What happened to my country?

From: People's World

by: Delphi worker

February 8 2010

tags: autoworkers, plant closings, unemployment, Ohio

As I grabbed my grease-soiled lunch cooler and stepped out of my GM truck to head into work at Delphi Packard Electric I had to stop for a moment to digest the sight of a nearly 1/2 mile long, 1/8 mile deep parking lot that was literally empty. I reflected for a moment on two American brothers with the knowledge and ingenuity to develop high voltage ignition cable that in the early 1900s was only available abroad. From those beginnings in a factory near downtown Warren, Ohio, evolved the largest automotive electrical wiring and component business in the world.

Eventually the North River Road complex became the center hub of all engineering and development. Some of greatest advances in automotive electronics were birthed right here in Warren, Ohio. At its peak nearly 15,000 American workers filed through these doors. The huge parking lot that I gazed upon once filled to its capacity with American workers now looked like a deserted scene from an apocalyptic movie.

What happened to my country?

The regal blue engineering and research facility now stands totally empty. American engineering and manufacturing skills built this once huge empire with blood, sweat and gears. Once the hard work was complete and the business model set, little by little the corporate heads began to whittle away at this empire. Not for the sake of survival but for the seemingly insatiable desire to line their pockets in excess - at the expense of each and every American worker, union and salary, that they could eliminate.

What happened to my country?

I couldn't help but get a bit emotional as I reflected on my own family members who had helped to build this empire and the excitement I felt when I was hired into the fold. The future looked grand here at Delphi Packard. I remember vividly my first week of employment. Exiting the freeway, the first thing you saw was this gigantic parking lot with thousands of cars, the majority of them General Motors vehicles. The sense of security I felt working for such a huge America icon of this size was comforting to say the least. A place this large, I thought, could never be replaced. It was too vital an operation, if only due to its vast size, so I thought. But now each day is greeted with more uncertainty of the future of this once great American built business. No commitment from a company whose Internet pages are loaded with accolades and accomplishments of plants in China, Mexico, South America, Morocco, Turkey, and Romania - just to name a few - with their smiling faces pictured amongst brand new equipment and facilities, likely funded by a once prosperous American base. While - at what is left of the US operations - we continue to produce more product per employee to a much higher quality standard with some equipment dating back 3 or 4 decades. I can only imagine what we could do in Warren, Ohio, given a fraction of the resources that have been awarded to many of these foreign facilities.

What happened to my country?

So as I continued my walk on that cold January afternoon up the sidewalk toward the turnstiles, I could almost hear the voices and footsteps of the thousands of former employees that walked this same sidewalk, where now just a few hundred remain.

And for some reason the American flag that flies proudly at the entrance looked a bit different to me this day. I felt a bitter sense of betrayal and anger. Not toward my country which this flag proudly represents, but a company that seemingly manipulated and exploited the freedoms that the flag stands for. In my humble opinion Delphi Packard should no longer even be considered an American company considering how it has forsaken its homeland and the American workforce that played such an integral part in its success.

The sad truth is, this same scenario, in different scales of severity is being played out all over the manufacturing base of this "once" great nation. For the sake of making a chosen sect of the American populous extremely wealthy they have forsaken Joe and Jane American. What they are beginning to realize though is that Joe and Jane American are the people who drive the American and world economy. Not the CEOs and other corporate heads. Take away Joe and Jane's livelihood and you have the America that you see now. An America struggling to keep its head above water. A government attempting to operate on a tax-based income that shrinks with the loss of each living wage job as the deficit climbs to new highs.

What happened to my country?

Well I'm sure we may not all agree on the answer to that question. But one thing is for sure. The vision that drove this Nation to be a fully independent world power, and the dominating industrial force on the planet, has been lost, if not greatly blurred, due to that insatiable desire for more that I spoke of earlier. The United States of America has changed drastically in the last 15 years and, in my opinion, not for the better. Greater empires have fallen. May God Bless America ...

The author is "just another number on the Delphi roster."

Photo: 1922 Packard Model 126 Sport Phaeton steering wheel/dashboard. The Packard Electric Co. was founded in Ohio in 1890. One of its subsidiaries produced the first Packard car in 1899. In 1932 it became part of the General Motors Corp., and later became Delphi Packard Electric Systems. http://www.flickr.com/photos/nostri-imago/ / CC BY 2.0

People's World

Safeway janitors stop work, tired of intimidation

by: Marilyn Bechtel

February 12 2010

tags: unions, janitors, California

OAKLAND, Calif. - Dozens of janitors who clean Safeway supermarkets in northern California stopped work on the night of Feb. 10, frustrated by the intimidation tactics of Safeway's janitorial services contractors, including illegal threats of termination, and their proposals to sharply cut standards for wages and benefits. Talks for a new collective bargaining agreement are now in their fifth month.

"I walked out because Safeway's janitorial contractors are not working with us to negotiate a contract which will remedy unsafe and unhealthy conditions in the stores, and help us support and build a life for our families," said Santa Rosa janitor Leodegario Acevedo.

Talks for a new contract began last October between SEIU United Service Workers West, Local 1877, representing 450 janitors at area Safeway supermarkets, and janitorial services contractors ABM, Crystal, Premier and AMS. The four contractors are proposing a big increase in the number of hours a janitor must work to be eligible for health care benefits. They want to increase wages by just 10 cents an hour per year, and seek the right unilaterally to remove janitors from their pension plan. The contractors also propose to eliminate dental benefits for new hires, increase their waiting period for medical coverage, and lower their starting pay to just $8.60 per hour.

Safeway janitors now average just $10.24 per hour. Safeway, Inc. is the third largest U.S. supermarket chain, with an estimated $44.8 billion in annual sales and consistent profits in recent years.

Safety and health are also issues in the talks, with the contractors refusing to add "green cleaning" standards to the contract. Though Safeway janitors now use toxic industrial cleaning chemicals that cause serious health problems and may pose a risk to food safety and customers' health, neither Safeway nor the contractors have been willing to take responsibility. Each claims health and safety conditions fall under the other's jurisdiction.

"Safeway wants to be seen as a responsible, neighborhood grocery store, yet they sit quietly by while their contractors propose cuts to vital benefits and refuse to assure safe working conditions for the janitors who clean their facilities," said Denise Solis, Local 1877's northern California vice president. "Ultimately," she said, "both Safeway and their individual contractors are responsible for making supermarkets safe, clean and green."

After the work stoppage, janitors say they'll continue to mobilize against the contractors' intimidation and proposed cuts, and to speak out against Safeway's silence on the issues. While the union and the contractors have more bargaining dates in the coming weeks, the janitors may soon vote on whether to authorize their bargaining committee to call an unfair labor practices strike. The janitors' last extension of the collective bargaining agreement expired Feb. 9.

"It's insulting to sit at the bargaining table with Safeway's contractors, and hear them say that Safeway won't give them the money to increase our poverty wages, maintain our health care benefits, safeguard our safety and health, and protect their own customers," said Neri Macuixtle, a Salinas janitor and bargaining committee member. "Safeway must own up to its responsibility to ensure quality jobs, safe food and healthy communities."

Since the contract talks began, janitors have visited northern California supermarkets, letting customers know about the problems harsh and dangerous cleaning products can cause to both workers and the buying public, and pressing for a switch to new "green" cleaning standards.

