From nyvoices at indypress.org Mon Dec 2 11:33:44 2002 From: nyvoices at indypress.org (Dania Rajendra) Date: Sun Feb 8 02:52:02 2004 Subject: [Dryerase] FW: Voices 43: 28 November 2002 Message-ID: <000701c29a28$f6dc0960$6501a8c0@herman> Dear Dry-Erase folks, Here is Voices 43. For full content visit our site. To reprint a single article, contact me or Ilana Miller at the info below to arrange the rights, or contact the paper directly. (It?s usually free, dependent on the source paper.) Rights are granted to reprint the edition as a whole. We encourage people to report on the the content and provide links. All the best, Dania. PS. I?m on vacation 12/4-1/1. Happy, peaceful holidays! Ilana Miller will coordinate Voices in my absence, feel free to contact her while I?m gone. nyed@indypress.org and the same info as below: Dania Rajendra Editor, Voices That Must Be Heard Independent Press Association - New York www.indypressny.org * 212/279-1442 * 143 West 29th St., 901, New York, NY 10001 -----Original Message----- From: Dania Rajendra [mailto:nyvoices@indypress.org] Sent: Wednesday, November 27, 2002 7:57 PM To: nyvoices@indypress.org Subject: Voices 43: 28 November 2002 This Week's Voices That Must Be Heard By IPA-New York, a sponsored project of the Independent Press Association Edition 43: 28 November 2002. Happy Thanksgiving! NEWS ITEMS: Al Sharpton leads protest against racism at Gramercy Park by Donna Lamb, New York Beacon, 21 November 2002. English language. The Gramercy Park Trust faces a lawsuit by Black and Latino students at Washington Irving High School, their parents, some teachers, and Mr. O. Aldon James, president of the National Arts Club. Gramercy Park is the only privately-owned park in New York. James, a member of the park, invited the students to the park for a field trip, but they were chased out because of their race. Sharpton and other prominent allies are protesting every day at lunch. MORE. Clean-up of Bronx River still a long haul by Robert Waddell, Siempre, 2 December 2002. Spanish language. Since the mid-90s, community activists, private citizens and students have cleared garbage and waste from the Bronx River. These eco-activists believe that it?s their responsibility as citizens to correct the damage done by polluters, industry and sewage plants. MORE. City homeless program rewards bad landlords by Heather Haddon, Norwood News, 4 December 2002. English language. Faced with a growing homelessness crisis, New York City is paying Park Avenue prices to some of the worst landlords to house people it cannot fit into its exploding shelter system. The result, tenant activists and housing advocates say, is a topsy-turvy system that encourages landlords to flout housing codes and drive long-time tenants out. MORE. A certificate of authenticity for Italian restaurants, new initiative presented in New York by Italian authorities by Riccardo Chioni, America Oggi, 8 November 2002. Translated from Italian by Katherine Sigelman. The official from the Itialian Federation of Public Concerns was frank: among the 12,000 Italian restaurants that exist in the United States, a meager 10-15 percent can be categorized as authentic. ?The others,? he emphasized, ?have in some way encroached upon the name, and behind the ?Italian Restaurant? sign, there?s a little of everything, or sometimes, there?s nothing.? The Italian government will survey every Italian restaurant and award some certificates announcing their authenticity. MORE. When a child emigrates by Elzbieta Tracewicz, Nowy Dziennik / Polish Daily News, 14 November 2002. Translated from Polish by Ursula Sedek. Immigration is like re-potting a human being. The period of adaptation is different in each case but, without exception, everyone is ill in some sense. The author, a PhD in psychology, explains how to ease the transition. MORE. BRIEFS: Demonstrators demand justice for boy?s murder and security for the community, Weekly Thikana, 22 November 2002. Translated from Bangla by Moinuddin Naser. Art project maps the G to save it by Marcin Szczepanski, Nowy Dziennik / Polish Daily News, 17 November 2002. Translated from Polish by Lukas Bulka. Keio Academy New York boys soccer team wins state championship for third time, Yomiuri America, 22 November 2002. Translated from Japanese by Brian Byun. A message in the music by Morlette Cowan, Weekly Gleaner, 27 November 2002. English language. Bronx Cambodians protest deportations by Heather Haddon, Norwood News, 4 December 2002. English language. ?Hawala,? an informal money transfer system, is under investigation, Pakistan Post, 27 November 2002. Translated from Urdu by Rehan Ansari. Brooklyn commemoration of Verti?res and Haitian independence, Haiti Progres, 26 November 2002. Translated from French by Jean-Claude Roux. Caravan of the brokenhearted: another 100 Pakistanis board a charter flight and are deported by Azeem M. Mian, Pakistan Post, 27 November 2002. Translated from Urdu by Rehan Ansari. EDITORIALS: Bloomberg?s policy: wipe out the poor but not the poverty, Bangla Patrika, 22 November 2002. Translated from Bangla by Moinuddin Naser. We?re in a fiscal crisis, and the government's measures seem focused on exploiting the poor. It is a great arrangement. Take the subway fare hikes and service cuts: Mayor Bloomberg, who travels by private plane, obviously would not understand why waiting an extra half hour for a train is a problem. MORE. Volunteering is exciting by Lyudmila Paltielova, Bukharian Times, 29 November 2002. Translated from Russian by Liz Vladeck. Getting absorbed in pre-election excitement, I really got a feel for the rhythms and impulses of the people around me. By including myself in their work, I was trying to discern the motives driving these volunteers. I learned that one thing that distinguishes America from other countries is that it helps people whether or not they?ve spent their entire lives here. MORE. Racial profiling at the border by Abdul Hameed Bashani, Pakistan Post, 27 November 2002. Translated from Urdu by Rehan Ansari. Bordering a farmer?s field on the U.S.-Canadian border, near Quebec, is a small gas station which lies on the American side, but has always attracted Canadians with its low prices. Last month, an Arab Canadian, who lives near the gas station and has been using its services for many years, drove his car to it, as was his habit. This time he was arrested by the police for illegal entry into the United States. MORE. **Please note that there were some corrections to ?Protest for detainees in front of the INS? in Voices #41. Voices welcomes, comments, suggestions, corrections and letters to the editor. Please contact Dania Rajendra or Ilana Miller at nyvoices@indypress.org. Happy Thanksgiving!o Dania Rajendra Editor, Voices That Must Be Heard Independent Press Association - New York www.indypressny.org * 212/279-1442 * 143 West 29th St., 901, New York, NY 10001 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.cu.groogroo.com/mailman/archive/dryerase/attachments/20021202/cbd3474c/attachment.html From sialtmedia at hotmail.com Wed Dec 4 12:50:59 2002 From: sialtmedia at hotmail.com (the uo insurgent) Date: Sun Feb 8 02:52:02 2004 Subject: [Dryerase] Insurgent Articles Message-ID: Here are a couple of articles for the list serve: They are word attachments. thanks, cristina _________________________________________________________________ Protect your PC - get McAfee.com VirusScan Online http://clinic.mcafee.com/clinic/ibuy/campaign.asp?cid=3963 -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Middle_Fork_being_logged.doc Type: application/msword Size: 5120 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.cu.groogroo.com/mailman/archive/dryerase/attachments/20021204/29f2eca9/Middle_Fork_being_logged.doc -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: move update Type: application/msword Size: 7680 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.cu.groogroo.com/mailman/archive/dryerase/attachments/20021204/29f2eca9/moveupdate.dot From nyvoices at indypress.org Thu Dec 5 12:24:11 2002 From: nyvoices at indypress.org (Dania Rajendra) Date: Sun Feb 8 02:52:02 2004 Subject: [Dryerase] Voices 44: 5 December 2002 Message-ID: <000001c29c8b$826f13a0$6501a8c0@herman> Dear Dry-Erase folks, Here is Voices 44. For full content visit our site. To reprint a single article, contact me or Ilana Miller at the info below to arrange the rights, or contact the paper directly. (It's usually free, dependent on the source paper.) Rights are granted to reprint the edition as a whole. We encourage people to report on the the content and provide links. All the best, Dania. PS. I'm on vacation 12/4-1/1. Happy, peaceful holidays! Ilana Miller will coordinate Voices in my absence, feel free to contact her while I'm gone. This Week's Voices That Must Be Heard By IPA-New York, a sponsored project of the Independent Press Association Edition 44: 5 December 2002. NEWS ITEMS: Deaths of two Indian subway workers in two days shocks community in New York by George Joseph, India Abroad, 6 December 2002. English language. According to union officials, the deaths of two subway workers could have been prevented had the MTA assigned flag workers to alert oncoming trains. Both Indian men had families in the U.S., who bid them farewell at funerals attended by hundreds of people. MORE. Bushwick students buck military by John Tarleton, The Indypendent, 1 December 2002. English language. The much-touted No Child Left Behind Act contains a little-known provision that allows military recruiters to get the inside scoop on high school students. Some students are making their response to these aggressive campaigns very clear: "Bring college recruiters, not military recruiters." MORE. Garifunas: One of ours by Manuel Jaime, Hoy, 15 November 2002. Translated from Spanish by Hannah Emmerich. If you pay close attention while walking down the streets of the South Bronx, you may notice a different type of Central American immigrant-the Garifuna. Though the Garifuna are a people of African descent, they are considered Latinos because they take the nationality of their country of birth and, for the most part, speak Spanish. MORE. A constantly evolving identity by Keren Lentschner, France-Amerique, 23 November 2002. Translated from French by David Ronis. For over roughly half a century, Haitians have fled to America to escape the dictatorship and misery of their homeland. The still-young Haitian community in the United States, divided over its attachment to its homeland and ambivalent about the model of American life, continues to search for an identity. MORE. BRIEFS: Bay Ridge Muslims reach out to the 68th Precinct, Aramica, 25 November 2002. English language. When will we stop worshipping at the feet of capital? by Oriya Maqbool Khan, The Watan America, 3 November 2002. Translated from Urdu by Rehan Ansari. Kukmin and Nara Bank merger discussed, Sisa News, 29 November 2002. Translated from Korean by Sun-Yong Reinish. A Muslim sues Marriott International Inc., for discrimination, Al-Manassah Al-Arabeyah, 15 November 2002. Translated from Arabic by Amir Jalal. EDITORIALS: The protests that fizzled, Haitian Times, 3 December 2002. English language. While we support the claim that Haitians are treated unfairly, we believe that it is time for Haitians to stop protesting in the streets and take their complaints to the hallways of state capitals and the White House-places where they can bring about some real changes. MORE. The changing nature of American society and ours by Azeem M. Mian, Pakistan Post, 4 December 2002. Translated from Urdu by Rehan Ansari. The death of Aimal Kansi marks the first execution of a Pakistani on American soil. Many Pakistanis, though horrified by Kansi's crime, are uncomfortable with the aftermath--yet the Pakistani community has remained silent on the issue. We as a community must give up our silent fears and our disconnectedness. MORE. The West Indians and their dollar vans deserve better treatment in Queens by Tony Best, New York Carib News, 3 December 2002. English language. Some influential people in New York City see the dollar vans, a predominately West Indian-owned business, as a threat to regular bus service. As a result, dollar van operators have been heavily ticketed by police in an effort to force them out of business. It's time that unions, and their supporters on city council, face the reality of the legitimate need for this service. MORE. Our sorrow, Russian Forward, 28 November 2002. Translated from Russian by Liz Vladeck. Among family and friends Lyudochka was always the leader. Wherever we were, whatever we were doing, if Lyudochka arrived, everything became warmer and happier, and any sorrows or bad moods disappeared. Our hearts ache unbearably to think that this will never be the case again. MORE. Dania Rajendra Editor, Voices That Must Be Heard Independent Press Association - New York www.indypressny.org * 212/279-1442 * 143 West 29th St., 901, New York, NY 10001 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.cu.groogroo.com/mailman/archive/dryerase/attachments/20021205/d48f1429/attachment.htm From millietent at yahoo.com Thu Dec 5 13:15:08 2002 From: millietent at yahoo.com (annie v) Date: Sun Feb 8 02:52:02 2004 Subject: [Dryerase] apologies private message sent to list Message-ID: <20021205191508.49533.qmail@web13208.mail.yahoo.com> sorry! previous message was meant for mark. av __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now. http://mailplus.yahoo.com From dr_broccoli at hotmail.com Tue Dec 10 15:56:27 2002 From: dr_broccoli at hotmail.com (Shawn G) Date: Sun Feb 8 02:52:02 2004 Subject: [Dryerase] AGR--Addicted to War Message-ID: Asheville Global Report www.AGRNews.org Reprinting permitted for non profit use, and to members of the Dryerase news wire. Addicted to War: An illustrated exposé of US bloodshed By Ronald Sebilo-Tibbits Nov. 25 (AGR)— If you want to know more about current affairs and how the US history in bloodshed has left us as scared and murderous as we are, then Addicted To War: Why The US Can’t Kick Militarism, by Joe Andreas (AK Press) is the place for you to start learning. This 62-page illustrated exposé is accessible, entertaining, and revealing. It’s quick-paced and to the point. It is packed with facts like the ludicrous reality that “50.5% … of the federal governments discretionary spending” is military spending and only “8%… is education spending.” It presents a critical outlook on how the narrow and treacherous motivations of corporations determine our local and foreign policy. The book shows how the prevalent war mentality keeps the working class and the poor enslaved to the bloody war machine on which corporations make bank. From xraymagazine at yahoo.com Tue Dec 10 16:48:14 2002 From: xraymagazine at yahoo.com (XRay Magazine) Date: Sun Feb 8 02:52:02 2004 Subject: [Dryerase] Censored in Cincinnati - XRay Magazine Message-ID: <20021210224814.68746.qmail@web14406.mail.yahoo.com> >>Censored in Cincinnati By Stacey Recht Just about any Cincinnatian can run down a list of major First Amendment cases to come out of our city in the last 20 years. Hustler. Mapplethorpe. The Pink Pyramid. Elyse's Passion. Thomas Condon.  Cincinnati's legendary puritanism is the subject of big-budget films. National media swarm to our area to take a peek at what our county officials want to cover up, prosecute out of existence, suppress and repress.Our collective sexuality is at issue. Our appetites are on trial.  The very stuff of human experience - sex, violence and death - is brought before the court. The resulting fear of prosecution for obscenity has consequently stifled local artists, retailers and citizens. The whole spectrum of pornography - at best, high-grade, culturally and socially relevant art about sex, and at worst, low-grade jack-off paraphernalia - has all been shoved under our collective mattress. Government censorship perfected by Cincinnati officials like County Sheriff Simon Leis, Jr. trickles down to our very souls, as we pull the brown paper wrappers over our own bodies. The influence of fear "Self-censorship is a good thing," Phil Burress, director of Cincinnati's Citizens for Community Values, said in a telephone interview. His group is famous nationwide for its cultural influence on the local sex industry.  "Since Mapplethorpe, I think there's been a real partnership among art organizations to providing quality arts in Cincinnati," Burress said. "There's enough cutting edge art out there that we don't need homoerotic or hard-core pornographic art here in Cincinnati.  People can make that kind of art if they want, but not with public funds. They have a right to produce and distribute the art, but those who object have the right to say that's not art." CCV began its culture purges in the early 80s, and has been shoving the proverbial soap deeper into the throat of Cincinnati ever since in its quest to rid us of our more prurient interests. Influencing the removal of sexually graphic material in book stores, on television and on pay-per-view stations in hotels, the group has worked to prosecute the highest profile porn with existing laws and silence the rest through intimidation. But Phil Burress insists CCV is a First-Amendment organization. Opposed to government control of media, the group instead, he claims, wishes to enforce the laws already on the books to remove smut of all kinds from view in our little hamlet. Why Cincinnati? Many upstanding citizens enjoy watching a little slap-and-tickle in all corners of the country. Decent people in Cleveland or Atlanta or San Diego partake in the stickying of glossies and adult books. Well-behaved Americans watch tawdry strip teases in bars in many parts of the country without the local constabulary breathing heavily down their necks. So how can Cincinnati stand alone in its old-fashioned objection to art glorifying the pleasures - and pains - of the flesh? It all dates back to 1973 and the Supreme Court case Miller vs. California. When the High Court couldn't objectively define obscenity, and Justice Potter Stewart in frustration uttered his famous words "I know it when I see it," a litmus test for prosecutable pornography became necessary. Straight-up porn is generally OK in the eyes of the law. Artsy sex and nudity are just fine under normal circumstances. The First Amendment loophole, however deals with obscenity. In Miller v. California, the court created its historical - and much belabored by local officials and conservative groups - three-pronged approach to defining obscenity.  