. There was an attempt to do it as legally and with as little violence as possible. The net result was cultural genocide, but not a policy of physical genocide.
For example, Captain Richard H. Pratt, the founder of the Indian Boarding Schools in Carlisle, Pa., is quoted as saying, “Kill the Indian to save the man.” By 1900, thousands of Indians were housed in 150 boarding schools. That’s not quite Dachau, said Jenkinson, but it was not that far away either, for not all concentration camps were Auschwitz.
It is not fair to do a Holocaust program in faraway Minnesota without looking in the mirror and saying, “How really different have America’s policies been, a much more benign version of what the Nazis were up to.”
The word Holocaust has to be looked at carefully, and for Jenkinson, it means the systematic industrial extermination of a people, purposefully out of mere hate. He said he feels that was not true in America.
Jenkinson went on to explain that the U.S. government did not go that far. Reservations today are homelands for Indians. They like the culture, a refuge, a place where white culture has a small footprint. They are places where Indians can be together and gain solidarity and have a relationship with the earth that they can’t have in white populations. The reservations were really concentration camps that were created in the 1870s as a stop gap measure to keep Indians together in preparation to their assimilation into the white population.
The reservation system was a way to imprison Indians on lands that nobody else wanted and now in the 21st century it’s become something different. Jenkinson said if you asked Indians today if they want to terminate the reservation system, they would say absolutely not. That is a big reversal, but the point is that the white people of Minnesota took the lands from the native people here. White negotiators would come to Bemidji and say to the Ojibwe, we’d like to buy this territory and if the Ojibwe did not want to sell it, they would take it.
The government of the United States would respond to the demands of the white population and make promises they couldn’t keep when Minnesota was first being populated in the 1820s and ’30s in the St. Croix area. They were what are called “second hop” because they already had lives in Pennsylvania, New Hampshire and Ohio, for example, and then moved here. At first nobody wanted northern Minnesota, so it was just left to the Indians. Then immigration after the Homestead Act brought more people to this area. At first, the Indians cooperated out of innocence or not understanding the negotiations or were bullied or given alcohol. In some cases, the native population would simply refuse, and a border skirmish would happen where an Ojibwe would kill a white family that was squatting on their land. Then troops would come in. There would be a war and the government would simply take the land that they wanted.
There is so much spiritual and emotional support for Indians today that it would be impossible for this to happen now, Jenkinson said. If there was anything that he would have liked listeners to take back with them last night, it is a respect for the resilience of these peoples: the European Jews and other minority populations like the Gypsys and the Native Americans.
The event was well attended and free to the public. It was funded, in part, by a grant from the Minnesota State Legislature and the McKnight Foundation.

Comment---

This will come as news to the tens of thousands of Native American Indians living in Minnesota:

"There is so much spiritual and emotional support for Indians today that it would be impossible for this to happen now, Jenkinson said. If there was anything that he would have liked listeners to take back with them last night, it is a respect for the resilience of these peoples: the European Jews and other minority populations like the Gypsys and the Native Americans."

Workers' Rights Here and Abroad

2011-02-18T09:23:00.000-06:00

This article, Workers' Rights Here and Abroad--- being published all over the place to confuse and intimidate and manipulate and control workers--- clearly articulates the official ideology of the U.S. labor movement throughout its long history except for a period from around 1930 to 1947 when the CIO was a powerful influence led by the "left," most notably the Communist Party USA which weilded substantial influence among working people with rank-and-file activists rising to become important leaders in leading union positions, including, Harry Bridges, Wyndham Mortimer, Phil Raymond and leaders of the CPUSA like William Z. Foster, James W. Ford, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Earl Browder and writers like Frank Marshall Davis... to name just a few.

Note: This article appeared in newspapers all over the United States; it was published in the Minneapolis Star Tribune on Feb. 17, 2011. http://www.startribune.com/opinion/commentary/116361909.html

Also, note: Spending on the wars is never mentioned as a major contributing factor to the budget crisis every state faces or is already experiencing. No mention of money for people; not for war.

Another note: check out the good dose of "red baiting" for extra measure--- "It's a throwback to 19th-century America, when strikes were suppressed by force of arms. Or, come to think of it, to Mubarak's Egypt or communist Poland and East Germany."

A most important note, the real issue to Harold Meyerson:

"Newly elected Republican governors, however, may reach the same conclusion Walker did and use the recession-induced fiscal crisis to achieve a partisan political objective: removing unions, the most potent force in the Democrats' electoral operation, from the landscape. "If we just stop and cure the pension problem, we have not gone far enough," Steve Malanga of the Manhattan Institute's City Journal said at the Conservative Political Action Conference last weekend."

The Democratic Party gets its money from Wall Street and its "foot soldiers" and votes from organized labor along with very substantial funding which drains union coffers to assure labor doesn't use its formidable financial resources and organizational strength to start its own political party like organized labor has in Canada with the socialist New Democratic Party.

My comment:

This dangerous ideology of "pragmatism" posing as liberalism inthis artiicle enables Wall Street through the Democratic Party to manipulate and control labor---

What kind of crap is this? The Democrats can cut wages and benefits better than Republicans?

"Democratic governors such as California's Jerry Brown and New York's Andrew Cuomo have proposed scaling back public services, pay, and benefits without going after workers' fundamental rights to bargain. The right to bargain is clearly a separate question."

"Liberalism" and "pragmatism" are not one and the same thing; though they can be, and often are.

It must be noted that Obama and the Democrats have prepared the soil for this attack--- by both Republicans and Democrats--- on the working class, not only in Wisconsin but all across the United States by:

1. Spending on wars instead of human needs and universal social programs.

2. Pushing through the "Health Insurance and Pharmaceutical Industry Bailout and Profit Maximization Act of 2010" instead of single-payer universal health care or the more comprehensive and better alternative a National Public Health Care System leaving health care to remain a "bone of contention" in labor management disputes.

3. By Obama's freezing of federal government employees' wages.

4. By refusing to enact the Employee Free Choice Act which would have given labor the opportunity to push its agenda more agressively from a position of strength. In fact, it was the refusal of Obama and the Democrats to implement--- with acquiescence and passivity and approval in the form of making up excuses for Obama from the AFL-CIO leadership that the defeat of EFCA has led now to labor being vulnerable to these attacks across the country, and let us make no mistake in understanding that if these attacks on teachers and other public sector employees and their unions are a success, all working people will suffer and the attacks on private sector unions will increase to untold proportions--- and the pressure is at a high level as it is right now.

5. Through attacks on Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare. Not to mention attacks on the anti-poverty programs like the Community Action Programs which are an integral part of what little remains of the "war on poverty."

It is unfortunate the left and progressive movement lacks a real independent publication like the Daily Worker or the National Guardian as we face these difficult dangers and problems ahead; but, since we don't have these kinds of publications it means that each of us has to take the responsibility of thinking these these kinds of things through and sharing our ideas to stimulate the broadest discussions possible in order to counter these most reactionary ideas like in this aricle being pushed in the name of liberalism, progressivism and even leftism.

What is most urgently required is a good strong dose of anti-imperialist education in the working class movement explaining the relationship between wars and the capitalist economic crisis, the crisis of every-day-living working people are now forced to endure in order to try to survive and the austerity measures being forced on us by Wall Street and it various political surrogates from Obama and the Democrats to the Republicans, the Tea Party crowd and the Birchites and their racist, fascist ilk like Ron and Rand Paul who hide behind "libertarianism."

Here is the article meant to poison the minds of working people which requires a swift response from the left (the Communist Party USA is not up to the task, unfortunately; a problem we are trying to correct)---

http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=workers_rights_here_and_abroad

Workers' Rights Here and Abroad

Workers toppled a dictator in Egypt, but might be silenced in Wisconsin.

Harold Meyerson | February 17, 2011 | web only

Wisconsin teachers protest budget cuts at the state capitol. (Flickr/markonf1re)

In Egypt, workers are having a revolutionary February. In the United States, by contrast, February is shaping up as the cruelest month workers have known in decades.

The coup de grace that toppled Hosni Mubarak came after tens of thousands of Egyptian workers went on strike beginning last Tuesday. By Friday, when Egypt's military leaders apparently decided that unrest had reached the point where Mubarak had to go, the Egyptians who operate the Suez Canal and their fellow workers in steel, textile, and bottling factories; in hospitals, museums and schools; and those who drive buses and trains had left their jobs to protest their conditions of employment and governance. As Jim Hoagland noted in The Washington Post, Egypt was barreling down the path that Poland, East Germany, and the Philippines had taken, the path where workers join student protesters in the streets and jointly sweep away an authoritarian regime.

But even as workers were helping topple the regime in Cairo, one state government in particular was moving to topple workers' organizations here in the United States. Last Friday, Scott Walker, Wisconsin's new Republican governor, proposed taking away most collective bargaining rights of public employees. Under his legislation, which has moved so swiftly through the newly Republican state legislature that it might come to a vote Thursday, the unions representing teachers, sanitation workers, doctors and nurses at public hospitals, and a host of other public employees, would lose the right to bargain over health coverage, pensions, and other benefits. (To make his proposal more politically palatable, the governor exempted from his hit list the unions representing firefighters and police.) The only thing all other public-sector workers could bargain over would be their base wages, and given the fiscal restraints plaguing the states, that's hardly anything to bargain over at all.

You might think that Walker came to this extreme measure after negotiations with public-sector unions had reached an impasse. In fact, he hasn't held such discussions. "I don't have anything to negotiate," Walker told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel last week. To underscore just how accompli he considered his fait, he vowed to call in the National Guard if protesting workers walked off the job or disrupted state services.

It's a throwback to 19th-century America, when strikes were suppressed by force of arms. Or, come to think of it, to Mubarak's Egypt or communist Poland and East Germany.

Now, it's not as if our states don't have fiscal crises to address, and Walker insists that it's Wisconsin's empty till that has driven him to curtail workers' rights. But there are other options.

Democratic governors such as California's Jerry Brown and New York's Andrew Cuomo have proposed scaling back public services, pay, and benefits without going after workers' fundamental rights to bargain. The right to bargain is clearly a separate question.

Newly elected Republican governors, however, may reach the same conclusion Walker did and use the recession-induced fiscal crisis to achieve a partisan political objective: removing unions, the most potent force in the Democrats' electoral operation, from the landscape. "If we just stop and cure the pension problem, we have not gone far enough," Steve Malanga of the Manhattan Institute's City Journal said at the Conservative Political Action Conference last weekend.

The real goal of the American right is to reduce public employee unions to the level of private-sector unions, which now represent fewer than 7 percent of American workers. Walker's proposal not only confines public-sector unions to annual bargaining over wage increases but restricts the increases for state employees to raises in the consumer price index and compels every such union to hold an annual membership vote to determine whether the union can continue to represent workers. It clearly intends to smash these unions altogether.

Which would yield what? Our unions have already been decimated in the private sector; the results are plain. Corporate profits are soaring, while domestic investment, wages, and benefits (particularly at nonunion companies) are flat-lining at best. With nobody to bargain for workers, America increasingly is an economically stagnant, plutocratic utopia. Is everybody happy?

American conservatives often profess admiration for foreign workers' bravery in protesting and undermining authoritarian regimes. Letting workers exercise their rights at home, however, threatens to undermine some of our own regimes (the Republican ones particularly) and shouldn't be permitted. Now that Wisconsin's governor has given the Guard its marching orders, we can discern a new pattern of global repressive solidarity emerging -- from the chastened pharaoh of the Middle East to the cheese-head pharaoh of the Middle West.

Harold Meyerson's Washington Post column runs on Wednesdays. This one originally ran here.

Harold Meyerson is the editor-at-large at The American Prospect and a columnist for The Washington Post. Click here to read more about him.

Comment by Alan Maki:

The labor movement has been "led" by those adhering to the imperialist ideology of "pragmatism" since 1947 making it very easy for employers and the government as well as the Democrats to manipulate and control labor. This particular article is a very dangerous article and needs to be refuted; especially this idea:

This comes from one of the AFL-CIO's "partners," American Prospect.

Look what they say about themselves in their "mission statement:"

http://www.prospect.org/cs/about_tap/our_mission

"At the same time, we take seriously our role as a forum for constructive debate and civil argument about ideas across a wide range of the center-left political spectrum. We don't have a party line, because we believe that robust, challenging internal debate, as well as honest and respectful engagement with philosophical conservatism, will strengthen our ideas, resolve weaknesses, and find the basis for compromise that leads to change."

"...honest and respectful engagement with philosophical conservatism, will strengthen our ideas, resolve weaknesses, and find the basis for compromise that leads to change."

From Wikipedia:

The American Prospect is a monthly American political magazine dedicated to liberalism. It bills itself as a journal "of liberal ideas, committed to a just society, an enriched democracy, and effective liberal politics"[1] which focuses on U.S. politics and public policy. Politically, the magazine is in support of modern American liberalism, similar to The New Republic and The Nation, which likewise target an intellectual audience.

The magazine was founded in 1990 by Robert Kuttner, Robert Reich, and Paul Starr as a response to the perceived intellectual ascendancy of conservatism in the 1980s. Originally it published quarterly, then bimonthly. In 2000, thanks to a grant from the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy, it became biweekly.[2] Financial and logistical difficulties ensued, and the magazine moved to its present monthly format in spring 2003. Kuttner and Starr share the title of Editor with Mark Schmitt, who is also the magazine's executive editor. The online version of the magazine includes an active blog, as well as blogs by Dean Baker and Adam Serwer.

In 2010, The American Prospect was the recipient of Utne Reader magazine's Utne Independent Press Award for Political Coverage.[3]

The magazine's alumni include Jonathan Chait, Jonathan Cohn, Joshua Green, Joshua Micah Marshall, Jedediah Purdy, Chris Mooney, Matthew Yglesias, Michael Massing, Joe Conason, Michael Tomasky, Ezra Klein, and Scott Stossel.

Recent executive editors have included (from oldest to latest) Michael Tomasky, Harold Meyerson, and Mark Schmitt.

In March 2010, "The American Prospect" entered into a publishing partnership with Demos, a public policy research and advocacy center.

Alan L. Maki

Director of Organizing,

Midwest Casino Workers Organizing Council

and

Co-Chair,

Lake-of-the-Woods Communist Club (Minnesota-Manitoba-Ontario)

58891 County Road 13

Warroad, Minnesota 56763

Phone: 218-386-2432

Cell Phone: 651-587-5541

E-mail: amaki000@centurytel.net

Check out my Blog:

http://thepodunkblog.blogspot.com/

An alternative to Obama's Wall Street unconstitutional "Health Insurance and Pharmaceutical Industry Bailout and Profit Maximization Act of 2010"

2011-02-01T12:53:00.002-06:00

I think this judge made the correct decision in finding Obama's "Health Insurance and Pharmaceutical Industry Bailout and Profit Maximization Act of 2010" as being unconstitutional.

I have been a vigorous supporter of single-payer universal health care as a first step towards a National Public Health Care System. In my opinion, the single-payer movement is dead.

It has died because so many people in this country are looking for a health care system that is:

* publicly financed,

* publicly administered, and

* publicly delivered.

People just are not gung-ho over private delivery of health care services. People resent the big money doctors have made off health care just like they resent the insurance and pharmaceutical companies making big profits and feeding at the public trough.

In my opinion what we need to do is start a labor-based people's party as an alternative to the Democratic Party and a National Public Health Care System (VA for all) should be the centerpiece of its program and platform.

Plus, single-payer would create around three-million jobs; a National Public Health Care System would create around ten-million new jobs.

We should push to phase in a National Public Health Care System beginning with Primary Health Care. 30,000 community health care centers providing free pre-natal to grave health care.

Financing would be very simple and could come from numerous sources from funds cut from war and military spending (remember the promises of "peace dividends") to taxing the wealthy and corporate profits or just a pay-roll tax like what finances Social Security--- or a combination of these.

Single-payer advocates complained that single-payer wasn't given a fair hearing; well, neither was a National Public Health Care System provided a fair hearing--- in fact it received no hearing at all.

No-fee/no-premium, comprehensive (pre-natal to death), all-inclusive (prescription drugs to eyes to general health care to mental), universal (everyone in, nobody out); publicly financed, publicly administered, publicly delivered.

There is nothing radical about: publicly financed, publicly administered, publicly delivered... isn't this the same way we our public schools operate?

If we can't trust the private sector to teach our children reading, writing, math and science; why would we trust the private sector with our health care?

Put doctors, nurses, all health care providers and the support network on the public payroll just like teachers and janitors in our public schools at the very same wages.

We already have three very fine public health care programs to build a National Public Health Care System from:

* VA (Veterans Administration)

* Indian Health Service

* National Public Health Service

A program for real change...

2011-01-31T21:19:00.001-06:00

* Peace--- end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and shutdown the 800 military bases.

* A National Public Health Care System - ten million new jobs.

* A National Public Child Care System - three to five million new jobs.

* WPA - three million new jobs.

* CCC - two million new jobs.

* Tax the hell out of the rich and cut the military budget by ending the wars to pay for it all which will create full employment.

* Enforce Affirmative Action; end discrimination.

* Raise the minimum wage to a real living wage

* What tax-payers subsidize in the way of businesses, tax-payers should own and reap the profits from.

* Moratorium on home foreclosures and evictions.

* Wall Street is our enemy.

Justice Charter To End Poverty in Manitoba

2010-10-07T18:05:00.000-05:00

Justice
Charter To End Poverty
in Manitoba

We the people of Manitoba, seeing the growing gap between the
wealthy and people in need, the working poor, and discriminated groups want to act
in a timely manner to reverse the situation, to provide for people with needs and
support the right for everyone to contribute to society to the best of their ability. To this
end we make these demands and will work to make them a reality:

Housing must be a right and
a comfort, not a constant crisis!