Photo: Janitors make their point at a Nov. 5, 2009, demonstration on the "green cleaning" issue, at a San Francisco Safeway. (PW/Marilyn Bechtel)

The U.S. and the world

From: People's World

by: Sam Webb

December 2 2009

tags: international, imperialism, cooperation, China, U.S. Brazil, India

Editor's note: Excerpted from Sam Webb's report to the CPUSA national committee meeting November 13th, 2009.

The world, it is generally acknowledged, has been torn loose from the old moorings that for decades structured life for billions of people.

This unhinging began with the Volcker "shock" in 1979 (when Federal Reserve Bank chairman Paul Volcker lifted interests rates to nearly 20 per cent), the election of Reagan a year later, and the meltdown of the Soviet Union at decade's end. But it reached a new stage with the rise of China, India, and Brazil, the resurgence of Russia, the social transformations in Venezuela and other Latin American countries; the Iraq war, and the recent world financial and economic crisis.

At the time of the Soviet collapse, defenders of U.S. imperialism declared U.S. imperial power was preeminent and that would remain the case, far into the 21st century. But obviously they badly misread the tealeaves. Though still dominant, the limits of U.S. power are narrowing and a multi-polar world is taking shape.

It is easy to imagine China rivaling the U.S. on the world scene. To go a step further and predict a civilizational re-centering from Europe and America to Asia, with all its implications, isn't out of the question either. (Although, it should be added that while trends are instructive, they become less so as they stretch far into the future. History can, and usually does, surprise.)

This transitional period, some theorists of international relations say, will bring instability, even chaos, and we should not dismiss this out of hand. In earlier periods, conflict, crisis, and war scarred the landscape as once dominant states declined and new ambitious rivals sought to take their place. Such rivalry turned the first half of the 20th century into a bloody and barbaric era.

At the same time, the past doesn't have to be prelude to the future. People and nations do learn. Historical memory can be a force for progress. The vast majority of humankind strongly desires an easing of tensions, an end to violence, and the normalization of international relations.

They want dialogue, negotiation, and a cooperative effort to address climate change, nuclear weapons proliferation, finite natural resources, swelling poverty and disease and broad-based and sustainable economic growth - not threats, war, and uneven economic development.

All of these challenges require speedy collective action. The global clock is ticking

While rivalry between states - especially in a multi-polar world - is built into the world system, the appetite and ambition of our imperialism constitutes the main obstacle to cooperation, peace, and equality.

A less malleable world
U.S. imperialism so far has been reluctant to yield ground to subordinate classes, nations, and regions entwined in the global world order. But reluctance is one thing; capacity to enforce your will is another.

U.S. imperialism doesn't have the same reserves and legitimacy as it had in the second half of the 20th century, its global power is far more circumscribed and collective resistance to the re-imposition of old imperial relationships, dressed in new forms, comes from many different quarters, including from the American people. Hundreds of millions are insisting that the new century not be a rerun of the second half of the old, in which a single country and its allies largely determined the path of global political and economic development. Such a path was unjust, unsustainable, and unacceptable then and is more so now. The world is far less malleable to the architects of imperial rule.

The current worldwide economic crisis has reinforced these sentiments. The turn to neoliberalism, financialization, and hyper globalization three decades ago not only resulted in financial and economic ruin on a world scale, but also, it is commonly understood, originated on Wall Street and in Washington.

Thus the global economic crisis has amplified the insistence of people worldwide that a new economic order be constructed - shorn of U.S. dominance. Not everybody is having it, especially in the seats of imperial power. Some want to reconstruct the old order, while some others are for minor changes that would not undercut in any significant way the dominant position of the U.S.
The outcome of this struggle is still to be decided in the decades ahead. And like everything else, it will be determined as much by human actions as the evolution of broader objective processes.
And given the immediacy of global challenges, history has to be speeded up. This is where humankind again comes in.

Foreign policy
President Obama is resetting U.S. foreign policy. In a series of speeches, he has accented human solidarity, diplomacy, cooperation, and peaceful settlement of contentious issues. In nearly every region of the world, he is engaging with states that during the Bush years were considered mortal enemies - Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea, and others.

In Latin America, he expressed a readiness to put relations on a different footing. In a historic speech in Prague, he voiced his wish to reduce and ultimately abolish nuclear weapons. And in an unprecedented address in Cairo he indicated his eagerness to reset relations with the Muslim world, sit down with the Iranian government, and press for a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

No small achievements! What the president has said (and done) so far constitutes a turn from the policies of the previous administration and an acknowledgement that the U.S. has to adapt to new world realities and challenges
.
And he does so with support of some (more sober and realistic minded) sections of the ruling class.

At the same time, neither the current administration nor the more sober-minded sections of the ruling class are ready at this point to give up U.S. global primacy - top dog status.

Adjustments in policy are not the same as a change of policy. They are not equivalent to reentering the world community on the basis of reciprocity, equality and cooperation.

And yet, it would be a serious mistake to dismiss or "damn with faint praise" the new approaches of the president.

For these changes can make a difference in the lives of hundreds of millions of people. They also create a better political environment for the progressive and anti-imperialist movements to press for a new foreign policy.

That there are inconsistencies and contradictions in words and deeds of the president and others in his administration - on policy towards Cuba, Honduras, Afghanistan, Iran, the fight against terrorism, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, etc - comes as no surprise. The opposition to any significant adjustments of foreign policy is enormously powerful and includes core sections of transnational corporate capital, the military-industrial and energy complexes, the Pentagon, right-wing extremists, the foreign policy lobbies, other elements of the national security state, and not least elements within the Obama administration itself.

Each, motivated by geoeconomic and geopolitical objectives and couch their imperial/hegemonic aims in the language of democracy, humanitarianism, and anti-terrorist bromides (terrorist actions are an undeniable danger and deserve a collective, proportionate, and many layered response, but shouldn't be turned into a rationalization for the protection and expansion of U.S. imperialist interests), is anxious to maintain U.S primacy in some form.

U.S. foreign policy, however, is not solely decided in elite circles. In the larger vector of struggle that determines our place in the world are found the American people and people and governments the world over.

An immediate task is to resolve the highly combustible trouble spots mentioned above in a peaceful, democratic, and just way, thereby easing tensions and weakening the hand of imperialism and political reaction worldwide.

What do Coal and Dirty Dorm Rooms Have in Common?

From: Compass

This is the weekly post from Bruce Nilles, director of the Sierra Club Beyond Coal Campaign.

Know a college student? As this holiday weekend rolls in and many of you might have college kids coming back to your home with huge bags full of dirty laundry, we’ve got something for you.

Know a college student with a dirty room? If you're nodding your head 'yes' right now, send them this link so they can be part of our quest to find the dirtiest room in the nation (or you – the friends or parents - can take a photo and enter them yourself!).

We're betting the dirtiest room we find, no matter how filthy, is still not as dirty as the coal that powers many of our nation's campuses.

The owner of the dirtiest room -- dorm, fraternity, or apartment -- will win a free, green cleaning service from the Sierra Club.

This is another step in our Too Dirty for College Campaign, which I've written about before. We've already had folks tell university presidents that it's time to move beyond coal and power our schools with 100 percent clean-energy solutions.

Now we're proving that no matter how dirty college gets, it's not as dirty as coal.

Your room (or your kid's or friend's room) might be completely filthy, but it's still not as bad as toxic pollution, mountaintop removal and global warming. Coal is dirty, dangerous and far too old to be fueling our nation’s college campuses. It poisons people's water when we drag it out of our mountains, it fills our air with asthma and cancer-causing toxins, and then continues its dirty legacy when the waste is dumped in unlined ponds. We can do better and our schools must lead the way.