Basically, a work is considered obscene if:- An average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the purient interest;- the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct, and the applicable state law specifically defines what depictions and descriptions are prohibited; and- the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value. And though most artists and retailers would most likely cleave to the "literary artistic, political and scientific value" clause, anti-smut campaigners hold dearly to "community standards." Just as dangerous as the government censoring sexuality are those who would define those standard for us. "We just keep getting fed this story that the people don't want it and that our community standards are different," said Louis Sirkin, "I maintain they are not that different and our politicians are out of touch with reality." Sirkin, famed first amendment attorney, defended Elyse Metcalf, Hustler publisher Larry Flynt, former Contemporary Arts Center Director Dennis Barrie and photographer Thomas Condon, among dozens of others brought to trial for pandering obscenity. Thirty years of squeaky cleanliness, thanks to Si Leis Played by former Clinton consultant James Carville and former Coach star Craig T. Nelson in Hollywood depictions of Cincinnati censorship trials, County Sheriff Simon Leis began a crusade against porn when he took office as prosecutor in 1971. He has worked his mojo to shut down X-Rated theaters, massage parlors, adult bookstores and a pornography warehouse within 8 years. Those that were not prosecuted out of existence closed out of fear.Leis won national fame for his long-standing battle with Larry Flynt, who described him as a "bully." He tried and failed to bring a conviction to Dennis Barrie and the Contemporary Arts Center for their famous Mapplethorpe exhibit, showcasing 175 photographs in the artist's career, seven of which Leis found obscene.  The jury, not art connoisseurs by any means, voted to acquit Barrie based on the test set forth by Miller v. California. In 1995, Leis tried to prosecute the Kenwood Barnes and Noble for selling the journal "Libido" to an 11-year-old girl. Even after the truth that her father put her up to purchasing the journal in an effort to bring a conviction against the store, Sheriff Leis insisted on proceeding. Then Prosecutor Joseph Deters, himself a staunch conservative, disagreed, and charges were dropped. Most recently, Anderson Township pornographer Jennifer Dute was arrested on four counts of pandering obscenity by selling home sex videos to Hamilton County residents. She used the domain www.simonleis.com to sell the tapes. The site has since been shut down. Last month, Dute was sentenced to one year in prison. Sirkin and Jennifer Kinsley, her attorneys, have vowed to appeal. Intimidated into impotence. "There's good and bad censorship," CCV director Burress asserted. "The misunderstanding is that all censorship is wrong." Anti-smut activists like Burress and Leis lost court battles against the Contemporary Arts Center, Elyse's Passion and the Pink Pyramid. But Cincinnati's sexual expression is the real loser here. Even when high and low profile obscenity cases are thrown out of court, even when pornographers, artists and shop owners win acquittals, the city still suffers from prosecution fear.  Not everyone likes the hard stuff. Give me plain old HBO and a glass of wine and I'm good to go. But damn it if I don't resent not having a choice in the matter. We gotta cross county lines for the good stuff. And I'm not just talking porn, here. I'm talking art, literature and music. Our local artists are locked in an invisible cell, surrounded by the threat of lawsuits and criminal charges. Power, money and influence set our city's "community standards." These imposed standards restrict us and enforce on us a pervasive impotence. As a result, the truest expressions of the most profound and rapturous human experience lie dormant beneath the brown paper wrapping of our own making. Copyright © 2000-2003, XRay Media __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now. http://mailplus.yahoo.com From millietent at yahoo.com Wed Dec 11 13:38:26 2002 From: millietent at yahoo.com (annie v) Date: Sun Feb 8 02:52:02 2004 Subject: [Dryerase] indy will contribute small fee Message-ID: <20021211193826.87910.qmail@web13205.mail.yahoo.com> hey there-- the indypendent consensed last night to donate the 5-10 per year to the dry erase (allied press?) syndicate... let us know where to send. av __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now. http://mailplus.yahoo.com From mad_insurgent at yahoo.com Mon Dec 16 15:13:05 2002 From: mad_insurgent at yahoo.com (the madison insurgent) Date: Sun Feb 8 02:52:02 2004 Subject: [Dryerase] Madison Insurgent - Nov/Dec articles - introduction Message-ID: <20021216211305.9759.qmail@web14905.mail.yahoo.com> Hey there Dry Erase folks-- We here at the Madison (WI) Insurgent have been a little remiss in our duties of posting stories to this list. However, we're working to fix that, beginning with this issue. I'm not posting some of the stories that are already more dated, though a few of the following might also need to be updated before reprint. Here's the articles being sent your way: #1- Nursing home workers in Madison vote to join union. #2- "Unlearning oppression" - report and analysis from a recent conference in Madison #3- Interview with Howard Zinn #4- The ILWU, Taft-Hartley, and workplace control #5- Reparations for the Rich - the Bush tax cuts #6- Police brutality and O22 protests #7- a veritable how-to on worm composting (with sidebar) #8- Food irradiation: nuking food for profit #9- Book review: Fast Food Nation #10- Book review: Power Politics #11- Movie review: Bowling for Columbine #12- Poem: "The Wait" Thanks for your patience, and we hope that some of these are useful. yrs, Nathan Moore __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now. http://mailplus.yahoo.com From mad_insurgent at yahoo.com Mon Dec 16 15:14:07 2002 From: mad_insurgent at yahoo.com (the madison insurgent) Date: Sun Feb 8 02:52:02 2004 Subject: [Dryerase] Madison Insurgent - Nov/Dec articles - story #1 Message-ID: <20021216211407.71333.qmail@web14913.mail.yahoo.com> Nursing home votes union by Jeremy Plague On October 8, workers at Oakwood Village Nursing Home in Madison voted overwhelmingly to organize together as a union. The final tally was 148–104 in favor of SEIU Local 150 being the exclusive bargaining agent. “We worked our tails off to get the message out about making positive changes around here,” said organizing committee member Chad Jenkins, a four-year veteran at Oakwood Village. “It feels really good to know that we can make a difference.” As part of a relentless anti-union campaign, Jenkins and others endured daily harassment from management and workers alike. “Management had meetings with us every week, and even sent letters to our houses with nothing but lies, trying to convince us not to vote for the union,” he said. “People who didn’t know any better were pissed, and it took a lot of time and communication to explain the benefits, and exactly what a union is and how it works for us. About how we are the union. Thankfully, the truth spoke for itself, and we won.” In addition to the constant barrage of letters and meetings, management went so far as to add additional close-captioned security cameras to achieve maximum surveillance of employees. “I was constantly tailed by my supervisors, and was even told that if I moved around the facility without letting anyone know where I was going, I was going to get fired,” explained Benjamin Dalsoren, another organizing committee member. “They wanted to know where I was at all times.” An aspect that made this organizing drive stand out from others was that in this case, it was not the rights of the workers that were foremost in the minds of the organizers. Instead, a rapidly declining quality of care provided to the residents was the central issue. Workers felt the only way to gain any control in the way they do their jobs was to unionize. “I truly love my job, and I love helping and caring for people,” explained Mary Jo Ball, a dietary aide at Oakwood. “But once it became apparent that they really didn’t care about the residents, I knew we were in trouble. I mean, if they didn’t care about them at all, what did that say about how they felt about us?” Factors contributing to the deteriorating quality of care included high turnover, low employee morale, and increasing animosity between workers and supervisors. “The high turnover issue was a big deal, one I heard many of my residents complain about in the past six months,” Jenkins explained. “Obviously, when you’re trying to give the best care possible to your residents, it matters that you have good people who enjoy their work, and who the residents recognize and can develop relationships with. That just wasn’t happening anymore here, and we felt that by having a voice in things, we could change that.” According to some residents, the difference in worker attitude has already improved. One resident says, “I’ve lived at Oakwood Village for six years. In just the past year, there were so many new faces. I’ve also noticed how overworked many of them are. Where we used to have three or four people working at a time, now there is one doing all the same work. But once talk about forming a union began, they seemed to be energized. I think realizing that they can improve their workplace and make things better for themselves has given them great energy.” John Norieka, executive director of Oakwood Village, has pledged complete cooperation with the union in matters of collective bargaining. “Of course we are delighted, absolutely delighted,” he explained, “to honor the wishes of our employees to be represented. I am absolutely committed to working constructively and working diligently and working respectfully with this union so that all of Oakwood’s employees will benefit.” After mounting such an aggressive anti-union campaign against his workers, his comments seem quite hollow to many. Workers have already formed a deep sense of mistrust of Norieka,; to hear him completely turn around and give workers and the newly formed union any credit and support makes them suspicious. Workers at Oakwood Village encourage the community to contact the author at unclejer1@hotmail.com to thank him for honoring his workers’ union and promising cooperation. __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now. http://mailplus.yahoo.com From mad_insurgent at yahoo.com Mon Dec 16 15:14:41 2002 From: mad_insurgent at yahoo.com (the madison insurgent) Date: Sun Feb 8 02:52:02 2004 Subject: [Dryerase] Madison Insurgent - Nov/Dec articles - story #2 Message-ID: <20021216211441.97338.qmail@web14904.mail.yahoo.com> Unlearning Oppression Teaching others about inequality in order to challenge it by James Murrell “I’m sick and tired of hearing about discrimination and disadvantages of Blacks, women, gays, or the poor.” … “I wish those people would stop whining.” … “I’m not a racist, so don’t blame me.”… “With all the special treatment these special interest groups are getting, it is white males who are at a disadvantage.” Race, gender, class, sexual orientation: inequality and oppression based on these categories held the attention of faculty and students attending a symposium in early November at the UW–Madison. It focused on teaching about inequality and challenging the daily words, actions, failures to act, and silences that continually renew and reinforce inequality based on group identity. Guest speaker Allan Johnson, a sociologist at the University of Hartford, cited the above quotes as often-heard examples of defensiveness and denial that arise in European Americans who classify themselves as “white,” or those who are male, middle-class, or straight, when teachers and professors attempt to address these issues in the classroom. Many people view attempts to discuss these issues as making excuses for those who have not or cannot prove their merit in society. Johnson pointed out the problem with the view that everything in society is a matter of individuals rather than understanding that the conditions and structures of society also play a role. Few do not accept that every person must be held responsible for his or her actions. Yet, it would also be difficult to claim that the billions of dollars spent every year on advertising to influence people’s choices are spent in vain, and that somehow, one’s “choices” are only one’s own. The reality of what political campaign advertising and packaging can deliver are clearly seen in the results of the recent election. Invited speaker Paula Rothenberg, professor of women’s studies at William Paterson University of New Jersey, emphasized the power exercised over the use of words that limits the capacity of the public to even name and discuss structures of society. She pointed out that “free enterprise”—the phrase used to describe the kind of system under which we live—has become almost synonymous with “freedom” and “democracy” in everyday speech. Under “free enterprise,” we have corporate CEOs receiving an average salary and “compensation” package of $11 million annually, Rothberg reported. She reported what is by now the well-known statistic that the top one percent wealthiest people own as much wealth as the bottom 95 percent in the United States. Clearly, the people in the top one percent did not work so hard or so much that they deserve to possess as much as 95 percent of the population does. Under the current social system, a small fraction of the people comes into possession of the wealth produced by the work of most of the other people. The recent rash of corporate finance and accounting scandals and the bursting of the stock market bubble remind us that stockholders do what my father always taught me was a bad thing—they get something for nothing. They receive money for doing no work. The work is done by the workers of the companies that trade their stocks on the market, however inflated their prices may be. In this system, if you own or control the means by which the things that all of us need to live—food, clothing, housing, manufactured goods—you are in a position to continue to increase your wealth at the expense of others, because it is the wealth produced by people who actually labor to make these things that ends up as dividends, assets, currency stores, etc., that are traded and accumulated by players in the markets. Inequality is an intrinsic structural aspect of society. The more you have, the more readily you can get even more. The less you have, the less control you have over your life, because even if you work full time at minimum wage, you are below the official poverty line. With inequality a basic part of the system, it only remains to be determined who will be at the bottom and who will be at the top. Due to concrete historical events and circumstances, Blacks, women, and the working and unemployed classes have consistently been placed lower in this hierarchy than their respective counterparts. Through history, various other ethnic groups have entered and sometimes escaped an out-group status, though today many Latino groups and others swell the lower ranks, and native people (“American Indians”) continue to be the poorest of the poor. There is a value to the survival and maintenance of this oppressive social system to having out-groups upon which an extra measure of exploitation can be applied. Since there must be inequality, if much of it can be “externalized” to out-groups, then there is more room to placate and pacify in-group members with a relatively higher level of material rewards. This can be used to help legitimate the system and to build the solidarity of the in-group against the external “Others” whom they are taught to see as less than worthy, even less than human. The standard of what is right and good and meritorious becomes what is “white,” “male,” and “middle-class” for the middle strata of people (that includes token Blacks, a few women in management, etc.) who are nonetheless subject to the same system of exploitation. Out-groups are portrayed as, or socially engineered to be, “deficient” and lacking in merit. Using, creating, or accentuating categories of difference to make them categories of superior and inferior helps to rationalize and justify a system based on the continual creation of inequality inherent to how the system operates. Though not treated in as great a depth, the issues of sexual orientation and various gender constructions were raised during the symposium, as it was pointed out that the daily practices of denigration through “Othering” on that basis is intertwined with—and inseparable from—those based on sex, race, and class. Denigra-tion of a group of people based on any category is a tool of oppression. Since those in the out-groups always put up some level of resistance, it becomes imperative for in-group members to cultivate and participate in mechanisms of control over the out-groups. The speakers and the dialog at the recent symposium emphasized the fact that the attitudes, beliefs, and person-to-person practices that implement and reinforce the classifications and their consequences are a matter of everyday actions and choices. A Black person, for example, can usually bear witness to the string of daily indignities and instances of invocation of “white privilege” consciously or unconsciously wielded by many European Americans; or a woman can point out “male privilege.” Yet, it is that daily interpersonal component of the continual reproduction of unequal structures that can be a potent site of resistance and refusal to accommodate the process, and which can be part of the undoing of oppression. Our classrooms are particularly powerful places in which teaching about and challenging the daily construction of oppression can take place. Raising the topic frequently provokes the kind of reactions shown in the opening quotes, providing opportunities for working through and transforming the processes that construct inequality and oppression into those that promote equality and more egalitarian control over our lives, our workplaces, and our relationships with each other. A crucial ingredient to the possibility of success of social movement through such a pathway is the realization that undoing the inequality based on race, class, gender, and other identities need not only benefit the members of the out-groups. “Whites” and in-group members ultimately have a stake and an interest in the society that could be built without the internecine social warfare and wherein exploitation itself could be ended, human needs of all could be better satisfied, and working lives and social relationships could be more rewarding and subject to our own decision-making, rather than that of a powerful few. There is a plan to follow up the symposium with future programs for dialog and activity. “Teaching About Inequality: Challenging Oppression Through Mindfulness” had several sponsoring academic departments and organizations and the principal contact person is Amanda Gengler, at amgengler@facstaff.wisc.edu. The author can be contacted at jmurrell@ssc.wisc.edu. __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now. http://mailplus.yahoo.com From mad_insurgent at yahoo.com Mon Dec 16 15:15:12 2002 From: mad_insurgent at yahoo.com (the madison insurgent) Date: Sun Feb 8 02:52:02 2004 Subject: [Dryerase] Madison Insurgent - Nov/Dec articles - story #3 Message-ID: <20021216211512.50661.qmail@web14906.mail.yahoo.com> The Zen of Zinn: an exclusive interview with the historian by Nathan Moore He’s not a large man. Thin. Wispy gray hair. Lots of wrinkles. He’s starting to look right grandfatherly these days. But while Howard Zinn may show some physical signs of aging, he’s still sharp, still a strong voice for democracy and freedom, still writing and lecturing. Lately, Zinn has been talking a lot about the military and United States expansionism. These are regular themes in his writings, but now there’s the looming question of Iraq to underscore his points. “Democracy flies out the window as soon as war comes along,” said Zinn