􀂊 End subsidies to private landlords
􀂊 Establish stricter rent controls.
􀂊 Enact a Tenant Bill of Rights.
􀂊 Build and maintain public housing to the standard
building code.
􀂊 No utility cut-offs; establish a panel with legal power
to require landlords to pay.
Universal health
care for all, for every need!
􀂊 Expand medicare into a comprehensive health
care system focusing on prevention.
􀂊 Extend medicare to cover all essential services such
as eye, drug, dental, ambulance and prosthetics.
􀂊 Reduce pollution from mining and manufacturing,
especially next to low income neighborhoods.
Jobs are a human right.
Create good-paying jobs for all!
􀂊 Create jobs through a massive investment in public
housing, a public child care program, and
conversion to a “green” economy.
􀂊 Increase the minimum wage to $14 an hour.
􀂊 Quality job creation by ensuring access to
education, ending tuition fees, free student
housing, education in Aboriginal and any other
language where numbers warrant.
􀂊 Access to better jobs - reduce the work week with
no loss in pay, add paid vacation days and
reduce the pension age for women to age 60.
􀂊 End the Foreign Temporary Worker program, give
these workers full labour rights and make them
immigrants to Canada, if they so choose.
Provide for those in need!
􀂊 Introduce a Guaranteed Liveable Income, above
the poverty line and indexed to inflation.
􀂊 Improve special needs benefits and introduce a
fast appeals process with free advocacy services.
􀂊 A public, high quality, free child care program
employing well-paid early childhood
development professionals.
􀂊 Establish a hot breakfast program for children in
schools.
􀂊 For injured workers, establish a fast and free
appeals process independent of the Workers
Compensation Board. Provide free legal services
and always respect the right to appeal.
􀂊 Establish a Manitoba pension credit plan funded
by payroll deductions, a surtax on corporate
income to top up pensions above the poverty
line and an inheritance wealth tax.
􀂊 Establish a federally-chartered, publicly-owned
bank that does not discriminate against people
in poverty, is located in low-income areas, and
provides free or nonprofit cheque cashing services
and international fund transmittals.
􀂊 Establish a province-wide, free and publicly-owned
handi-transit service for people with disabilities.
􀂊 Establish price controls for essential foods throughout
Manitoba.
End racism,
sexism and discrimination of all forms!
􀂊 Support immediate settlement of Aboriginal land claims
and emergency action to end housing, health care
and education inequality.
􀂊 Take steps to recognize Aboriginal nations on a new
basis in Canada, including full national rights and
equal nation to nation relations.
􀂊 Introduce immediately affirmative action hiring with
mandatory quotas for Aboriginal people, people of
colour, women and people with disabilities in both
the public and private sector.
􀂊 Job pay equity for all workplaces.
􀂊 Replace the present legal system of retribution and
punishment with principles of restorative justice -
restitution and reconciliation; include “ability to pay”
as a consideration for sentencing people to jail for nonpayment
of fines.
􀂊 Ban discrimination based on social or mental health
conditions in the Human Rights Code.
􀂊 Introduce a Manitoba Bill of Rights based on the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights (1948), adding
protections against all forms of sexism.
Reform the democratic system
􀂊 Establish proportional representation so that people
will vote for what they want and so that every person’s
vote will count.
􀂊 Pay Legislators the average worker’s wage and benefits
in Manitoba.

The Justice Charter is for
discussion by all Manitobans. The
Four Directions Committee is
planning a Conference to discuss
the Charter on November 28,
2010. Contact us to get involved
in planning the conference.
Four Directions Walk 􀁀 Four Directions Walk 􀁀 Four Directions Walk 􀁀 Four Directions Walk 􀁀
Four Directions Walk 􀁀 Four Directions Walk 􀁀 Four Directions Walk 􀁀 Four Directions Walk 􀁀 Four Directions Walk 􀁀 Four Directions Walk 􀁀 Four Directions Walk 􀁀
Four Directions Walk 􀁀 Four Directions Walk 􀁀 Four Directions Walk 􀁀 Four Directions Walk 􀁀 Four Directions Walk 􀁀 Four Directions Walk 􀁀 Four Directions Walk 􀁀
Four Directions Walk 􀁀 Four Directions Walk 􀁀 Four Directions Walk 􀁀 Four Directions Walk 􀁀

We are inviting groups representing Aboriginal
peoples, women, workers, youth and students,
people of colour, people with disabilities, injured
workers, the working poor, people living in
poverty, people of all faiths and nonbelievers - all
supportive groups - to discuss and amend the
Charter at the Assembly. Contact the Four
Directions Committee if you would like to receive
a copy of the Call to the Conference or
comment on the Charter.
Email: fourdirectionswalk@mts.net or phone (204)
792-3371.
- Produced by volunteer labour

Olson, Persell, Bye endorsed by Senate 4 DFL

2010-03-21T11:04:00.003-05:00

Published March 21 2010 Bemidji Pioneer

http://www.bemidjipioneer.com/event/article/id/100017081/group/News/

Olson, Persell, Bye endorsed by Senate 4 DFL

WALKER — Two incumbents and a second-time candidate were endorsed here Saturday morning by Senate District 4 Democrats.

By: Brad Swenson, Bemidji Pioneer

WALKER — Two incumbents and a second-time candidate were endorsed here Saturday morning by Senate District 4 Democrats.

Sen. Mary Olson, DFL-Bemidji, and Rep. John Persell, DFL-Bemidji, were both overwhelming endorsed for second terms, despite being challenged on American Indian issues.

Meg Bye of rural Pequot Lakes was unopposed for endorsement for a second run against Rep. Larry Howes, R-Walker, who will be seeking his seventh term for House 4B.

Olson was challenged by Greg Paquin of Bemidji, a Red Lake Band member, who said both Olson and Persell aren’t doing enough to ensure that American Indian tradesmen get jobs. Olson, however, won the endorsement with a 68-3 vote of Senate 4 delegates.

Nicole Beaulieu of Bemidji, a Leech Lake Band member, sought to wrest the House 4A endorsement from Persell, saying it’s time for American Indians to become politically active and take legislative seats to represent native communities. Persell won the endorsement for a second term with a 42-4 vote of 4A delegates.

“I think we saw democracy in action, as we do at the Capitol when people come down with strong views, wanting to make sure their voices are heard,” Olson said after the endorsements.

“That’s something we encourage in the DFL, and we encourage in democracy,” she said. “And I think we heard some concerns raised that are valid concerns, and I think that’s always a good thing for the process.”

Neither Paquin nor Beaulieu said if they would challenge the endorsements in the Aug. 10 DFL primary.

Bye was unopposed for endorsement, and was unanimously endorsed by 25 House 4B delegates at the convention held in the Walker-Akeley-Hackensack High School.

“This is going to be a very, very important election,” said Olson, who will be seeking a two-year term because of pending reapportionment. “This is really going to make a difference and an opportunity for Minnesota to decide whether we affirm our traditional values, whether we affirm three separate branches of government acting as three separate branches of government, whether we affirm the importance that we place on having equal opportunity for all of our citizens, whether they’re native American citizens, whether they’re rural Minnesota citizens, or whomever they may be.”

Olson also includes having equal access to a quality education across the state, not just in property-wealthy areas of the suburban metro area; equality in funding for health care so all Minnesotans have access to quality and affordable health care; and whether to deregulate everything and let consumers fend for themselves.

“All of these issues are going to be on the ballot in Minnesota this year,” Olson said. “Which direction we go on those issues is going to depend on how involved we get in this process.”

Persell, seeking his second term, said the rest of this session will be tough and one where not much is expected to get done with a Republican governor who won’t raise taxes. The office is open on the November ballot, as Gov. Tim Pawlenty isn’t seeking a third term.

“Things are very trying down there,” Persell said of the session in St. Paul. “The anger … is on the surface. If you read the papers, it probably came out of me a couple of times. I try very hard not to show my anger.”

The Bemidji Democrat was referring to remarks he made at a town hall meeting that he had looked into how to impeach Pawlenty, and also for those who think the business climate is better in South Dakota, he’d pay them $10 toward a ticket to that state.

“But these are really tough times,” he said. “God, I wish we had a veto-proof majority. I’m not going to say some of the things that are on the tip of my tongue about that, but I did talk to some of my colleagues the other day and said in all seriousness I was going to get a peach tree and plant it outside the governor’s office.

“I welcome this endorsement, and I trust that you will find it in your hearts to send me back,” he added. “I’m excited to go back again; I hope I’m fortunate to go back in 2011 and sit in the House of Representatives with a Democrat governor, a majority in each of the houses … so we can start to rebuild Minnesota.”

The rest of the session won’t be pretty, Persell said. “Those who really need help out here are hurting, and we know that, but we can’t come up with any new revenue with the governor, the way it is right now. We’re just going to have to commit ourselves … to rebuilding Minnesota, getting education back to the 15 to 20 pupils range (in the classroom) instead of 30-plus.”

Beaulieu said she sees certain needs of American Indians that aren’t being addressed by current politicians or tribal leaders. Coming from a “struggling family” of seven, she said she took a part-time job to help pay the bills.

“There are many needs that need to be met, and that is one reason I want to be your representative,” she said. “I want to commend John Persell for his dedication … I see some of the things he does for my people, although being a native American myself and growing up with these struggles and things that are not met in this community.”

A main reason to campaign, Beaulieu said, is to break the influence of gangs in Cass Lake and Bemidji. “The gang culture in our communities is so strong, and is one of the many struggles we deal with on the reservation.”

Beaulieu says she wants change for her people. “I think it’s about time that a native American gets involved in this political process — it’s long overdue.”

Olson and Persell have done wonderful things for the native people, Beaulieu said, “but they are not native. I don’t know what it’s like to be a non-native, but I’m sure it’s much easier than being a native American.”

Beaulieu said it was not her goal to just represent American Indians but to represent Democrats.

The political process is open to everybody, said Paquin, who sought the Senate 4 endorsement. But not much has changed for American Indian communities, he added.

Last year, he formed a native American labor union to try to increase job opportunities, but said he found a brick wall with the Bemidji Regional Event Center and U.S. Pipeline working the Enbridge pipeline as contractors wouldn’t hire his referrals. In another case, there was a refusal to recognize Paquin’s union.

“Our people are … left out of it,” he said, adding that there is no interest in enforcing affirmative action laws. “We have tribal leaders today, but I never see them get out there and say, ‘Hey, Minnesota. Hey, Mr. Persell, Ms. Olson — we want jobs for our people, and not just behind the fence. When a legislator gets a vote from an Indian behind the fence, he thinks it’s a sovereign nation and it’s the tribal government’s responsibility to provide economic development.

“No,” he continued. “When they take a vote from an Indian on a reservation, they owe us all to be treated equally and that’s what this is about – equality.”

He said that despite a billion-dollar American Indian casino industry in Minnesota, taxpayers still have to pay huge sums for welfare programs to American Indians. “Something’s wrong,” Paquin said.

One of Olson’s seconders was Eugene “Ribs” Whitebird, a Leech Lake Tribal Council member, who laid out numerous bills that Olson carried for Indian people, and that she is a member of the Minnesota Indian Affairs Council.

Harold “Skip” Finn, a former state senator and a Leech Lake Band member, seconded Persell’s nomination. Finn said Persell “has demonstrated an unwavered commitment to those less powerful, to those who have no other voice in the process — the children, the elderly and the poor.”

Working his career with American Indian tribes in environmental consulting, Persell has “also demonstrated an unwavering allegiance to the goal of one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all,” Finn said.

Bye, unopposed for endorsement for 4B, said more people than ever have no access to health care. More and more of Minnesota’s lakes and streams have been listed as impaired. And the state’s budget continues to spiral.

“Anger and disappointment is widespread among us,” said the former Duluth City Council member who retired to rural Pequot Lakes. ‘It has brought out the worst in many of us., as we throw verbal fire bombs at one another.”

It’s time for Minnesotans to get back into the game and do better, she said. “We still care; you still care. We still care about the state of our state and our nation. We still care about the future of our children and their children.”

Minnesotans still care to provide an education system with access to all and health care system with affordable access to all, she said.

“Democrats do not believe that transferring more wealth to the already wealthy is the way toward a healthy economy,” Bye said. “The experiences of the last two years has proven us right.”

The threat from the rightwing

2010-01-30T12:11:00.001-06:00

A couple points missed by the Campaign for America's Future...

By Alan Maki
January 30, 2010 - 1:07pm GMT

First, you have ignored a very important development. John Birchers Ron and Rand Paul are involved in a movement that is really scary which brings together some Green Party people and even some misguided leftists who don't look beneath the surface to see what is going on and the connections these people have with outfits like the viciously racist and anti-Semitic John Birch Society whose influence is growing again across the country. This "movement," while still small, seems to be growing quite rapidly--- often working in league with the Tea Party movement.

Second, you people with the Campaign for America's Future are afraid to look for an alternative to the Democratic Party that works. The socialist Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party of Governors Floyd B. Olson, Elmer Benson and U.S. Congressman John Bernard was the most powerful and effective challenge, to date, to this two-party trap... and it worked in the interests of the common people--- workers, farmers, professionals and small business people.

The only way to fight the right-wing when they start attacking everything as socialist is to provide a truthful and honest explanation of what socialism is and what a socialist agenda and program really are.

We should begin by putting socialized healthcare on the table which would create tens of thousands of jobs while creating as many public healthcare centers as there are public libraries which would create for the American people a world-class healthcare system second to none along the lines of VA, the Indian Health Service and the National Public Health Service...

No-fees/no premiums.
Comprehensive.
All-inclusive.
Pre-natal to grave.
Universal.
A fully public healthcare system.
Publicly financed.
Publicly administered.
Publicly delivered.

All financed by transfering funding from militarism and wars toward serving the public good.

This would require ending Obama's wars.

We need public healthcare centers spread out across our country instead of over 800 U.S. military bases on foreign soil dotting the globe protecting Wall Street's profits and interests.

We cannot talk in vague and simplistic terms about a "progressive populism;" we need to get specific. This is the only way to counter the growing rightwing movement that gets scarier and scarier as it moves to the "center" of the political spectrum... it is a progressive, anti-capitalist, pro-socialist progressive politics that needs to become the "center" of American politics if we are going to move forward--- away from war and militarism and towards an economy based on improving the livelihoods of everyone.

What we need is a "declaration of independence" from the Democratic and Republican parties which are both Wall Street parties; parties of war, racism and corruption.

For our country to go "green" it has to go "red" which requires the building of some kind of "people's front" on a much larger scale than what existed in the 1930's.

Alan L. Maki

Minnesota

Suggestion: A very good book to read, "The People's Front" by Earl Browder... available through your local public library.

The global economic crisis: An historic opportunity for transformation

2010-01-26T22:08:00.001-06:00

The global economic crisis: An historic opportunity for transformation

An initial response from individuals, social movements and non-governmental Organisations in support of a transitional programme for radical economic transformation

Collective

15 October 2008

More informations on this website : To sign the statement

Beijing, 15 October 2008

Preamble

Taking advantage of the opportunity of so many people from movements gathering in Beijing during the Asia-Europe People’s Forum, the Transnational Institute and Focus on the Global South convened informal nightly meetings between 13 and 15 October 2008. We took stock of the meaning of the unfolding global economic crisis and the opportunity it presents for us to put into the public domain some of the inspiring and feasible alternatives many of us have been working on for decades. This statement represents the collective outcome of our Beijing nights. We, the initial signatories, mean this to be a contribution towards efforts to formulate proposals around which our movements can organise as the basis for a radically different kind of political and economic order. Please sign on to this statement at http://www.casinocrash.org.

The Crisis

The global financial system is unravelling at great speed. This is happening in the midst of a multiplicity of crises in relation to food, climate and energy. It severely weakens the power of the US and the EU, and the global institutions they dominate, particularly the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the World Trade Organisation. Not only is the legitimacy of the neo-liberal paradigm in question, but the very future of capitalism itself.

Such is the chaos in the global financial system that Northern governments have resorted to measures progressive movements have advocated for years, such as nationalisation of banks. These moves are intended, however, as short-term stabilisation measures and once the storm clears, they are likely to return the banks to the private sector. We have a short window of opportunity to mobilise so that they are not.
The challenge and the opportunity

We are entering uncharted terrain with this conjuncture of profound crises – the fall out from the financial crisis will be severe. People are being thrown into a deep sense of insecurity; misery and hardship will increase for many poorer people everywhere. We should not cede this moment to fascist, right wing populist, xenophobic groups, who will surely try to take advantage of people’s fear and anger for reactionary ends.

Powerful movements against neo-liberalism have been built over many decades. This will grow as critical coverage of the crisis enlightens more people, who are already angry at public funds being diverted to pay for problems they are not responsible for creating, and already concerned about the ecological crisis and rising prices – especially of food and energy. The movements will grow further as recession starts to bite and economies start sinking into depression.

There is a new openness to alternatives. To capture people’s attention and support, they must be practical and immediately feasible. We have convincing alternatives that are already underway, and we have many other good ideas attempted in the past, but defeated. Our alternatives put the well-being of people and the planet at their centre. For this, democratic control over financial and economic institutions are required. This is the “red thread” connecting up the proposals presented below.

Proposals for debate, elaboration and action

Finance

• Introduce full-scale socialisation of banks, not just nationalisation of bad assets.
• Create people-based banking institutions and strengthen existing popular forms of lending based on mutuality and solidarity.
• Institutionalise full transparency within the financial system through the opening of the books to the public, to be facilitated by citizen and worker organisations.
• Introduce parliamentary and citizens’ oversight of the existing banking system.
• Apply social ( including conditions of labour) and environmental criteria to all lending, including for business purposes.
• Prioritise lending, at minimum rates of interest, to meet social and environmental needs and to expand the already growing social economy.
• Overhaul central banks in line with democratically determined social, environmental and expansionary (to counter the recession) objectives, and make them publicly accountable institutions.
• Safeguard migrant remittances to their families and introduce legislation to restrict charges and taxes on transfers

Taxation

• Close all tax havens.
• End tax breaks for fossil fuel and nuclear energy companies.
• Apply stringent progressive tax systems.
• Introduce a global taxation system to prevent transfer pricing and tax evasion.
• Introduce a levy on nationalised bank profits with which to establish citizen investment funds (see below).
• Impose stringent progressive carbon taxes on those with the biggest carbon footprints.
• Adopt controls, such as Tobin taxes, on the movements of speculative capital.
• Re-introduce tariffs and duties on imports of luxury goods and other goods already produced locally as a means of increasing the state’s fiscal base, as well as a means to support local production and thereby reduce carbon emissions globally.