So show us that dirty room. To enter, go to this "2dirty4college" photo contest group, and join our online community. You can then upload your image by clicking "Add a photo" on the left-hand side of the page.

Again, the owner of the dirtiest room will win a free, green cleaning service from the Sierra Club. So, call that ex-boyfriend, pay a special visit to your friend's fraternity or call those gals living in the group house next door with the funky smell, and get them to enter today for the glory of being the dirtiest in country. (And a free clean up!)

Help us find the dirtiest room and show that while college can get pretty nasty, coal is still far, far worse.

Scary Movie - The Horror of the Employee Free Choice Act

Committing heresy: Nazis and the Berlin Wall

From: People's World

BERLIN — Close to my home here, I saw a frightening march Oct. 11 of Nazis, calling themselves the Nationale Sozialistische Partei Deutschlands, leaving out only the word "arbeiter" (worker) from the name Hitler used. Several thousand of them, almost all in black, many skinheads but also many all too "normal-looking" youngsters (and a smattering of very blonde girls), with the loudest loudspeaker I've heard in years blaring out their propaganda. They were agitating against democracy, denouncing the Bundestag representatives, even the cops, spreading hatred against all foreigners, but above all against the left and the leftists. At least one big banner contained a threat: "Make sure you know where the nearest antifascist club is located."

They started at Alexander-Platz, halted at the circle near my house to yell and chant for 20 minutes, then marched along to Platz der Vereinten Nationen (UN Square, once Lenin-Platz) and along Landsberger Allee, once Lenin-Allee, stopping for a meeting, perhaps by accident halfway between where the big Lenin statue was torn down after the end of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and the quiet, hardly noticeable little memorial cemetery with graves and a monument to those who died in the Revolutions of 1848 and 1918-1919.

After a ranting speech in tones recalling Hitler or Goebbels, too loud for me to understand much, their leader read out 50 or more names of all their "martyrs," punctuating each name with a roll on a drum and his loud call for "rache" (revenge).

The only name I recognized was the big Nazi "hero" Horst Wessel, who died 200 meters from here in the hospital which the Nazis renamed after him until 1945. The song about his alleged murder served the Nazis as a main hymn and then as a second national anthem.

Along the main route from which began at the central Alexander-Platz there were hundreds of people walking along on both sides, shouting "Nazis raus" (Out with the Nazis"), often carrying handmade signs or some banners, including a few from the Left Party, the Young Greens, the new anti-establishment "Pirate Party" (which opposes laws limiting pirating of music) and a few from union youth and antifascist groups. Between the marchers and the protesters was a giant number of police, which walked along to protect the Nazis, or to keep the two groups apart. Scores of police vehicles, including a water cannon and an ambulance, were ahead of, next to or behind the marchers.

One man who was standing next to me watching the meeting noted that the anti-Nazis, mostly the same age as the Nazis, were also often wearing black jackets, the color in fashion these days, I guess. He seemed to lump both Nazis and anti-Nazis together, a worrisome development. I don't know how many others also thought that way.

Most of the crowd was decidedly antifascist. Some, perhaps those whose emotions led them to break though to attack the Nazis, got arrested.

Especially frightening for me: many Nazis were carrying big flags, totally black except, in white letters, the county or town they came from. These represented the "fighting groups." While some of those organized in the three officially permitted neo-Nazi parties are well-dressed and often clever tacticians (who profit from the fact that their legal parties still get state subsidies granted every party with a certain percentage of the vote), these hitherto semi-clandestine "fighting groups" are loosely allied with them, and are largely made up of the worst thugs, who go around beating up people of foreign background or of color and left-wingers, whom they call "zechen" or ticks. Even the most violent ones are rarely caught or arrested and, when they are, are usually dealt with very mildly. They gather in a number of bars and "youth centers" and purchase clothing with Nazi code-signs and paraphernalia at a number of shops in Berlin and most major cities. Some jackets have SS runes or the number 88, for Heil Hitler - H being the 8th letter of the alphabet.

They were especially excited because a few days ago two Molotov cocktails were thrown into one of their best-known bars and meeting places (aptly called "At the Executioner"), injuring a few of them, one severely. They immediately blamed this on leftist opponents of the bar, but the police are now convinced the bombs were thrown by disgruntled neo-Nazis, either because of turf quarrels or simply because the doorkeepers didn't let them in some evening.

The march, the number of pro-Nazi young people, the blaring noise and the clear dedication to a fearful past made for a frightening event stirring up countless recollections here in the middle of Berlin.

The media are currently overflowing with recollections of those heroic weeks 20 years ago and of how the oppressed people of East Germany chose freedom and forced the fall of the Berlin Wall. It is the usual blatant over-simplification of a fearfully complicated matter, told in a completely one-sided way. Somehow I could not help recalling how we in the GDR scoffed or laughed when the party officialdom rejected the word "mauer," or "wall" used almost universally for the Berlin Wall, and insisted, quite in vain, on the unwieldy term "antifascist protective barrier."

Of course, everyone knew that it was erected to keep people in, not out, which was why so many rejoiced at its fall. But watching this menacing parade made me wonder: was it perhaps, in a way and in the historical long run, also indeed a kind of protection against Nazis like these?

But even considering such matters these days, at least aloud, is of course pure heresy.

America needs warriors for justice

From: People's World

by: Stewart Acuff

October 4 2009

tags: Labor,

Original Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

It is beyond doubt that we are living in a period of potentially great historical change in the United States.

Just a year ago we trade unionists, progressives, and Americans of good will made history with the election of an African-American President--something many of us never thought possible -- and large majorities of pro-working family Democrats in both Houses of Congress.

With the implosion of our financial services sector and the consequent economic crisis and recession, it has become abundantly clear that unregulated, unfettered free market capitalism doesn't work for anyone. We now have irrefutable proof that greed is not good, that the markets don't by themselves work for the common good in the nation's interest, that if all the money and resources go to the top, the middle and the bottom are starved. And speaking of the middle, we now know that the middle class is in peril -- endangered by the policies of free market economics -- unfettered corporate-driven globalization, illegal and immoral union busting, contracting out, working rat, privatization, benefit busting, wage thievery -- all the policies that have made up the 30 year assault on working families and unions. While some may have doubted these truths two or four or more years ago, these truths are beyond doubt today.

Those who once held themselves up to be leaders of our society and government are now scorned -- Wall St, Bush, Cheney, AIG. The recipients of the governments bailouts continue to shovel obscene amounts of our money to executives without a clue while we suffer 10 percent unemployment, continued loss of health care, and declining wages and a consequent declining standard of living, and a potentially frightening future for our kids and grandkids and beyond.

Most importantly, our people are ready for and even demanding change. By significant majorities, Americans want a public healthcare plan included in the larger health care reform package, and Americans want the Employee Free Choice Act to be passed to once again allow American workers to freely form unions and bargain collectively.

America is ready for change.

Why then is change so hard to achieve?

Those who've prosecuted and benefited from the 30 year financial assault on America's working families refuse to let go, to give up what they've come to see as theirs -- the insurance companies, the union busters, the ABC, the Comcasts, the Walmarts, Wall St and manipulators of our finances, the Radical Rightwing including Cheney and Rush Limbaugh and Karl Rove and Dick Armey and the Heritage Foundation and Cato Institute.

It is clear that if we are to win the change we voted for last fall and many of us have worked for for years, we are gonna have to fight, fight hard, and fight outside the normal Washington lobbying box.

Washington politics and lobbying does not work for workers and working families.

