If there's ONE thing we learned from the 60s, it's that there will NOT be a Revolution here in Amerika.<div><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Sun, Oct 10, 2010 at 5:37 PM, E. Wayne Johnson <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:ewj@pigs.ag">ewj@pigs.ag</a>></span> wrote:</div>
<div class="gmail_quote"><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
<div bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000">
It's an interesting read. <br>
<br>
The people are waking up to the fact that they've been Gypped. Slowly,
though.<br>
<br>
The Tea Party is made up of a lot of different kind of folk. Some of
them are neo-connish for sure.<br>
The neocons have money to burn and a big horn to toot and enough green
cash to astroturf the TeaParty.<br>
But a lot of the Tea Partiers are anarcho-libertarians and paleocons.<br>
There are even some like Ernest Hancock and Karen Quinn-Tostado <br>
who are left-leaning progressives and influence the TeaParty. You can
find the antiwar<br>
wing of the TeaParty in the blogs and chats fuming about how the
"TeaPotty" has been<br>
co-opted. <br>
<br>
I personally don't have any use at all for Sarah Palin.<br>
<br>
Boehner (Boner) is a likewise meretricious dilwad and <br>
will not be any significant change over Nancy P. Lousy.<br>
There isn't any lesser evil amongst them. <br>
If you are up to your chin in smelly liquid cat shit, and some one <br>
flings a bucketful of festering dog shit at you, do you duck?<br>
<br>
The system is lining the TeaParty up for a railroad job down a dead end
path<br>
hoping to cop the political spin and defuse the anger that drives the
TeaParty.<br>
<br>
What is yet to be seen is what will happen to the TeaParty <br>
after it has been thoroughly SWAKed by Karl Rove's GOP...<br>
if it will have enough anger to go home, wash off, and come out again.<br>
<br>
Some like Quinn-Tostado are calling for a National Strike. <br>
If anyone could agree on what it's for, a National Strike would be a
great idea.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
On 10/10/2010 10:38 PM, David Johnson wrote:
<blockquote type="cite">
<div><font face="Arial"><strong>EXCELLENT ANALYSIS AND WELL
DOCUMENTED ARTICLE ABOUT THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION,THE DEMOCRATS, AND
THE NATIONAL SO CALLED " LEADERSHIP " OF LABOR AND CIVIL RIGHTS
ORGANIZATIONS.</strong></font></div>
<div><strong></strong> </div>
<div><strong></strong> </div>
<div style="font-family:arial;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;font-size:10pt;line-height:normal;font-size-adjust:none;font-stretch:normal">-----
Original Message -----
<div style="background:rgb(228, 228, 228) none repeat scroll 0% 0%"><b>From:</b>
<a title="intexile@iww.org" href="mailto:intexile@iww.org" target="_blank">intexile@iww.org</a> </div>
<div> </div>
<div><b>Sent:</b> Saturday, October 09, 2010 1:38 PM</div>
<div><b>Subject:</b> [ Obama, the Tea Party & Why We Need a Labor
Party (from /Socialist Organizer/)</div>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<span> </span>
<div>
<div>
<div>
<p></p>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;color:black">THE
ORGANIZER NEWSPAPER</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;color:black">P.O.