during his October speech at the Orpheum Theatre in Madison. “If you look at Congressional actions when a president announces a war, you’ll find the troops lining up behind the leader.” The cover of Howard Zinn’s latest book is rather disconcerting. A United States military plane drops a score of bombs, destined for some unknown target. Set against the hazy sky, the book’s title glares out in red: Terrorism and War. “The means of war have become so horrible that they exceed any possible good that could come out of them,” said Zinn. That is certainly the case now, with the president outlining his “First Strike” doctrine and hinting at the use of nuclear weapons. Zinn, quoting his friend Kurt Vonnegut, said, “Only one country in the history of the world has been crazy enough to drop an atomic bomb and turn hundreds of thousands of people into dust.” Zinn touched on many subjects during his 60 minute talk. Most of them were familiar themes from his most famous work, A People’s History of the United States – class conflict, oppression, (mis)education, democratic struggles. “Democracy is the neglected history of our country,” Zinn asserts. “Democracy has come alive in this country only when people have rebelled against the authorities.” That is the main lesson to draw from Zinn. If we seek liberation, real democracy, and the chance for everyone to live flourishing lives, we’ll have to rebel against authority, in all its forms. The other important lesson Zinn brings us is his optimism. There are, unfortunately, too many on the left who become cynical, depressed, and fatalistic about things going on all around. It’s easy to give up. Zinn is hopeful, but in a quiet sort of way. Radical change won’t happen automatically, but it can happen, and there are steps we can take to help it along. “You should not be discouraged by how small a movement may seem at the beginning of something critical,” he advised. Following his lecture, I caught up with Zinn. The interview was short – he’s a popular guy. It’s printed here in its entirety. Nathan Moore: You talked a lot this afternoon about issues with Iraq right now and of war in general. If you were going write an update of People’s History, how would you write up the last couple years? Would you include war and aggression? How would you approach that? Howard Zinn: Well, my history talks about war and aggression all through American history, so I think I would have to point out how we are really watching a continuation of a long history of American expansion. Except that today the justification for that expansion is different than it was, say at the beginning of the cold war, different than it was at the turn of the century, different than it was in the middle of the 19th century. We’ve always had different rationales for expansion. We had Manifest Destiny in the middle of the 19th century. At the turn of the century, we claimed we were liberating Cuba, saving the Philippines from everybody else, Christianizing them. And during the cold war: saving the world from communism. And today, the rationale is terrorism, but the common denominator to all of American policy through its history is expansion of American military, political, and economic power, first on this continent and then in the world. NM: I’d like to ask another question about People’s History, and that’s about the final chapter in the revised edition called the “Coming Revolt of the Guards.” It’s an interesting phrase and an interesting chapter. How do you foresee that revolt maybe happening? HZ: Well, I didn’t give a date, you remember. [laughs.] I didn’t say when it would happen. But I suggested that if there was going to be a radical change in the United States, it would have to come when the middle classes joined the working classes, when all of that great Middle America – which so far has been directed to be hostile to the poor, the welfare people, people of color, the immigrants – when that great part of Middle America realizes it has been deceived, and that its interests are really the same as the interests of working people. And that the tiny elite that controls the country and monopolizes the wealth of the country does not do any good for the middle classes. And they will realize that they are the guards of the system, that they are the buffer between the poor and the rich. And my hope is that at some point they will understand that, and then there can be a united movement to really take back the country from this power elite that now runs it. NM: Here’s a question for you as someone who’s been around universities for their career. What’s the role of an academic in social change and social activism? HZ: I think the role of academic, first of all should be distinguished from the role that is usually assigned to it, the usual orthodox view that the academic prepares young people to become successful members of the going society, to fit in with whatever the society wants it to do. My notion of the role of the academic is that the role of the academic is to bring up a new generation of citizens who will look critically at what is going on and who will become agents for change. And therefore, in order to accomplish this, the academic has to violate the ordinary standards of classroom behavior and teach in a different way, teach different curriculum, teach different material, be unashamedly partisan in representing certain values in the classroom. And also at the same time, I think the academic must step outside the classroom, must be active in the community, must demonstrate to students that it’s not enough to study the right things and think the right thoughts, but that it’s important to act out the beliefs that you develop as a citizen in this society. So an academic should really have one foot in academia and one foot in the real world outside. NM: In the same vein, as far as talking about universities, there’s a well-established trend in the last decade or so of universities becoming more bureaucratic, more profit-oriented, more prone to stifle dissent. I know you’ve had issues like that yourself at Boston University. What steps can we take to counter that trend? HZ: In order to change the university, you have to organize. Students have to organize. Faculty have to organize. The workers of the university have to organize. You have to think in IWW terms – that is, have all the people who work for the university decide to run the university. People who work and study and teach – they’re the ones who should make decisions for the university. I think that should be the goal of creating a real community of education, which would end the control of education by absentee landlords, you might say. NM: One last question before you have to go. If you could change one thing with a magic wand, what’s the most pressing problem you would address? HZ: I see the central problem as the distribution of wealth and power. The central issue is using the enormous wealth of the country for human needs. Taking it away from the military, taking it away from the super-rich, and using it for what people need. __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now. http://mailplus.yahoo.com From mad_insurgent at yahoo.com Mon Dec 16 15:15:41 2002 From: mad_insurgent at yahoo.com (the madison insurgent) Date: Sun Feb 8 02:52:02 2004 Subject: [Dryerase] Madison Insurgent - Nov/Dec articles - story #4 Message-ID: <20021216211541.71560.qmail@web14913.mail.yahoo.com> The ILWU, Taft-Hartley, and workplace control by Tony Schultz Recently, the Badger Herald, a UW-Madison student newspaper, ran a story about the West Coast struggle between the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) and the Pacific Maritime Association (PMA). There is currently a labor dispute because of unsuccessful contract negotiations. The coverage was clearly taken from corporate sources, and was, expectedly, extremely biased and inaccurate. Besides being filled with quotes from manufacturers groups and the Bush Administration, there was no analysis of how the Administration or the PMA was using the conflict to further their agenda. Unfortunately, this issue is much more complex than it is being portrayed in mainstream media, and is extremely important to the future of the labor movement. The ILWU is one of the strongest and best-organized unions in the country. They have a long history of militant unionism and have demonstrated their power in progressive ways – refusing to unload goods from apartheid South Africa, shutting down the docks for a day in solidarity with Mumia Abu-Jamal, participating in the World Trade Organization protests in Seattle, and standing in solidarity with dockworkers struggling in Liverpool, England. Harry Stamper, an ILWU member, sums it up: "Our entire history is one of change and modernization, of social and ethnic equality, of solidarity so tight it will hold water." The ILWU is one of the best organized groups in the United States because of their role in the process of production. They load and unload cargo from sea ports on the West coast – making them bottleneck in the production line. If they don’t work, production halts. Their work is also geographically immobile – unlike many industries, it cannot be relocated to other less-organized, lower-wage areas. Without this weapon of mobility, the workers’ employer, the PMA, has been forced to deal with them in ways that most employers aren’t. The PMA is currently going to great lengths to weaken the ILWU because of this power. And this fight is central to the labor movement as a whole, because the strengths of the ILWU are essential to any successful labor union. The ILWU draws its power from its militancy, its members’ skills, and its control over the workplace. The PMA’s goal in contact negotiations is to undermine the skills aspect of the workers’ strength, in an effort to completely undermine the union. Skill is a combination of experience, formal mental or physical training, informal training, physical abilities, and judgment. Mike Parker of Labor Notes says, "Skilled work is a thorn in the employer’s side, not just because skilled workers are more difficult to replace in the event of a strike, but because skilled workers are more difficult to control in the workplace. The fact that management would have difficulty replacing you or even telling you what to do gives the skilled worker a sense of power, individually and collectively." The PMA is trying to outsource skilled work to non-union employers – jobs that are contractually ILWU work. The current struggle on the docks focuses on about 600 "marine clerk" jobs, about five percent of the ILWU’s membership. Historically, the job of determining the placement of cargo in outgoing ships, checking the organization of incoming cargo, sequencing unloading and placing for loading on trucks and trains was done by union members. But over the past 40 years, more of this work has been done using computers. The employers have used this technology to move some of the skilled planning and coordination work outside the ILWU. Now employers are trying to accelerate this process under the guise of technological change. The union is willing to accept the technology, but insists that the functions of dock, vessel, rail planning, and all other new work created by implementation of new technologies remain in the ILWU. This work is what the PMA is hoping to outsource. These skilled jobs are key to worker control. The situation on the West Coast has been portrayed as overpaid dockworkers fighting modernization and threatening "national security." This is the corporate media’s gross misrepresentation of a struggle with which they do not want people to identify, a struggle between owners and workers in this capitalist system. The Herald called the situation on the West Coast a "strike." This is incorrect. The dockworkers were locked out – kept from work by their employer. To call it a "strike" puts responsibility for the halt in production on the workers. The employers used this tactic because they knew the Bush administration would use the Taft-Hartley Act to force the workers back to work, under conditions preferable to the PMA – which they have done. The Taft-Hartley Act was an anti-labor act passed in 1947. When Congress passed it over Truman’s veto, he called it a "slave labor act." Well in advance of current contractnegotiations, shiping companies and retailers such as Target, Mattel, Home Depot, and The Gap – which depend on imports from the West Coast – formed the West Coast Waterfront Coalition. The Coalition wanted the Bush Administration to use a clause in Taft-Hartley that allows the president to force workers back to work for a "cooling off period" of 80 days when a labor dispute is threatening "national security." This injunction of the Act was timed so that the dockworkers would have to work without the ability to strike during the holiday season – one of their strongest leverage points. Bush’s use of the act had nothing to do with national security, but rather, it was about getting Payless Shoes on the racks in time for Christmas. The ILWU recently called on the Department of Justice to conduct a full investigation into the apparent collusion between the Bush Administration and shipping companies and associations during the contract dispute. In particular, the ILWU has asked the Department of Justice to release the names of individuals who attended secret meetings with the Administration regarding the dispute. This is still pending. What’s happening on the West coast is an example of government sponsored union-busting. The Bush Administration’s collusion with the PMA has allowed the PMA to undermine the bargaining strength that the ILWU possesses. This allows the PMA to further their effort to destroy the ILWU by giving them better leverage at the bargaining table to outsource skilled positions – which is where the ILWU draws so much of its strength. This is a case of the government and corporations trying to teach a lesson to workers with "too much control" over their workplace. Like Regan, Bush is working to further weaken the labor movement, which is considered a liability to free-market corporate profiteering. contact the author at aeschultz@students.wisc.edu __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now. http://mailplus.yahoo.com From mad_insurgent at yahoo.com Mon Dec 16 15:16:39 2002 From: mad_insurgent at yahoo.com (the madison insurgent) Date: Sun Feb 8 02:52:02 2004 Subject: [Dryerase] Madison Insurgent - Nov/Dec articles - story #5 Message-ID: <20021216211639.87128.qmail@web14902.mail.yahoo.com> Reparations for the Rich by Adrian Lomax In August, activists from around the United States gathered on the National Mall in Washington, DC, for the “Millions for Reparations” rally. Participants advocated justice for the descendants of slaves and listened to various speakers including Nation of Islam chief Louis Farrakhan. What most fascinates me in the public discourse over reparations for slavery is the level of opposition expressed by white people in the United States. I am consistently taken aback by the vehemence of the anti-reparations sentiment relayed to me in everyday conversation. Anti-reparation fervor extends far beyond the circle of people I encounter in my own life. In the days leading up to the Washington rally, right-wing talk radio, both local and national, approached the point of hysteria in denouncing the reparations movement as absurd and ridiculous. A CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll taken last February found that 84 percent of white people in the United States oppose reparations for slavery. It’s not as if people of the United States reject in any general way the concept of reparations to compensate for social crimes of the past. The US government’s payment of compensation to Japanese-American victims of internment during World War II was well received by the public here. As were the efforts of Swiss banks to compensate Jewish families for assets confiscated by the Nazis. By far the largest and most successful reparations movement in recent memory, though, is President Bush’s 2001 tax cut. His tax plan distributes $1.3 trillion from the US Treasury, with the vast majority of it going to the wealthiest one percent. Yet we have no trouble in this nation telling the descendants of African slaves they should pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Yes, African Americans should rely on hard work and perseverance rather than government handouts in order to overcome whatever disadvantages and hardships the 400-year regime of slavery and Jim Crow has placed in their paths. But when the mega-rich complain that they are not quite rich enough, Dubya and his cronies rush in with public giveaways on a mind-boggling scale. Speaking of scale, it’s worth pointing out that making reparations to the descendants of slaves would be no more expensive than Dubya’s tax cut. The 2000 US Census numbers the African American population at 34.7 million. We could send a check for $37,000 to every African American woman, man and child and the total would amount to less than Dubya’s $1.3 trillion tax cut. I hasten to add, though, that most proponents of reparations aren’t even proposing direct cash payments. Instead, they favor the establishment of foundations, at a cost of far less than $1.3 trillion, that would assist slavery’s descendants in obtaining education, jobs and housing – assets that the legacy of race-based social and economic hierarchy has long impeded. Advocates of reparations for slavery are unable even to pass HR 40, the bill introduced annually by Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.). It asks only for the establishment of a commission to study the question of reparations. Dubya’s reparations-for-the-rich-tax-cut sailed through Congress. The elected representatives of society have thus decided that the wealthiest among us deserve reparations for the special burdens of being rich. It is tough, I suppose, to figure out how to spend and invest all that money. To be forever on the lookout for new ways to evade taxes. Living in palatial mansions. Attending Ivy League schools. Taking vacations in Europe. Having summer homes in the Hamptons and Cape Cod. I don’t know how the rich can stand it. And consider for a moment the singular hardship of living one’s entire life without ever performing manual and menial – to say nothing of dangerous – labor. It is a cruel fate beyond the imaginations of the upper class receiving the bulk of tax relief. The real priorities of the US policy-making establishment stand out clearly in the context of reparations for slavery versus the Bush tax cut. The suffering and degradation caused by 400 years of slavery and Jim Crow, along with those institutions’ persisting legacy of racial prejudice, is a minor historical footnote unworthy of governmental redress. We should all just get over it. On the other hand, the complaint of the very wealthiest, many of whose families were enriched by slave labor, that they deserve affirmative governmental action to make them even wealthier – becomes a problem of crisis proportion requiring an immediate $1.3 trillion reparations program. It would appear that the descendants of victims of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, a human-rights atrocity on a scale rarely equaled in history, are far more deserving recipients of a trillion dollars