We cannot forget that we've gotten to the verge of passing the Employee Free Choice Act by running the largest national grassroots legislative campaign in the history of the American labor movement. Over the six year course of this campaign we've put literally hundreds of thousands of people on the street and more than a million workers in motion. We delivered one and a half million signatures to the Congress, sent half a million emails, wrote 300,000 handwritten letters and made 200,000 phone calls to Senators.

That's a ton of good work. But it is more than clear that we have to do more of it.

While the Employee Free Choice Act has not yet passed, we have realized many benefits -- more than a dozen states have passed new public employee collective bargaining laws including majority authorization. Public officials from town and county commissions to city councils to state assemblies to governors and mayors to the Congress to the President of the United States now realize what hell workers go through when they try to organize and bargain for a better life. More public officials than ever have weighed in to support workers trying to organize.

We have got to ramp up our grassroots lobbying by our members.

But just as importantly, we have to ramp up our effort to engage and organize workers who don't have a union, to make use of the progress and allies we've made and enlist unorganized workers in the struggle to organize their workplaces and to fight and struggle in the public policy fight to pass the Employee Free Choice Act. Every organizing campaign is a direct and clear reason to pass the Employee Free Choice Act.

It is not enough to wait for the Employee Free Choice Act to pass. We have to demonstrate its necessity with struggle--old fashioned struggle right now, today not tomorrow. And by their actions, unorganized workers have to demonstrate the necessity for the passage of the Employee Free Choice Act.

It is not enough to wait on the law to change.

History is not made and humanity is not advanced by those who accept the status quo. History is made and the human condition is advanced by warriors willing to struggle for a better life for their kids and grandkids, warriors who understand what they have was won by the blood and tears and sacrifice of our forebears.

America today needs warriors -- warriors to organize and struggle, to fight for change, to fight the Radical Right and corporate domination, to organize and struggle, to dare the rat bastards to stop us, to refuse to lose, to challenge the status quo, to tell those who've run our country and too many lives into the ditch that change is now, that we will fight in Washington but that we will also fight all across America.

The future is ours. Let's take it.

This article originally appeared on HuffingtonPost.com and is published with the permission of the author.

New website

People's Weekly World new website: People's World

09.24.2009 Young Communist League Weekly Update

Este es un mensaje bilingue. This is a bilingual message.

"Politics begin where the masses are, not where there are thousands, but where there are millions, that is where serious politics begin." -Vladimir Lenin

Mass Action: Tell your Representative and Senators to support the DREAM Act

Thousands of students across the country are participating in the National Back to School DREAM Act Day of Action urging their Representative and Senators to support the DREAM Act that would allow thousands of immigrant students the ability to attend college. The United States Student Association (USSA) has a script you can use to email your Rep and Senators with (link to word "script" http://www.usstudents.org/our-work/legislative/dream-act-take-action . You can also find our more information and the importance of the DREAM Act here (link to word here http://www.dreamactivist.org/ ).

In the News: Obama opposition based on racism, Jimmy Carter says

Obama opposition based on racism, Jimmy Carter says
by Pepe Lozano

Former president Jimmy Carter, 84, believes much of the opposition directed at Barack Obama since his election stems from deep-seated roots of racism and a fear that an African American is at the head of the U.S. government. To read the full article, check the People's Weekly World Website (link to word "website" http://www.pww.org/article/view/17011 )

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

1. How much of the opposition to Obama's healthcare plan and other legislation do you think is fueled by racism? Obama himself has stated that he was "black before the election" as a response to the conservative opposition. Do you think that Obama would be able to say that the conservative opposition is fueled by racism?

2. Do Democrats and progressives gain/lose anything by focusing on racism over the the issues such as the role of the federal government and the need for the public option?

3. What happened to Van Jones? Why did he resign from office? What factors were at play?

Eastern Regional Collective

The Eastern Regional Collective first met on September 19^th, 2009 in Boston, MA. This collective is comprised of leaders and members of the YCL from Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New York, Maryland, Philadelphia, and New Jersey. This collective focuses on the triad of Culture, Education and Mobilization, with the emphasis on Cultural Work. They plan to hold Regional Marxism Schools, Music/Live Art Showcases, and to work together to build locally. At their first meeting, they demonstrated their advanced understanding of the current political climate, and displayed a high level of organizing skills.

WATCH OUT FOR THEIR BLOG: ycleast.blogspot.com, and if you want to get involved, email them @ ycl.east@gmail.com

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Este es un mensaje bilingüe. Este es un mensaje bilingüe.

"La política comienza donde están las masas, no donde hay miles, pero donde hay millones, que es donde la política seria empezar". -Vladimir Lenin

Acción: Dígale a su Representante y los Senadores a apoyar la Ley DREAM

Miles de estudiantes de todo el país participan en la Vuelta a la Escuela Nacional de DREAM Act Día de Acción insta a su representante y los senadores a apoyar la Ley DREAM que permitiría a miles de estudiantes inmigrantes la posibilidad de asistir a la universidad. La Asociación de Estudiantes de Estados Unidos (USSA) tiene una secuencia de comandos que puede utilizar para enviar su representante y con los senadores (enlace con la palabra "script" http://www.usstudents.org/our-work/legislative/dream-act-take- acción. También puede encontrar nuestros más información y la importancia de la Ley DREAM aquí (enlace a la palabra aquí http://www.dreamactivist.org/).

En las noticias: La oposición de Obama basada en el racismo, Jimmy Carter, dice

La oposición de Obama basada en el racismo, Jimmy Carter, dice
por Pepe Lozano

El ex presidente Jimmy Carter, de 84 años, cree que gran parte de la oposición dirigida a Barack Obama desde su elección se deriva de las raíces profundas del racismo y el temor de que un afroamericano está a la cabeza del gobierno de EE.UU.. Para leer el artículo completo, consulte el People's Weekly World Web (enlace con la palabra "sitio web" http://www.pww.org/article/view/17011)

Preguntas de discusión:

1. ¿Qué parte de la oposición al plan de salud de Obama y otra legislación crees que es alimentado por el racismo? El propio Obama ha declarado que era "negro antes de la elección", como una respuesta a la oposición conservadora. ¿Cree que Obama sería capaz de decir que la oposición conservadora está alimentada por el racismo?

2. Los demócratas y los progresistas de ganar-perder nada por la lucha contra el racismo en el de las cuestiones como el papel del gobierno federal y la necesidad de la opción pública?



3. ¿Qué pasó con Van Jones? ¿Por qué ha cesado en su cargo? ¿Qué factores estaban en juego?

Colectivo Regional del Este

El Colectivo de la Región Oriental reunió por primera vez el 19 de septiembre de 2009 en Boston, MA. Este colectivo está compuesto por líderes y miembros de la YCL de Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Nueva York, Maryland, Filadelfia y Nueva Jersey. Este colectivo se centra en la tríada de Cultura, Educación y Movilización, con el énfasis en la obra cultural. Que planean celebrar el marxismo Regional de Escuelas, Música / Live Art vitrinas, y de trabajar juntos para construir a nivel local. En su primera reunión, que han demostrado su comprensión avanzada de la actual clima político, y muestra un alto nivel de capacidades de organización.

¡OJO CON SU BLOG: ycleast.blogspot.com, y si quieres participar, them@ycl.east correo electrónico @ gmail.com

Why is Pat Buchanan Defending Hitler?

Link

MSNBC conservative commentator and former Republican presidential candidate Pat Buchanan has a history of insensitivity to issues surrounding the Holocaust. Yet again, with the 70th anniversary of the start of World War II, Buchanan posted a telling column on his own website and on Townhall that seems to blame Poland for World War II.