Box 40009, San Francisco, CA 94140<br>
Tel. (415) 641-8616; fax: (415) 626-1217</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;color:black">email:
<a href="mailto:theorganizer@earthlink.net" target="_blank">theorganizer@earthlink.net</a></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;color:black">website:
<a href="http://www.socialistorganizer.org" target="_blank">www.socialistorganizer.org</a></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;color:black">PLEASE
EXCUSE DUPLICATE POSTINGS</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt"></span></p>
<p>(I am not uncritically supportive of /Socialist Organizer/ as they
don't seem to give the IWW as much credit as they could and I am not
uncritical of the creation of a Labor Party either--especially given
the fact that the "Winner Take All" electoral system that dominates
most of the US makes the winning of elections by third party candidates
very difficult, but this is a thoroughly excellent analysis of what is
currently wrong with the Democratic Party and why Obama is not only NOT
a socialist, but he makes /Ronald Reagan/ look like a liberal!)</p>
<p></p>
<p>THE ORGANIZER NEWSPAPER</p>
<p>P.O. Box 40009, San Francisco, CA 94140 Tel. (415) 641-8616; fax:
(415) 626-1217</p>
<p>email: <a href="mailto:theorganizer@earthlink.net" target="_blank">theorganizer@earthlink.net</a></p>
<p>website: <a href="http://www.socialistorganizer.org" target="_blank">www.socialistorganizer.org</a></p>
<p>PLEASE EXCUSE DUPLICATE POSTINGS</p>
<p></p>
<p><strong>SPECIAL SUPPLEMENT</strong></p>
<p>(September-October 2010 Issue)</p>
<p></p>
<p><strong>Obama, the Tea Party & Why We Need a Labor Party</strong></p>
<p></p>
<p>Addressing the Ohio AFL-CIO convention on September 13, AFL-CIO
President Richard Trumka called on union members to mobilize and rally
behind "economic patriots" in a "knock-down, drag-out" fight against
the "false populism and name calling" that Tea Party and Republican
leaders like House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) are employing
in this fall's elections.</p>
<p></p>
<p>Trumka lambasted the U.S. corporations that sit on more than $800
billion without creating jobs, when banks hoard more than $1 trillion
in profits without lending to small businesses and consumers, and when
health insurance companies with tens of billions in profits demand huge
premium increases.</p>
<p></p>
<p>"We know what Rep. Boehner will do if he gets the speaker's job,"
Trumka stated, "because he's told us! He'll privatize Social Security,
protect the corporations that send our jobs overseas, slash taxes for
the super-rich. There will be no jobs legislation. No retirement
security. No health care."</p>
<p></p>
<p>Trumka urged support for Democrats in the battle-ground state of
Ohio and insisted that if Republicans win back the Congress in
November, it will mean "one ugly future for America!"</p>
<p></p>
<p>"There are races all over this country that we can win, that we're
going to win if we do what we know how to do," Trumka concluded. "It
won't be easy. We know the anti-worker politicians, and the
corporations, and the ideologues don't want the union vote. They want
us to stay home, frustrated and angry at Washington. But that's not
going to happen. Not on our watch!"</p>
<p></p>
<p>Clearly, working people across the country have every reason to
fear the rapid growth of the right-wing and Tea Party movements. But
the $64,000 question that the unions should be asking -- but are not
asking -- is the following: Is it possible to defeat the right wing by
supporting Democratic Party politicians whose policies are not only
demoralizing the workers and oppressed peoples who voted with such
great hopes for Obama, but in fact are paving the way for the very
development of this right-wing populist movement?</p>
<p></p>
<p><strong>Who Is Responsible for the Deteriorating Economy?</strong></p>
<p></p>
<p>Though many of the problems preceded his inauguration and are due
to economic policies supported by both major political parties,
everyone knows that the situation facing working people in the United
States has only gotten worse since the historic November 4, 2008,
election that brought Barack Obama to the White House and gave the
Democrats a super-majority in the Congress.</p>
<p></p>
<p>Many opinion polls and media analysts are predicting that the
Republicans will take back control of the House and Senate by a very
slim margin in the upcoming mid-term elections.</p>
<p></p>
<p>These predictions are based not so much on a large increase in
votes for the Republican Party -- which is facing its deepest political
crisis in decades, including a split in its own ranks that has
witnessed the launching of the Tea Party; they are due to the fact that
a massive abstention of the Democratic Party base that voted for Obama
in 2008 is expected.</p>
<p></p>
<p>Indeed, polls show a growing disillusionment by the American
people with both major political parties: The Democrats in Congress
have only a 33 percent approval rate, while the Republicans' rate is
even lower: 24%.</p>
<p></p>
<p>In his Columbus, Ohio, speech Trumka pointed his finger at the
anti-worker candidates and policies of the Republican Party. True
enough. But over the past two years that the Democrats have been in
charge, they have pursued basically the same corporate policies as
George W. Bush. Working people know this -- having experienced the
brunt of these attacks directly -- which is why growing numbers will
stay home come election time in November.</p>
<p></p>
<p><strong>Why Obama's Reversal in the Opinion Polls</strong></p>
<p></p>
<p>The large reversal in support for Obama and the Democrats in the
opinion polls cannot be understood without examining the deep economic
crisis ravaging the country.</p>
<p></p>
<p>The official unemployment rate is 9.6 percent. Close to 200,000