Public Spending and Investment

• Radically reduce military spending.
• Redirect government spending from bailing out bankers to guaranteeing basic incomes and social security, and providing universally accessible basic social services such as housing, water, electricity, health, education, child care, and access to the internet and other public communications facilities.
• Use citizen funds (see above) to support very poor communities.
• Ensure that people at risk of losing their homes due to defaults on mortgages caused by the crisis are offered renegotiated terms of payment.
• Stop privatisations of public services.
• Establish public enterprises under the control of parliaments, local communities and/or workers to increase employment.
• Improve the performance of public enterprises through democratizing management - encourage public service managers, staff, unions and consumer organisations to collaborate to this end.
• Introduce participatory budgeting over public finances at all feasible levels.
• Invest massively in improved energy efficiency, low carbon emitting public transport, renewable energy and environmental repair.
• Control or subsidise the prices of basic commodities.

International Trade and Finance

• Introduce a permanent global ban on short-selling of stock and shares.
• Ban on trade in derivatives.
• Ban all speculation on staple food commodities.
• Cancel the debt of all developing countries – debt is mounting as the crisis causes the value of Southern currencies to fall.
• Support the United Nations call to be involved in discussions about how the to resolve the crisis, which is going to have a much bigger impact on Southern economies than is currently being acknowledged.
• Phase out the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and World Trade Organisation.
• Phase out the US dollar as the international reserve currency.
• Establish a people’s inquiry into the mechanisms necessary for a just international monetary system.
• Ensure aid transfers do not fall as a result of the crisis.
• Abolish tied aid.
• Abolish neo-liberal aid conditionalities.
• Phase out the paradigm of export-led development, and refocus sustainable development on production for the local and regional market.
• Introduce incentives for products produced for sale closest to the local market.
• Cancel all negotiations for bilateral free trade and economic partnership agreements.
• Promote regional economic co-operation arrangements, such as UNASUR, the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), the Trade Treaty of the Peoples and others, that encourage genuine development and an end to poverty.

Environment

• Introduce a global system of compensation for countries which do not exploit fossil fuel reserves in the global interests of limiting effects on the climate, such as Ecuador has proposed.
• Pay reparations to Southern countries for the ecological destruction wrought by the North to assist peoples of the South to deal with climate change and other environmental crises.
• Strictly implement the “precautionary principle” of the UN Declaration on the Right to Development as a condition for all developmental and environmental projects.
• End lending for projects under the Kyoto Protocol’s “Clean Development Mechanism” that are environmentally destructive, such as monoculture plantations of eucalyptus, soya and palm oil.
• Stop the development of carbon trading and other environmentally counter-productive techno-fixes, such as carbon capture and sequestration, agrofuels, nuclear power and ‘clean coal’ technology.
• Adopt strategies to radically reduce consumption in the rich countries, while promoting sustainable development in poorer countries.
• Introduce democratic management of all international funding mechanisms for climate change mitigation, with strong participation from Southern countries and civil society.
Agriculture and Industry
• Phase out the pernicious paradigm of industry-led development, where the rural sector is squeezed to provide the resources necessary to support industrialisation and urbanisation.
• Promote agricultural strategies aimed at achieving food security, food sovereignty and sustainable farming.
• Promote land reforms and other measures which support small holder agriculture and sustain peasant and indigenous communities.
• Stop the spread of socially and environmentally destructive mono-cultural enterprises.
• Stop labour law reforms aimed at extending hours of work and making it easier for employers to fire or retrench workers.
• Secure jobs through outlawing precarious low paid work.
• Guarantee equal pay for equal work for women – as a basic principle and to help counter the coming recession by increasing workers’ capacity to consume.
• Protect the rights of migrant workers in the event of job losses, ensuring their safe return to and reintegration into their home countries. For those who cannot return, there should be no forced return, their security should be guaranteed, and they should be provided with employment or a basic minimum income.

Conclusion

These are all practical, common sense proposals. Some are initiatives already underway and demonstrably feasible. Their successes need to be publicised and popularised so as to inspire reproduction. Others are unlikely to be implemented on their objective merits alone. Political will is required. By implication, therefore, every proposal is a call to action.

We have written what we see as a living document to be developed and enriched by us all. Please sign on to this statement at http://www.casinocrash.org.

A future occasion to come together to work on the actions needed to make these ideas and others a reality will be the World Social Forum in Belem, Brazil at the end of January 2009.

We have the experience and the ideas - let’s meet the challenge of the present ruling disorder and keep the momentum towards an alternative rolling!!

Initial Signatories
Organisations
Transnational Institute, Netherlands
Focus on the Global South
Red Pepper magazine, United Kingdom
Institute for Global Research and Social Movements, Russia
Ecologistas en Acción, Spain
JS - Asia/Pacific Movement on Debt and Development (JS APMDD), Asia
RESPECT Network Europe, Europe
Commission for Filipino Migrant Workers (CFMW), Netherlands
The Movement for a Just World, Malaysia
Nord-Sud XXI, Switzerland
Europe solidaire sans frontières (ESSF), France
Indian Social Action Forum (INSAF), Inadi
Movimiento Madre Tierra, Honduras
Asian Bridge, South Korea/ Philippines
Center for Encounter and Active Non-Violence, Austria
The Alliance of Progressive Labor (APL)
Pakistan Institute of Labour Education and Research (PILER), Pakistan
Pambansang Katipunan ng Makabayang Magbubukid-PKMM (National Federation of Patriotic Peasant), Phillipines
Proresibong Alyansa ng mga Mangingisda-PANGISDA (Progresive Alliance of Fisher), Philippines
WomanHealth, Philippines
Kilusan para sa Pambansang Demokrasya (KPD), Philippines
Fisherfolk Movement Philippines
Democratic Socialist Perspective, Australia
Resistance & Alternative, Mauritius
Observatori del Deute en la Globalització, Spain
African Journalists on Trade and Development
Centre for Education and Communication (CEC), India
EQUATIONS, India
ESK-Basque Land, Basque Country
Common Frontiers, Canada
Alab-Katipunan, Philippines
Finnish Asiatic Society, Finland
Red Constantino, Philippines
Intercultural Resources, India
Women’s March Against Poverty and Globalization (WELGA)
FDC Women’s Committee
Bharatiya Krishak Samaj (Indian farmers organization)
Peace for All International Development Organization, Canada/Uganda
Foundation for Media Alternatives, Philippines
The Philippine Rural Reconstruction Movement , Philippines
The Freedom from Debt Coalition-Iloilo, Philippines
Jubilee Eastern Cape, South Africa
SdL intercategoriale, Italy
Foro Ciudadano de Participación por la Justicia y los Derechos Humanos, Argentina
APRODEH (Asociacion Pro Derechos Humanos), Peru
Attac Spain, Spain
HealthWrights, Workgroup for People’s Health and Rights, US
Ander Europa, Netherlands
Enlightening Indonesia, Indonesia
SolidaritéS, Switzerland
ATTAC Hungary
AITEC (Association Internationale de Techniciens, Experts et Chercheurs), France
Red Venezolana Contra la Deuda/CADTM Venezuela Movimiento Unido Socialista Haitiano por el ALBA (MOUSHA), Venezuela
IPIAT (Instituto para la Investigación de la Agricultura Tropical), Venezuela
ECOPEACE Party South Africa
Jubilee Kansai Network, Japan
Ecuador Decide, Ecuador
ATTAC Japan
Transnationals Information Exchange (TIE) – Netherlands
Popular Education for Peoples’ Empowerment, Philipines
International Gender and Trade Network, Brazil
Committee for the Abolition of Third World Debt (CADTM), Begium
ATTAC Morocco
ATTAC-Denmark
Friends of the Earth Finland
European Left Party Network, UK
Center for the Study of Democratic Societies, USA
European Social Forum Activists News Agency.
Cymru Europa Press (Social Forum Cymru/Wales), UK
Initiative Colibri/Germany
Sudptt (SOLIDAIRES), France
Attac 44 France
International Debt Observatory, Belgium
Ligue communiste révolutionnaire (LCR), France
Attac France
Anti Debt Coalition (KAU), Indonesia
Africa Europe Faith and Justice Network
The Corner House, UK
Climate and Capitalism (Canada)
BanglaPraxis, Bangladesh
Centro Studi Monetari, Italy
The Network Institute for Global Democratisation (NIGD) , Finland
Project SafeCom
Justice and Peace Commision, Mexico
Theater of the Oppressed Laboratory (TOPLAB), US
Grasroots Policy Project, US
Habitat Net, Germany
Metta Center for Nonviolent Education, US
Legal Rights and Natural Resources Center (LRC/Friends of the Earth), Philippines
PODER, A.C.
ATTAC-Québec
Foundation for Gaia, UK
Alianza Social Continental, Americas
Red Colombiana de Acción Frente al Libre Comercio-RECALCA, Colombia
World Development Movement, UK
Confederación Latinoamericana de Cooperativas y Mutuales de Trabajadores - COLACOT
Fundacion Solon, Bolivia
War on Want, UK
Habitat International Coalition
Midwest Casino Workers Organizing Council
NEUE, Another Society is Possible
Berne Declaration, Switzerland
Individuals
Fiona Dove, South Africa
Walden Bello, Philippines/Thailand
Hilary Wainwright, United Kingdom
Boris Kagarlitsky, Russia
Achin Vanaik, India
Dot Keet, South Africa
Brid Brennan, Ireland
Pietje Vervest, Netherlands
Cecilia Olivet, Uruguay
Ramon Fernandez Duran, Spain
Tom Kucharz, Spain
Pierre Rousset, France
Rodney Bickerstaffe, United Kingdom
Von Francis C Mesina, Philippines
Al D. Senturias, Jr., Philippines
Sammy Gamboa, Philippines
Fe Jusay, Philippines
Nonoi Hacbang, Philippines
Lidy Nacpil, Philippines
Seema Mustafa, India
Kenneth Haar, Denmark
Wolfram Schaffar, Germany
Christa Wichterich, Germany
Isabelle Duquesne, France
Adhemar Mineiro, Brasil
Benny Kuruvilla, India
Aehwa Kim, South Korea
Manjette Lopez, Philippines
Bonn Juego, Philippines
Rasti Delizo, Philippines
James Miraflor, Philippines
Miquel Ortega Cerda, Spain
David Llistar, Spain
Alpo Ratia, Finland
Mira Kakonen, Finland
Hilary Chiew, Malasya
Celeste Fong, Malasya
Tatcee Macabuag, Philippines
Teodoro M. de Mesa, Philippines
Uwe Hoering, Germany
Asad Rehman, UK
Andy Rutherford, UK
Debbie Valencia, Greece
Petra Snelders, Netherlands
Etta P. Rosales, Philippines
Pete Pinlac, Philippines
Ute Hausrnann, Germany
Alain Baron, France
Hanneke van Eldik Thieme, Netherlands
Dorothy Guerrero, Philippines
Ric Reyes, Philippines
Herbert Docena, Philippines
Dr. Chandra Muzaffar, Malaysia
Ahmad Soueissi, Switzerland
Elias Davidsson, Germany
Juan Almendares, Honduras
Carlos Ruiz
Alexis Passadakis
Sally Rousset
D.W.Karuna
Hyowoo Na, South Korea
Sung-Hee Choi, Korea
Marko Ulvila, Finland
Matthias Reichl, Austria
Orsan Senalp, Turkey/The Netherlans
Tamra Gilbertson, Unites States
Prof. Kamal Mitra Chenoy, India
Prof Anuradha Chenoy, India
Gilbert Achcar, UK
Richel “Ching” M. Borres, Philippines
Helen Mendoza, Philippines
Sukla Sen, India
Olli-Pekka Haavisto, Finland
Amira Armenta, Colombia
William K. Carroll, United States
Gigi Francisco, Philippines
Sylvia Estrada Claudio, Philippines
Pablo Rosales, Philippines
Alice Raymundo, Philippines
Maris dela Cruz, Philippines
Terry Townsend, Australia
Ashok Subron, Mauritius
Ko Ko Thett
Einar Ólafsson, Iceland
Anjani Abella, Philippines
Gianni Alioti, Italy
Dr Michael Williams
Peter Lavina, Philippines
Gina Cantano-Dela Cruz, Philippines
Cecilia Jimenez, Philippines/Switzerland
Thierry De Coster
Sushovan Dhar, India
Krishan Bir Chaudhary, India
Dave Tucker
Bruno Ciccaglione, Italy/Austria
Haydi Zulfei , Asia
Adam Davidson-Harden, Canada
Al Alegre, Philippines
Tom Mertes
Elâabadila Chbihna, Morocco
John A. Fitzpatrick
Matyas Benyik
Roger Keyes
Ted Aldwin Ong, Philippines
Romero P. Gerochi, Philippines
C.P. Vinod, India
Laurence Schechtman
Berend Schuitema, South Africa
Francesco Martone, Italy
Asbjørn Wahl, Norway
Teodolita S. Lopez-Suano, Philippines
Hans Schäppi, Switzerland
Rasigan Maharajh
Anna Camposampiero, Italy
Lorenzo Pellegrini, Italy/Netherlands
Rashmi Shetty, India
Wahyu Susilo, Malaysia
Fabrizio Tomaselli, Italy
Rayhan Rashid, Bangladesh
Saskia Poldervaart, Netherlands
Pierluigi Tedeschi, Italy
Gladys Baldew, Netherlands
Francisco Soberon, Peru
Erik Eriksson, Sweden
Marco Cuevas-Hewitt
Luigia Pasi - Italy
Maximo Kinast Aviles
Paul R. Woods
Antonio Carlos Diegues, Brazil
Luis David Saraiva Grivol, Brazil
Nick Dearden, UK
David Werner, US
Håkan Danielsson, Sweden
Wouter F.A.Snip, Netherlands
Valdimar Jóhannsson, Iceland
Vida Viktor, Hungary
Edgardo Lander, Venezuela
Yvon Thea Young-Ang, Philippines
Khristine Alvarez, Philippines
Hayri Kozanoglu, Turkey
Manfred Schiess, Germany
Antonio Gomez Movellan, Spain
Enrique Baigorri Remirez, Spain
Gunilla Andersson, Sweden
Matyas Benyik, Hungary
Kathia Ridore, France
Willem Bos, Netherlands
Irendra Radjawali, Indonesia
Jean Batou, Switzerland
Hector de la Cueva, Mexico
Maurizio Casetta, Italy
Adriana Nicoleta Filip, Italy
Kathia Ridore, France
Susana Barria, Suiza
Julia de Souza, Brazil
Paulino Núñez, Venezuela
Borsos Dóra, Hungary
Geraldine McDonald,
Fco. Javier Benítez Morales, Spain
Diego Luís Castellanos
Daniel Kollmer, Netherlanda
Daniel Chavez, Uruguay
Jayatilleke de Silva, Sri Lanka
Ruben Joseph
Carolina Parada, Sweden
Filippo Incorvaia, Italy
Lilia Claudia Jaramillo-Guerra, Austria
Miguel Gamboa
Bram Büscher, The Netherlands
Luis Gonzalez
Ikrame Moucharik, Morocco
Oscar Revilla Alguacil, Spain
Adriano Garassino, Italy
Brissaud Jean-Bernard, Morocco
Franny Parren, The Netherlands
Lisa Clark, Italy
Donatella Biancardi, Italy
Davide Buoncristiani, Italy
Martin Pigeon, Brussels, Belgium
Jo Versteijnen, Netherands
Eric Toussaint, Belgium
Murray Smith
Daniel Gomez, Netherlands/Argentina
Panos Vlachakis, Greece
Natalia Sansón Moreno, Spain
Moustakbal Jawad , Morocco
Pablo Peredo
Albert Capella
Kristof Gal
Dr. Magdolna Csath, Hungary
Piero Stella, Italy
Ibarrola Aitor
Tamara Pearson, Venezuela
Mark Barrett, USA
Kenneth Haar, Denmark
Fred Moseley, USA
Bo Jansson, Sweden
Ingegerd Jansson / Sweden
Charles Quist-Adade, Canada
Marko Ulvila, Finland
Andrew Stevens, UK
Edlira Xhafa, Albania
Robley E. George, USA
Cristina Civale, Argentin
Sebastian Job .
Al Campbell, USA
Mirjana Joksimovic Bohlin, Serbia
Johannes Lauterbach, Germany
Carol Bergin, Germany
Alain Mouetaux, France
Gábor Vinnai, Hungary
Jorge Marchini, Argentina
Johannes Dragsbaek Schmidt, Denmark
Federico Lucero
Etienne Funck, France
Urantsooj Gombosuren, Mongolia
Erich Seifert
Jaume Francesch Subirana
Bernadette Huger
Djilali Benamrane, France
Eric Goujot, France
Brigitte Queck, Germany
Martial Denis
Heinrich Jacqueline
Bastiaan van Apeldoorn, Netherlands
Robert Jasmin, France
Jang, Seok-Joon, South Korea
Terence Osorio
Nathalie Lavallée
Gabor Vida, Hungary
Henri Dominici
Emanuela Donat-Cattin - Italy
Brian McDonough, Canada
Henry van Maasakker, The Netherlands
Susan Caldwell
Marc Torres Ciuró
Sean Thompson, UK
Richard Carruthers
Jaume Francesch i Subirana
Giovanny Colorado
Idoia LLano
Elvis Mori, Peru
Míriam Grande Vallugera
Maite Martínez
Marc Roux
Matteo Messori, Italy
Roberto Cortese, Italy
Lorenzo Palumb, Italy
Ján Lenc, Slovakia
Andrew Roche
Greg Gerritt, US
Gareth Dale
Jonathan Ensor
Peter Gelauff, Netherlands
Ulla Lötzer, Member of Parliament, DIE LINKE, Germany
Joana Ricart Sala, Barcelona
Concha Martinez, Spain
Boykin Reynolds, Germany
Bernadette Wagnleithner
Jose Luis Aguilar, Mexico
Alessandra Galie’, Italy
Sankara Saranam
Dr. Greg Kleis, New Zeeland
Bill Koehnlein
Marie-Claire Picher, US
Klaus Starke, Germany
Renau Marty, France
Gordon Jackman
Jerise Fogel, Germany
Knut Unger, Germany
Kathy Clark, US
M. Channa Basavaiah, India
Colleen Angove
Linda Provenza, US
Philippe Mühlstein, France
Stefano Puddu Crespellani, US
Richard Sheeler
Chris Brandt, US
Johanna Voß, Germany
Jesús Ortega Rodríguez,Mexico
Klaus Bosselmann, US
Barry K Gills, UK
Boyd Reimer, Canada
Germán Guillot, Germany
Pablo Guerra, Uruguay
Guillermo Díaz Muñoz, Mexico
Margaret Willig Crane, US
José Antonio Durand, Mexico
Mike Hall
Chamnan Yana, Thailand
Debra Evelyn Armet
Mertens Jean-Pierre, Belgium
Jiten Yumnam, India
Isabelle Perron, Canada
Michael Büsgen, China
Eduardo Arenas
Josep Just, Spain
Elizabeth Peredo, Bolivia
Guadalupe Méndez
Beatriz Romero
N.K.Jeet
Ben Leeman, Australia
Yu Xiaogang, China
Mechthild von Walter, Germany
Dipac Jaiantilal, Ph.D, Mozambique
Mike Nagler, Germany
Nadia Burza
Gemma Bone
Marie-Dominique Vernhes, Germany
Brigitte Holzner, Germany
Costa Constantinides, Cyprus
Jure Lesjak, Slovenia
Neil Osborne, Canada
Bridin Ashe, Ireland
Marion Flores
Martin Zeis, Germany
Ximena de la Barra, Chile
Suzanne Duarte
Hamid Hashtroudian, Germany
Guido Dalla Casa, Italy
Jashana Kippert
Hubert Pichler, Germany
Rachel Takats
Helene Vitre
Lucia Goldfarb, Argentina
Geoffrey Payne, UK
Kiersty Caesar, UK
Maite Martínez
Eduardo Arenas
Josep Just, España
Ana Sugranyes
Marisa Choguill
Charles Choguill
Kenneth Fernandes
Andrew Muller
Rosabel Agirregomezkorta
AngelL F. Furlan
Ma. Teresa Moreno
Tim Mavrič, Slovenia
Josnar Dionzon, Philippines
Martin Rožej, Slovenia
dr. alfred daniels, Germany
Nina Janßen-Deinzer
Rainer Grauer, Germany
Marie-Helene Bonin
Sue Bond
Tomaž Štumpfl, Slovenia
MR Iwuoha Chima Iwuo, Nigeria
Tomaž Flajs, Slovenia
Alan L. Maki
B. L. Wagner
Josephine Gre
Alexander Schmidt
Kirk Gibson
Denis Donoghue
Mohammed Zulfekhar Ahmed
Helene Kippert
Sabina Žulič
Suzana Abspoel-Djodjo
Jennifer Stewart
Dhinendra Lohmor, UK / India
Christine Pagnoulle, Belgium
Jakot Karrera
Christiane Salim
José Pérez-Oya
Agustin Antunez
Dag Seierstad
Gokarn Bhatt
Titia Roesems, Belgium