In a piece titled "Just how crazy is Pat Buchanan," Ethan Porter writes on his blog, "Mr. Obama's Neighborhood," that Buchanan's latest comments reflect "revisionism that comes perilously close to denial:"

Despite his current position, as a friendly sparring partner with Rachel Maddow and in-house winger on MSNBC, the guy has been a very-thinly veiled fascist sympathizer for decades. And in his column this week, he all but removes that veil.

Available here, the column is titled "Did Hitler Want War?" Buchanan believes the answer to be no. He pins the blame for World War II on Poland, and Britain's guarantee of protection to it. As evidence, Buchanan points to a string of inexplicably dumb decisions made by Hitler-so dumb that, to Buchanan, they negate the myths about the war and the man thought by nearly all sentient beings to be its instigator.

You might think that Buchanan would have stopped using this sort of unrepentant rhetoric as his career moved from a Republican firebrand to a commentator on one of the nation's top cable news channels - but you'd be wrong.

Buchanan has the sort of history that has earned him an entire page on the Anti-Defamation League's (ADL) website. The ADL goes so far as to describe Buchanan as one who "publicly espouses racist, anti-Semitic, anti-Israel and anti-immigrant views." The site features a sampling of more than 2,000 of Buchanan's own words, but maybe more telling are the thoughts of the late conservative intellectual William Buckley, who was included in a Newsweek's article "Is Pat Buchanan Anti-Semitic:"

Buchanan also wrote that if the United States went to war, the fighting would be done by "kids with names like McAllister, Murphy, Gonzales, and Leroy Brown." Buckley, in his usual opaque writing style, argues that this amounts to charging Jews with starting a war they wouldn't fight in a genuine slur against them. He adds: "I find it impossible to defend Pat Buchanan against the charge that what he did and said during the period under examination amounted to anti-Semitism, whatever it was that drove him to say and do it: most probably, an iconoclastic temperament."

These are rough words coming from Buckley, who goes to great pains to distinguish between anti-Semitism and simply voicing criticism of Israel.

It is hard to be surprised by a man who has written many columns concerning World War II revisionism, but this may be his worst yet.

However, what may be most surprising is why Buchanan still has a job.

Actually, there is a place on MSNBC where he may belong - you would have to ask Keith Olbermann about that one.

UPDATE: MSNBC is currently promoting Buchanan's column on MSNBC.com. This is beyond ridiculous. The National Jewish Democratic Council just issued a statement that says: "This sort of historical revisionism is deplorable. Buchanan's latest column should be removed immediately from MSNBC.com, and no worthy news organization should employ a commentator who engages in such vile fiction."

UPDATE II: Within an hour of our press release, MSNBC has removed Buchanan's column, "Did Hitler Want War," from their website. Here's a response from David A. Harris, NJDC's President: "MSNBC took the responsible action and removed Pat Buchanan's column defending Adolf Hitler from their website, but no worthy news organization should employ and promote a commentator who engages in such vile fiction."

Follow Aaron Keyak on Twitter: www.twitter.com/akeyak

Plot to kill Post Office cloaked by right wing ‘recess rally’ chaos

From: PWW

Author: John Wojcik
People's Weekly World Newspaper, 08/11/09 13:13

Even as it works overtime to disrupt the national debate on health care reform, the radical right is taking advantage of the chaos to quietly destroy yet another public service Americans take for granted – the United States Postal Service.
Working through Sen. Thomas Coburn, R-Okla., they have rolled a huge boulder onto the road lawmakers are taking to close a $7 billion budget deficit hanging over the agency for the year ending Sept. 30.

Coburn attached a killer amendment, just before the Senate’s August recess, to legislation that would grant the Postal Service the $5 billion it needs to cover health care costs for retirees. Without the legislation the agency says that on Sept. 1 it will have to fire more than 50,000 workers, close down hundreds of post offices and kill Saturday pickup and delivery.

The right-wing amendment effectively squashes the collective bargaining rights of the entire Postal Service workforce by ordering arbitrators to place the fiscal condition of the Postal Service ahead of any contractual obligations the agency has to its workers or retirees.

The law, as amended by Coburn, would allow the Postal Service, for example, to withhold a $5.4 billion payment it must make within a month to cover retiree health care costs.

The postal worker unions are warning that attachment of the Coburn amendment to the rescue bill forces them to withdraw their earlier support for the legislation.

“The Coburn amendment serves only to upset collective bargaining procedures,” said Bill Burrus, president of the American Postal Service Workers Union.

The new Letter Carriers president, Frederic Rolando, told senators in a hearing just before the recess, that his union also could not support a bill containing the Coburn amendment.
Witnesses at the Aug. 6 Senate hearing pointed out that health care costs are only part of the problems the agency faces.

Mail volume has dropped by 12 percent in the last year and the drop is expected to reach 16 percent by the end of fiscal 2009, in September, according to the Government Accounting Office.

Postmaster General John Potter told senators that the USPS has lost much of its volume because of the Internet.

Potter, who was named by a GOP-appointed Postal Board during the Bush administration, has proposed cuts in the workforce as the solution. He says that at least 677 post offices should be closed, most of them in major cities, and that 55,000 workers should be fired.

The USPS workforce, the unions note, has already shrunk, through retirements and buyouts, to 603,000 workers, from 773,000 several years ago.
The unions are saying there is a better way than job cuts.

Both union leaders are angry about the radical right amendment to the rescue bill because they have already been working with USPS management on money-saving plans.

The Letter Carriers and the agency, for example, are reviewing 168,000 city letter carrier routes, examining them for possible consolidations.
Senators at the Aug. 6 hearing were non-committal on the Coburn amendment.

Sen. Joseph Lieberman, Ind., Conn., was among the group of supposedly pro-labor Democrats who weren’t saying too much.

He asked Rolando and Burrus to submit conditions they would attach to any arbitrations.
Both restated their opposition to the anti-labor amendment attached by Coburn but declined to offer any others.

Limbaugh’s Nazi slurs draw condemnation

From: PWW

Author: Susan Webb
People's Weekly World Newspaper, 08/11/09 14:43

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi threw Rush Limbaugh into a snit when she objected to use of Nazi symbols by anti-health-reform protesters.

On Aug. 5, when a reporter asked Pelosi if she thought the right-wing-organized protests were real grassroots expressions, she replied, "I think they are Astroturf, you be the judge."

Astroturf, the fake grass used in sports arenas, is being used to refer to fake “grassroots” happenings that are a specialty of far-right groups, going back to the “Brooks Brothers riot” in December 2000 that intimidated Miami-Dade election officials into stopping the vote recounting.

"They're carrying swastikas and symbols like that to a town hall meeting on health care," Pelosi noted.

Limbaugh, the next day on his radio talk show, accused Pelosi of being “deranged” because “she's running around now claiming that we're Nazis, that not only are we an unruly mob but that people are showing up wearing swastikas.”

But a spokesman for Pelosi told FOXNews.com that Pelosi was referring to a photo taken at a Massachusetts town hall meeting hosted by Democratic Rep. Ed Markey. The photo showed a protester holding a sign bearing a swastika crossed out over Obama's name and a question mark.

Also in Massachusetts, according to news reports, one protester compared Democratic Rep. Jim McGovern to the Nazi Josef Mengele, who did ghastly medical experiments on concentration camp prisoners.