in reparations than are the billionaires who now feed at the trough of the Bush tax cut. I guess I’m neither as compassionate nor as conservative as our president. See In These Times, Sept. 30, 2002 for more information. This article was intended for publication in the October Madison Insurgent, but was received after production had ended. Our apologies to the author and to our readers The author is currently a guest of the State of Wisconsin. Write him at 116387, PO Box 25, Oregon, WI 53575. __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now. http://mailplus.yahoo.com From mad_insurgent at yahoo.com Mon Dec 16 15:17:17 2002 From: mad_insurgent at yahoo.com (the madison insurgent) Date: Sun Feb 8 02:52:02 2004 Subject: [Dryerase] Madison Insurgent - Nov/Dec articles - story #6 Message-ID: <20021216211717.69986.qmail@web14908.mail.yahoo.com> Beating down police brutality by Nathan Moore and Andrea MK On October 11, San Francisco police were called to Thurgood Marshall Academic High School to stop a fight between three African American and 10 Asian Americans teenagers. “The police immediately came toward the African Americans and started hitting us with billy clubs and handcuffing innocent people who were not even involved in anything, simply trying to go to their classes,” writes Jamie Redmond, a student at TMAHS. “They slammed students up against lockers, put guns to students’ heads, and handcuffed innocent people.” “A teacher of ours named Mr. Peebles … was telling the cops to ‘let ‘em go, you’re hurting them,’” says Jeff, a TMAHS 12th grader. “They told Mr. Peebles to leave or they’ll take him to jail. He said that he didn’t care, left, went upstairs, got a camera, and started videotaping all the police beating up the kids. After that, the cops took the videotape, handcuffed [Mr. Peebles] and took him to jail.” Accounts of that morning differ in details. Explanations of why it happened are even more disparate. But most people agree on one thing: the police used too much force. Police brutality is one of the most widespread problems in the United States. The Coalition to Stop Police Brutality, Repression, and the Criminalization of a Generation reports that police excessive force or misconduct killed more than 140 people in the last year alone. A 16-year old black male beaten by police in Los Angeles. White officers acquitted after shooting black people in Cincinnati. The infamous shooting of Amadou Diallo in New York. Similar scenarios in Atlanta, Boston, Detroit, Minneapolis, New Orleans, St. Louis, and Washington, D.C. And the most extreme instance of police brutality in the United States – the 1985 firebombing of the MOVE headquarters in Philadelphia. This article could easily become a litany of police abuses. In fact, we could fill the pages of this paper and still not be finished. In a sense, that’s part of the problem – there are so many cases of police brutality that many have become desensitized to them. Some decry these abuses, while others argue that certain force is excusable. But it seems those on both sides have gotten used to police brutality as an institution. It is our reality today. The Coalition to Stop Police Brutality wants to bring that to an end. Organizers of annual demonstrations on October 22, they have successfully united local anti-brutality groups with families of brutality victims. The group coordinated nationwide protests in a dozen cities this year. Their aim is to refocus attention on police brutality—an issue that has been marginalized almost as much as its victims, largely young black and Latino men. They are fighting an uphill battle. Between media “whitewashing” of instances of police violence, and corruption on municipal “Civilian” Review Boards, there seem to be few outlets left for anti-police brutality groups to radically change things or even publicize events. Inside the system, police brutality has seemingly become entirely established as part of state tradition. The O22 annual protests then, serve a critical role. They are, one hopes, the beginnings of a truly mass movement against state violence and the systems that legitimate it. At the O22 funeral procession in St. Louis, Rena Johnson, whose son was shot five times by St. Louis police, spoke. “It is very important that we all stick together, and not just come together when we’re angry. We have to fight every day, because they are killing our babies left and right and nothing is being done. It’s time to stand up and say enough is enough.” Many O22 groups are calling for Civilian Oversight Review Boards, to which police departments are accountable. If passed, a bill in the St. Louis City Council will create a group that would receive and investigate civilian complaints against police officers. The Board would have access to all police records and would also have the power to report findings and recommend disciplinary action and policy changes. One hopes that Civilian Review Boards can address some of the problems of police brutality. On a base level, though, O22 groups and anti-state violence actions show us what we must do to fight a brutal police force. We must first seriously and concertedly acknowledge victims of police violence, then work to aid them. We must monitor the police on our streets through groups such as CopWatch. We must support our imprisoned peers, often victims of racist laws and the so-called War on Drugs. By acknowledging the injustices operating presently, we can organize to fight this manifestations of state power. Nathan Moore can be contacted at nathan@wvejc.org. __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now. http://mailplus.yahoo.com From mad_insurgent at yahoo.com Mon Dec 16 15:17:42 2002 From: mad_insurgent at yahoo.com (the madison insurgent) Date: Sun Feb 8 02:52:02 2004 Subject: [Dryerase] Madison Insurgent - Nov/Dec articles - story #7 Message-ID: <20021216211742.79180.qmail@web14912.mail.yahoo.com> Compost This! Getting down with worm composting by Ginny Goldberg There is more to worm composting than meets the eye. It looks like a strangely nice-smelling box of decomposing food waste in a basement or garage, but it is more. It is so very much more. Vermiposting or worm composting is a fantastic way to reduce the amount of waste entering landfills and limit water pollution. In addition, worm castings (a.k.a. worm poop) are extraordinarily high in usable nitrogen and therefore make excellent fertilizer and potting soil additive. A worm bin can be a multi-disciplinary teaching tool for people of all ages. It is useful for classrooms, homes, churches, and community gardens, as well as a host of other sustainability-minded organizations. Worm bins are easily mobile and are an ideal way for apartment dwelling humans to compost. The necessary items for a worm bin are a container, bedding, worms, and food waste. There are many ways to create a usable worm composting system. Here is one very simple process. Find a 20–30 gallon dark plastic container with a tight fitting lid. The bin must be dark, because worms are photophobic – unable to function in light. Drill small air holes in all the sides, around the bottom, and on the lid; in all, 50–100 holes should suffice. Because plastic is not absorbent, it will have a tendency to create wet conditions inside the bin. If this occurs, check to see if any air holes are blocked, and drill more holes if necessary. Next, fill the bin with bedding material. This is “brown” or dry material like shredded junk mail, newspaper, and/or cardboard, fallen leaves, sawdust, straw, or any dry plant material. The more diversity in bedding material, the richer the worm castings will be. Bedding helps aerate the habitat as well as control odor. Add a handful of soil to the bedding material to create grit for the worm’s digestion. Dampen the bedding material with enough water that it feels like a wrung-out sponge. It is important to use composting worms (Eisenia foetida, or red wiggler worms), which are typically found in manure piles. Regular earthworms will not survive under the conditions necessary for composting. Purchase worms online, from a purveyor of fine composting worms, or collect them from a friend who has a working worm bin. Bury the red wigglers along with a pound or so of food under the bedding. From mad_insurgent at yahoo.com Mon Dec 16 15:18:05 2002 From: mad_insurgent at yahoo.com (the madison insurgent) Date: Sun Feb 8 02:52:03 2004 Subject: [Dryerase] Madison Insurgent - Nov/Dec articles - story #8 Message-ID: <20021216211805.70161.qmail@web14908.mail.yahoo.com> Food irradiation: Nuking food for profit by John E. Peck Hidden inside the recently passed 2002 Farm Bill – unbeknownst to most consumers, farmers, and taxpayers – was a provision (Section 1079E) granting the U.S. Food and Drug Administration the power to approve any technology capable of killing pathogens as a form of "pasteurization." Another provision (Section 442) goes even further, forbidding the U.S. Department of Agriculture from restricting distribution of irradiated foods through mandated national school lunch and child nutrition programs. Corporate agribusiness has long awaited such provisions, so they can circumvent consumer warning labels and sidestep clean-up of factory farm conditions. Corporate food irradiators now have access to the nation’s entire food supply. Test marketing of irradiated burgers began at several Dairy Queen restaurants in Minnesota over the summer. Companies such as Schwan’s and Wegmen’s now sell irradiated meat – much of which comes through Chicago-based Sure-Beam, a spin-off of defense contractor Titan Corp. Sure-Beam claims irradiated food keeps NASA astronauts healthy and that its electron beams use exactly the same electricity as a microwave oven or television set. As reported in The New York Times (10/27/2002), the company can now dump whatever mystery meat remains onto children’s school lunch trays by year’s end, at taxpayer expense. This drive towards ionizing radiation of food is actually part of a larger corporate campaign to shift food production to the global South. In fact, USDA officials claim irradiation is "absolutely necessary" for future global food trade; it extends the shelf-life of produce, kills pathogens and other pests, and even masks the contamination/putrefaction of meat – making it appealing for long distance shipment. Brazil is the leader in food irradiation, with 11 operating ionization plants and another 21 under construction. Irradiated food is already available in 33 countries, and includes everything from spices to tropical fruit to beans. Whole irradiated foods sold in U.S. grocery stores are now required to bear the "radura" irradiation symbol – a green flower in a broken circle (strikingly similar to the logo of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency) that can be as small as a fingernail. But no consumer warning label is required for irradiated ingredients mixed into other items – such as baby food, frozen lasagna, or fruit juice – or for entrees served in restaurants, hospitals, and schools. Many people already eat irradiated foods on a daily basis, without their consent or even awareness. Another powerful proponent of food irradiation is the nuclear industry. As early as the 1970s, the U.S. Department of Energy advocated food irradiation under its "Byproduct Utilization Program." Conventional food irradiation uses cobalt 60 and cesium 137 – both nuclear waste byproducts – to generate high-energy gamma rays. In a typical facility, a human operator moves aluminum food racks into a chamber with six-foot thick walls and then exposes the target to a rack of cobalt 60 "pencils" lifted out of a water pool. A more recent innovation uses an "e beam" from a particle accelerator. Titan Corp., which created the "e beam" idea from its ongoing Star Wars research, receives 80 percent of its revenue from U.S. taxpayers through DOE and the Pentagon. The University of Wisconsin itself holds $53,000 worth of Titan stock in its Trust Fund" (www.uwsa.edu/tfunds). The number of microbes killed by radiation depends upon the time and length of exposure; 100 percent mortality is rarely achieved. Irradiation does not physically remove the manure, pus, vomit, and other waste on food, either – nor can it prevent future contamination from dirty utensils, cutting surfaces, unwashed hands, etc. And the negative consequences for "non-target organisms" are apparent – as witnessed by the health impact on government workers in Washington D.C. forced to handle irradiated mail in the wake of post 9/11 anthrax attacks. Over 100 U.S. Postal Service employees and 250 Congressional and Executive Branch staffers are reported to have suffered a wide variety of irradiation symptoms – from bloody noses and chronic headaches, to skin lesions and tingling sensations. Unlike normal cooking, when food is irradiated, numerous chemical bonds are ruptured, leaving behind a trail of free radicals, ions, and other radiolytic byproducts. Some of these compounds are already known to be dangerous to human health when ingested – such as formaldehyde, formic acid, and benzene. Others are only identified as "unique radiolytic products" – including cyclobutanones such as 2-DCB – which are not found naturally anywhere, only in irradiated foods. There has been no federal safety testing and little scientific investigation of URPs – despite the fact that they are known to persist for up to a decade in food, a time period in which experts fear is long enough to trigger cancers and birth defects. Irradiation also destroys many vitamins, enzymes, healthy bacteria, and other nutritional elements found naturally in whole foods. The free radicals produced by irradiation rupture cell membranes, mutate others, and destroy vitamins. Given estimates that 40 percent of people living in the United States take vitamin supplements, food giants have a vested interest in fortifying the same foods they degrade and marketing nutritional supplements. Surveys have also shown that irradiation reduces and distorts flavor. But for agribusiness giants such as Smithfield, Cargill/Excel, and Conagra, irradiation will let them avoid costly meat recalls and evade the crisis of rampant contamination in factory farming – including recent outbreaks of E. coli, Listeria, and Salmonella – due to hazardous farming practices. Over 80 percent of the antibiotics used in agriculture in the U.S. are for non-essential purposes – such as medicated feed that stimulates growth (www.keepantibioticsworking.com). This has led to the emergence of strains of resistant bacteria because of their widespread presence in our food chain and water supply (due in part to runaway manure runoff from factory farm operations). Irradiation exposure will accelerate the evolution of more "super germs" – which is why some of the staunchest opponents of irradiated foods (and sub-therapeutic antibiotics) are biologists, physicians, and nurses. While it is technically illegal, many U.S. agribusiness operators continue to feed farm animals the remains of other animals, often in the form of processed blood/bone meal supplements. This practice is especially tempting for factory dairy farm operators, who need higher protein in their feeding regimen to compensate for the unnatural milk volumes cranked out of cows injected with recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH). In some cases, entrails of slaughtered animals are even served back to others "stuck in the queue" at slaughterhouses, easily spreading prions, viruses, bacteria, fungus, mold, and other pathogens between animals and across species. Meat packing mergers and accelerated assembly lines are two other clear factors behind the contamination that irradiation is meant to "solve." One infected steer tossed into a corporate hamburger grinder and redistributed to fast food outlets nationwide can easily kill scores of people in half a dozen states. The deregulation and privatization of meat inspection under the Clinton/Bush administrations has only made the situation worse. A recent exposé by Public Citizen revealed that the USDA’s new "Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point" meat sanitation program was a food safety joke. For instance, the Cargil/Excel meatpacking plant, responsible for an E. coli outbreak in Wisconsin that killed one child and sickened 500 others, passed its first two HACCP checks, but then during the 15 month "holiday" between such mandated inspections, received 26 other citations for fecal contamination with no regulatory action. A recent memo from the USDA Food Safety Inspection Service leaked to the public (11/2/02 New York Times) actually redefined "fecal contamination" and warned inspectors that they would be held personally accountable for the economic consequences of halting meat production for food safety concerns. Grassroots efforts are now underway to mandate proper labeling, build a consumer boycott against all irradiated products, pressure school boards and other elected officials to ban irradiated foodstuffs from public institutions, and otherwise end this technology. As Michael Hart, a British farmer who visited Wisconsin on a speaking tour last summer said, "I don’t want to eat shit – raw, cooked or irradiated." The author can be reached at jepeck@students.wisc.edu. __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now. http://mailplus.yahoo.com From mad_insurgent at yahoo.com Mon Dec 16 15:18:25 2002 From: mad_insurgent at yahoo.com (the madison insurgent) Date: Sun Feb 8 02:52:03 2004 Subject: [Dryerase] Madison Insurgent - Nov/Dec articles - story #9 Message-ID: <20021216211825.70205.qmail@web14908.mail.yahoo.com> Burgers and SuperSized Misery A review of Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation by Victoria Prozan When looking for reasons that our society is failing so many individuals, it is easy to blame guns, television, under-funded schools and politicians. But don’t forget to add McDonald’s and other fast food chains to the list. Fast Food Nation, the Dark Side of the All American Meal by Eric Schlosser, is an in-depth look at the greed and exploitation that is at the foundation of the fast food industry. Many people have long been aware of the cruel conditions of factory farming that keep these restaurants afloat, but unfortunately, this is only the tip of the iceberg. Animals are not the only suffering beings in this story. Potato farmers, low-skilled workers – often people of color, immigrants, and even franchise owners are all trampled on as they attempt to carve out a small living. Do consumers really know what they are supporting when they order? The objective of fast food chains everywhere is to maintain a consistent product through every franchise. This approach ensures consumers are much more likely to head to the Golden Arches if the alternative is unfamiliar to them. Imagine trying to keep thousands of restaurants identical; then, realize that chains can only accomplish sameness through cheap, dehumanizing means. A French fry seems harmless enough, right? McDonald’s “revolutionized” the French fry by switching from fresh cut fries (too expensive – the fresh produce, the labor to peel, cut, and fry them) to frozen fries. This allowed McDonald’s the consistency they craved, while at the same time eliminated the need for more employees, thus reducing the cost of the product (for McDonald’s, not the