jobs were lost in the month of July 2010 alone. Close to 9 million jobs
have been lost officially since the beginning of the Great Recession
two and a half years ago. The real unemployment rate is much higher: 15
million. An estimated 6.6 million people have been unemployed for more
than nine months, which means they are not included among the
officially unemployed. In addition, close to 9 million workers are
"heavily underemployed" -- that is, they work part time with less than
20 hours of work per week, mostly in low-paying precarious jobs. This
is why the AFL-CIO places the official unemployment level above 20
million and the official number of workers in need of a full-time job
at 27 million.</p>
<p></p>
<p>The<em> San Francisco Chronicle</em>, in an August 15 article on
Nancy Pelosi, highlighted the impact of the sagging economy on the
mid-term elections: "With eerie accuracy, political forecasting models
can predict elections based on one factor: the economy. On that issue,
the news keeps getting worse for Democrats. The economy is in a serious
stall, with unemployment stuck at 9.6 percent and economic indicators
turning south almost across the board." (Ibid.)</p>
<p></p>
<p>This is, without a doubt, the main issue that has the Democrats
reeling, as they are the party in office and are therefore seen as
responsible for the current situation. Obama's big stimulus plan bailed
out Wall Street and the banks to the tune of close to $3 trillion
(combining the Federal Reserve credit lines and the direct government
bailouts). But this was not a jobs-creation plan.</p>
<p></p>
<p>One of Obama's so-called landmark feats, according to the
Democrats, was his fiscal stimulus program and rescue of the financial
system. The truth is that this plan has been a disaster for working
people. The banks were bailed out but they haven't invested any of
their billions in the productive economy and job creation. They have
not jump-started the economy as Obama had predicted would happen.</p>
<p></p>
<p>The<em> Wall Street Journal</em> on August 14 noted that the banks
are in fact sitting on $1.8 trillion of government bailout funds and
have simply gotten back to "investing" these funds in derivatives,
hedge funds, off-shore currency trading and other speculative ventures.
That is, they have gone back to the very financial practices that
triggered the recent financial meltdown.</p>
<p>Alan Greenspan is quoted in the same<em> Wall Street Journal</em>
article as stating that the economy is spinning into a "double-dip
recession" that could fast become a major economic depression.</p>
<p></p>
<p>The Democrats are quick to blame George W. Bush and the
Republicans for passing this recession onto them. But the Democrats,
with their super-majority in the Congress, did nothing different from
what Bush had done. Bush began the bank bailouts in September-November
2008, before he left office, with the full support of the Democratic
majority. (Obama and Nancy Pelosi, in fact, joined with Bush and the
Republicans in overturning the first bailout rejection by the Congress
on September 30, 2008.) And the Democrats continued the Wall Street
bailouts.</p>
<p></p>
<p><strong>The Federal Deficit and Obama's Response</strong></p>
<p></p>
<p>The federal stimulus program has produced a huge federal deficit.
The gigantic sums needed to bail out the banks, instead of working
people, have to come from somewhere -- and that somewhere is the hides
of the workers themselves.</p>
<p></p>
<p>One of the main rallying slogans of the right-wing Tea Party
movement has been the call to fight Obama's huge federal deficit, which
they say, will have to be shouldered by taxpayers and passed on as a
debt to their children and grandchildren.</p>
<p></p>
<p>As always with these right-wing populists, there is more than a
grain of truth to what they are saying -- though in their mouths it is
nothing but pure demagogy. It's part of a scare tactic aimed at turning
the American people away from any "Big Government" expenditures such as
public schools, public hospitals, public transportation, welfare,
health care for the poor, Medicare, you name it. Everything, of course,
but the biggest Big Government expenditure of them all -- that is, the
government's military budget, now annually at over $700 billion.</p>
<p></p>
<p>The Tea Party movement carefully ignores the fact that Bush was
one of the presidents who increased the federal debt to levels unknown
in the recent past -- mainly because of the skyrocketing military
expenses. They also conveniently ignore the fact that the bank
bailouts, begun under Bush and the Republicans, were supported
overwhelmingly by Democrats and Republicans, including by Sarah Palin
and her Tea Party partners.</p>
<p></p>
<p>The response to this deficit/debt crisis by the U.S. ruling class
has been to create a Federal Deficit Reduction Committee. Obama, as
part of his trademark pattern of governing "across the aisle" with the
Republicans, called upon Republican Senator Alan Simpson from Wyoming,
a strong opponent of public services and public enterprises, to
co-chair this bipartisan committee.</p>
<p></p>
<p>Not surprisingly, the committee has met and decided that it will
be necessary to "reform" the Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid
systems in the United States to address the "growing financial
viability" of these systems.</p>
<p></p>
<p>By "reform," the Obama-appointed committee means increasing the
minimum retirement age of Americans and gutting the Medicare and
Medicaid programs -- with larger co-payments and fewer payments and
benefits.</p>
<p></p>
<p>True, Obama has called for saving Social Security in response to
the Republicans and the Tea Party spokespersons. True, Obama says he is
against the drive by the Republicans to "privatize" Social Security.