At a photo site linked to the right-wing freerepublic.com, someone named Dallas59 posted a photo of people at an unidentified rally holding a giant photo of Obama with a Hitler mustache drawn on.

On Aug. 7, CNN’s Rick Sanchez identified the same photo as from a rally outside a health care forum in Romulus, Mich.

Sanchez also displayed a photo from Texas of a man holding a sign depicting Democratic Rep. Lloyd Doggett as the devil, next to another sign with the symbol of the Nazi SS and a slogan talking about stopping socialism.

Today, Rep. David Scott, D-Ga., told reporters that his district office in Smyrna was vandalized with a four-foot swastika last night.

Viveca Novak, at factcheck.org, writes, “Pelosi did not actually accuse opponents of being neo-Nazis; that’s just the way Limbaugh and others chose to interpret her phrase, ‘carrying swastikas and symbols like that.’ It is clear from the images in hand that the anti-Obama protesters were the ones accusing others of Nazi-like tendencies. And Pelosi turns out to be right.”

In fact, Limbaugh spent much of his Aug. 6 radio diatribe invoking the Nazis and Adolf Hitler in a highly provocative way, with a strong paranoid streak.

Limbaugh declared, “The Democrat Party and where it's taken this country, the radical left leadership of this party bears much more resemblance to Nazi policies than anything we on the right believe in at all.”

“The Obama health care logo is damn close to a Nazi swastika logo,” Limbaugh claimed, calling it “right out of Adolf Hitler's playbook.” He likened Obama to Adolf Hitler, saying President Obama is “not who he said he was” and cannot be trusted.

An event today showed that Limbaugh’s provocative language is not just an abstract matter.

MSNBC today aired footage of the crowd gathering before Obama’s afternoon town hall meeting on health care in New Hampshire, and pointed out one man in a group holding protest signs with a gun in a holster on his hip.

The gun-toting protestor was holding a sign reading “It is Time to Water the Tree of Liberty.” It is a reference to the Thomas Jefferson quote: "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants." Police said the man is legally carrying the gun, is nowhere near where the president will be, and is "under constant surveillance," Talking Points Memo reports.

Last Friday, major Jewish groups condemned the use of Nazi comparisons and images to attack health care reform.

David A. Harris, president of the National Jewish Democratic Council, called the Nazi references "not funny" and "profoundly troubling."

"At these too-well-organized 'mad as hell and we're not going to take it anymore' town hall meetings around the country this August, more and more of these disturbing Nazi comparisons are cropping up — and they all seem to be coming from the heart of the Republican base," he said. "And it has to stop."

The Anti-Defamation League issued a statement condemning the use of Nazi imagery by some reform opponents as "outrageous, offensive and inappropriate."

The ADL, the nation's largest Jewish civil rights group, specifically condemned Limbaugh’s Nazi comparisons.

“The use of Nazi symbolism is outrageous, offensive and inappropriate," said ADL national director Abraham H. Foxman, a Holocaust survivor.

"Comparisons to the Nazis are deeply offensive and only serve to diminish and trivialize the extent of the Nazi regime's crimes against humanity and the murder of six million Jews and millions of others in the Holocaust," said Foxman. "I don't see any comparison here. It's off-center, off-issue and completely inappropriate."

The National Jewish Democratic Council has an online petition “Tell Rush: Nazi Rhetoric Must Stop.” It calls on Clear Channel Communications (the parent company of Premiere Radio Networks which produces “The Rush Limbaugh Show”) to “stop allowing Limbaugh to abuse the memory of the more than 12 million Holocaust victims who suffered and died at the hands of Adolf Hitler and his Nazi regime.”

suewebb @ pww.org

SickForProfit: Video Series Highlights Insurance Company Greed

From: AFL-CIO Now Blog

by Mike Hall, Aug 7, 2009

United Healthcare’s “mission is to help people live healthier lives,” CEO Stephen Hemsley told the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee in March.

But the health insurance giant’s real mission is to maximize its profits and executive pay and to defeat health care reform that threatens that pot of gold, says the new website SickForProfit.com.

Launched by Brave New Films, SickForProft will feature a series of Web videos spotlighting several large insurance companies—their profits, their CEOs’ astronomical compensation and the stories of everyday families insured by those firms but denied coverage or turned away altogether.

Welcome to the American health insurance industry. Instead of helping policyholders attain the health security they need for their families, big insurance companies get rich by denying coverage to patients. Now they’re sending lobbyists to Washington, D.C., to twist the arms of lawmakers to oppose reform of the status quo. Why? Because the status quo pays.

United Healthcare’s Hemsley finds the status quo quite comfortable, with nearly three-quarters of a billion dollars in unexercised stock options and millions in annual salary, according to the first film posted at Brave New Films.

But that same status quo made the first few years of Isabella Griggs life miserable and painful for the little Watertown, Wis., girl, and heartbreaking for her parents. Isabella was born with several life threatening conditions, says her mother, Stephanie, including the inability to eat solid food.

Isabella was forced to use a feeding tube that delivered liquid nourishment straight to her stomach, a painful and frightening treatment for a young child. But when her parents discovered and were accepted into a treatment program for which doctors said Isabella was “an ideal candidate,” United Healthcare refused to pay. Of course, the company had gladly accepted the Griggs’ premiums for years.

After waiting weeks for approval, Stephanie says:

First, we were told that the paperwork was lost, and then we were told that it was being denied….They make all that money off the backs of people like us.

It was only after Stephanie posted a YouTube video chronicling their battle and United Healthcare’s despicable denials, that the Griggs’ family saw some action. After thousands of views, posting on insurance watchdog websites, United Healthcare, seeing the quick viral growth of the video, suddenly had a change of heart and agreed to cover the treatment.

Click here to see Isabella’s story and those of two other United Healthcare customers coldly denied the life-changing treatment. Click here to find out how much insurance industry CEOs are making out of the broken health care system and here to tell your own story of insurance industry abuses.

Labor issues call for a new New Deal

From: PWW

Author: John Wojcik
People's Weekly World Newspaper, 07/29/09 13:13

The executive council of the AFL-CIO, the nation’s largest labor federation, called for a massive second economic stimulus package yesterday, modeled after FDR’s Works Progress Administration, noting that the agency put 3.5 million people to work in 1935 alone. The council, after a one-day meeting yesterday in Silver Springs, Md., declared:

“President Roosevelt’s strategy can be re-engineered to help revitalize the modern manufacturing sector by putting the jobless to work renovating factories and public structures, while others can develop financing and marketing plans to support domestic production and jobs.”

In addition to the WPA-type program the federation said the second stimulus plan must include an additional seven weeks or more extension of jobless benefits, another increase in food stamp benefits, more aid to state and local governments to prevent further layoffs and service cuts and more spending on infrastructure and clean energy products.

The federation said the measures are called for because the current recession is much deeper than anyone had first thought.

The call for the second stimulus was issued after the executive council met in a closed-door session with Jared Bernstein, a top economic aide in the Obama administration. During the session Bernstein talked about the administration’s pro-labor moves, said the first stimulus is slowly beginning to work and that the administration is not yet ready for a second stimulus.

AFL-CIO Policy Director Thea Lee said, in a phone interview, that Bernstein told the council that “one third of the stimulus money has been spent or is in the pipeline.” Lee said the union leaders directly pushed the administration spokesman for a second stimulus package and that “Bernstein said they’re not ready to talk about that yet.”

Labor has, of course, been more than ready to discuss a second stimulus.

Richard Trumka, AFL-CIO secretary-treasurer, has been calling for one for several months.