consumer). This bit of “progress” was partly responsible for McDonald’s growing from 725 restaurants in the mid-60s to 3000 only a decade later. How did this affect the potato farmer? Initially, McDonald’s purchased produce from 175+ farms; but the change to frozen fries allowed them instead to buy from one or two big suppliers. As the suppliers’ strength grew, they controlled the prices paid to small, local farmers. The number of farmers in Idaho has decreased 50 percent in the last 25 years, yet the amount of farmland growing potatoes has increased. Small farmers are being driven out of business, and then hired by agri-businesses to manage the farms they once owned. To put it in perspective, $0.02 for each $1.50 order of fries goes to the actual farmer. Another hidden evil of the McDonald’s French fry is the fact that they contain beef fat. When McDonald’s switched to frozen fries, they needed to find a way to improve the taste. This was solved by frying them in rendered beef fat. However, public health concerns caused them to abandon this practice and switch to frying in vegetable oil. Once again, McDonald’s faced the dilemma of how to better flavor their fries. The solution: just put beef fat in the fry itself. Vegetarian and Hindu groups in the U.K. recently sued McDonald’s over this issue and won. Who staffs the Golden Arches? People who would have difficulty finding work elsewhere – teenagers, elderly, immigrants, and others with few job skills. These same folks are often the most likely to put up with unsafe working conditions and low wages, leaving them with little chance to build actual job skills that could lead to more rewarding work. Labor practices in the fast food industry are a worker’s worst nightmare. Another of McDonald’s “revolutions” was bringing assembly line work to the kitchen, reducing virtually all positions to repetitive, non-thinking actions. This allows them to not “waste” any time training new employees – especially important since the average turnover in the fast food industry is four months. But if training employees gets too expensive, that’s okay: the federal government provides subsidies for the “training” programs in fast food chains. The tax break amounts to $2400 for each employee “trained.” To qualify, the chain needs to employ the person for just 400 hours, or about 10 weeks full-time. Given their high turnover rate, most employees won’t be around much longer than that anyway. Thus, the chain is free to start the whole subsidized training cycle again. There’s another group of employees who actually have it worse than those running the fryers and cash registers: the miserable souls whose job it is to run the slaughterhouses that supply those sought-after burgers. Few people in the United States even consider doing this work. Teams of recruiters have active offices in Mexico City and other places south of our border to ensure a steady supply of bodies to fill these retched jobs. For $8–9 per hour, immigrants are willing to leave home and be transported to (usually) the Midwest. They can earn twice as much money as in Mexico, allowing them to help support their families. But is the pay worth it? The number of amputations and repetitive stress injuries in slaughterhouses is astounding. Meanwhile, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration is rarely around to properly monitor the situation. Even one day after an amputation, employees are coerced into showing up for at least a few hours of work, so the company can avoid a lost workday on its paperwork. The issues raised here only allude to the big picture of the fast food chains’ conquest of employees, suppliers, consumers, and the environment in building their fast food empire. Once you pick up Fast Food Nation, be prepared for your view of the endless chains on every highway and roadway in American to change forever. __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now. http://mailplus.yahoo.com From mad_insurgent at yahoo.com Mon Dec 16 15:18:44 2002 From: mad_insurgent at yahoo.com (the madison insurgent) Date: Sun Feb 8 02:52:03 2004 Subject: [Dryerase] Madison Insurgent - Nov/Dec articles - story #10 Message-ID: <20021216211844.14315.qmail@web14911.mail.yahoo.com> Radical and common sensical Review of Power Politics, by Arundhati Roy by Tracy McLellan “What is happening to our world is almost too colossal for human comprehension to contain. But it is a terrible, terrible thing. To contemplate its girth and circumference, to attempt to define it, to try and fight it all at once, is impossible. The only way to combat it is by fighting specific wars in specific ways. A good place to begin would be the Narmada Valley.” Thusly does Roy conclude the second of three relatively short essays, which comprise Power Politics. The Narmada Valley contains one of India’s major rivers, on which a series of dams are being built that have already displaced 30 million people. It is in microcosm the flim-flam of “free-enterprise” and “privatization,” with the appalling consequences that have become typical of the corporate multinationals, many of which, including Enron, are familiar names. This is a short book, only 103 pages not counting the notes and index, but it is chock full of salt-of-the-earth ideas, and the passion of a powerful writer. After the huge success of her novel, The God of Small Things, Roy wrote three political essays that attacked the shenanigans and malfeasance of “globalisation.” She was thereafter marked as a trouble-maker and has been hauled before the Indian Supreme Court twice on specious charges. She was, in essence, exonerated the first time. The judgment in the second was pending as the current book went to press. She presents the indictment of the second charge verbatim, which is an exercise in gobbledygook, subterfuge, and venom; and her response, full of fire and lightning. An example of the common sense of Roy’s writing, so obvious and self-evident as to go unremarked in the corporate and mainstream media: “When all the rivers and valleys and hills of the world have been priced, bar-coded, and stacked in the local supermarket, when all the hay and coal and earth and wood and water have been turned to gold, what then shall we do with the gold? Make nuclear bombs to obliterate what’s left of the ravaged landscapes and the national notions in our ruined world?” This book is a valuable insight into the processes of globalisation at the most grassroots of levels, and the corporate domination of the world’s wealth and resources by the multinationals as they are shaping India and the rest of the world. Roy’s focus is on her own country. She witnesses and reports on events that are easily extrapolated widely. She examines in detail and with passion, artistry, and outrage, the political events of the Narmada Valley Development Project. This project plans to build 3,200 dams, many of them already started or completed, that, according to Roy “will alter the ecology of an entire river basin, affect the lives of about twenty-five million people who live in the valley, and submerge four thousand square kilometers of old-growth, deciduous forest, hundreds of temples, as well as archeological sites dating back to the Lower Paleolithic Age.” The people affected aren’t consulted. Roy laments President Clinton’s visit to India in March, 2000: “He was courted and fawned over by the genuflecting representatives of this ancient civilization with a fervor that can only be described as indecent... The poor were herded away, and hidden from the presidential gaze... In Delhi’s dirty sky, vindicated nuclear hawks banked and whistled: Bill is here because we have the Bomb.” During his visit contracts worth 3-4 billion U.S. dollars were signed and, under terms of “free trade,” import restrictions were lifted on many basic commodities, many of which India has in surfeit. Indeed, at the very time that India was removing the import quota on wheat, in effect so that American agribusiness could flood the market, “forty-two million tons of grain were rotting in (Indian) government storehouses.” Wouldn’t want to let this tidy fact interfere with the profit-making of the free enterprise system. Roy’s book is a rare little gem which manages to say more in 100 pages than most books do in many more. Talking about her compatriots she says, “It is strange to see ‘ordinary’ people march around in khaki shorts and learn that amassing nuclear weapons, religious bigotry, misogyny, homophobia, book burning, and outright hatred are the ways in which to retrieve a nation’s lost dignity...(to) see... how the two arms of government work in synergy. How they have evolved and pretty near perfected an extraordinary pincer action – while one arm is busy selling the nation off in chunks, the other, to divert attention, is orchestrating a baying, howling, deranged chorus of cultural nationalism... to actually see how the inexorable ruthlessness of one process results in the naked, vulgar terrorism perpetrated by the other.” This book, by the way, was written and published before the events of September 11th. If I would have a criticism of this book, it is that it is too short; and that, only because what she does offer is so refreshing and forthright, not to speak of absent from the mainstream. I read the book in an hour-and-a-half. It is very gripping and enjoyable. It is full of ideas, and the passion of an artist, activist, democrat, and writer. __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now. http://mailplus.yahoo.com From mad_insurgent at yahoo.com Mon Dec 16 15:19:03 2002 From: mad_insurgent at yahoo.com (the madison insurgent) Date: Sun Feb 8 02:52:03 2004 Subject: [Dryerase] Madison Insurgent - Nov/Dec articles - story #11 Message-ID: <20021216211903.46854.qmail@web14901.mail.yahoo.com> No easy solutions in Moore's new flick by Tracy McLellan Because it shows the truth about United States imperialism too often neglected in corporate media and conventional history, the most hopeful thing about Bowling for Columbine, Michael Moore’s new documentary, occurs about two-thirds of the way through. Moore, trying to get at the root cause of the rampant violence in our society, shows a montage of images revealing CIA and US military interventions in foreign countries. There’s the oil grab in Iran in 1953 where the CIA assassinated President Mosadegh; Jacobo Arbenz’s assassination in 1954 in Guatemala after he nationalized fallow lands contrary to the wishes of United Fruit Company; Patrice Lumumba in the Congo in 1960; Allende in Chile in 1973 and the rise of Pinochet, the Panama invasion of 1990, Grenada, Vietnam, and others. Indeed, it seems the current discussion of terrorism, its causes and solutions, lacks this important context. This sequence alone puts the film in a unique category. An air of emptiness permeates the whole film, as Moore never really uncovers either the reason or the solution to widespread violence. Moore’s use of Louis Armstrong’s soundtrack, “What a Wonderful World” over a collage of violent images culled from the American Canon adds to this feeling of unreality. Moore takes his camera literally all over the map. He visits the Michigan Militia and talks with one of its members, James Nichols, brother of Terry of Oklahoma City bombing renown, for an eerie interview. It is as vacuous and has as little reason as the pandemic of gun-violence. He visits a bank, which gives away a free gun to anyone opening a new account. He interviews an executive with Lockheed Martin against the backdrop of one of its missiles, near Columbine, who cannot see any link between the violence at the school and his company being the world’s largest manufacturer of weapons. He takes two of the Columbine survivors, who each still have bullets in their bodies, to Kmart headquarters to “return the merchandise.” The gunmen had purchased 900 rounds of ammunition at 17 cents a pop at a Kmart store. He also talks with some of those who benefit from the widespread violence like security companies, metal detector firms, and the like. One of these company’s spokeswoman suggests high school dress codes can end the problem of gun-violence. Although the film is a search for the source of gun-violence, Moore finds as few answers as he does solutions. Joe Lieberman blusters about Marilyn Manson being to blame. Although the murder rate is down 20 percent in recent years, coverage of murder and mayhem in TV news is up 100 percent. Dick Clark slams the car door in Moore’s face when he inquires about a welfare-to-work mother in Michigan, whose six-year-old son gunned down a classmate. She had to travel 60 miles roundtrip daily to get to a minimum wage job working at Dick Clark’s grill, and rarely saw her boy. Lockheed Martin of all corporations administers the privatization of Michigan’s welfare program. Charlton Heston is the celebrity on the hot seat. Heston led a charge of the NRA into Columbine within a week of the catastrophe. Moore, “the filmmaker,” as he tells Heston over the intercom at his home, lets Moore in to “talk about his new movie.” And soon walks out on Moore, leaving him hostless in his posh house in the California mountains. Perhaps not so coincidentally, April 20, 1999, the day of the Columbine massacre, was also the day the most bombs were dropped by allied forces in the Kosovo War. Clinton was off TV less than an hour after justifying the bombings when he returned to the television screen offering condolences for the victims of the Columbine massacre. I had heard from several sources that this movie was all about Michael Moore’s ego. I detected none of that. Moore tells his story in his unique style, with raucous humor, capturing the emptiness of this like many of the issues of the day in the depoliticized US, with intelligence and energy. By turns he is somber, tender, and compassionate with the victims of the tragedies, stunned by the intellectual bankruptcy of many of the pro-gunners and a complacent society, and outraged at the powers that be, which often benefit from the status quo, who allow and are culpable in the profound stupidity of citizen killing citizen. The best answer Moore can provide as to the why of Columbine, is that a campaign of scare mongering keeps everyone fearful and afraid, and leads to consumption. The best solution he can offer, as he did in his best-selling book, Stupid White Men, when he suggested Frank Zappa to a corporate executive who was particularly clueless, is good rock-n-roll music. And so, rolling the end credits over a punk cover of “What a Wonderful World” is a nice touch to a movie that engages the viewer in the issues of the day rather than provide escapism in mindless entertainment, or worse, violence for its own sake. __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now. http://mailplus.yahoo.com From mad_insurgent at yahoo.com Mon Dec 16 15:19:23 2002 From: mad_insurgent at yahoo.com (the madison insurgent) Date: Sun Feb 8 02:52:03 2004 Subject: [Dryerase] Madison Insurgent - Nov/Dec articles - story #12 Message-ID: <20021216211924.27424.qmail@web14909.mail.yahoo.com> The Wait by Dan Marakis Merry Pranksters of Disrepute, (merry, not in a fat-white-guy-in-a- red-suit way as much as blue; prankster, no acid here, another motive seated in the theater of control issuing disrepute over others engendering them selves, spending nights in absence of conscience— no conscious rebuttal of wrong: It was right of me to wake Neo at the foot of the stairway, he had nowhere else to lay his head, I gave him a prison bed. It was much softer. But hey, what is there to say to the man backed by your bills?) who do you think made your seats so comfy? When expressed in terms heard by all, this place your ass can’t be, “HEY, this is private property.” No this is a problem of privacy in private proprietorship I pose to prose while the throes of Santa’s sleigh-people reap woes on the uneasy minds of children too weak to bear their wait (an impetus for change). __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now. http://mailplus.yahoo.com From nyvoices at indypress.org Thu Dec 19 12:53:49 2002 From: nyvoices at indypress.org (Dania Rajendra) Date: Sun Feb 8 02:52:04 2004 Subject: [Dryerase] Voices 46: 19 December 2002 Message-ID: <000001c2a78f$f8efeb30$6a01a8c0@herman> Dear Dry-Erase folks, Here is Voices 46. For full content visit our site. To reprint a single article, contact me or Ilana Miller at the info below to arrange the rights, or contact the paper directly. (It's usually free, dependent on the source paper.) Rights are granted to reprint the edition as a whole. We encourage people to report on the the content and provide links. Dania will be back in the office on Jan. 2. Happy Holidays! This Week's Voices That Must Be Heard By IPA-New York, a sponsored project of the Independent Press Association Edition 46: 19 December 2002. Advisory editor: Mohsin Zaheer, of Sada-e-Pakistan NY, an IPA member publication. There will be no edition on 26 December 2002. NEWS ITEMS: Redistricting: the people of Chinatown try to create its history by Xiaoqing Rong, Sing Tao Daily, 30 November 2002. Translated from Chinese by Xiaoqing Rong. As redistricting only occurs every 10 years, Chinatown's residents want to ensure that new lines are drawn in their best interests. In District 1, with wealthy areas like Soho, many feel that their issues are ignored and would be better served in a new district that included the growing Hispanic population on the Lower East Side. Others feel that Chinatown's lines should stay put. MORE. U.S. to Caribbean: criminal deportees law "a fact of life." U.S. rules out changes that would ease pain on immigrant families by Tony Best, New York Carib News, 10 December 2002. English language. The Caribbean community expects a dramatic rise in the number of criminal deportees from the U.S. next year, which would have disruptive effects on families in Caribbean countries and in the United States. A proposal to reduce this number, and use U.S. funds to help resettle deportees, was sent to the Bush administration. Their answer: Forget about it. MORE. Boy who sold toys on the streets of Chinatown becomes chairman of rapidly growing IT consulting company by Bomsinae Kim, The Korea Central Daily, 11 December 2002. Translated from Korean by Bomsinae Kim. Woo Song arrived in New York City at age 11, nervous and discouraged by the challenges of immigrant life. Inspired by his parents' hard work, Song resolved to succeed. Twenty-six years later, he is the chairman of a Manhattan-based IT consulting firm with over 150 employees. MORE. Russian seniors cry foul: residents complain of language barrier at subsidized housing project billed as immigrant friendly by Adam Dickter, Jewish Week, 13 December 2002. English language. Since the layoff of a Russian-speaking employee, residents of a Brooklyn housing project say they have been left in the dark. Many are elderly tenants, who speak only Russian, and face increased difficulty seeking repairs, reading safety instructions and dealing with building management. Claiming that the language barrier does not allow residents to access services, a public interest lawyer has filed a suit on behalf of 16 tenants. MORE. A new opportunity in a new city by Georgine Yorgey, The Link, 1 December 2002. English language. Sonnia Lopez owned a farm in her native Ecuador. After immigrating to New York City, Lopez dreamed of continuing