Collective

Congolese Women and Girls Suffering the Insufferable

2010-01-12T23:44:00.000-06:00

Guest Blog:

by Emily Spence and Brian McAfee / January 12th, 2010

While in the eastern Congo last summer, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stated, “With respect to companies that are responsible for what are now being called conflict minerals, I think the international community must start looking at steps we can take to try to prevent the mineral wealth from the DRC ending up in the hands of those who fund the violence here.”

In relation, the Democratic Republic of Congo’s UN supported armed assault against rebels in the eastern Congo has promoted widespread death, rape and other forms of brutality. Indeed, the decade long war has claimed at least 5.4 million lives — the most in any conflict since WWII. At the same time, hundreds of thousands of women and girls, including babies, have suffered rapes and sexual mutilation, often with weapons and tools used in the process. Further, it is thought that, in eastern portions of the Congo, up to seventy percent of Congolese women, along with children of all ages, have been sexually attacked, according to the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, a research center at Harvard University.

Moreover, some relief workers have estimated that up to twenty percent of new rapes have been instigated by police and civilians in urban rather than rural areas in that a culture of violence has set into much of the nation due to the long, drawn out conflict. At the same time, the attacks are so extremely violent that they have been described as sexual terrorism by medical workers at the Panzi Hospital in Bukavu at which thousands of survivors have been treated each year.

Overall, it has emerged that all major groups involved in the warfare have committed these and other serious war crimes, including looting peasants, purposefully destroying homes and forcing the mass dislocations of more than a million terrorized people from their neighborhoods. On account, countless families and whole communities have been forced to live with constant fear, repeated migrations and insurmountable social turmoil.

In a country with an annual income of $110 per capita and a life expectancy rate of 54.4 years, life is difficult enough as it is. However, individuals on the run can’t even have the assurance of this modest sum to support existence. As a result, massive food, medical and displacement aid is needed in the country at the very time that it is most dangerous to be there as an aid worker. Simultaneously, a shortage of donations negatively impact the quality of care delivered by various assistance organizations, including U.N. sponsored relief programs.

Meanwhile, a callous society ostracizes the victims, regardless of their ages, while showing leniency towards the rapists. Indeed, wounded sufferers are generally shunned by their spouses, other family members and former friends, particularly so if they have any children that resulted from periods of long term bondage accompanied by repeated rapes.

Simultaneously, assailants rarely receive proper trials. Therefore, the lack of punishment has increasingly emboldened Congolese men to find pleasure through physically violating women and children on a routine basis. Consequently, the number of assaults on women and children are increasing and spreading into new regions so as to include ever new groups, such as the Pigmies.

Even as the International Criminal Tribunal recognizes rape as a crime of genocide under international law, there is little by way of meaningful deterrence to the escalating aggression. In relation, this “pandemic of sexual violence,” indicates Stephen Lewis, the former United Nations special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, is “obscene,” “insanely savage,” and is nothing short of “femicide.”¹

Despite that social stigma is prevalent, the abandoned women and girls, of whom some are pictured at Congo/Women,² do sometimes receive substantial help. For example, it comes from groups like SOS AIDS, an organization that works with other relief agencies to get in touch with rural survivors so as to take them to treatment centers for psychological counseling and medical support.

The assistance often includes the successful repair of fistulas, debilitating ruptures of the urinary-genital tract that leave females incontinent and prone to infections for life. The helpers, also, try to provide housing, including for those in need of anti-retroviral and other drug treatments due to the attackers having infected their victims with assorted serious diseases. (The HIV prevalence includes approximately 4.2 percent of the population.) Meanwhile, the high number of injured women and girls makes it impossible to treat them all, aside from the fact that the majority of the assaults, apparently, go unreported.

Thankfully, there are a number of dedicated groups like SOS AIDS taking a stand for justice and human welfare even when it is dangerous for their staff to do so. Tragically, others try to increase the very same kinds of turmoil SOS AIDS is striving to remedy. They are doing so in order to gain control of four main minerals: tin, tantalum, tungsten, and gold that garner an estimated $180 million in revenues each year.

The main reason that these minerals are in such high demand is because they are critical in the fabrication of digital cameras, laptops, cell phones, portable musical devices and video games. Yet, some of these battlefield minerals are not widely found over much of the world. Therefore, there is great competition for them in the Congo and some individuals will stop at nothing to get them.

All considered, people interested in supporting the necessary reforms in this war torn land can phone or write letters to Congressional representatives to urge them to ratify the Congo Conflict Minerals Act (S. 891) and the Conflict Minerals Trade Act (H.R. 4128), which are currently undergoing legislative review.³ They can, also, sign petitions directed to members of Congress.⁴ Additionally, they can contact their respective mobile phone manufacturers to indicate that they want the companies to ensure that cell phones are only made from certified conflict-free materials.

The women and girls of the Congo are our sisters and daughters in the larger sense of our all being part of one human family. Therefore, our love and concern for them, as it would be for any other cherished human being, must be present. In relation, I sort of decided to adopt the rest of the world as my family due to my having been orphaned at an early age. Besides, Congolese people deserve unreserved justice and compassion as much as any other people do, as our common welfare is inexorably linked. In fact, only a huge outpouring of care from around the world will help to bring about the kind of changes so desperately needed in this tragically destroyed nation.

Due to a shortage of funds and critical care supplies, the crisis in the Congo is inadequately addressed. Yet many charitable groups are striving their best to provide relief.

Thankfully, several of these agencies have excellent track records. A few of them that come highly recommended are the Women and Girls of the World, Stephen Lewis Foundation, SOS Medical Centres and Women for Women International in the event that any support of their projects might like to be undertaken.⁵ As Margaret Mead suggested, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

Ensler E, Lewis S (2008) The never ending war. Huffington Post. The Stephen Lewis Foundation (2007 September 13) Stephen Lewis calls for a new UN initiative to end sexual violence in the eastern region of the DRC. [↩]
Congo/Women, an exhibition featuring photographs by Lynsey Addario, Marcus Bleasdale, Ron Haviv and James Nachtwey. [↩]
GovTrack.us, 111th Congress, 2009-2010, S. 891: Congo Conflict Minerals Act of 2009. GovTrack.us, 111th Congress, 2009-2010,HR 4128: Conflict Minerals Trade Act. [↩]
Urge Your Senators to Cosponsor the Congo Conflict Minerals Act of 2009 (Raise Hope for Congo). Urge Your Representative to Cosponsor the Conflict Minerals Trade Act (Raise Hope for Congo). [↩]
Humanitarian relief organizations: Women and Girls of the World, Stephen Lewis Foundation, Medical Centres in Congo — SOS Medical Centres, and Women for Women International’s Congo initiative at Congo Women Need Your Help | Women For Women International. [↩]

Emily Spence and Brian McAfee are authors living respectively in Massachusetts and Michigan. They have spent many years involved in human rights, environmental and social services efforts.

They can be contacted at brimac6@hotmail.com. Read other articles by Emily Spence.

Most red ink ever: $9 trillion over next decade

2009-08-25T20:42:00.008-05:00

Most red ink ever: $9 trillion over next decade

President Barack Obama looks on after announcing he is keeping Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke for a second term, Tuesday, Aug. 25, 2009, during a news conference in Oak Bluffs, Mass. (AP Photo/Stephan Savoia)

Most red ink ever: $9 trillion over next decade

Question:

Who will pay for this?

Answer:

Wall Street will make the working class pay.

Most red ink ever: $9 trillion over next decade

Question:

What will this do to the standard of living of working people?

Answer:

Debt equals poverty... think about what this huge debt will mean for you.

Most red ink ever: $9 trillion over next decade

Question:

Who will profit from this debt?

Answer:

Wall Street bankers

Most red ink ever: $9 trillion over next decade

Question:

Who created this mess?

Answer:

Wall Street coupon clippers

Most red ink ever: $9 trillion over next decade

Question:

Why should the working class pay--- with a deterioration in its standard of living--- to clean up a mess workers had no part in creating?

Answer:

Because we lack political and economic power.

Most red ink ever: $9 trillion over next decade

Comment: Let the Wall Street bankers and coupon clippers pay to clean up the mess they created.

Comment:

$9 trillion over next decade and not one single problem working people are experiencing has been solved... talk about your ass-backward priorities

Comment:

There is no longer any question who Barack Obama is working for: Wall Street.

Most red ink ever: $9 trillion over next decade

The solution: We need to build a very broad, united people's front struggling for a real program for change which must include:

1. Real progressive health care reform with a combination of a vastly expanded public health care sector... no fees/no premiums, comprehensive, all-inclusive, cradle to grave universal health care; publicly funded, publicly administered and publicly delivered combined with single-payer universal health care as the first step towards a fully-funded socialized health care system for all based upon the principles embodied in Social Security.

2. A long-term moratorium on all home foreclosures and evictions... pay-off the mortgages of working people to the tune of the amount the Wall Street bankers have been subsidized, and cancel all student debt for working class students--- the middle class, small business and the wealthy can afford to pay their own way.

3. Free public child care for all working class families; the middle class, small business and the wealthy can afford to pay their own way.

4. Raise the minimum wage to a real living wage based upon the scientific calculations using actual cost-of-living factors as determined by the United States Department of Labor and its Bureau of Labor Statistics. Anyone knows that poverty will never be eliminated as long as employers are allowed to pay working people poverty wages. Any employer not wanting to pay workers real living wages for work that needs to be done should do the jobs themselves.

5. Affirmative action must be aggressively enforced to counter the extreme poverty on Indian Reservations and in communities of color as well as for women because otherwise, with a country sinking into the morass of bankruptcy mired in $9 trillion dollars of debt poverty is going to soar--- further--- out of control on Indian Reservations and in communities of color and families headed by single mothers will see child poverty and all the ensuing misery and despair spiral completely beyond control. Barack Obama oversees a massive economic and governmental apparatus that is nothing but a web held together by institutionalized racism and this web must be torn asunder once and for all... strict enforcement of affirmative action programs is the surest way to put an end to racism.

We must wrest social, political and economic power from the hands of the military-financial-industrial complex if we are going to turn our country around.

The time has come to once-and-for-all beat swords into plowshares... Let the generals hold the baked-goods sales and sell candy bars door-to-door to finance their military insanity, boondoggles and imperialist wars.

The time has come to shut down the more than 800 U.S. foreign military bases dotting the globe and use our precious human and natural resources to establish 800 public health care centers across our own country.

Barack Obama and his Wall Street masters have bankrupted our country and there isn't even a single thing of benefit to working people to show for this.

We need a people's lobby to win a people's bailout... the longer we delay action the worse this situation becomes by the day...

When Barack Obama was campaigning for election; did you ever think that his message of "hope" and "change" was going to result in this kind of a nightmare?

We are now staring a situation in the face where Barack Obama is feeding us a line of bull that our taxes will not increase as city, county and state governments intend to slash funding to the bone and make us pay for those services that used to be provided for free for the common good... before long we will be paying to borrow books from our public libraries--- if they have the funds to remain open... this is the direction our country is headed.

Capitalism is on the skids to oblivion and we are well down the short, bumpy road to perdition. No one with an ounce of common sense continues traveling down such a dangerous road knowing what awaits them at the end.

Remember: Debt equals poverty.

Working people will pay and suffer the cost of this $9 trillion dollar debt; Wall Street bankers will profit from this $9 trillion dollar debt.

Most red ink ever: $9 trillion over next decade

Something is terribly out of whack in our country as anyone with common sense can tell... obviously the Democrats don't know the difference between "fair" and "fare;" give them a dictionary, not your vote... we are sorely in need of a real progressive political party based on the legacy and traditions of the socialist Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party.

Most red ink ever: $9 trillion over next decade

What Barack Obama and the Wall Street bankers and coupon clippers have done to our country in plunging us into this huge debt that will completely destroy what remains of our standard of living is nothing short of treason.

For weeks we have been getting economic reports coming out of the White House from Barack Obama prepared by Rosy Scenario and now this economic ticking, time-bomb has been dropped:

Most red ink ever: $9 trillion over next decade

Aug 25, 2009

By JIM KUHNHENN

WASHINGTON (AP) - In a chilling forecast, the White House is predicting a 10-year federal deficit of $9 trillion - more than the sum of all previous deficits since America's founding. And it says by the next decade's end the national debt will equal three-quarters of the entire U.S. economy.

But before President Barack Obama can do much about it, he'll have to weather recession aftershocks including unemployment that his advisers said Tuesday is still heading for 10 percent.

Overall, White House and congressional budget analysts said in a brace of new estimates that the economy will shrink by 2.5 to 2.8 percent this year even as it begins to climb out of the recession. Those estimates reflect this year's deeper-than-expected economic plunge.

The grim deficit news presents Obama with both immediate and longer-term challenges. The still fragile economy cannot afford deficit-fighting cures such as spending cuts or tax increases. But nervous holders of U.S. debt, particularly foreign bondholders, could demand interest rate increases that would quickly be felt in the pocketbooks of American consumers.

Amid the gloomy numbers on Tuesday, Obama signaled his satisfaction with improvements in the economy by announcing he would nominate Republican Ben Bernanke to a second term as chairman of the Federal Reserve. The announcement, welcomed on Wall Street, diverted attention from the budget news and helped neutralize any disturbance in the financial markets from the high deficit projections.

The White House Office of Management and Budget indicated that the president will have to struggle to meet his vow of cutting the deficit in half in 2013 - a promise that earlier budget projections suggested he could accomplish with ease.

"This recession was simply worse than the information that we and other forecasters had back in last fall and early this winter," said Obama economic adviser Christina Romer.

The deficit numbers also could complicate Obama's drive to persuade Congress to enact a major overhaul of the health care system - one that could cost $1 trillion or more over 10 years. Obama has said he doesn't want the measure to add to the deficit, but lawmakers have been unable to agree on revenues that would cover the cost.

What's more, the high unemployment is expected to last well into the congressional election campaign next year, turning the contests into a referendum on Obama's economic policies.

Republicans were ready to pounce.

"The alarm bells on our nation's fiscal condition have now become a siren," said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. "If anyone had any doubts that this burden on future generations is unsustainable, they're gone - spending, borrowing and debt are out of control."

Even supporters of Obama's economic policies said the long-term outlook places the federal government on an unsustainable path that will force the president and Congress to consider politically unpopular measures, including tax increases and cuts in government programs.

"The numbers today portend the biggest budget fight we've probably had in decades in the United States," said Stan Collender, a former congressional budget official.

The summer analyses by the White House budget office and by the Congressional Budget Office reached similarly bleak conclusions. The CBO's 10-year deficit figure was smaller - $7 trillion - but that is because it assumes that all tax cuts put into place in the administration of former President George W. Bush will expire on schedule by 2011. Obama's budget baseline, however, hews to his proposal to keep the tax cuts in place for families earning less than $250,000 a year.