But Obama's "reforms" are moving Social Security down the gradual path
of privatization. The real fear is that Obama will do what Bush could
not do -- that is, weaken Social Security in spite of what the people
want.</p>
<p></p>
<p>Obama's call to defend Social Security sounds hollow in the ears
of working people, who have seen Alan Simpson in action and who know
that Obama is just the soft cop in the corporate game to undo Social
Security. Working people are angry and want to see their retirement and
their Medicare plans preserved. "Hands Off Our Social Security!" is a
demand that has resonated loudly nationwide.</p>
<p></p>
<p>Obama is being attacked from all sides as he goes after Social
Security and Medicare. The Republicans and Tea Party activists are
attacking him relentlessly, accusing him of being a "socialist" who
wants to nationalize every industry in the country and who is sticking
to his Big Government agenda. Nothing could be further from the truth.</p>
<p></p>
<p>It seems that no matter how far Obama moves to the right under the
pressure from the Republicans and the Tea Party, he will never placate
the country's right wing. They want to wring his neck, and they want it
badly ... precisely because he was elected with a huge mandate for
implement real, progressive change. For the Tea Party proto-fascists,
the conditions under which Obama was elected are unacceptable and have
to be reversed.</p>
<p></p>
<p><strong>What About Obama's Tax Policies?</strong></p>
<p></p>
<p>In his speech in Columbus, Trumka railed at the Republicans for
opposing any taxation policies that would favor working people. He is
not wrong. But what about the Democrats?</p>
<p></p>
<p>For months now, the AFL-CIO leadership has pointed out that the
best way to reduce the federal deficit is to create a massive public
works program to put 15 million people back to work and to get the
productive economy back up and running, thereby generating a strong tax
base once again. This is absolutely correct. The labor federation has
also called upon Obama to increase the taxes on the super-rich by, at
the very least, returning to the tax rates of the early 1990s.</p>
<p></p>
<p>But Obama has rejected this course. On the tax front, he is
refusing to extend the Bush-era tax cuts to the super-wealthy, but he
is in favor of major corporate tax cuts in the name of spurring the
economic recovery. He is also resisting all calls to increase the taxes
on those Americans making over $250,000 per year.</p>
<p></p>
<p>Obama refuses to tax the rich, bending to the corporations, to the
corporate press and to Tea Party movement, all of whom insist that
taxing the rich is un-American and would kill any possible economic
recovery. But working people across this country are not rubes; they
know that tax cuts for the wealthy and trickle down economic policies
haven't worked and will never work.</p>
<p></p>
<p><strong>Is Obama Really Delivering Health Care to Working People?</strong></p>
<p></p>
<p>Many of the "liberal" sectors of the mainstream media such as the<em>
New York Times</em> have lauded many of Obama's -- and Nancy Pelosi's
-- achievements. At the top of this list, in addition to the fiscal
stimulus plan and the Financial Stability Bill, is the Obama
health-care reform plan.</p>
<p></p>
<p>Little by little, the harsh realities of this Obama plan are
beginning to emerge in the media. [See sidebar article.]</p>
<p></p>
<p>Liberals can point to the fact that many of the poorest sectors of
society, mainly Black and Latinos, will now get health care. This is
not insignificant. But who is paying the cost of this expansion of
health-care coverage to the estimated 12 million low-income people?
It's not the private insurance companies. It's not the super-rich,
whose tax rates have been lowered drastically over the past 30 years.