Earlier this month Trumka said the first stimulus, at $787 billion, was “too small for an economy with a 9.5 percent jobless rate, falling industrial production, rising foreclosures and declining gross domestic product.”

The union leaders went further in their warnings about the economy yesterday than they have gone in any statement thus far. Their statement said that, within 12 months, one third of all U.S. workers could end up finding themselves in either the category of unemployed or underemployed.

The executive council also announced plans for two big labor mobilizations in August – one on health care and another on the Employee Free Choice Act.

Both campaigns are intended to counter the on-going business backed efforts against both health care reform and labor law reform.

Sources say the labor leaders were angry about the decision of the Democratic-run 111th Congress, due to divisions within the Democratic majority, to put off final decisions on health care until after Sept. 8.

Even as the council was meeting unions were funneling 50,000 phone calls to members of Congress as part of a national day of action on health care reform.

Discussing the Employee Free Choice Act after the meeting, AFL-CIO Organizing Director Stewart Acuff said, “The important thing is to preserve the essential elements of the Employee Free Choice Act: Restoring the freedom to organize and bargain collectively. That’s the measure by which any tweaking of the law will be judged.”

The council itself reaffirmed the federation’s strong support for the bill’s majority sign-up provision, which calls for recognition of a union as soon as a majority of workers sign cards indicating that they want representation by that union.

Acuff said that alternatives to majority sign-up, including mail-in ballots, mail-in authorization cards and quick NLRB elections were not discussed much at the meeting but were also not ruled out. “These would be dramatically better than what we have now,” he said.

Current law allows long campaigns that give employers the opportunity to harass, intimidate and fire union organizers.

Senate sponsor Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, continues to insist that majority sign-up is still on the table. “Nothing is agreed to until everything is agreed to,” he is saying.

After the meeting AFL-CIO Legislative Director, Bill Samuel and AFSCME President Gerald McEntee described some of the discussion on health care reform.

“We reviewed what’s happened so far and talked about our success in beating back the idea of taxing health benefits,” Samuel said.

“But if the Senate Finance Committee decides to let employers off the hook and to ax the government run public option, we’ll have to see what to do,” said McEntee.

McEntee’s union, alone, has some 16,000 members out campaigning for health care with a strong public option and is running a national television ad campaign on the issue.

White House school reform plan draws mixed reaction

From: PWW

Author: Susan Webb
People's Weekly World Newspaper, 07/27/09 14:41

Teachers unions and advocates gave a mixed reaction to a $4.35 billion education reform initiative announced by President Obama and U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan last week.

Billed by Obama as “one of the largest investments in education reform in American history,” the new program is part of the $787 billion economic stimulus plan passed by Congress and signed into law by Obama in February.

Under the “Race to the Top” program, states will compete for federal funding grants for innovation in education.

"Rather than divvying it up and handing it out, we are letting states and districts compete for it,” Obama said as he and Duncan announced the program last Friday. “That's how we can incentivize excellence and spur reform and launch a race for the top in America's public schools.”

Duncan said his department will be “scrutinizing state applications for a coordinated and deep-seated commitment to reform.”

Among the more controversial elements of Race to the Top are requirements that promote the growth of charter schools, link teacher evaluation and pay to student performance and push for national student performance standards — presumably measured by standardized tests.

Duncan said states will be awarded grants based on their readiness to implement four core reforms:

* “adopt common, internationally-benchmarked K-12 standards that truly prepare students for college and careers.” To speed this process, Duncan said, the Race to the Top program will set aside $350 million to fund the development of” rigorous, common state assessments.”

* “monitor growth in student learning—and identify effective instructional practices.”

* “identify effective teachers and principals, reward and retain more top-notch teachers—and improve or replace ones who aren't up to the job.”

* "institute far-reaching reforms, replace school staff, and change the school culture.”

Duncan emphasized that the four reforms are interrelated, and “one reform reinforces the others.”

“When teachers get better data on student growth,” he said, “it empowers teachers to tailor classroom instruction to the needs of their students and boost student achievement.”

“When principals are able to identify their most effective and least effective teachers, it makes it easier for them to place teachers where they are needed most—and provide struggling teachers with help.”

“When superintendents have the authority to tackle their lowest performing schools by replacing staff and shaking up the school culture, they will have the ability—for the first time—to close or remake the dropout factories in our urban districts that are at the root of our dropout problem.”

Obama said the Race to the Top competition “will not be based on politics or ideology or the preferences of a particular interest group.”

“We will use the best evidence available to determine whether a state can meet a few key benchmarks for reform — and states that outperform the rest will be rewarded with a grant,” the president said.

Many education reform advocates, including teachers and their unions, are concerned that the competition guidelines appear to place excessive reliance on standardized multiple-choice or fill-in-the-blank tests

National Education Association President Dennis Van Roekel said in a statement that the NEA would “encourage the Education Department to think more broadly about what it views as the basic tenets of a student’s educational experience.”

“If we continue to focus narrowly on test scores, then students in need of the most support will continue to get more test prep rather than the rich, challenging, engaging education they deserve,” Van Roekel said.

“Teachers should be evaluated on their practice using multiple criteria, not just one,” he said.

Likewise, Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said on the AFT website, “Hopefully we will agree that teacher evaluations must be improved the right way. We need meaningful, fair and multiple measures for supporting and evaluating teachers so that evaluations aren't based on one observation by a principal or one standardized test score."

Weingarten and Van Roekel along with state and local teachers union leaders were among the invited guests at the July 24 announcement of the Race to the Top initiative.

One of the local leaders, Jean Clements, president of the Hillsborough (Fla.) Classroom Teachers Association, a joint affiliate of the AFT and the NEA, addressed the gathering. "There is no 'one thing' that will improve teacher quality or student achievement," she said.

She cited successful joint initiatives by her local union and school district including high-quality mentoring and coaching, well-trained principals who work collaboratively with teachers, adequate resources, and professional growth opportunities at all career stages.

Noted educator and reform advocate Deborah Meier says the drive for national standardized testing gives her “chills.”

In a July 14 interview posted on her web site, Meier condemns reliance on standardized tests. “We have made what can be measured cheaply (and thus is easily ranked) the definition of being ‘well-educated’,” Meier says. “We have defined ‘achievement’ and even ‘performance’ to scores on paper-and-pencil tasks, largely of the multiple choice variety, without any evidence that this is wise policy, or will produce either a stronger economy or a stronger democracy. (Or even stronger college performance!)”

The two national teachers unions said they would study the details of the Race to the Top proposal and, in Van Roekel’s words, “use the 30-day comment period to find common ground with the administration.”

suewebb @ pww.org

Raul points the way for Cuba on July 26

From: PWW

Author: Morning Star
People's Weekly World Newspaper, 07/26/09 16:40

Original source: morningstaronline.co.uk

Raul Castro has said that the global economic crisis means tougher times ahead for Cuba, but the country has no-one to blame but itself for poor farm production.

In a speech marking Revolution Day, the Cuban president said that the island can't simply pin all its problems on Washington's 47-year-old trade embargo.

He implored Cubans to take better advantage of a government programme initiated last year to turn unused state land over to individual farmers.

"The land is there, here are the Cubans," he said, pounding the podium. "Let's see if we get to work or not, if we produce or not, if we keep our word."

The 78-year-old Mr Castro called agricultural production Cuba's top priority and a matter of national security.

"It is not a question of yelling 'Fatherland or death! Down with imperialism! The blockade hurts us'," he said.

"The land is there waiting for our efforts."