Both budget offices see the national debt - the accumulation of annual budget deficits - as more than doubling over the next decade. The public national debt, made up of amounts the government owes to the public, including foreign governments, stood Tuesday at a staggering $7.4 trillion. White House budget officials predicted it would reach $17.5 trillion in 2019, or 76.5 percent of the gross domestic product. That would be the highest proportion in six decades.

Congressional Budget Office director Douglas Elmendorf said if Congress doesn't reduce deficits, interest rates are likely to rise, hurting the economy. But if Congress acts too soon, the economic recovery - once it arrives - could be thwarted.

"We face perils in acting and perils in not acting," Elmendorf told reporters.

David Walker, former head of the Government Accountability Office, said the numbers illustrated the need for a national commission that would review spending and taxing options and present lawmakers with a deficit reduction plan that Congress could approve or reject.

"We're going to have to do a hard course correction once we turn the corner on the economy," Walker, now president and CEO of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, said.

Both Romer and Obama budget director Peter Orszag said this year's contraction would have been far worse without money from the $787 billion economic stimulus package that the president pushed through Congress as one of his first major acts.

At the same time, the continuing stresses on the economy have, in effect, increased the size of the stimulus package because the government will have to spend more in unemployment insurance and food stamps, Orszag said. He said the cost of the stimulus package - which spends most of its money in fiscal year 2010 - will grow by tens of billions of dollars above the original $787 billion.

The White House also credited the $3 billion cash-for-clunkers auto program for contributing to recent economic growth.

Orszag, anticipating backlash over the deficit numbers, conceded that the long-term deficits are "higher than desirable." The annual negative balances amount to about 4 percent of the gross domestic product, a number that many economists say is unsustainable.

But Orszag also argued that overhauling the health system would reduce health care costs and address the biggest contributor to higher deficits.

"I know there are going to be some who say that this report proves that we can't afford health reform," he said. "I think that has it backward."

At the same time, 10-year budget projections can be "wildly inaccurate," said Collender, now a partner at Qorvis Communications. Collender noted that there will be five congressional elections over the next 10 years and any number of foreign and domestic challenges that will make actual deficit figures very different from the estimates.

__

Associated Press writers Christopher S. Rugaber, Tom Raum and Stephen Ohlemacher contributed to this report.

Books for real change.

Suggested reading list for working people:

Super Profits and Crisis by Victor Perlo

Working Class USA by Gus Hall

Writings of Frank Marshall Davis by Frank Marshall Davis

The People's Front by Earl Browder

Marx and Engels Selected Works

Twilight of World Capitalism by William Z. Foster

For a real understanding of what the American revolution was about, read Citizen Tom Paine by Howard Fast.

Let's talk about the politics and economics of livelihood... and working class political action.

This is YOUR future...

Alan L. Maki

Check out my main blog:

http://thepodunkblog.blogspot.com/

2010 United States Social Forum to be held in Detroit; What will it accomplish?

2009-08-15T23:37:00.003-05:00

We need to start thinking about presenting a real progressive alternative agenda at the USSF Detroit and it should start with advocating real health care reform and countering the reactionary direction the Obama administration and the Democrats are taking this country.

There is something wrong about the way this United States Social Forum 2010 in Detroit is developing if every participant doesn't go back home into their communities and stimulate movements for real health care reform.

A major problem with this Social Forum movement has been its inability to unite participants to undertake struggles aimed at accomplishing specific tasks, goals and objectives.

To bring so many activists together and not bring forward an agenda for real health care reform we can all unite and fight for just doesn't seem right.

I would urge people to contact the working groups and insist that the struggle for health care reform becomes a primary objective of this Social Forum in 2010.

We need to send Barack Obama and the Democrats a loud, clear message that 25,000 activists will be organizing, as a complement to all their other activities, a national struggle for real health care reform.

I would encourage people to read my blog posting on this topic:

http://thepodunkblog.blogspot.com/2009/08/health-care-reform.html

If 20,000 activists all assembled in one place at the same time can't launch a real fight for health care reform and forge a massive "people's front" by creating some kind of massive "people's lobby" there is something wrong with how these Social Forums are being organized.

Health care reform, real health care reform and not this phony crap of Barack Obama's, should become the centerpiece in the struggle for a "people's bailout."

Capitalism is on the skids to oblivion and it is time to start talking about the socialist alternative... let the talk begin by bringing forward the advocacy of socialized health care.

Alan L. Maki

Working Groups

Mon, 06/22/2009 - 03:05

One of the many ways that you can get involved in the organizing efforts for USSF Detroit is through the national Working Groups. There are currently 10 Working Groups, and several committees, where you can participate in regular (often biweekly) conference calls. With representatives from the Detroit Local Organizing Committee, each Working Group and committee discuss ideas, strategies, and plans around the work needed to bring the USSF to Detroit.

For more information about joining a Working Group or committee, please contact the following point people (all contacts are interim):

Working Groups

Culture – Oya Amakisi, Detroit Local Organizing Committee, amakisi@gmail.com

Communications – Bill Bryce, Southeast Michigan Jobs with Justice, williamabryce@att.net

Resource Mobilization – Genaro Lopez-Rendon, Southwest Workers Union, genaro@swunion.org

International Solidarity – Cindy Wiesner, Grassroots Global Justice Alliance, cindy@ggjalliance.org

Language Access – Danielle Mahones, CTWO, dmahones@ctwo.org

Logistics – Maureen Taylor, USSF Staff, chuteh7@hotmail.com

Outreach – Tammy Bang Luu, Labor Community Strategy Center, Tammy@thestrategycenter.org and Ahmina Maxey, EMEAC, ahmina@emeac.org

People's Movement Assembly – Stephanie Guilloud, Project South, stephanie2@projectsouth.org

Program – Walda Katz-Fishman, LRNA, wkatzfishman@igc.org

Religion - Bill Wylie-Kellerman bill@scupe.com and
Rev. Charles E. Williams II Cwilliams@im4justice.com 313.303.8002

Technology – Alfredo Lopez, May First/People Link, alfredo@mayfirst.org

Women's - Ariel Dougherty, Women's Media Equity Collaborative, arielcamera@gmail.com and Jacqui Patterson, Women of Color United, jpatters1@yahoo.com

Committees

Detroit Local Organizing Committee – Will Copeland, USSF Staff, williamwholenote@gmail.com

Union leaders meet with Obama

2009-07-14T11:01:00.001-05:00

The most important item that should be at the top of this agenda but isn't even included is the question of peace.

Alan L. Maki

Union leaders meet with Obama

Author: John Wojcik

Union presidents are meeting with President Obama in the White House today where they are discussing the urgent need for health care reform with a public option, according to Gregory King, special assistant to Gerald McEntee, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.

They are also mapping plans, King said, for passage of the Employee Free Choice Act, a bill that would make it easier to unionize.

The Communications Workers of America said this afternoon that 10 of the union leaders at the White House gathering are members of the National Labor Coordinating Committee, a group committed to reuniting the labor movement which currently consists of unions that belong to two federations, the AFL-CIO and Change to Win, and unions that are independent.

“They are talking to the president about health care and about what the labor movement can do to help in the passage of reform legislation," according to King. "They are stressing the importance of the public option in which a government-run entity would compete with private insurers and they are emphasizing their opposition to a tax on employee-provided health benefits to help finance that reform.”

Such a tax would be particularly painful for union members because many receive health benefits from their employers.

While health care is at the top of the agenda King said he expected that the Employee Free Choice Act would be discussed.

Labor has been waging a strong campaign to convince several senators who are sitting on the fence to come out in full support of the bill. Sixty votes will be needed to stop a planned Republican filibuster against it.

Besides McEntee, the list of labor leaders meeting with the president includes John Sweeney, president of the AFL-CIO, Andrew Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union and Dennis Van Roekel, president of the National Education Association. Also at the meeting are the presidents of the steelworkers, communications workers, Teamsters and food and commercial workers.

An AFL-CIO source says that many in the group are also anxious to discuss the issue of trade. The labor movement is opposed to so-called free trade agreements that result in exploitation of labor in developing countries while U.S. jobs are exported by companies chasing after cheap labor.

The source said that there is also “concern about the need to develop an entirely new approach to, a planned approach to developing a manufacturing policy in America. We have to create good paying manufacturing jobs if we are really going to restore this economy.”

Unemployment, is of course, also expected to be discussed. Labor leaders are supporting a second stimulus package in the wake of widespread expectations that the official unemployment rate will surge into double digit territory.

Is The Global Recession Over?

2009-06-25T12:47:00.001-05:00

This is a very interesting and important question being posed here. The same question is being posed in a variety of publications ranging from conservative to the left.

Here we get an interesting take from one of the largest, most powerful and influential communist parties in the world.

However, noticeably absent is any reference to what these huge debts being incurred in the name of "economic stimulus" are really doing to nations and people.

This accumulation of debt may be having some short-term results as far as alleviating the problems associated with the collapsing capitalist economy which is certain to negatively impact all the countries the United States is trying to use to shore up its own economy.

But, there can only be one consequence of this huge accumulating debt aimed at trying to save the capitalist system, not just from complete collapse, but saving the system itself... we are already well into a full-blown depression.

What is the consequence of all this debt that is not considered in this article? Poverty. Massive poverty will be the result of these huge accumulations of debt. Masses of people who have never experienced poverty will be experiencing poverty and everything that goes with such poverty.

One need only examine what the western imperialist governments and their bankers did to socialist Poland to figure this out.

Debt equals poverty... massive debt equals massive poverty.

Recession, depression or whatever happens with the capitalist economy this massive, massive, massive debt is going to result in the most devastating and massive world-wide poverty the human race has ever experienced.

Something to think about and ponder as you gather around the dinner table... you might also contemplate how much longer you will have food to put on the dinner table for your family...

The leading capitalists, headed by Wall Street, are taking advantage of this depression as capitalists always do--- using this economic depression to drive down that standards of living of working people across the globe.

It is no wonder so many working people are turning to Karl Marx for answers... one only has to read the very short Chapter 26 from Volume One of Marx' "Capital" to understand what is taking place in the world today... if you have never read or studied Karl Marx before, I would urge you to get to your nearest public library and check out Volume One of "Capital" and give it a good, thorough read because what the bankers did to Poland they are now doing to the entire world... the United States included.

Is the "global recession over?" Yes it is; we are in a capitalist economic depression... the result will be massive poverty for years to come because Barack Obama and Wall Street have tried to solve the problems they created on the backs of the working class.

Alan L. Maki

People's Democracy

(Weekly Organ of the Communist Party of India (Marxist)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Vol. XXXIII

No. 25

June 21, 2009

Is The Global Recession Over?

C P Chandrasekhar

FINANCE ministers of the G8, meeting at Lecce in Italy during the latter part of week ending June 14, were cautiously optimistic. The final communiqué noted that in the aftermath of efforts at financial stabilisation and fiscal stimulation “there are signs of stabilisation in our economies, including a recovery of stock markets, a decline in interest rate spreads, (and) improved business and consumer confidence”. But, the ministers cautioned “the situation remains uncertain and significant risks remain to economic and financial stability”.

There were two elements of the communiqué that pointed to a compromise between the differing perceptions of the US and UK, on the one hand, and Germany and France, on the other, regarding the principal problems and tasks at hand. The first of these elements was the reference to the persistence of “significant risks” which was not there in the original draft of the communiqué, and was ostensibly inserted by those countries (UK and US) who feel that it is not yet time to decide that the recovery is here and the stimulus provided thus far has been adequate. Moreover, the mention of “encouraging figures in the manufacturing sector” that figured in the draft was dropped, since it went against the evidence that industrial production in the eurozone area had fallen by 21 per cent in April, relative to the corresponding month of the previous year.

LEADING POWERS DIFFER ON EMPHASIS

The second element of the communiqué of interest is that it pushes for going beyond thinking of recovery and formulating national level “exit strategies” “for unwinding the extraordinary policy measures taken to respond to the crisis.” The reference here is to the huge budget deficits and high levels of public debt that many countries, especially the US, have accumulated in the wake of the bail-outs and the stimulus packages they have put in place. Though the US and UK have played down this aspect of the discussions, there is clearly a difference in emphasis among the leading powers on where the world economy stands and what is the immediate priority in terms of action.

The difference hinges, quite clearly, on the extent to which different sections believe that the worst is over. The reason for uncertainty regarding a potential recovery is that the figures are yet to point to a definitive revival. As of May 2009, nearly two years since the financial crisis broke and a year-and-a-half after the onset of the global recession, the economic scenario remains uncertain, if not bleak. The rate of unemployment in the US, which stood at less than 5 per cent in the first quarter of 2008, had risen to 8.1 per cent in the first quarter of 2009 and is estimated to have touched 9.4 per cent in May 2009—its highest rate for the last 26 years. This possibly explains US pessimism. It is true that the unemployment rate in the European Union had also risen from 6.8 to 8.1 per cent between the first quarters of 2008 and 2009. But the higher base level may be making the problem appear less alarming to ruling governments there than in the US, influencing their perceptions.

Output growth too gives no cause for optimism. Quarter-on-quarter growth rates of US GDP (as measured relative to the corresponding quarter of the previous year) had declined sharply in the last quarter of 2008 and first quarter of 2009 across the G7. This decline was even sharper in the UK and the EU, than the US). The crisis had clearly not gone away by the beginning of April, despite signs of recovery in the stock market. The disconcerting element is that this situation prevails despite huge infusion of funds by G7 governments. According to one estimate, the US Federal Reserve had by April 2009 offered about $12.7 trillion in guarantees and commitments to the US financial sector, and spent a little over $4 trillion in combating the crisis. As a result the federal deficit has risen to more than 12 per cent of GDP, frightening fiscal conservatives who predict the onset of stagflation. The big thrust seems to be over and the recovery is still not in sight. What it has possibly done, and even that is not certain, is prevent the recession from turning into a depression.

OPTIMISM BASED ON STILL TENUOUS EVIDENCE

Despite this evidence relating to the period till the last full quarter for which numbers are available, speculation that the downturn has bottomed out and the developed world is on the verge of recovery proliferates. This optimism is based on still tenuous evidence, including evidence that the rate of decline of economies is slowing. The most important of these is that the monthly decline in employment in the US is down sharply. In May 2009 nonfarm payroll employment fell by 345,000, which is around half the average monthly decline over the previous six months and well below the close to 750,000 fall in January this year. Associated with this fall in monthly employment declines is a fall in new unemployment claims. Economist Robert Gordon of Northwestern University in the US, a respected analyst of growth and productivity trends in the US, has found that past recessions came to an end four to six weeks after new unemployment claims peaked, which they have now done. So he conjectures that the business cycle will find its trough in May or June (Financial Times, June 3, 2009). While these developments are reassuring, we should view them in the light of the fact that the unemployment rate is at record levels and new unemployment claims are still above the figures they touched in the worst months of the last recession.

A second cause for optimism is that US producers may be reaching the phase of their inventory cycle where an increase in production is inevitable. By April, wholesale inventories had fallen for the eighth month running as firms cut back production to clear the excess inventories generated by falling demand. Having made those adjustments, it is argued, firms are now in a position where they would have to step up production, especially if demand begins to stabilise. In other words, the argument is that since things are so bad, they can only get better. But the figures do not support even this position. Thus, after seven months of decline, inventories in April fell 1.4 per cent relative to the year before and 6.4 per cent relative to the corresponding month of the previous year. That was because sales fell by 0.4 per cent in April, led by automobiles and parts. Sales of durable goods too were down 1.9 per cent during the month and 23.4 per cent over the year.

The third potential cause for comfort is the sign that relative to previous months the decline in production is slowing. The available evidence shows that the decline in GDP relative to the immediately preceding quarter, which was rising till the first quarter of 2009, seems to have bottomed out in the US and to a lesser extent in the EU. What is more, this trend seems to be reflected even in the month-on-month annual growth rates of industrial production, with the rate of decline in April 2009 relative to the corresponding month of the previous year showing signs of reversing its hitherto continuous increase in the US, UK and EU.

While this third factor may be adequate reason for optimism for some, there are two reasons why we should not read too much into this data. To start with, even if the downturn is touching bottom in terms of the stabilisation of the rate of decline, the decline could persist and the economy could “bounce along the bottom” as some analysts reportedly speculate. That is, there is no “statistical” reason why a stable rate of decline should automatically lead to lower rates of decline and positive rates of growth in the coming months or quarters.

Further, it is unclear whether there would be adequate alternative stimuli to sustain the recovery when the effects of the already implemented fiscal stimulus wane. Governments could hold back on providing any fresh stimulus because of arguments of the kind espoused by conservative economists, representatives of the financial sector and even some European governments, which emphasise the dangers of inflation. If that happens, recovery would depend on the return of the consumer to the market.

But here too the prognosis is not all too happy. Fears generated by the recession and rising unemployment and the increased desire to save to make up for the decline in the values of accumulated housing and financial assets is encouraging savings even in the US. According to a recent estimated of the Federal Reserve, the net worth of US households had fallen 2.5 per cent or by $1,300 billion in just the first three months of 2009. This comes on top of the 18 per cent fall in the previous year which was the worst since the Fed began estimating household wealth in 1946.The net result is that household savings rates in the US are rising and consumer spending was falling in March and April this year.

In the event many still remain sceptical. The Financial Times quotes Martin Feldstein as saying that “it is possible but unlikely” that the recession is over. “I think it is a more likely scenario that we are seeing the favourable effects of the fiscal stimulus,” he reportedly said. “That, for a while, will offset the general diminished trend we have seen over the past two quarters, but it is a one-shot thing.” Put otherwise, there could be more bad news ahead.

A Worker's Forum of the Americas Fifth Summit of the Americas

2009-04-28T13:51:00.002-05:00

Please note: These questions and concerns have not been answered as of the date of this posting.

Questions and concerns about: A Worker's Forum of the Americas Fifth Summit of the Americas

Sisters and Brothers;

Could you tell me if Unions from the United States and Canada participated in drafting this Declaration?

Also, were Cuban unions involved?