It's not the Wall Street tycoons. No. It's the working-class majority
that is being asked to pay ... so that the pockets of the insurance
companies can be lined even further.</p>
<p></p>
<p>The tragic outcome of this new law is that it pits predominantly
white working-class Americans against the mainly Black and Latino
recipients of the health-care plan, thus dividing the working class and
preventing a united fightback for universal health-care rights.</p>
<p></p>
<p>Taking these insurance companies out of the health-care equation
would have permitted the financing of a Medicare for All, single-payer
health-care system that would not have pitted the "middle class"
against the lowest strata in society. It would have created solidarity
among working people and provided free health-care on demand. But this
would have required breaking with a private industry that is one of the
major funders of both the Democratic and Republican parties.</p>
<p></p>
<p>In this sense, it is instructive to look at the results of the
July 2010 referendum that was placed on the Missouri ballot by the Tea
Party movement. In this referendum 70% of the state's voters, in a vote
marked by an unusually high turnout, rejected the Obama health-care
plan that would force them to buy health care or else pay a major fine
to the government.</p>
<p></p>
<p>Clearly, with an economy still in shambles, with an extremely high
Missouri unemployment rate (officially 13%, much higher than the
national average -- because of the transfer of much of the state's
industrial base to Mexico or China), and with high home foreclosure and
eviction rates, the state's voters felt that they should not be forced
by the government to pay out of pocket for what would likely be
inadequate health-care coverage to begin with. They had a higher
priority: sheer survival.</p>
<p></p>
<p>As a result of the failure by the Obama administration to adopt a
single-payer system, or even a public option, the working-class
majority was easy prey for the right-wing Tea Party movement, which
demagogically sought to capitalize on the voters' anger over a
government-imposed individual mandate to buy health-care from a private
insurance company. Working people simply did not have the money to do
this. In addition, the voters understood that they would get
insufficient coverage and high premiums, along with higher co-pays, any
time they needed to visit a doctor or buy medicine.</p>
<p>The Democratic Party liberals immediately decried the so-called
"right-wing turn of the Missouri voters," refusing to acknowledge their
own responsibility in creating the situation that pushed the "middle
class" voters in the state to reject Obama's plan. By refusing to break
with the private health-care insurance companies, by refusing to enact
a program that would provide all citizens of the country with free
health care on demand (single-payer) -- a program that had the support
of the large majority of the population -- Obama, Pelosi and the
Democrats had paved the way for their own demise.</p>
<p></p>
<p>And Missouri is just one of 18 states where the Tea Party has
placed a similar referendum on the ballot.</p>
<p></p>
<p><strong>What About Obama's Promise to Pass EFCA?</strong></p>
<p></p>
<p>Another failed promise by Obama that has given the Republicans and
the Tea Party movement a campaign to mobilize around involves the
Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA).</p>
<p></p>
<p>For months, the trade-union leadership campaigned energetically
for Obama because of his promise to enact EFCA -- an act that would
give the trade unions far greater freedom to organize new members. In
the United States, the trade unions have the right to organize a union
of their choice only on paper. In reality, because of the way the
National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has been gradually undermined
over many decades, it is almost impossible for workers to organize into
a union of their choice. Bosses can fire workers in union organizing
drives almost at will.</p>
<p>Obama promised to level the playing field so that unions could
finally have the right to organize. Union members who mobilized for his
election across the country expected that Obama's very first action as
president would be to introduce and campaign for EFCA.</p>
<p>This didn't happen. A few months into office, Obama's top economic
adviser, Larry Summers, announced that enacting EFCA would be a major
obstacle to economic recovery. Soon other Obama administration
officials joined the chorus of anti-EFCA right-wingers.</p>
<p></p>
<p>Then came a major blow to EFCA from within the trade union
movement. Andy Stern, then president of SEIU, announced that EFCA had
to be altered if there was to be any chance of getting it adopted. He
said that the main provision in EFCA -- in fact, its very heart and
soul -- had to be gutted. Stern was referring to the "card check"
provision in EFCA that would allow a majority of workers who sign a
card requesting to join a union to thereby have the right to organize
and have a first collective-bargaining agreement.</p>
<p></p>
<p>Soon after, the AFL-CIO followed suit, announcing that it would
favor passage of an EFCA without card check -- a reversal of its
previous positions.</p>
<p></p>
<p>Before long, the mainstream press pronounced that EFCA was dead,
and that even a heavily emasculated EFCA as proposed by Andy Stern
would not likely see the light of day.</p>
<p></p>
<p>What is surprising in this mid-term election is that few, if any,
Democrats running for office even mention passage of EFCA. They know
that Obama, as the true spokesperson of corporate America, is not about