On the third anniversary of the last time his 82-year-old brother Fidel was seen in public, the younger Mr Castro showed signs that he is getting more comfortable with national addresses.

He opened his speech with a joke about the stage's lack of shielding from the sun.

Tens of thousands of supporters, most wearing red T-shirts or caps, filled a grassy plaza dotted with red and black July 26 flags.

Revolution Day commemorates the date in 1953 when the Castros led an attack on the Moncada army barracks in the eastern city of Santiago.

Cubans consider it the beginning of the revolution that culminated with dictator Fulgencio Batista's ousting on New Year's Day 1959.

An eight-story tall banner on a building behind the crowd featured a picture of both Fidel and Raul thrusting their arms skyward under the words The Vigorous and Victorious Revolution Keeps Marching Forward.

Mr Castro has asked Cubans to be patient as he implements "structural changes" to a struggling economy.

He also has said he'd be willing to meet US leaders over any issue.

Officials from Cuba and the US discussed immigration this month for the first time since 2003.

The Obama administration lifted restrictions on Cuban-Americans who want to travel or send money to the island.

But the US has said it wants to see small political or economic reforms before going further.

Young Republicans elect a new leader who's under fire for racist remarks

From: PWW

Author: Sue Sturgis
People's Weekly World Newspaper, 07/19/09 13:18

Original source: southernstudies.org

The Republican Party has been trying to revamp its image as more inclusive of diversity -- but the newly elected leader of the party's youth branch may set that effort back.

At their annual convention in Indianapolis last week, the Young Republican National Federation elected as their new chair Audra Shay (in photo) of New Orleans, the group's former vice chair at large. Shay, a 38-year-old Arkansas native, defeated Rachel Hoff, the group's director of media relations, by a vote of 470-415, according to The Daily Beast.

The online news site has been covering the story in depth, revealing racially offensive comments made by Shay on Facebook:

Specifically, a thread where one of her friends posts that "Obama Bin Lauden [sic] is the new terrorist... Muslim is on there side [sic]... need to take this country back from all of these mad coons... and illegals," and Shay responds eight minutes later with: "You tell em Eric! lol."

When two Facebook friends including the head of the African-American Young Republican Chapter complained about the racist remarks, Shay reportedly responded by unfriending them. She later released a statement disavowing her support for the remarks and pointing out that under her chairmanship the Louisiana Young Republicans raised $90,000 for a minority outreach media campaign.

But the Daily Beast also reported that in October 2008, following news that Sarah Palin was being hung in effigy outside a home as an offensive Halloween decoration, Shays posted to Facebook, "What no Obama in a noose? Come on now, its just freedome [sic] of speech, no one in Atlanta would take that wrong! Lol."

She later added, "Apparently I could not spell last night. I am wondering if the guys with the Palin noose would care if we had a bunch of homosexuals in a noose."

House bill: Taxes the wealthy to keep America healthy

From: PWW

Author: John Wojcik
People's Weekly World Newspaper, 07/16/09 13:27

The health care bill presented by the House leadership this week pays for the health insurance of the 20 percent of the people who cannot afford it with a surtax on the richest 1 percent.

Nothing like this has ever emerged from the leadership of a U.S. Congress.

At best, throughout American history, Congress has, under pressure from labor and the peoples’ movements, closed various tax loopholes for the rich, given tax credits to workers or created programs like Medicaid for the poor. The programs for the poor were paid for with funds raised from a progressive income tax system that everyone pays into, and never by any type of transfer of wealth from the rich to those in poverty.

It is a testimony to the power of the massive labor-led coalition that has been battling for health care reform that the House is saying, for the first time ever, that those in society who can afford it should pay for the health insurance of those who cannot.

While the right wing is doing everything and anything, including coughing up blood, in its effort to kill the proposal, the labor movement is out there telling everyone how fair it really is.

“The wealthiest 1 percent of American households take home 20 percent of all income in the country – the highest percentage since the time just before the crash that started the Great Depression,” said the AFL-CIO in a statement it released after the Senate health committee approved its version of a health care reform bill a day later.

The federation noted that, unlike the House bill, the Senate’s health committee bill “does not address financing.” Labor is calling upon the Senate to adopt a bill that includes the House’s funding strategy.

“Instead of taxing working families’ health care benefits, as some senators propose, the House bill lands on the side of fairness. In most cases, all or a large part of the surcharge (on the rich) is offset by the savings they will realize from comprehensive health care reform,” says the AFL-CIO.

That point is well taken because many of the lawmakers most opposed to taxing the rich have been leaders on the bandwagon calling for taxes on workers who currently have employer provided health insurance.

The AFL-CIO points out that no one making less than $192 (yes, that’s one hundred and ninety two) an hour would be affected by the surcharge.

The right wingers in the Senate say the House funding mechanism is a deal breaker they can never support because it means more taxes for the very people who supposedly invest, innovate, hire and thereby keep the economy humming along. The result, they claim, will be to hurt everyone, including the working people and poor who the plan means to help.

Robert Reich, Secretary of Labor during the Clinton administration, countered that argument today when he said, “There’s no reason to suppose that taking a tiny sliver of the incomes of the top 1 percent will reduce all that much of their ardor to invest, innovate and hire in the future. Yet if this tiny sliver means affordable health care for a far larger number of Americans, who will be able to get regular checkups and stay healthy and productive, the positive effect on the American economy is likely to be far greater.”

Another major argument conservatives are making against the House funding mechanism is that it will hurt small businesses.

The facts are that less than 5 percent of small business owners would be paying any surcharge.

Only the profits of a small business would be taxed. A couple whose income comes entirely from a small business would have to earn more than $350,000 in business profits, after paying all their expenses, including salaries, before the surcharge would affect them at all.

Still not willing to cede the point, right wingers say, “even so, it will be a job killer because it will reduce the incentive small businesses have for expanding and hiring more workers.”

This argument also is false because those add-on workers are paid out of pre-tax income.

Purchasing of new equipment by small businesses would also not be discouraged because most small businesses can write off up to $250,000 of the costs of such equipment.

The AFL-CIO summed it up this way: “A small surtax on the wealthiest 1 percent buys health care reform for America. That’s not much to finally get a handle on costs that are dragging down the entire economy. Even the wealthy will get a big chunk of their money back in savings. Their premiums won’t go up as fast, and no one will have to pay the hidden $1000 insurance premium add-on to cover costs for uncompensated care. The House health care surtax is a fiscally responsible investment. It will pay steady returns every year.”

Obama reported firm in his support for EFCA

From: PWW

Author: John Wojcik
People's Weekly World Newspaper, 07/13/09 17:24

A top aid to one of the union leaders present at a White House meeting with President Obama today said the president remains firmly committed to passage of the Employee Free Choice Act, the bill that would make it easier to unionize.

“He told the leaders that his administration is firmly committed to the bill but as of now there is no formal timeline on when it would get to his desk,” the aid said.

Lawmakers have been struggling to work out a “compromise” on the bill because several Democrats have been wavering and a 60 vote majority is needed to break any Republican filibuster.

The aid also said that the labor leaders, who emerged from the meeting with the president late in the afternoon, assured him that the administration has labor’s full support on health care reform.

Union leaders present at the meeting represent unions in both labor federations, the AFL-CIO and Change to Win. The independent National Education Association was also represented.

For more information: "Union leaders meet with Obama" at pww.org/article/articleview/16353/.

The Faces of the Communist Party

From: CPUSA Online

Here is a great video developed and produced by some participants in the recent National Marxist School of the Communist Party.