her life as a farmer-a dream she never imagined would come true. That was until Lopez found the New Farmer Development Project, which helps immigrants who were farmers in their home countries get a start here. MORE. BRIEFS: Study: undocumented workers in U.S. pay $7 billion in annual taxes by Emelyn Tapaoan, Filipino Express, 15 December 2002. English language. Hometown black support shrinks for Lott by Beacon News, New York Beacon, 16 December 2002. English language. Television news ignores Latinos by Lynn Elber, El Diario / La Prensa, 16 December 2002. Translated from Spanish by Hannah Emmerich. Emergency Medical Services battle rages between private and public by Chris Burch, Highbridge Horizon, 11 December 2002. English language. Aztec invasion in the Big Apple by Maria del Carmen Amado, Hoy, 12 December 2002. Translated from Spanish by Telesh Lopez. EDITORIALS: Funding fascist Hindu organizations in the United States by Ibrahim Sajid Malik, Pakistan Post, 11 December 2002. Translated from Urdu by Rehan Ansari. U.S. law enforcement agencies are reaching out to mosques across the United States with a list of Muslim charities suspected of having ties to militants, and a message: contribution to these charities is considered criminally negligent. But these agencies have overlooked the money that is funneled to fascist Hindu organizations from many U.S. companies and individuals. MORE. False social security brokers on the rise: H-- Tour Company in Flushing's Union Mall issues false social security cards Joo Gan New York News, 6 December 2002. Translated from Korean by Sun-Yong Reinish. The sale of counterfeit social security cards and driver's licenses is big business for illegal brokers who prey on the fears of undocumented immigrants. Even crackdowns from the INS have not deterred these companies from selling fake ID's. These illegal brokers represent the underside of the Korean community and must be eradicated. MORE. The media and the U.S. government by Ahsan Jehangir, News Pakistan, 11 December 2002. Translated from Urdu by Rehan Ansari. The relationship between the media and the U.S. government appears closer than ever. The media has become a place where the administration tests public reaction to a future policy, or where administration policies are "explained." And ties between the administration and the media are not simply close-both act toward a common goal. MORE. Dania Rajendra Editor, Voices That Must Be Heard Independent Press Association - New York www.indypressny.org * 212/279-1442 * 143 West 29th St., 901, New York, NY 10001 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.cu.groogroo.com/mailman/archive/dryerase/attachments/20021219/d04451df/attachment.html From news at ckln.fm Thu Dec 19 12:35:55 2002 From: news at ckln.fm (ckln NEWS 88.1fm) Date: Sun Feb 8 02:52:04 2004 Subject: [Dryerase] [Fwd: "A slow process of ethnic cleansing"] Message-ID: <3E02118B.44CF4D57@ckln.fm> Message from the author: Feel free to re-post the article below (if you're with a publication that can offer $, I need the money; if you have no $, no worries, this is copyleft). Just be sure to include all the info at the bottom of the article. Also, I'd really appreciate it if you can re-format the article if the margins, apostrophes, etc are garbled. S'il y a qqn qui pourrait traduire l'article ci-dessous en francais, ca sera tres apprecie aussi. ---------- "A slow process of ethnic cleansing" by Jaggi Singh JERSUALEM, December 19, 2002 -- Today, in Tel Aviv District Court, a Palestinian worker, Jihad Abu Id, will be demanding his release from an Israeli prison. Abu Id has been detained for the last six months, ever since he was arrested for working in Israel without a permit. Abu Id comes from a village called Bidu, located near Ramallah in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. The normal process to deal with "illegal" Palestinian workers in Israel is to detain them for no more than a day, and then remove them to their village of origin in the occupied territories. However, in the case of Abu Id, the Israeli Ministry of the Interior is trying to deport him to Jordan. The excuse: he's married to a Jordanian woman. According to Sharon Bavli, the state attorney at the Israeli Interior Ministry that is attempting to force the removal of Abu Id, his marriage to a Jordanian forfeits his rights to reside in Palestine itself. Abu Id has been jailed for the last six months in Israel's Maasiyahu Prison, a special facility for deportees which, according to Israeli human rights lawyer Shamai Leibowitz, includes a whole section of Palestinians in similar situations to Abu Id. Abu Id's is resisting his deportation by petitioning both the Tel Aviv District Court today, as well as at the Israeli Supreme Court in the coming weeks. At the latter tribunal, he will fight to re-establish his status as a Palestinian. Today in Tel Aviv, his lawyer, Leah Tsemel, will simply ask for his release on bail. The decision in Tel Aviv today is crucial, according to Leibowitz. If Abu Id is released, and returns to Bidu in the West Bank, it will be difficult for the Israeli authorities to go in and grab him, due to the attention that will bring within the village, and perhaps beyond. In Leibowitz's words, "This is about diluting the Palestinian population without attacting media attention". Abu Id's continued imprisonment is the only way the Israeli government might succeed in expelling him to Jordan. Abu Id's family situation also speaks to the nature of the process of dispossession, and the long, quiet struggle for many Palestinians to establish their identity and basic right to reside in their own villages and towns. Abu Id's father was illegally deported from Bidu to Jordan in 1970 by an Israeli military commander who issued a deportation order in territories that were illegally occupied after the Six Day War in 1967. That deportation was eventually determined to be illegal, more than a two decades later, and the family returned to Bidu in 1994, where Abu Id has lived for the past eight years. According to government documents read by Leibowitz, the Israeli state attorney's office estimates between 50-60,000 Palestinians who they deem to be deportable from the occupied territories, for reasons similar to Abu Id. To engage in a mass search and expulsion of these thousands of so-called "illegal" Palestinians is not feasible on both a logistical and public relations level (although some in the Israeli right, which is becoming the mainstream, would forcibly "tranfer" all Palestinians tomorrow if they had their way). Instead, deportations happen quiety, one-by-one, in circumstances like Abu Id's. It's what Leibowitz has no hesitation calling "a slow process of ethnic cleansing". Leibowitz also doesn't hesitate to underline the complicity of the Israeli courts in the expulsion policy of the Israeli goverment, calling the judicial branch "just a long arm of the political branch ... they all collaborate together." A decision about Abu Id's release is expected later today in Tel Aviv. -- Reported by Jaggi Singh in East Jersualem. [For more info about the case of Jihad Abu Id and other Palestinian deportees, please contact Shamai Leibowitz in Tel Aviv at +972 3 670 4170. Jaggi Singh (jaggi@tao.ca) is a member of the International Soldarity Movement (ISM): www.palsolidarity.org. He is a writer and social justice activist based in Montreal, and a member of the No One Is Illegal campaign, an immigrant and refugee rights movement in Canada (nooneisillegal@tao.ca).] From dr_broccoli at hotmail.com Thu Dec 19 19:23:55 2002 From: dr_broccoli at hotmail.com (Shawn G) Date: Sun Feb 8 02:52:04 2004 Subject: [Dryerase] AGR--Hundreds rally in Asheville against war Message-ID: Asheville Global Report www.agrnews.org Reprinting permitted for non-profit use and to members of the Dryerase news wire. Hundreds rally in Asheville against war By Liz Allen Asheville, North Carolina, Dec. 9 (AGR)— Over 300 people gathered in Prichard Park last Saturday to show their opposition to war with Iraq. The rally, lasting from 2pm until 5 that afternoon, included a march, speakers, musicians, poetry and dance. “For us, the point is to show that there is opposition to the war and that we think not only is it morally wrong, but it is not effective,” Melissa Friedlin, an event co-organizer, explained. “The main thing is to keep up the energy. We can’t give up because we feel overwhelmed or because we feel like war is inevitable.” Friedlin says she believes the US has been at war with Iraq since the Gulf War, but actual declaration of war goes a step further to spark hatred and make enemies. The event was sponsored by a number of area non-profit and religious-based organizations. Information tables from various justice-oriented groups were set up and flyers and pamphlets were distributed. The Asheville Police Department was also present, videotaping the attendees and patrolling in uniform and undercover. A broad spectrum of reasons for opposition to war with Iraq were expressed at the demonstration. “I hate it when they have war because most of the people get killed,” said a twelve-year-old boy with “I Love America” painted on his face. He also carried a sign he made that read, “No War. No Fighting. No War. No Fighting.” A prevalent concern of many present was the cruelty the people of Iraq are subjected to through war. Speakers, signs and individuals brought up the fact that war and sanctions on Iraq have killed thousands of Iraqi children. “How long can we turn a blind eye to the Iraqi people?” said Professor Elmoiz Abunura, member of Western Carolinians for Peace and Justice in the Middle East and former undergraduate student and prisoner of conscience in Iraq, speaking at the rally. “Saddam will only be replaced with another Saddam.” He stated that as a Sufi Muslim he believes in the principle of nonviolence and that he believes war will only cause more violence, instability and destruction. “What the President and his cartel of war mongers have to understand is that Iraq was not behind 9/11, it was a criminal act by al-Qaida,” said speaker Ahmad Amara, a refugee of Palestine and retired microbiologist who has written on the Palestinian/Israeli conflict. “In any language, wherever we find it, war is vile, inhuman and immoral.” He believes that war will not harm Saddam, but only the people of Iraq. The United States of today was compared to Germany in the 1920s by Marc Karson, a speaker who is a peace activist, a 1968 peace candidate for the Democratic Party in Illinois, and a political science Professor Emeritus at Makato University in Minnesota. Karson criticized the US as going against international law, being unilateralist, anti-intellectual and pro-military. “Politics is a struggle for power. What we have is not government by the people, for the people and of the people, but government by corporate America, for corporate America and of corporate America…It’s ironic to say Soviet Communism wanted to take over the world. Now we are left to take over the world with our own system,” he said. A march through the downtown area commenced at around 3pm with some marchers singing a peace song and burning sage. The marchers were denied a permit for full use of the streets. Consequently, in order to avoid $100 traffic citations, marchers were instructed to walk two by two on the sidewalk being careful not to interrupt the flow of traffic, in accordance with state and citywide laws. According to Lt. John Kirkpatrick, because the Toys for Tots bike rally was taking place in Biltmore, there were not enough police, 10 – 15, to properly and safely shut down the streets and intersection for the march to legally take place. In order for that to have been organized, he claims they need more prior notice than a week to 10 days. Friedlin said plans for the march and rally began during the trip to protest the School of Americas the second to last weekend in November and that it was last minute because of the urgency of the issue. She stated that in working with the coalition of groups organizing the march, she found the Asheville Police Department and Parks and Recreation Department to “[h]ave been sort of cooperative; with the rally they have and with the march they haven’t.” In a phone interview the Friday before the march Kirkpatrick stated: “If they have 100 or 200 people show up, I don’t think there’s any way they can have a march without keeping people from using the sidewalk. [There cannot be a march] unless it was so organized that people walked single file so that other people could use the sidewalk if they wanted.” Immediately prior to the march Kirkpatrick said “Hopefully the march will go along fine, people will obey the law and everything will be hunky-dory.” So protesters, giant puppets of birds and moon-faced creatures, drums, radical cheerleaders and signs took to the sidewalks, using crosswalks and obeying the lights. Many passing cars honked at the “Honk for Peace” sign. The law-abiding tactic was met with criticism from some of the more radical march attendees. Phoenix, a politically active Asheville resident questioned: “How the hell are we supposed to stop war if we can’t even disobey a goddamn traffic law? Every traffic light we stopped for, we were perpetuating the authority of the state.” Another marcher added, “Everyone so romanticizes civil disobedience and then can’t even do it.” _________________________________________________________________ Add photos to your messages with MSN 8. Get 2 months FREE*. http://join.msn.com/?page=features/featuredemail&xAPID=42&PS=47575&PI=7324&DI=7474&SU= http://www.hotmail.msn.com/cgi-bin/getmsg&HL=1216hotmailtaglines_addphotos_3mf From dr_broccoli at hotmail.com Thu Dec 19 19:21:51 2002 From: dr_broccoli at hotmail.com (Shawn G) Date: Sun Feb 8 02:52:04 2004 Subject: [Dryerase] AGR--Bush Faith Based Initiatives Message-ID: Asheville Global Report www.agrnews.org Reprinting permitted for non-profit use and to members of the Dryerase news wire. Bush circumvents Congress to enact Faith Based Initiatives By Shawn Gaynor Asheville, North Carolina, Dec. 18 (AGR)—In what the White House has characterized as “a fresh start and bold new approach to government’s role in helping those in need,” President Bush has initiated, through executive order, much of his Faith Based Initiative that has failed to gain Congressional support for over a year. The President took the steps last week after attending a Philadelphia conference on the plan attended by 1,500 religious charities where he gave a speech on the program. Underlining who the Presidential initiative is aimed at, the President gave a special welcome to local preacher Franklin Graham, who has espoused what some characterize as bigoted and intolerant views regarding Islam. The orders allow religious organizations that are social service providers to accept federal grant funds. Many groups fear that this will lead to widespread, government-sanctioned, discrimination in employment and service provision. “Congress wouldn’t accept taxpayer-funded religious discrimination last year -- and President Bush knew it wouldn’t in 2003 either,” said Christopher Anders, an ACLU Legislative Counsel. “But rather than compromise and work within the political process, the President has decided to circumvent public and congressional opinion in his quest to allow religious discrimination in the workplace.” According to the ACLU the plan violates the separation of church and state by forcing taxpayers to support religious ministries. In classic Orwellian doublespeak, during his speech Bush repeatedly characterized the separation of church and state as “a pattern of discrimination,” against religious organizations. “I have directed specific action in several federal agencies with a history of discrimination against faith-based groups,” Bush assured the Philadelphia audience. As an example of the behavior that would be validated by the President’s plan, the ACLU pointed to a Georgia lawsuit filed against the United Methodist Children’s Home in Decatur. In it, a Jewish psychotherapist named Alan Yorker is demanding damages because the home explicitly denied him employment based on his religion — even after it admitted that he was the most qualified candidate. In fact, an administrator freely told Yorker that he was rejected because he is Jewish and told another applicant that resumes with Jewish names are automatically thrown out.  Other groups worry the initiative will be used to discriminate against people based on their sexual orientation. “In order to preserve our democracy, the separation of church and state must be maintained,” said Sean Cahill, director of the Policy Institute of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. “The wholesale privatization and desecularization of the United States’ social service infrastructure will be devastating for the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender community. This also threatens basic principles of diversity and cultural pluralism, church-state separation, and individual rights that are at the core of the American political system.” The executive orders signed this week included opening “faith based initiative” offices in the Department of Agriculture, and for USAID, opening the specter of government funded missionary work to third world nations. The order offered no insight into how the new offices would distribute money to church charities. Also among the myriad of concerns over the program are that the government would discriminate against some religious groups for “preaching hate,” while turning a blind eye to the intolerance expressed by others. Bush has indicated the Nation of Islam would not be eligible for funds for it’s preaching of hate. The administration has also voiced concerns about funds going to Wiccan groups. The plan outline no guide lines for what constitutes hateful preaching and is almost certain to ignore religious leaders like Fred Phelps, Jimmy Swaggart. The President had previously ordered the opening of Faith Based Initiative offices in five executive departments. Those offices had handed out their first round of grants to faith based institutions this fall. Grant recipients included Pat Robertson, founder of the of the right-wing Christian Coalition, who received $500,000 dollars for Operation Blessing International (a charity he founded) in the first round of taxpayer money handed out to religious groups. _________________________________________________________________ Add photos to your e-mail with MSN 8. Get 3 months FREE*. http://join.msn.com/?page=features/featuredemail&xAPID=42&PS=47575&PI=7324&DI=7474&SU= http://www.hotmail.msn.com/cgi-bin/getmsg&HL=1216hotmailtaglines_addphotos_3mf From antiracistaction_la at yahoo.com Thu Dec 19 23:49:16 2002 From: antiracistaction_la at yahoo.com (Michael Novick) Date: Sun Feb 8 02:52:04 2004 Subject: [Dryerase] Learning the Lessons of George the First's First Gulf War Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.0.20021219213245.01d6e040@pop.mail.yahoo.com> Here's the lead editorial from the latest issue of "Turning the Tide: Journal of Anti-Racist Action, Research & Education," Volume 15 #4, Winter 2003. For a free sample copy of the entire issue, email ara-la@antiracistaction.us, or write to the address at the bottom of the articles. Paid subscriptions are always welcome. Learning the Lessons of George the