A final question, then some comments and suggestions:

Why isn’t there any mention of the socialist solution to the present economic crisis? Was socialism one of the alternative economic models discussed? If not, why not? We need to replace capitalism with something; simply referring to “casino capitalism” is inadequate given the present crises. It would seem to me that capitalism doesn’t offer the working class anything along the lines of justice while socialism does. More attention and emphasis could be placed on saving jobs and industries through public ownership and nationalization--- what tax-payers finance, tax-payers should own and control. Your comments, please.

It would seem to me that your Declaration misses an important point--- possibly because you are unaware--- regarding organizing workers in the United States. I welcome the support you give for the Employee Free Choice Act; however, this Declaration does not take note that over half the states in the United States have very repressive and reactionary anti-labor “at-will hiring; at-will firing” legislation on their books which desperately need to be rescinded if workers are going to have the opportunity to organize because such legislation will remain the main and primary impediment to union organizing even with the Employee Free Choice Act which, at this time, appears to be doomed.

Your positive assessment of Barack Obama’s election seems highly over-rated and optimistic to me given his ties to the Wall Street crowd and his lack of initiative in seeking moratorium legislation preventing hundreds of thousands of working class families from losing their homes and getting those who have already been forced from their homes by parasitical bankers in the mortgage lending industry.

It would seem to me a major weakness of this Declaration is that it does not adequately address the need to end war and militarism which takes a terrible toll on humanity and the environment, first in the awful killing and destruction, but also the tremendous waste of human and natural resources and the senseless waste entailed in the sphere of production--- certainly humanity is being robbed of resources that could be of great value in solving the problems of humanity from alleviating poverty which entails hunger, homelessness and lack of medical care.

Without addressing the issue of governments squandering our resources on wars and militarism, it seems to me it will be just about impossible to begin any kind of discussion on how governments are wasting funds.

We need to always, and at all times, make people and governments aware that it is labor which creates all wealth with quite a little assistance from Mother Nature; we simply can no longer afford to allow labor to be robbed as Mother Nature is being raped by the multi-national corporations. The exploitative nature of capitalism enables both crimes to take place simultaneously as huge profits are amassed while global warming and the destruction of our living environment results.

On the question of militarism:

For instance, if all 800 U.S. foreign military bases dotting the globe were to be closed; those bases could be turned into health care centers, recreational centers, job training and research centers in these countries; plus, the people of the United States would have the resources to build 800 community public health care centers across the United States providing free access to health care for all--- from cradle to grave. Militarism and wars are taking a terrible toll on humanity; depriving people of health care with such screwed up priorities in this way is an atrocious crime.

In closing, please allow me to point out that this Declaration misses the main and primary cause of the present economic crises while hitting at the exacerbating problems all around the periphery--- as important as these problems are--- this Declaration does not even begin to broach the main and primary cause of this economic crises: workers unable to purchase back the very goods and services their labor has been producing.

There is only one way to resolve this problem, and that is for all countries to enact minimum wage legislation that is legislatively linked to all of the nation’s cost of living factors using the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Millennium Statement referenced here in this Declaration as the guide.

I would call to your attention, once again, what I have called to the attention of General Secretary Guy Ryder and the International Trade Union Confederation on numerous occasions; the fact that in the United States of America, over two-million casino workers are employed in smoke-filled casinos at poverty wages with no rights under state or federal labor laws in the Indian Gaming Industry managed by a bunch of mobsters like the Frank Fertitta Family and those who inherited Meyer Lansky’s “family business.” For two-million workers to be employed under these Draconian conditions serves to dampen and thwart the struggles of the working class for justice everywhere.

Overall, I think this Declaration is a very powerful tool in the struggles of the working class to attain justice.

We certainly require some kind of working class bailout from this economic mess.

Your call for redistribution of wealth is right on the mark.

I will bring the Declaration to the attention of our Organizing Council and our Organizing Committees for consideration with suggestions for strengthening these weaknesses before we circulate and distribute such a statement.

I assume each and every state and provincial labor body, local labor councils and all local unions are receiving this important Declaration.

I thank you for asking me to distribute this important document for labor action.

Yours in the struggle,

Alan L. Maki
Director of Organizing,
Midwest Casino Workers Organizing Council

Cc: Maggie Bird
President,
Midwest Casino Workers Organizing Council

-----Original Message-----
From: Americas Info [mailto:icemamericas@sindicatomercosul.com.br]
Sent: Wednesday, April 22, 2009 6:27 AM
To: Antonio Carlos, amaki000@centurytel.net
Subject: A Worker’s Forum of the Americas Fifth Summit of the Americas

A Worker’s Forum of the Americas Fifth Summit of the Americas

Port of Spain, 15-16 April 2009

DECLARATION

We, trade unionists of the Americas, representing over fifty million workers across the entire continent, have met in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago on 15 and 16 of April 2009, on the occasion of the Fifth Summit of Heads of State of the Americas, and following the G-20 Summit held recently in London, and hereby declare:

The current crisis deepens the crisis of distributive justice In recent months, our region has sunk into a new recession worse than the great depression of the 1930´s, but it is one that is different in depth and magnitude. Because it coincides with the food, energy, social and environmental crises, this indicates a systemic crisis of global proportions. As usual, those first and most seriously affected are women, youth, informal sector and migrant workers. Another effect has been the deepening of a social crisis which is affecting primarily women, making access to employment difficult, widening the gaps in wages and reducing investments in health, education and universal public policies, replacing formal employment with sub-contracting and labour flexibility, provoking a crisis on social security systems and social protection in general.

In their analysis which predicted this crisis, international trade unions had already highlighted the “crisis of distributive justice” (or crisis of inequality), in other words, a disconnect between wage increases and increased productivity, which seriously affects fundamental human rights such as the right to live in a healthy environment, with access to education, health care, social protection and food security.

Finally, the crisis is now causing a reversal in the flow of migration from destination countries in the North to countries of origin in the South, as well as a significant reduction of remittances, affecting millions of working people and their families.

The environmental, energy and food crises We share the view of the International Trade Union Confederation which affirms that countries of the South cannot be denied the right to development, and that at the same time, the planet’s natural
resources do not allow us to spread the consumption patterns of industrialized countries to the entire world population. Added to this, are the effects of climate change, and the fact that social inequalities remain exposed to the negative impacts of climate change because, clearly, it is the poor who suffer the most.

This is why we believe that especially in the rich North, the failure of the neo liberal model calls for a change in the production/consumption pattern which will permit sustainable development respecting the values of social justice and pluralism. This also involves reformulating the energy matrix towards clean and renewable sources of energy. The current drop in the oil price (clear evidence that there was high speculation on this price before the crisis) should not be a reason to stop looking for alternative sources.

Although the drop in agricultural commodity prices tends to regulate the food crisis, there are three negative aspects which continue to have an effect on it – excessive food consumption in the North, financing of the global food market, and the unacceptable genetic control and manipulation of seeds by transnational companies. These elements, together with the concentrated agribusiness export model, in opposition to agrarian reform policies, threaten the survival of the peasant populations and improved living standards through food consumption in poor countries.

For the trade union movement in the Americas the greatest responsibility for this crisis rests with the governments of the world powers. They are the ones who shaped the world (that fell apart) by means of their political and economic power. These governments used or neutralized international institutions in the interests of multinational companies, leading to high levels of corruption and impunity.

To lay the blame solely on irresponsible bankers is to deny the responsibility of those who were supposed to regulate financial markets. To blame only the industrialists and consumers for the overflow of the planet’s capacity is to deny the responsibility of those who should have curbed this type of production and consumption a long time ago, and should have moved to another development model.
The “London Consensus” of the G-20 is not up to the circumstances Years ago, the international trade union movement sounded the alert with regard to the crisis of the capitalism of financial hegemony which neglects to give credit to productive activities and engages in unproductive speculation. Recently, the trade union world came to agreement responding to the declarations at the G-20 Summits in Washington and London. They also said “No to the casino economy” at the World Social Forum in Belem, a coherent proposal in relation to the crisis.

In spite of our expectations of the possibility of a new multilateralism emerging in response to the crisis, we see that the two G-20 Summits have fallen short in many ways. The financial regulation for which the world is clamoring did not reach the levels that even governments feel necessary, and there was agreement only for a Financial Stabilization Council, with a mainly supervisory role.

Except for measures dealing with high risk funds, tax havens, risk assessment companies and the banks themselves, the other measures are specific and limited. One example is the set of resolutions adopted concerning executive bonuses, since there are no limits set on this type of remuneration.

We have been deeply disappointed with the efforts to bail out financial institutions which are the paradigm of the neo liberal model. This is why it is a mistake to place the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in a coordinating, financial and supervisory role as a way of ensuring the salvation of the system, without setting new criteria for changing its conditionalities, or with no serious criticism of its responsibility through the implementation of policies which dismantled States and governments, thus eroding their ability to exercise economic control and allowing markets to destroy their sovereign ability to set economic and fiscal policies.

We believe that it is important to defend the countries of the South in terms of the importance of expansion programs, and the emphasis given to the regulation of the financial system. But, it is a bitter surprise to us that the resources promised are especially aimed at countries of the North, with very little allocated to countries of the South (about 10%). Similarly, we have to wait and see if the promise of a change in the voting system within the IMF and the World Bank will be fulfilled.

With regards to trade, the call by the G-20 to complete the Doha Round based on the agreements reached last year, is of great concern, since it provides a new opportunity for the block of countries which proposed an unbalanced and unsatisfactory focus for the countries of the South and emerging states.

Finally, we call attention to the place assigned to labor in the London Declaration, recognizing the need to create jobs and to have the International Labor Organization (ILO) assume the role of evaluating labor related issues in the policies of the G-20.

The Fifth Summit of the Americas must approve changes

This Fifth Summit has created high expectations in public opinion in general and for the trade movement of the region in particular, not only because of the maturity of a number of progressive Latin American governments and the assumption of a new US leadership, but because it provides an opportunity for dealing with the crisis at a hemispheric level. From a trade union perspective, it is also important, as it is the first Summit since the defeat of the FTAA at the Mar del Plata Summit in 2005. However, the draft of the declaration does not reflect the political sensitivity of this situation. It is just “one more document”, with only a brief generic paragraph in which the governments state that they are determined to strengthen cooperation, work together to restore growth in the world and adopt the necessary reforms to the world financial systems.

There are no concrete policy proposals for regional coordination or actions for the effective improvement of the quality of life and employment of people. The document should start from the decisions of the G-20 and advance much further, namely to completely turn around economic, political and social orientations in the region.

Furthermore, it seems to ignore the fact that many countries are still encouraging and negotiating free trade agreements (FTAs). As we have seen in the experiences of some countries such as Mexico or Chile, these do not lead to the development of the weakest economies nor to the improvement of the quality of life of workers in the strongest economies. These attempts to maintain the system are made primarily at the expense of women’s lives, through massive dismissal of workers, cuts in public spending in social areas and by reaffirming the model of production and development that directly impacts these areas, in that it increases reproductive work and sustainability increases. FTAs arise as a constant threat and undermine the integrity and progress of regional integration processes, which undoubtedly, since they are more equitable, could lead to alternative solutions to the crisis.

We are absolutely certain that one of the ways to move towards this model of development in the Americas is through the strengthening and deepening of the processes of regional integration in a coordinated, complementary way and in solidarity, so that member states can each strengthen their economies and ensure the well-being of their societies. We have no doubt that integration must go beyond trade issues. This is why trade unionism in the Americas has opposed free-trade agreement negotiations and investments for more than 15 years and demands a review of current agreements, which, as we have warned, have brought great sorrow to our peoples.

We, the workers of the Americas, have proposals Almost four years ago, the trade union movement, together with other social movements, mobilized for the Fourth Summit of the Americas (Mar del Plata, November 2005) against the FTAA and in defense of the Labor Platform for the Americas (LPA), presenting a broad agenda on public policy to promote “sustainable development with decent work”.

The LPA proposal is highly relevant today and shows the urgency of establishing a model of sustainable development that integrates social, economic, environmental, political and cultural dimensions in a framework of intra- and inter-generational justice. This is the only suitable response to the multiple crises in the world today: in other words, development with social justice, distribution of wealth, preservation of the environment, gender equity, protection of health, participatory democracy, respect for diversity, and equity among nations and generations.

At present, and in response to the crisis, it is essential to keep in mind the following issues:

Multilateralism and the new global institutionality

The defense of multilateralism is key. Fair standards for international trade must be established and mechanisms for enforcing labor rights must be strengthened in order to contribute to the development of nations and to reduce inequalities etween nations. The new multilateralism must give priority to labour issues.

The United Nations is the natural venue for debating this crisis, and as such, it should be strengthened. We believe that the proposal to create a Global Economic Council, at the same level as the Security Council, is important to define concrete guidelines for resolving the crisis.

It is time to take up again the debate on the “Tobin tax” and mechanisms for controlling monetary and financial flows worldwide, to restrain and avoid speculation and put an end to tax heavens. The establishment of new financial services for the solidarity economy must be given priority.

It is important to correct the fatal deficiency caused by the dislocation of the public services that has lost their capacity to exercise the regulatory and control functions that prevent the financial crisis and carry out duties in accordance with the rule of law, in a fair and professional manner. It is therefore important that Governments invest in public services so that to deliver quality public services, fully equipped with the key and critical resources.

Social protection, decent jobs and sustainability of the planet
In the social arena, it is necessary to have a social bailout, based on public policies and the strengthening of the State’s role in the economy.

We must ensure that the new global architecture for development fully integrates gender equality and women’s human rights on the basis of international commitments and treaties. According to paragraph 20 of the United Nations Millennium Declaration, “The States commit to promoting equality between the sexes and the economic autonomy of women as effective means for fighting poverty, hunger and illnesses, and for stimulating truly sustainable growth”. The way this objective has been formulated implies an acknowledgement of the fact that once the different needs and realities of men and women are contemplated, only then will it be possible to improve the situation of alarming inequalities that are present in the Continent, strengthen democracy and social peace.

The ITUC proposes a plan for recovery and sustainable growth, based on a public investment policy geared towards social development and job creation. As such, the building of productive and social infrastructure, which includes improving public services for everyone, must be prioritized.

It is crucial that the income of the low and middle classes be increased and to have policies focused on the groups that are most affected: youth, women, migrants, the elderly, individuals with special needs, indigenous groups, and temporary, underemployed and part-time workers. Finally, it is necessary to insist on the right of workers to form free trade unions, elect delegates and to negotiate collectively, putting special emphasis on the redistribution of benefits.

We support the initiative of the ILO to, through the Global Employment Pact, debate the creation of a Global Employment Fund that takes into account existing asymmetries between developed and developing countries in terms of their fiscal capacities.

More than ever, it is necessary to insist that the Fundamental Labor Regulations remain in force, especially those ensuring trade union freedom and collective bargaining and to accompany the ILO in its potential actions on the crisis, including the creation of the Forum and its participation in the G-20.

We reaffirm the importance of the ratification and implementation of the “Ibero-American Multilateral Social Security Agreement”, on disability, old age and survival. There is already a similar agreement in effect (since 2005) within Mercosur, which can serve as a reference in order to move forward with its enforcement in the continent.

We also value the agreement of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), as we consider that the environmental crisis must take into account the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities.

The international trade union movement calls for the fulfillment of what was agreed upon at the X Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean, held in Quito in 2007. We will not accept that the crisis lead to setbacks in advances made toward achieving gender equality in relation to the participation of women in the labour market. We call the international worker’s movement to apply the concept established by the UN of co-responsibility in the family and labour life, that applies equally to men and women, as well as the recognition of non paid work and its importance to the welfare of families and countries.

We strongly oppose and condemn all forms of violence against women. We also denounce and condemn all forms of discrimination and violence based on racial prejudice.
We demand, especially in this moment of crisis, the urgent cancellation of illegitimate external debt for developing countries.

Finally, we acknowledge the political changes that have taken place in many of our countries, through the election of progressive administrations of different levels and expressions, but, at the same time we reaffirm that governments must restart the Social Dialogue processes, making them more transparent and democratic and guarantee social and civil participation in the debates on solutions to the crisis.

A call to action

The trade union movement demands concrete policies from the governments of the region that make the proposals being debated a reality. We demand spaces for participation at the national and international level in order to present our proposals. In this sense, it is essential that more and better consultative mechanisms be established between governments and social movements.

We have expectations with regards to the political process of the United States, where the new President has made a commitment to consider trade unionism, not as a problem, but as part of the solution to the crisis. We forcefully support the adoption of the Employees Free Choice Act (EFCA), which defends the right of workers in the United States to organize freely and to negotiate collectively, and prevents employers from interfering in the organization of workers. In addition to contributing to the strengthening of the North American economy, this will have positive impacts on the international scene and in the Americas.

We support the recent decision of the Obama administration to allow people from the United States to travel and send money to Cuba, to establish fiber optic and satellite connections with the island, and to broaden the list of humanitarian products that may be exported to the island. The recent mission of US Congressmen to Cuba is also encouraging. These positive steps should result in a definitive end to the blockade against Cuba. Trade unionism in the Americas has demanded an end to the blockade against this country for decades.

As part of the international trade union movement, we demand that in the next G-20 Summit, actions and effective changes in the regulation of the world economy be approved. On the financial level, the creation of regional institutions for regulating and monitoring financial activities should be supported and we must move ahead with the process of strengthening the Bank of the South, the Central American Economic Integration Bank, and others.

We hope and we demand that the priorities of the decisions of the G-20 and other multilateral organizations will be to make changes to the policies that gave rise to the crisis, combat its effects and the consolidation of multilateralism focused on social equity, decent work with decent pay and sustainable development.

We call upon all the workers of the Americas to mobilize: on May 1st, International Day of Workers and of Mobilization to face the Crisis; and on October 7th, World Day for Decent Work in face of the Crisis, and November 25th, International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.

FOR THE VALIDITY OF TRADE UNION FREEDOM AND COLLECTIVE BARGAINING!

FOR SOCIAL PROTECTION!

FOR THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE LABOR PLATFORM OF THE AMERICAS!