First's First Gulf War by Michael Novick, Anti-Racist Action-LA/People Against Racist Terror Malcolm X said that of all studies, history best rewards our diligent efforts, because of the light it casts on our current reality. With that in mind, a look back at the previous U.S. war in Iraq, and the opposition to it, will pay dividends in dealing with the current Bush administration plan to launch a renewed military assault in the on-going US war against Iraq. Unless we want to repeat the failures of that previous effort, we must understand why we were not capable of derailing Desert Shield and Desert Storm in the early 1990's, or doing much to materially impede the decade of war that has followed. What were the key weaknesses of our organizing and resistance efforts? What were the main strategies of the U.S. ruling elite in building its international coalition and support base within the U.S.? How can we overcome those weaknesses, and undermine those strategies, in the current period? How can we expose to people in the US, whose consent is still pivotal to the ability of the US regime to wage such wars, what its real costs are? Not by seeking a level of opposition that will minimize people's discomfort level, but by exposing the system that produces war. We can identify four key weaknesses of the anti-war movement in that earlier period. The most obvious and basic weakness was that the movement against the war flat-lined once the war began. People are talking excitedly today about how the current growing opposition to the war is much greater than at a comparable period in the development of the Vietnam War and the anti-war movement of the 60's. But they are forgetting that most of the protest and opposition to the first Bush war in Iraq came during the build-up of Bush's international coalition and the massing of US and "allied" forces in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in preparation for the invasion. Once Congress voted to approve Bush Sr.'s proposed use of armed force, and troops went in, the anti-war movement pretty much collapsed. The litany of "We have to support our boys" became predominant. the Democrats fell loyally in line behind the President once the vote was taken. That's because they ultimately represent the same class and colonial interests as the Republicans. Vietnam an Exception to thePattern of Acquiescence to War This is in fact the general pattern in U.S. history, to which the Vietnam War was a striking exception, because the Vietnamese were able to effectively apply a strategy of protracted people's war. Combined with US over-extension and weakness, this allowed the war's impact to be experienced first-hand by a conscript army, and seen as a prospect by millions more facing conscription. The rulers of the US learned two key lessons, which mean such a process is unlikely to be repeated. First, they abandoned the legal draft, obligatory military service, in favor of a poverty draft and a professional, high tech army. Second, they abandoned "escalation." Instead they opted for a combination of "low-intensity warfare" (covert military actions fought mainly under CIA control via puppet soldiers from the colonies) as in Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador and Afghanistan in the 80's; and nazi-style "blitzkrieg" (lightning war) as in Granada, Panama, Iraq and Kosovo/Yugoslavia. Remember that there was opposition to the US war with Mexico in 1846. Abraham Lincoln, in Congress, actually voted against a declaration of war. People like to quote him now from that speech about the dangers of executive power. But they neglect to mention that once the declaration passed, he along with the rest of Congress voted to "support our boys" and pass the appropriations bills necessary to fight that war of aggression. Congress later approved the annexation of the additional territories conquered in that war (including California), as they had approved the annexation of Texas, which precipitated the war. There is no reason to expect that a war in Iraq will be protracted, once launched. Remember that people made dire predictions to the effect that Afghanistan would be a snare for the U.S. because of its long history of protracted, bloody battles against foreign invaders, and the fact that they had bogged down the Russians for almost a decade. Yet neither the Afghan winter, nor its mountains, nor its clans, proved to be any substantial impediment to the US military operations. (This is not to say the US operation was a success, either on its own terms or from the perspective of the Afghan people, who are now suffering under a new set of mujaheddin warlords.) Iraq has almost no natural protection from invasion in terms of terrain, and only a little in terms of weather. Its army and people have been weakened by over a decade of warfare by the US and Britain. It will no doubt pay a horrible price if Bush succeeds in once again sending in troops and launching a full-scale air war on Baghdad. But we cannot expect that the course of the war will provide opportunities for an incremental growth of opposition and anti-war organizing based on the costs of the war for the U.S. in conventional terms. We must do it now -- the building, the extending, and the engaging of people in a critical dialogue that will deepen their questioning of the whole sick system. It's an Empire, not a Policy A second related weakness of the anti-war movement a decade ago was that it fell into the trap of a "foreign policy" debate. Seeking the lowest common denominator, people focused on the need for using diplomatic means to achieve US goals, rather than on exposing and opposing the US empire. Forces that did present a supposedly "anti-imperialist" analysis mostly tried to portray Saddam Hussein as a bulwark of anti-capitalist development. The connection between the war and the totality of the imperialist system, including the way it functions inside the U.S. itself, was not dealt with. Recall that once the war was launched, there was in fact a massive, jingoistic outpouring of support, especially to hail the conquering heroes. Yellow ribbons appeared everywhere and in cities across the US there were victory parades greeting the returning troops with crowds far larger than any opposition march had been. Anti-war organizing must take on, head-on, this identification with the empire. It must challenge both the costs that the empire extracts from, and the inducements it offers to, people in this country. Without this key element, simply trying to expose how Saddam used to be the CIA's man does little to motivate people to the sacrifices necessary to really confront the war machine. The anti-war movement cannot perpetuate illusions about democratic decision making in Congress or Democratic opposition to war. The Congressional vote this year, like that in 1990, came to a foregone conclusion. Enough Democrats vote 'no,' once passage is assured, to preserve the illusion of debate and 'loyal opposition.' The war must be fought through forms of direct action, resistance, education, and the development of the social and political forces that can stop it. These lie outside of Congress and the political parties of the rulers. We must take into account that the empire began here, in the territories and among the people of America, and it is here that it will ultimately be ended. Racism, Police Brutality, and the War at Home Even more critically, the anti-war movement against Desert Storm failed to deal with the central issue of racism. This had several manifestations. Here in Los Angeles, for example, the struggle over the war practically coincided with the widely publicized police beating of Rodney King. Yet the peace movement was invisible on the issue of this manifestation of a "war at home." Although there was some significant Black participation in peace rallies in L.A., including several Black war resisters in the ranks of the military, there was minimal white involvement in the justice struggle to end police brutality. More than 5000 people marched on the LAPD's Parker Center on Mother's Day 1991 to protest the King beating and demand a house-cleaning with top to bottom change at the LAPD, but the folks from "Another Mother for Peace" or other white, west-side and student based peace groups were not there. It was mostly a "Black thing." The fall-out from this failure of the peace movement to connect to the issue of police abuse was profound for both issues and movements. The white-dominated peace movement failed to make connections or sink roots by linking the issue of militarism at home and abroad, despite lip service to the theme of "peace and justice." It failed to add its force to a push for radical social transformation and community empowerment. As a result, the powers-that-be were able to install a few minor cosmetic changes at LAPD, allowing Chief Gates to stay in power for another year or more and for the cops who beat King to be acquitted. Warren Christopher went from brokering a deal for phony "reforms" in the LAPD to charting the course of the empire as a king-maker and Secretary of State for Bill Clinton. And the peace movement condemned itself to irrelevance. Compare that to the high water mark and lasting impact of the anti-war, anti-imperialist struggle at the time of the Vietnam War, which was in many ways led and pushed by Black, Chicano and Asian liberation forces in this country. Even a figure like Martin Luther King, Jr. was clear that the struggle for justice and against war were one and the same. He declared that the struggle against the war in Vietnam had to be a struggle against the system that produced war or we would simply be fighting a rear-guard action against another war in short order. It was the Black Power movement that coined the slogan, "Hell No! We Won't Go!" which set a standard of resistance that galvanized anti-draft and anti-war protests. It was Muhammad Ali who said, "No Viet Cong ever called me nigger." It was the Chicano Moratorium that seared into people's consciousness the visceral connection between racist police brutality and imperialist war. The anti-war movement today must follow that earlier example and overcome the weaknesses of the movement against the first Gulf War in this regard, or it is doomed to irrelevance. In the USA PATRIOT law and the Homeland Security Department, in the anti-immigrant crackdown and Operation Tarmac, and in LA police chief William Bratton's definition of supposed gang violence as a 'national security problem,' police repression and brutality are tightly connected to the drive towards endless colonial wars around the globe. The empire becomes ever more seamless. The "peace movement" must address the needs, issues and leadership of the "peace makers," the gang truce activists who are trying to bring peace to their own communities, and assert community control over abusive police. And clearly, anti-war activists must get ourselves organized to protect ourselves from and defend against police abuse and repression of political dissidents. War and Fascism The fourth and final aspect of a failure by the peace movement of the early 90's to deal with racism and the nature of the system is two-fold, and we are still seeing its repercussions. It has to do with a failure to deal with fascist activity in the U.S. On the one hand, racist and fascist elements seized on the war to present themselves as opponents of the government and the Bush "New World Order," and thereby sought to infiltrate and recruit from the anti-war movement. In Seattle, a member of the Lyndon LaRouche fascist network took a position of leadership in the main anti-war coalition. In many cities the John Birch Society as well as openly anti-Semitic forces hiding behind Pat Buchanan, attempted to worm into peace rallies. White Aryan Resistance leader Tom Metzger sent racist propaganda to US soldiers in the Gulf. At the same time a wave of bigoted violence broke out within the US, directed at both Arabs and Jews. These twin phenomena have continued unabated to this day, in fact on a far larger scale. They must be high-priority areas for the peace movement to act, particularly in defense of immigrants targeted as scapegoats by both the state and out-front racists. If the anti-war movement clearly opposes the totality of the empire, defends the human rights and needs of oppressed people around the world and inside the US, and struggles for justice against racism and police abuse, it will clearly demarcate opposition to the war based on a commitment to human liberation, from the propagandistic posturing and racist scapegoating carried out in war time by fascist forces. Neo-nazi groups in substantial numbers are presenting themselves as opponents of the US war drive in order to recruit disaffected young whites to their ranks. The anti-war, anti-imperialist forces must be explicitly anti-racist, and also explicitly revolutionary-minded, to effectively out-organize such nazi formations. We offer this analysis as a contribution to building a more powerful, more effective and more revolutionary movement against the latest phases in Bush's "endless war." We invite feedback and criticism, and hope that by understanding and debating this history, we can overcome the problems that hamstrung the anti-war efforts a decade ago. Please respond to: ara-la@antiracistaction.us Lead editorial from "Turning the Tide: Journal of Anti-Racist Action, Research and Education" Volume 15, Number 4, Winter 2002-2003 Anti-Racist Action/People Against Racist Terror (ARA/PART) PO Box 1055 Culver City CA 90232 310-495-0299 ara-la@antiracistaction.us From antiracistaction_la at yahoo.com Sat Dec 21 23:55:57 2002 From: antiracistaction_la at yahoo.com (Michael Novick) Date: Sun Feb 8 02:52:04 2004 Subject: [Dryerase] TTT: LAPD Chief Bill Bratton launches a war in Los Angeles Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.0.20021221215453.01d7fe80@pop.mail.yahoo.com> BILL BRATTON PICKED TO HEAD L.A.P.D. WHY HIM? WHY HERE? WHY NOW? by CopWatch L.A. LA's new police Chief Bill Bratton and Mayor Jim Hahn are beating the drums about an increase in violence, shootings and killings in Los Angeles. Hahn calls it a threat to the city's economic recovery and development. Bratton goes even farther, calling it a national security threat. They are calling for a "war on gangs" and arranging for federal forces to come into L.A. to help wage it. Their campaign has accelerated, rather than curbed, the propensity of the L.A.P.D. to use violence and deadly force against young Blacks. At the same time, L.A. is silencing, undercutting, forcing out and firing the peace-makers -- truce activists with street credibility who are trying to re-establish the truce that had once dramatically reduced senseless killings among Black and Latino young people. The LAPD did its best to disrupt the truce a decade ago, and Bratton and Hahn clearly have no interest in seeing it reborn today. They are looking for scapegoats. As Twilight Bey, an activist with Communities in Support of the Gang Truce puts it, "They are camouflaging the problem of poverty by calling it crime." But Bratton and Hahn have no answers for growing poverty. That's why they attack Black youth instead. Bratton wants people in L.A. to get angry, he says. But who does he want us angry at? The rich and powerful politicians and big business interests who are destroying health care, bleeding the schools, cutting jobs and forcing people into prison to work for nothing? No chance -- Bratton wants people to get angry at poor, beat-down Black teenagers and young adults! Bratton said, at his first press conference in October upon being picked for chief by Hahn: "Where you have guns, you have drugs. Where you have drugs, you have youth. Where you have youth, you have gangs. Why treat them like four different diseases?" Where was the anger and outrage at a so-called public servant equating all young people of color, and in particular Black youth, with gangs, crime and violence -- and calling them all a disease!? Bratton is fueling the very sense of hopelessness that burns as self-destructive violence. L.A. is a new test case for a further ratcheting up of the police state. Bratton has had three months to show us what his 'treatment' means. He wants to increase the LAPD by more than 30% to 9,000 cops. The Department wants to rebuild Parker Center, which would mean taking even more money from health care, after-school programs and other services. He wants to reinstate the old CRASH "anti-gang" units under a new name. But it will be with the same foot soldiers, the same cowboy culture, that led to the widely publicized Rampart scandal and to the hidden atrocities of 77th, Hollenbeck, Southeast, Foothill and other divisions where the LAPD carried out the same bare-knuckles war. He has presided over about as many killings by the LAPD in three months as usually occur in a whole year -- and he has had nothing to say about them except, "Control your kids." The message to the ranks is clear, and it is the same one he delivered as chief in New York, when arrests and brutality escalated to the point that Amnesty International issued a report condemning the NYPD for human rights violations. He has launched sweeps of the growing ranks of the homeless on Skid Row. He identifies panhandlers and graffiti as high priority targets in carrying out his war. He went to Israel to learn about "counter-terrorism" from the practitioners of state terrorism. He has appointed a "Homeland Security" adviser for the LAPD as part of Bush's domestic counter-insurgency operations. He created a mini-police state downtown for the October 22nd rally against police brutality. Bratton has manipulated statistics to produce a sense of fear and hysteria that will build support for his get-tough policies. In January, 1995, as New York police commissioner, Bratton admitted to a group of business executives in Boston that, while crime in major cities is declining, fear of crime is still on the increase. ''Fear far surpasses the reality of crime,'' he said, according to the Boston Globe. The result of this unusually honest admission was manifested in NY when shortly after the end of his tenure, the NYPD made 35,000 more arrests than there were reported crimes! 100 Black and Latino youth a day arrested for no reason except "suspicion" and for no purpose except to criminalize them, and grease the skids for a trip, sooner or later, to state prison. Despite the hysteria and fear Bratton is trying to recreate here, comparing November and early December of 2002 to the same period a year ago shows a very similar pattern and number of shootings and killings. They are related less to gang activity and more to despair deepened by steadily worsening economic and social conditions. The holiday season increases self-destructive and criminal activity because this society rubs people's faces in their inability to buy the goodies and material possessions that supposedly measure human worth. A further year of war and economic devastation thanks to George Bush more than accounts for any minor differences between last year and this. If Bill Bratton is the new shot-caller at LAPD, he is not calling the shots alone or in a vacuum. George W. Bush remembers quite well that the L.A. unrest of 1992 drove his daddy from office. While 'Dubya' pays off the mega-millionaires who put him in office with tax cuts and juicy military contracts, and wages an "endless war" that has already increased the level of violence within our own country, Bush is also overseeing a big boost in domestic police repression and militarization. He is using local police forces as enforcement arms of the federal government against immigrants, workers and young people in schools, colleges and on the streets. These new laws and procedures are necessary because the super-rich get their wealth and power from the people they hold down and rip off, and they know they have to intensify that exploitation and oppression. They need the kind of cop crackdown and fear-mongering that Bratton is a proven expert at, in order to keep people down. Look at LAX, where the feds used fear of "terrorism" to drive Black, Latino and Asian workers out, and now United Airlines is planning a bankruptcy to break its union contracts and drive down the wages of its workers. Bratton steps right up with a plan to absorb the LAX police into the LAPD. Don't buy their lies. We have to regain our own political initiative, to liberate ourselves through our own efforts. It was the truce that drastically cut killings among young Blacks and Latinos. It was the L.A. uprising in 1992 that cut back on the scourge of liquor stores in the Black and Latino communities. Today, we need to develop a campaign that targets the real culprits and criminals; that puts responsibility on the greedy, not the needy. We need a program of community self-defense and self-determination, not more cops. We need to demand an independent investigation of the recent barrage of police killings and shootings. We need to revive the call for community control of the police, a special prosecutor and elected civilian review board. And this must be linked to a program for de-funding the cops, the prisons and the military -- to a demand for using that money to provide decent housing and health care, quality training and jobs, and meaningful education for all poor and working people. Increase the peace! To find out more about the Copwatch project in L.A., call 310-495-0299, or email copwatchla@yahoo.com From antiracistaction_la at yahoo.com Sun Dec 22 00:02:46 2002 From: antiracistaction_la at yahoo.com (Michael Novick) Date: Sun Feb 8 02:52:05 2004 Subject: [Dryerase] TTT-Why Are Our Schools Failing Black Children? Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.0.20021221220206.01db0c10@pop.mail.yahoo.com> Why Are Our Schools Failing Black Children? by Mabie Settlage I am a middle school teacher, and I've been teaching for 15 years in inner-city South Central Los Angeles. My students are both Latino and African American. There has been a continuing "discussion" in L.A. of the behavior of African American, or Black students provoked by a letter by a teacher at John Muir H.S. in Pasadena, and an article about it in the L.A. Times. In response, I would like to offer some observations. First, it was said that the teacher, in complaining about the "disruptive behavior" of Black male students, and blaming it for poor educational results and low test scores, was only offering "empirical evidence, supported by statistics." But empirical evidence, offered without context or history, can be as manipulative and misleading as false propaganda. It's very American to say, "Let's look at this minute, just this minute," and then try to make generalizations or draw conclusions. That's ridiculous and an utter waste of time. On September 11, 2001, events in the U.S. horrified the world. What happened, the empirical observation, has been replayed for political purposes ever since. But the "why," which would necessitate examining context and history, and that might prevent such an event from happening again, is ignored. So it is, too, in respect to America's ongoing race relations and racial issues. We refuse to let history shed any light on current reality. Ten years ago, a bevy of right-wing ideologues put out a spate of "scholarly" books, papers and publications that categorized Black and Brown youth as violent, based on an imagined "jungle past." Nowhere in their writings was there any discussion of white violence. Yet from the beginning of this country, white violence has led the society, from the encounters with Native Americans, forced slave labor of Africans, escape from English governmental control, development of a docile labor force, and denial of voting rights to all but white property-owning males. The Twentieth Century saw the development and use of weapons of mass violence, targeted at civilians, as the leading employer and mainstay of U.S. industry, only to be recently overtaken by the prison-industrial complex of today. LYNCHING One particular chapter of this history of white violence is especially taboo lynching. Very specific, very close, whites would gather in hundreds and thousands to beat, cut , hang and burn Black people, in forms of violence as extreme as any ever perpetrated by humans. Lynching by white mobs is always left out of the discussion of how violent and mob-like non-whites can be. The U.S. uses children to drive the commercial economy. The psychological temptations and seductions used to generate desired consumer behavior are often violent, often sexual. Our society sells music, videos, attitudes, clothes, movies, TV air-time, and toys via a culture full of violence and disrespect for authority. All American children (and increasingly, children around the globe) are affected, both academically and culturally. But when children mimic the behaviors they have been socially inundated with, we blame them and their parents, as individuals. We expect discipline from children who are products of an increasingly undisciplined and selfish commercial society. Many areas of our society have been adversely affected by the direction in which youth culture has been pushed U.S. capitalism in its drive for profits. But observably, the most affected are children whose social setting is more disorganized and alienating. This often includes Black children, and also Brown children, though for the time being, they have not been as heavily targeted for blame by the media. Even in respect to this, however, we must acknowledge that school shooters have been overwhelmingly rural, white and male. Is it an accident that the media are suddenly singling out Black youth as the culprits guilty of educational failures at the same moment that the L.A. mayor and police chief are singling them out as the cause of violence and crime? RECENT LOCAL HISTORY Let's look at some recent history. At my school, we have sixth, seventh and eighth graders. When I entered the system, there had been a successful lawsuit charging that English learners, mostly Latino/a immigrants, were not being served by the State of California. So we teachers were trained. In order to bring up the test scores of those targeted children, I had over 125 hours of training, one part off-campus for two weeks that I paid for. Sure enough, the test scores of those children went up. One of the principles that we were taught was respect for the culture of Latino (Mexicano/a and Central American) children, to understand their history, and show respect for the language they came into the system with. EBONICS When this same idea was suggested as also being meaningful to help African American children raise their test scores, and named "Ebonics," it was trashed and ridiculed in the media and by political figures. There was no attempt to understand it was the same principle that was being applied to immigrant children. Of course white society doesn't respect Black culture and history; as a nation, we never have. For "English Learners" (EL), the term used for immigrant children, there are several possibilities for grouping children to achieve success. For so-called "English Only" (EO) students, the term used essentially for African Americans children at my school, there are only two, often overcrowded classes in groups that stay together over the entire three years of middle school, no matter how successful or dysfunctional the group is. The only "alternative" is Special Ed, for children defined as having learning disorders or disabilities. I have seen the EO 6th grade classes given again and again to the newer or weaker teachers, who often know nothing of the children's history or culture, and they often fail to teach, to reach or to discipline these students. I have watched students who enter in poorly-behaving groups being kept in those same groups because there are no different group levels, as offered to EL students. THE TRAGEDIES OF DAILY LIFE Tragically, I have seen sweet 6th graders enter my school, restless and hopeful, and leave three years later, behaving obnoxiously, undisciplined, defiant and uneducated. My school did not help them, it hurt. I have written letters to LAUSD school board officials, and complained in local and regional education and school district meetings over the years, to embarrassed silence by everyone, regardless of race. TIMIDITY, INDIFFERENCE & EMBARRASSMENT With respect to Black children, if white teachers are intimidated, Latino teachers are distant, and Black teachers are embarrassed, who is going to step forward to demand and nurture good behavior and academic success for them, as for all our children? The U.S. has a history of distorting, fabricating and embellishing the supposedly good behavior of white society and the supposedly bad behavior of any "others," but especially Black people. This belief system and methodology originally justified racial chattel slavery, and is now used to justify the prison/industrial complex. We can understand this fully, only if we are willing to put in work to understand the history and colonial make-up of our class and race relations. Through this work, we can deconstruct our own assumptions, and increase our expectations of Black children. BLACK MALE YOUTH IN THE MEDIA Understand the role of the media. The Pasadena teacher's letter, widely publicized by the Los Angeles Times and other news outlets, are also simultaneously stigmatizing Black youth as the culprits in a supposed wave of killings. Is this a coincidence? Thirteen years ago, in NY, a brutal rape and beating took place in Central Park. A white professional woman was brutalized, and five Black boys were arrested, charged and forced into confessions. There was a media frenzy, and the boys were called a "pack," fiends, and "super-predators 'wilding' in the park." People in the city called for the death penalty. Donald Trump took out full-page ads calling for their execution, although they were juveniles not charged with a capital crime. Earlier this year, a man unconnected to the five confessed that he alone had raped and beaten the jogger. Now even the D.A. is moving to overturn the convictions. It had been a media hype, damaging to everyone, especially the boys who did 13 years in prison for a crime they did not commit. A letter similar to that from the Pasadena teacher, and to the letter from teachers at L.A.'s Washington Prep H.S. was written about a month before at Jefferson High School, similarly criticizing Latino students there, resulting in a campus riot and it did not get reported in any L.A. media. The news media target those they want to denigrate. EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE OR EVIDENCE OF EMPIRE? Here is some other empirical evidence. Real money has been taken out of schools in California and put, almost dollar for dollar, into prisons. To keep this profit-motivated system going, the state needs thousands of uneducated, angry young people coming into the criminal justice system every year, and the public schools are providing them. African American children are fundamentally no different from any other children. They need hope. They need firm, consistent academic and social education. I have seen caring, but very firm teachers get control of even the "worst-behaving" classes at my school, when the system cares to assign them. WHO IS ACCOUNTABLE? All adults in a society are accountable for the rearing of our society's children. There are real, even severe problems in some areas that have been feeding the frenzy in media coverage. It is no mystery, it is part of history. So what are we going to do about? Mabie Settlage is a long-time middle school teacher. She has been an anti-racist community activist in L.A. and in the US southeast where she is originally from. She has conducted training and workshops on uprooting white supremacy, and written about education issues from a classroom teacher's perspective. From dr_broccoli at hotmail.com Sun Dec 29 23:01:15 2002 From: dr_broccoli at hotmail.com (Shawn G) Date: Sun Feb 8 02:52:05 2004 Subject: [Dryerase] AGR-INS bait and switch Message-ID: Asheville Global Report www.agrnews.org Rerinting ermitted for non-profit use, and to the members of the Dryerase news wire. Hundreds detained in INS bait and switch By Shawn Gaynor Asheville, North Carolina, Dec. 23 (AGR)— Roughly 700 immigrants from five Middle Eastern countries were detained last week as part of a new Justice Department program to track foreign visitors. The program, administered by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) required males over 16 years old from Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, and the Sudan to report for fingerprinting and special INS interviews by Dec. 10. In Los Angeles nearly a quarter of those reporting to voluntarily comply with the new policies were immediately detained by the INS, in what the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is calling a “round-up.” Those detained have been held as far away as Arizona, with no access to legal counsel or family. As of Sunday, the INS has released some of the detainees, but as the agency refuses to release any numbers on exactly how many were detained and how many have been released. It is impossible to know exactly how many men remain detained. “Given the evidence, there is no alarmism in saying this is a round-up,” said Lucas Guttentag, Director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project. “Attorney General Ashcroft is using the immigrant registration program to lock up people who already have provided extensive information as part of their green card applications,” he said. “Therefore the purpose is clearly not to get information but rather to selectively arrest, detain and deport Middle Eastern and Muslim men in the United States.” According to a Justice Department document explaining the program “the Attorney General has determined that certain non-immigrant aliens require closer monitoring when national security…interests are raised.” But People Against Racist Terror (PART), an LA-based human rights group, said: “These new regulations adopted for so-called national security have nothing to do with combating terrorism. Instead, they serve to demonize immigrants and particularly those from predominantly Muslim countries. They are part of a concerted campaign by the government to promote an atmosphere of fear, division and repression.” Thousands of people outraged by the detentions gathered in protest last Wednesday in front of the Westwood Federal building to demand freedom for those detained. The crowd, which was predominantly Iranian, carried signs that read “What Next, Concentration Camps?” and “What happened to liberty and justice?”. “The Iranian American Community is outraged at the maltreatment that its members have been receiving at the hands of the Immigration & Naturalization Service,” said Babak Sotoodeh, president of the Alliance of Iranian Americans (AIA). “We have been receiving and documenting the horror stories of defenseless Iranian immigrants, who in their efforts to be law abiding citizens and to comply with the call of President Bush to combat terrorism by complying with the Special Registration law, have come to INS offices under your jurisdiction and instead have faced wholesale arrests, without any proper justifications.” Sotoodeh, accompanied by New York Times Western Bureau Chief, John M. Broder, went to the LA INS facility to speak to INS officials, but the two were separated and Sotoodeh was denied a meeting after being promised one in Broder’s presence. The AIA says that it is planning a class action lawsuit against the INS policy. A second deadline, for immigrants and visitors from Afghanistan, Algeria, Bahrain, Eritrea, Lebanon, Morocco, North Korea, Oman, Qatar, Somalia, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen will occur on Jan. 10. A third deadline for immigrants and visitors from Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan will pass on Feb. 21. Citizens from traditional US allies like Egypt and Jordan have been left off the list. Though the policy exempts immigrants with permanent resident status, “green card holders,” and people who have been granted asylum, no exception is made for persons whose spouses or families have US citizenship. Immigrants holding dual citizenship also must comply with the program. The program requires citizens and “nationals” of those countries listed to be photographed and fingerprinted by the INS. Those reporting as part of the program have to report every year for review at the INS offices. Immigrants from these countries also are required to submit to an INS exit interview upon leaving the country, and will only be permitted to leave from specially designated ports. Dalia Hashad, the ACLU’s Arab, Muslim, and South Asian advocate, questioned the effectiveness and aim of the program. “It seems unlikely that a hardened terrorist is going to voluntarily register with the government,” she said. “What is more likely is that law-abiding people who were planning to register will now be afraid to come in because of the arrests, and the INS will use that as an excuse to deport them.” Though the Justice Department has insisted that “registration is based solely on nationality and citizenship, not ethnicity or religion,” the only non-Muslim country to be included is North Korea. In response to the increasing racism associated with the US “war on terror” the UN’s High Commissioner on Human Rights, Sergio Vieira de Mello, said on Tuesday that the US-led “war on terror’’ was hurting human rights and exacerbating prejudices around the world. “Arabs and Muslims at large are experiencing increasing incidents of racial discrimination ... Singling out, finger pointing and ... even in some instances [violence],’’ he said. PART, along with several other chapters of Anti-Racist Action, is calling for mass demonstrations at INS facilities on the date of the second deadline. A statement calling for actions against the INS on Jan. 10 reads: “We cannot allow the government to divide us or intimidate us at this moment, nor can we rely on conventional political methods such as petitioning our elected representatives to act. They have acted, and legalized all these measures of military aggression and political repression, just as Germany legalized all its repression of Jews with a series of Nuremberg laws. The time is now for concerted direct action that builds solidarity and courage.” _________________________________________________________________ STOP MORE SPAM with the new MSN 8 and get 3 months FREE*. http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail&xAPID=42&PS=47575&PI=7324&DI=7474&SU= http://www.hotmail.msn.com/cgi-bin/getmsg&HL=1216hotmailtaglines_stopmorespam_3mf