Port of Spain, April 16th, 2009

Americas Info is the newsletter from TUCA - Trade Union Condederation of the Americas – the ITUC regional organization for the Americas.

TUCA CSA
Rua Formosa, 367 - 4°andar - Centro
CEP 01049-000 São Paulo / SP - Brasil
Phone: (55) (11) 2104 0750

Response to a vicious attack on Naomi Klein by a slobbering Obama supporter

2009-04-27T00:15:00.009-05:00

Note: Naomi Klein's article and Al Giordano's article follow my commentary.

Al Giordano, a slobbering Obama supporter, has sown disruptive seeds in the progressive movement in a desperate attempt to fend off the growing opposition from the working class and the left to Barack Obama's Wall Street agenda with his piece entitled: You and What Movement? A Response to Naomi Klein.

Al Giordano said of Klein's writings they are, "Revealing a bizarre contempt and college-educated condescension toward a vast multi-racial swathe of progressive supporters and sympathizers of Obama and his movement, Klein seeks to explain us away as dupes."

In fact, Giordano's essay is one more from a line of pathetic, slobbering Obama supporters who are trying to twist, turn and shape Barack Obama's election into something it was not while shielding and protecting him from criticism from the grassroots and the rank-and-file in the working class movements for peace, social & economic justice.

Barack Obama's election was not a mandate for a Wall Street agenda.

Quite the opposite, working people who voted, voted for "change."

Had Barack Obama run for election on the program he is now pushing for Wall Street he never would have been elected.

Giordano and his ilk are not "dupes;" they are consciously doing Wall Street's dirty work in the progressive movement... with many being handsomely paid for their dirty deeds.

There has been an endless stream of foundation whores, poverty pimps, class collaborationist labor "leaders," phony progressives and envelope stuffing environmentalists begging for money coming before Giordano. They claim Barack Obama was a "community organizer" just like them... the problem is, they are all a bunch of foundation whores, not community organizers.

Obama's entire campaign was built on lies and deceit. This is my response to Giordano and the slobbering Obama supporters who are attempting to disorient and confuse working people.

Barack Obama is nothing but a voice for Wall Street.

The proof is in everything he says and does.

Barack Obama is no friend of working people.

This guy citing "popularity polls" means absolutely nothing.

I have no doubt the polls cited are accurate; I have read the same polls and agree they are accurate based upon my many talks with working people and others.

But, something Obama's slobbering supporters might want to keep in mind:

Polls don't die in wars; real people do.

Polls don't get foreclosed on and evicted from their homes; real people do.

Polls don't go to school hungry; children do.

Polls don't have to work in smoke-filled casinos at poverty wages without any rights like two-million American workers employed in the Indian Gaming Industry are forced to do because Barack Obama and the Democrats enable this disgraceful situation.

Polls don't have to work for a miserly minimum wage that is far from providing workers with a standard-of-living in line with the real cost-of-living; people do.

I would take Naomi Klein's analysis any day over this kind of fact-less slobbering over Obama; and, for those using these polls to justify supporting Barack Obama under the guise that he is some kind of "friend of the people," once it sinks in what Obama has done to the working class and the body bags start rolling in from all over the world, those polls are going to change as rapidly as capitalism is collapsing.

By the way, many casino workers are people of color, many are young women of child-bearing age and many others are retired workers unable to make ends meet on the miserly Social Security checks they receive.

I have yet to hear one single Obama supporter step forward asking Barack Obama to reopen the "Compacts"--- many of which he voted for--- creating the more than 350 casinos/hotels/motels/restaurants/theme park/resorts comprising the Indian Gaming Industry even though he has shredded the contracts of auto workers and will most likely do the same with steelworkers when the steel industry comes begging for a bailout as it surely will.

Bankers and industrialists get bailout from Obama; where is the people's bailout?

Where's the change?

Barack Obama is no liberal, he certainly is no progressive or socialist... Barack Obama is nothing but a self-serving, self-promoting, flim-flam man and con-artist opportunist that Wall $treet latched on to to do its dirty work desperately trying to save capitalism.

Capitalism is on the skids to oblivion and Barack Obama is dragging the American people down the dark, bumpy, curvy and treacherous road to perdition... and working class liberals, progressives, socialists and communists should join together and formulate an alternative progressive program to shove under Obama's nose forcing a sharp left turn towards socialism.

The United States has over 800 military bases on foreign soil costing trillions of dollars and Barack Obama doesn't have the plain old common human decency to break with imperialism by insisting these bases be closed; and, instead, 800 public health care centers be built and opened across the United States to provide free health care for all.

No, instead of providing people with health care, Barack Obama talks about giving every family "affordable" access to broadband Internet!

"Affordable" in Barack Obama's Wall Street language means profitable to the Wall Street coupon clippers.

If Barack Obama's priorities aren't as screwed up as Wall Street's priorities get in putting profits before people; what is?

Barack Obama is every bit as bad as George Bush, even worse, and no poll result can change this basic truth.

One only has to ask:

Where's the change?

Perhaps in talking about "change" Barack Obama meant we will all be out on the streets selling apples asking, "Brother, can you spare a dime?"

You know, it is one thing for people to have voted for Barack Obama because we couldn't tolerate another Republican... but, the sad truth is, the Democrats--- Barack Obama included--- are every bit as racist, uncaring, incompetent, corrupt, warmongering and Wall Street centered as the Republicans. No polls, no matter how accurate, can change the facts.

Like i said, I never saw a "poll" die in a war or sit in a school classroom going hungry.

Alan L. Maki
Director of Organizing,
Midwest Casino Workers Organizing Council

This is the article Naomi Klein wrote:

In Obamafanland:
A Lexicon of Disappointment

by Naomi Klein / April 17, 2009

All is not well in Obamafanland. It's not clear exactly what accounts for the change of mood. Maybe it was the rancid smell emanating from Treasury's latest bank bailout. Or the news that the president's chief economic adviser, Larry Summers, earned millions from the very Wall Street banks and hedge funds he is protecting from reregulation now. Or perhaps it began earlier, with Obama's silence during Israel's Gaza attack.

Whatever the last straw, a growing number of Obama enthusiasts are starting to entertain the possibility that their man is not, in fact, going to save the world if we all just hope really hard.

This is a good thing. If the superfan culture that brought Obama to power is going to transform itself into an independent political movement, one fierce enough to produce programs capable of meeting the current crises, we are all going to have to stop hoping and start demanding.

The first stage, however, is to understand fully the awkward in-between space in which many US progressive movements find themselves. To do that, we need a new language, one specific to the Obama moment. Here is a start.

Hopeover. Like a hangover, a hopeover comes from having overindulged in something that felt good at the time but wasn't really all that healthy, leading to feelings of remorse, even shame. It's the political equivalent of the crash after a sugar high. Sample sentence: "When I listened to Obama's economic speech my heart soared. But then, when I tried to tell a friend about his plans for the millions of layoffs and foreclosures, I found myself saying nothing at all. I've got a serious hopeover."

Hoper coaster. Like a roller coaster, the hoper coaster describes the intense emotional peaks and valleys of the Obama era, the veering between joy at having a president who supports safe-sex education and despondency that single-payer healthcare is off the table at the very moment when it could actually become a reality. Sample sentence: "I was so psyched when Obama said he is closing Guantánamo. But now they are fighting like mad to make sure the prisoners in Bagram have no legal rights at all. Stop this hoper coaster-I want to get off!"

Hopesick. Like the homesick, hopesick individuals are intensely nostalgic. They miss the rush of optimism from the campaign trail and are forever trying to recapture that warm, hopey feeling-usually by exaggerating the significance of relatively minor acts of Obama decency. Sample sentences: "I was feeling really hopesick about the escalation in Afghanistan, but then I watched a YouTube video of Michelle in her organic garden and it felt like inauguration day all over again. A few hours later, when I heard that the Obama administration was boycotting a major UN racism conference, the hopesickness came back hard. So I watched slideshows of Michelle wearing clothes made by ethnically diverse independent fashion designers, and that sort of helped."

Hope fiend. With hope receding, the hope fiend, like the dope fiend, goes into serious withdrawal, willing to do anything to chase the buzz. (Closely related to hopesickness but more severe, usually affecting middle-aged males.) Sample sentence: "Joe told me he actually believes Obama deliberately brought in Summers so that he would blow the bailout, and then Obama would have the excuse he needs to do what he really wants: nationalize the banks and turn them into credit unions. What a hope fiend!"

Hopebreak. Like the heartbroken lover, the hopebroken Obama-ite is not mad but terribly sad. She projected messianic powers on to Obama and is now inconsolable in her disappointment. Sample sentence: "I really believed Obama would finally force us to confront the legacy of slavery in this country and start a serious national conversation about race. But now whenever he seems to mention race, he's using twisted legal arguments to keep us from even confronting the crimes of the Bush years. Every time I hear him say ‘move forward,' I'm hopebroken all over again."

Hopelash. Like a backlash, hopelash is a 180-degree reversal of everything Obama-related. Sufferers were once Obama's most passionate evangelists. Now they are his angriest critics. Sample sentence: "At least with Bush everyone knew he was an asshole. Now we've got the same wars, the same lawless prisons, the same Washington corruption, but everyone is cheering like Stepford wives. It's time for a full-on hopelash."

In trying to name these various hope-related ailments, I found myself wondering what the late Studs Terkel would have said about our collective hopeover. He surely would have urged us not to give in to despair. I reached for one of his last books, Hope Dies Last. I didn't have to read long. The book opens with the words: "Hope has never trickled down. It has always sprung up."

And that pretty much says it all. Hope was a fine slogan when rooting for a long-shot presidential candidate. But as a posture toward the president of the most powerful nation on earth, it is dangerously deferential. The task as we move forward (as Obama likes to say) is not to abandon hope but to find more appropriate homes for it-in the factories, neighborhoods and schools where tactics like sit-ins, squats and occupations are seeing a resurgence.

Political scientist Sam Gindin wrote recently that the labor movement can do more than protect the status quo. It can demand, for instance, that shuttered auto plants be converted into green-future factories, capable of producing mass-transit vehicles and technology for a renewable energy system. "Being realistic means taking hope out of speeches," he wrote, "and putting it in the hands of workers."

Which brings me to the final entry in the lexicon.

Hoperoots. Sample sentence: "It's time to stop waiting for hope to be handed down, and start pushing it up, from the hoperoots."

© 2009 The Nation

[Naomi Klein is an award-winning journalist and syndicated columnist and the author of the international and New York Times bestseller The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, now out in paperback. Her earlier books include the international best-seller, No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies; and the collection Fences and Windows: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Globalization Debate (2002). To read all her latest writing visit www.naomiklein.org.]

This is Al Giordano's response:

Barack Obama, community organizer.

You and What Movement?

A Response to Naomi Klein

Revealing a bizarre contempt and college-educated condescension toward a vast multi-racial swathe of progressive supporters and sympathizers of Obama and his movement, Klein seeks to explain us away as dupes.
By Al Giordano

[The following opinion piece by Al Giordano, who is a community organizer now living in Mexico, was written in response to an article by Naomi Klein, originally published in The Nation and posted on April 17, 2009, by The Rag Blog under the title of "Naomi Klein : Hopebroken and Hopesick. Giordano published his response on April 18 in the Narco News Bulletin. We think he makes some very good points and suggest that progressives disillusioned with Barack Obama's presidency so far might benefit from Giordano's perspective.]

Naomi Klein is suffering, along with some other sectors of the academic North American left, an existential crisis.

In a recent column she published in The Nation and in The Huffington Post, she complained about “the awkward in-between space in which many US progressive movements find themselves” now that Barack Obama is president of the United States.

Revealing a bizarre contempt and college-educated condescension toward a vast multi-racial swathe of progressive supporters and sympathizers of Obama and his movement, Klein seeks to explain us away as dupes. We (I use the first person plural proudly and without hesitation) are, according to Klein, part of a “superfan culture,” that, she says, believes we can “save the world if we all just hope really hard,” and that suffers from the following psychological ailments: “Hopeover… hoper coaster… hope fiend… hopebreak… and hopelash.”

Her theory, that progressive Obama supporters are now inflicted by buyer’s remorse, flies contrary to all objective measurement. The pollster.com aggregate of all recent public opinion surveys finds that 61.8 percent of Americans view Obama (less than 100 days into his presidency) favorably, compared to 32.9 percent that view him unfavorably. As Gallup notes, President Obama’s first-quarter average favorability of 63 percent exceeds that of the first three months of his eight immediate predecessors: Presidents Bush II, Clinton, Bush 1, Reagan, Carter, Ford, Nixon or Johnson.

Ah, but Klein is talking about “progressives,” so let’s take a look at the hard data that is available. Separate out the crosstabs, and those numbers are even sky higher among progressive demographic groups. Among Democrats, according to an early April Pew survey, 88 percent view the young president favorably, so it’s not really clear who Klein is talking about, imagining or inventing out of thin air when she devotes an entire column to claim a non-existent demographic trend.

Among African-Americans (without which there can be no successful “progressive movement” in the United States), a towering 94 percent approve of how the president is doing his job, according to the Quinnipiac survey. Among Hispanic Americans (just as important to any progressive future in the US), 73 percent feel the same way. Among Americans that earn less than $50,000 a year (the working class and the poor), a solid 60 percent approve. The question must be asked: What “movement” does Klein thus imagine? An exclusively white and college educated one? I fear that the truth may not be far from it if she is so quick to insult and dismiss such a large bloc of people who skew non-white, poor and working class.

There is currently no quicker way for white progressives to further divide themselves from African-American, Hispanic-American, working class and poor Americans – all sectors without which serious and successful progressive movements in the US would be impossible – than to invent derogatory psychobabble terms for us because we do not share Klein’s tendencies to feel somehow demoralized by the country’s first African-American head of state, and demonstrably its most progressive since Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

That such complaint comes after less than 100 days, when the President has just eased the Cuba embargo that was foolishly embraced by Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton and Bush II, is nothing less than pathetic. In the same week, Obama made the classified torture memos public (and as any working journalist or investigator knows, every department of his administration now responds quickly – usually overnight – to our Freedom of Information Act requests for information; a sea change from all previous administrations) . The passage of Obama’s economic Stimulus bill marked the single largest expenditure ever on jobs and social programs like unemployment insurance, Medicaid and public education in the history of any country. He has already made the orderly withdrawal of US combat troops from Iraq official policy with a timeline that has most of it done before the 2010 midterm elections. And in three short months, Obama has restored the principle of progressive taxation to the United States.

Yesterday, at the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad, the US president extended a long overdue hand of friendship to his Venezuelan counterpart, a democratically elected leader that suffered an attempted military coup d’etat that was cheered, if not planned, by Washington. The President, in short time, has already defused an entire string of similar policy time bombs left by previous administrations (Republican and Democratic alike). Will there be more tensions between Chávez and the US? Very likely the answer is yes, but the gravity and context of them has shifted positively. This hemisphere is already a safer place for dissident journalists, community organizers, governments of the left and other grassroots change agents. That, alone, makes it more possible for us to organize and make bigger and better changes – of the kind for which we do not need any government’s permission – in the days and years ahead.

I quite agree with Klein’s belief that “demanding” is better than “hoping” when it comes to changing public policy. But where I get off her bus is upon her inference that we who are supportive of – and more happy than not about – Obama’s presidency somehow believe differently. Her claim only demonstrates her gross ignorance toward the important sector of the left (including parts of the Obama movement) that are community organizers. “Demanding” is necessary but without “organizing” to back it up it is merely an act of intellectual masturbation. It accomplishes nothing. It never has won a single battle. And that’s why, until 2008, the US left in particular – so busy demanding without doing the hard work of organizing – went through at least three “lost decades.”

The problem with too much of the “activist left” in North America is that so many of its adherents don’t really want to do the hard work of community organizing. I wonder: when was the last time that Klein went door-to-door, or staffed a phone bank, or otherwise reached out directly to real people demographically different from her? Any journalist or writer that hasn’t, at minimum, accompanied organizers doing that real work of change should shut the fuck up when it comes to opining about “the people.” They don’t have a clue as to who “the people” are. Activism that doesn’t involve one or more of those tasks does not rise to the level or effectiveness of organizing. And those that don’t do it really have no idea where the public is at: the masses (or “the multitude” in current jargon) are imaginary cartoon characters to these people. Their view of us is as elitist as it is condescending.

They can complain about, for example, US policy toward Israel and Palestine, seemingly oblivious to how US public opinion on the matter keeps those very bad policies in place. If they got off their duffs and knocked on doors to ask real people about it, they’d get a lesson in civics, and perhaps learn better ways to move public opinion in a better direction. They can bemoan the “bailouts” (essentially government loans to financial services industries) ignorant of the fact that when big corporations fall they land hardest on the workers and the poor, as would a 1929-level crash of the kind that nearly occurred last October. They can demand “nationalization” of the banks, without offering any detail as to what that would look like. I live in Mexico where the 1982 bank nationalization proved disastrous for the country’s workers, and helped destroy its middle class. The devil is always in the details.

I am not a member of the Democratic Party, and I did not vote for twelve years prior to 2008 until Obama’s candidacy gave me a reason to do so. While the academic North American left went jet-hopping from summit protest to social forum across the globe, I went to Latin America, lived, worked and reported alongside the authentic social movements that many of them came to visit for a weekend or maybe a month. I’m more comfortable with an anarcho-syndicalist view of the kind of society that I daily work toward than I am with electoral politics. Socialist, although it’s a moniker that seems a bit statist and conservative for me, is still a term that I’m more comfortable with than “Democrat.” And yet every day I see the President moving the United States closer to my own version of utopia, after a lifetime of watching each of his predecessors pull it farther away. More importantly, for me, as a journalist and an organizer, the Obama presidency has created much more space for people like us to get out there and do this hard work without the repression and marginalization that we have struggled under for decades.

Here’s what the academic left – hopping mad, frustrated and now, like Klein, lashing out at those of us in the working left – doesn’t get: It was Obama – not Klein’s post-Seattle ’99 milieu of “anti-globalization activists” – who opened the doors of the American left for the first time since the Civil Rights movement of the ‘50s and ‘60s to the building of an authentically multi-racial movement. It was Obama – not Klein and her colleagues – that got working class whites struggling alongside working class blacks and Hispanics in the United States, and who turned a new generation onto the art of community organizing that the activist left had abandoned.

When colleagues like Klein so summarily insult Obama supporters and sympathizers, they are driving yet another stake between their white college-educated ghetto and the 94 percent of African-Americans, and the 73 percent of Hispanic Americans, and the 60 percent of the entire American working class, that is pleased, as I am, that this unique historic figure is, for the next four years at least, the President of the United States.

I’m reminded of the scene from the Martin Scorcese motion picture, The Aviator, in which Kathryn Hepburn (Cate Blanchette) brings Howard Hughes (Leonardo DiCaprio) home to meet her family. “We’re socialists,” the mother tells Hughes. And then, when she thinks Hughes is speaking ill of President Franklin Roosevelt, she nearly runs him out of the house. FDR, like Obama, wasn’t a socialist (and unlike Obama, he was born into privilege). But a great many socialists, communists and even anarchists of the era understood that their work was made so much more possible by his presidency. And that cultivated an intense synergy, not to mention a renaissance of labor and community organizing during that epoch. In retrospect, that synergy between the working left and the FDR presidency brought with it many of the 20th century’s most progressive advances.

The same is happening now – although Klein and others haven’t done the investigative or organizing spadework to recognize it – and that (even without the many progressive policies enacted by the Obama administration already, and those important ones like immigration reform yet to come) makes me an unabashed, eyes wide open, Obama sympathizer, guilt-free, without any of the feelings of remorse Klein seeks to assign to me and millions like me. That enthusiasm hasn’t turned us into blind followers: these pages are already filled with hard-hitting critiques when the Obama administration has been wrong; on Plan Mexico, on the drug war, and other deadly serious matters. And yet even on those fronts, our ability to push back and serve as a check and a break on the extremities of those bad policies vastly outweighs what we were able to do for many previous decades.

But I’m not going to sit back silently while some white progressives – dripping with the nastiest forms of envy because, truth be told, the Obama movement succeeded at resurrecting community organizing and multi-racial struggle whereas their tired tactics and strategies had failed again and again to do so – try to claim to me or anyone else that they’re the ones doing the demanding while we’re somehow sitting back and thinking we can “save the world if we just hope really hard.”

Memo to Ms. Klein: Go back to the only school that ever got the left – in which I take no back seat to you in either mileage or scar tissue – anywhere: that of community organizing. We’re doing it. You’re not. And when you go to give your next speech at some university or activist hall, look around at the white, privileged faces that occupy more than half those seats. Study how many of them choose to self-marginalize from workers or racial minorities with their freak-show narcissistic – and yet humorless! – antics. You know what I’m talkin’ about. And you probably wince regularly as they ask you to sign your book for them.

Ask yourself, “are these the so-called masses that are going to make a progressive movement succeed?” You know damn well, in your heart, that they’re not. They do buy hardcover books though, a lot more than the workers and the poor ever will. With all due respect I must ask: Have you become an intellectual prisoner of what you think it takes to pander to your own college-educated consumers?

No thank you, Ms. Klein: When it comes to the United States, I’ll take my chances with the multi-racial community organizers of the Obama movement, and the tens of thousands of young organizers they’ve inspired and trained, at least until the non-electoral North American left gets its shit together, which, after reading a column like yours, seems still a long and far away struggle.

Source / The Narco News Bulletin

Indian Health Summit

2009-04-22T20:51:00.002-05:00

-----Original Message-----

From: Alan Maki [mailto:amaki000@centurytel.net]

Sent: Wednesday, April 22, 2009 8:47 PM

To:

Joan Kim
Phone: 301-897-2789 x117
Fax: 301-897-9587
Email: jkim@thehillgroup.com or

Kimi De León
Phone: 301-897-2789 x132
Fax: 301-897-9587
Email: kdeleon@thehillgroup.com

Cc: 'Jim Hart'; 'John Kolstad'; 'Kip Sullivan'; 'Carl Levin'; 'Sen.Jim Carlson'; 'rep.bill.hilty@house.mn'; 'rep.tom.anzelc@house.mn'; 'rep.tom.Rukavina@house.mn'; 'rep.tony.sertich@house.mn'; 'ddepass@startribune.com'; 'mmiron@bemidjipioneer.com'; 'bswenson@bemidjipioneer.com'; 'Chris Spotted Eagle'; 'jgoldstein@americanrightsatwork.org'; 'teresa_detrempe@klobuchar.senate.gov'; 'peter.erlinder@wmitchell.edu'; 'peter.makowski@mail.house.gov'; 'esquincle@verizon.net'; 'Walter Tillow'; 'nursenpo@gmail.com'; 'Steve Early'; 'Joshua Frank'; 'Ta, Minh'; 'Rhoda Gilman'; 'David Shove'; 'ken nash'; 'Ken Pentel'; 'WCS-A@yahoogroups.com'; 'MARKOWIT@history.rutgers.edu'; 'tdennis@gfherald.com'; 'Myers, John'; 'loneagle@paulbunyan.net'; 'Thomas Kurhajetz'; 'mhoney@u.washington.edu'; 'moderator@portside.org'; 'debssoc@sbcglobal.net'; 'Tom Meersman'; 'peterb3121@hotmail.com'; 'laurel1@dailyjournal-ifalls.com'; 'jscannel@aflcio.org'; 'rgettel@uaw.net'; 'gdubovich@usw.org'; 'info@jamesmayer.org'; 'mzweig@notes.cc.sunysb.edu'; 'rachleff@macalester.edu'; 'advocate@stpaulunions.org'; 'elizabeth_reed@levin.senate.gov'; 'Alan Uhl'; 'Charles Underwood'

Subject...

Re: Question on Indian Health Summit

To whom it may concern;

Could you tell me if there will be a discussion at the Indian Health Summit--- July 7-9, 2009 in Denver, Colorado--- concerning the issue of casino workers in the Indian Gaming Industry and the impact to their health of second hand smoke in their workplaces?

Link: http://conferences.thehillgroup.com/healthsummit/contact.html

Could you advise me if there have been any discussions about this with the American Cancer Society and/or the Heart and Lung Foundation?

I am very concerned since I find nothing on this important topic among any of the materials you are distributing for the Indian Health Summit.

With health care costs become an important topic for discussion it would seem that this issue would at least merit some kind of mention at an Indian Health Summit considering the large number of Native Americans employed in the Indian Gaming Industry.

Perhaps you would be interested in having me address one of the plenary sessions since this topic has not been considered previously.

I would point out that I have contacted my of the local offices and administrators of the Indian Health Services concerning this issue and no one will speak to me.

With the Indian Health Services being part of the Department of Interior and associated with the Bureau of Indian Affairs, it would only seem logical that no further casino “Compacts” would be approved unless they contain provisions banning and prohibiting smoking.

I would also suggest that the Indian Health Services insist that all existing “Compacts” be re-opened so a ban and prohibition on smoking can be inserted into them.

“Compacts” are nothing more than contracts and the Obama Administration has seen fit to insist that previously negotiated contracts with labor unions be re-negotiated so there is definitely a precedent that has been established for doing this and I am sure you will agree with me that there could not be a better argument made for renegotiating these “Compacts” than to protect the health of hundreds of thousands of workers employed in these casinos who, in addition to working in these smoke-filled working environments are not protected under any state or federal labor laws, which makes this problem of being employed in a work environment detrimental to human health even a more serious concern.

Perhaps the Indian Health Services could make a recommendation to the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Secretary of the Department of Interior that the Secretary of Labor, Hilda Solis, becomes involved so that the protection of casino workers’ rights under all state and federal labor laws protecting all other workers in the United States be included at the time the Compacts are re-opened to protect the health of casino workers.

If you have any doubts second-hand smoke contributes to an unhealthy work environment and that second-hand smoke is recognized as a leading contributor to a variety of cancers and heart and lung diseases please do not hesitate to request additional information. I will be more than happy to attend your Indian Health Care Summit with the necessary resource materials.

With some two-million workers now employed in the Indian Gaming Industry we want to make sure everything possible is being done to protect the health and well-being of these workers.

If I have addressed this letter to the wrong persons, would you please provide me with the name of the proper person/s and department/s this letter should be sent to.

If you think this issue concerning the impact of second-hand smoke on the health of casino workers is not significant enough to be discussed at the Indian Health Summit would you be so kind as to advise me of your decision and how it was reached?

Thanking you in advance for your timely consideration;

Alan L. Maki
Director of Organizing,
Midwest Casino Workers Organizing Council

58891 County Road 13
Warroad, Minnesota 56763
Phone: 218-386-2432
Cell phone: 651-587-5541
E-mail: amaki000@centurytel.net

Check out my blog:

Thoughts From Podunk

http://thepodunkblog.blogspot.com/

Cc: Maggie Bird
President,
Midwest Casino Workers Organizing Council

The Truth About Tea Parties and Teabaggers

2009-04-21T09:38:00.000-05:00

This post by right-wing bigot Nancy L. LaRoche to the "e-democracy forum" pretty much tells us the truth behind all the statements coming from the two-bit, half-assed fascist right-wing talk radio big-mouths who host these programs that somehow these teabaggers are putting on some kind of "non-partisan" events open to all who decry wasteful government spending.

Check out this response to me very closely because the truth is in what Nancy L. LaRoche posted in opposition to what I posted.

Here is what I posted which she is responding to:

Alan wrote: "Yes, you want people to attend your "Tea Party" rallies but you exclude those with a left view from speaking... wow! Real democratic.

Invite me to speak; I'll be there."

Now, notice what she says:

Alan: Do you leftist protesters pass their bullhorns and allow the other side to speak at their rallies?

This is a very frank admission that only those from the right side of the political spectrum are welcome at these "Tea Parties."

This statement here makes Mitch Berg, Chris Baker, Shawn Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and the rest of the chicken shit patriot crowd so eager to send others off to kill and die in these dirty imperialist wars being waged for control of the oil fields and gas pipeline routes along with regional domination and control of the poppy and heroin trade nothing but outright liars afraid to defend their fascist, racist, warmongering, pro-capitalist, pro-imperialist ideas. They lie when they say these "Tea Parties" were organized by "concerned citizens" from grassroots, when, in fact, these right-wing bigots and blowhards of talk radio have organized these "Tea Parties" for two reasons: 1.) As promotional publicity stunts to promote the now largely discredited right-wing talk radio; and, 2.) To try to move the country firther to the right THAN WHAT BARACK OBAMA, THE DEMOCRATS AND THE WALL STREET CROWD are already trying to take us. Make no mistake, Barack Obama is not liberal, progressive or left in any sense of the meaning of these words... Obama is definitely not a "socialist" as these racist, bigots of right-wing talk radio of are charging.

In other words, the teabaggers are not going to allow me (or any known "leftist" to address their Tax Day Rallies with the message that military spending is wasteful government spending.

The organizers of these "Tea Parties" do not want people hearing the truth that the most excessive, wasteful government spending is for wars and militarism.

These right-wing blow-hards like Mitch Berg are afraid to have me addressing their crowds saying things like:

The United States government, dominated by Wall Street bankers and coupon clippers, is wasting trillions upon trillions of dollars of tax-payer monies borrowed from Wall Street bankers to finance a vast and far-flung network of over 800 U.S. military bases on foreign soil dotting all parts of the globe instead of building 800 public health care centers right here in the United States providing free health care from cradle to grave for everyone.

Now, this self-avowed, Bircher--- this two-bit, half-assed fascist--- Nancy L. LaRoche declares that I have denied people with differing viewpoints from my own the right to speak at anti-war rallies.

This is another outright and brazen two-faced lie and she is well aware she is a liar in making this statement.

I have never in my life prevented anyone--- from any political perspective or persuasion--- with an anti-war view to speak at any anti-war rally.

To the extent it has been within my power (as one vote on a committee), I have never allowed anyone with a pro-war view to speak at an anti-war rally.

Why would I give consideration to anyone with a pro-war view to speak at an "anti-war rally?" Only a complete idiot and fool like this Birchite, Nancy L. LaRoche, would make such a statement... it is up to her and her warmongering friends who support these wars but never go off to fight them to organize their own "pro-war rallies."

However, I have organized (and participated as a debater in debates I had no part in organizing) dozens of debates all over Minnesota--- some ninety debates, in fact--- prior to the start of the war in Iraq, around the question and issue:

Should the United States Government Go To War in Iraq?

Participants in these debates, generally consisted of two or three pro and con views. As the main organizer of these debates across Minnesota I did not seek out and select participants according to my personal left-wing views. In fact, these debates included retired military people--- both pro and con--- on the question and the issue. In fact, there were even some right-wing talk show hosts who participated in these debates--- several times as the moderators. Not once was I ever accused of stacking these debates. And not once was the discourse anything but cordial. I would note, the bigots and the Birchites did condemn these debates because they included the anti-war view! You see, these two-bit, half-assed fascists do not believe in democracy or any concept of democracy. To them, democracy is only them getting out their views. These is an obviously perverted view of democracy; the same perverted view of democracy that almost thoroughly permeates right-wing talk radio--- with a very few notable exceptions of those who hold genuinely conservative views but welcome all other views into the "battle of ideas in our modern world."

Nancy L. LaRoche intentionally tries to blend "debate" with demonstrations and rallies. She does this intentionally as do all of her bigoted friends because they know that people get their ideas together when they hear the many sides to these complex and complicated questions in the process of public and democratic debate--- and, then, after formulating opinions based upon what they believe to be the best information they can gather; from this informed position they go out a try to convince others to rally and demonstrate with them to try to move government, corporations or whatever in the direction they think society should be moving.

But, where has the debate been on the Obama/Wall Street agenda?

In fact, there has been no debate.

In fact, the "left" which our bigoted, Birchite friend Nancy L. LaRoche so bemoans, has had no voice what-so-ever in a debate, which I would remind the reader, has largely been an attack on socialism.

Denying a voice to the adherents of the socialist viewpoint and perspective under these circumstances can hardly pass for democracy.

By Nancy L. LaRoche's own words here, these "Tea Party" and tax-protests are nothing more than right-wing rallies; her own words give lie to the words of those like Mitch Berg, Chris Baker, Shawn Hannity and Rush Limbaugh along with the "fair and unbiased" FOX news crew that these rallies are anything but anti-communist, pro-war and pro-corporate bash the working class and attack the rest of the world rallies.

That two-bit, half-assed fascists from both the Republican and Democratic Parties participate in these rallies does not mean these rallies are open to all who oppose wasteful government spending; it means that those on the right from both political parties support and sponsor--- and exclude--- anyone not right-wing from participation.

After all, when you openly state as Nancy L. LaRoche has done that "leftists for peace" are excluded; here in the state of Minnesota you are excluding a good 40% of the population.

And, if you are "not going to pass the bullhorn" to leftists to speak about their concerns about inappropriate government spending no one, not Mitch Berg or Chris Baker or Shawn Hannity or Rush Limbaugh, can make the claim they are speaking for all Americans... they are speaking for a very, very narrow slice of America... perhaps 3% to 4% of the population... no more than this.

But, here we are supposedly talking about bringing people of "all political persuasions together" in these Tea Parties who are opposed to "government waste."

Are these "Tea Parties" also "pro-war parties and rallies?" If we listen to Nancy L. LaRoche they really are.

Not only do the American people have to ask:

Where is the change?

We also have to ask:

Where are the debates on these issues?

Nancy L. LaRoche knew better than to demand the microphone at an anti-war rally because she was pro-war.

In her small little demented and perverted mind, patriotism is equated with being pro-war. Waving a flag is equated with being pro-war. That she convinced someone to put down a peace sign and hold the American flag tells us absolutely nothing... did she convince that person to become pro-war? No. And she knows it. That person waved the American flag to demonstrate that peace is patriotic, and war is unpatriotic.

I'm not a "flag-waver" but I will stand my patriotism for this country up against the chicken shit patriotism of these right-wing bigots hosting these Fox radio programs any day... and it they who run from the challenge of debating these issues.

That they can convince a few stupid fools like Nancy L. LaRoche to join them tells us everything we need to know about this perverted crowd of "teabaggers."

Nancy L. LaRoche tells us that she and her friends "don't bite." However, they sure want to give the working class a good "teabagging."

Teabaggers have more in common with the "steal the land from the Indians," pro-slavery, pro-Hitler crowd than with the sons and daughters of the American Revolution and Tom Paine and Benjamin Franklin or Thomas Jefferson.

Again, I reiterate my suggestion for real--- face-to-face--- debates in every city where the teabaggers are planning their events... come on Nancy L. LaRoche, your idols Mitch Berg and Chris Baker refuse to debate me... let's me and you tour these sixteen cities debating the issues involved... let's me and you debate what constitutes wasteful government spending...

bak, bak, bak, baaakkk, bak, bak, baakk, baaakkkkk, bak, bak.

No doubt Hitler was a "teabagger," just like Mitch Berg and Chris Baker in every sense of the word.

Something to think about around the dinner table--- if you can keep from gagging.

Yours in the struggle,

Alan L. Maki

From a posting to "e-democracy" to which the "moderator," Rick Mons, would not allow me the above response.

The posting was from: Nancy L LaRoche Date: 07:23 CDT Short link

Alan Maki wrote:

"Yes, you want people to attend your "Tea Party" rallies but you
exclude those with a left view from speaking... wow! Real democratic.

Invite me to speak; I'll be there."

Alan: Do you leftist protesters pass their bullhorns and allow the other side
to speak at their rallies? I've attended some anti-war protests and had great
conversations with those opposed to my views. I didn't demand the microphone.
In fact, at one three years ago I made friends with a homeless Native American
who was given an anti-war sign to carry. After we talked for a while, he put
his sign down and picked up a flag. That's what democracy is - the right to
have differing opinions and discuss openly with others. You seem to want to
dismiss and shut up those who disagree.

Come out and talk with us May 2. Try to understand our side face to face.
Again, we don't bite.