to deliver EFCA -- so why make promises that are likely to ring false
to the electorate?</p>
<p>But this isn't all. The failure to enact EFCA has created a void
that the Tea Party activists are seeking to capitalize on. In 12 states
nationwide, Tea Party members have placed on the November 2010 state
ballots referenda that would ban card-check provisions where they exist
and render it even more difficult to organize new members into unions.</p>
<p></p>
<p>The old axiom holds true: Politics abhors a vacuum. In the face of
non-action for working people, the moneyed, corporate right will fill
the void.</p>
<p></p>
<p><strong>Resistance Widespread Throughout the Labor Movement</strong></p>
<p></p>
<p>The will to resist the corporate onslaught and to preserve the
trade unions as fighting and independent instruments against the bosses
has been expressed throughout the 20 months of the Obama administration.</p>
<p></p>
<p>It is not the lack of willingness to fight back by labor's ranks
that explains the current dismal situation facing working people. The
problem is the union leadership's subordination to the Democratic
Party. The problem is the officialdom's continued refusal to break with
the Democrats and organize the fightback against their pro-corporate
policies.</p>
<p></p>
<p>The creation of the Labor Campaign for Single Payer Health Care
only six weeks after the election of Obama was the first expression of
this will to utilize the unions as instruments of struggle. More than
150 trade union leaders and activists gathered in St. Louis and
launched a campaign that ultimately resulted, after a protracted
nine-month struggle, in an historic vote by the AFL-CIO national
convention in September 2009 to support single-payer -- though the
labor officialdom would later turn their backs on this convention
mandate.</p>
<p></p>
<p>Other signs of resistance include the following:</p>
<p></p>
<p>- The return of UNITE HERE to the AFL-CIO and the various
militant, grassroots organizing and contract campaigns by the union's
hotel workers' division in particular;</p>
<p></p>
<p>- The August 28, 2010, Jobs, Peace and Justice rally of 5,000
people in Detroit, co-sponsored by the UAW and Jesse Jackson's
Operation PUSH. One of the main demands of the demonstration was the
"immediate end to the U.S. wars and occupations of Afghanistan and
Iraq, to save lifes, and the redirecting of all war funds to meet
social needs at home."</p>
<p></p>
<p>- The fightback among teacher unionists across the country in
opposition to Obama's "Race To The Top" program (a barely veiled effort
to bust teacher unions and to promote the privatization of public
education), but particularly in Chicago, where a dissident opposition
caucus (CORE) won the local union elections in the nation's
third-largest public school district.</p>
<p></p>
<p>- The widespread support for the Workers Emergency Recovery
Campaign within important sectors of the labor movement, with the
endorsement by various local unions and even state labor federations of
the WERC-initiated call for the AFL-CIO to organize a Solidarity Day
III mobilization in Washington to advance labor's most pressing demands
-- beginning with the demand for a massive public works program to put
at least 15 million people back to work. Wide sectors of the labor
movement took a stand to affirm that labor must take to the streets in
the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, to insist that Obama must
live up to his promises and to his call for progressive change.</p>
<p></p>
<p>- The massive opposition at the California Labor Federation
convention in San Diego and at the National LCLAA Convention in Las
Vegas, both held in August 2010, to the attempts by the federation
leadership to get the delegates to go along with the AFL-CIO-Change to
Win Memorandum on Immigration (which dovetails with Obama's positions
on immigration). The delegates rejected the Obama plan and insisted on
reaffirming the federation's adopted position (since the late 1990s) in
opposition to "guest-worker" programs, employer sanctions and border
security, and in support of amnesty/legalization and full labor rights
for all undocumented workers.</p>
<p></p>
<p>- The development within Stern's SEIU of a powerful rank-and-file
movement, led by Sal Rosselli, that insisted that the SEIU ranks
should not accept the company unionist orientation of Stern and co.
This resistance movement has now become the National Union of
Healthcare Workers and has galvanized unionists across the country in a
David<em> vs</em>. Goliath fight for the heart and soul of what at one
time was one of the most militant and progressive unions in the country.</p>
<p></p>
<p><strong>October 2nd One Nation March in Washington</strong></p>
<p></p>
<p>Most of these union sectors in resistance have strongly supported
the call for the October 2 One Nation March in Washington, DC, because
they want to press Obama to heed the workers' demands and implement the
change that working people voted for in November 2008.</p>
<p></p>
<p>Earlier in the year, the AFL-CIO leadership had rejected the call
for a Solidarity Day III action, arguing that it would take away funds
and energy from their campaigns to elect Democratic Party candidates in
November 2010.</p>
<p></p>
<p>In July 2010, however, SEIU Local 1199 and the NAACP issued a call
to mobilize on October 2nd to demand jobs, peace and justice. George
Gresham, president of Local 1199, explained that a mass action in
Washington was now necessary to urge Obama and the Democrats to deliver
on their pledge for change, particularly the need for a massive
job-creation program.</p>
<p></p>
<p>Momentum soon developed around this One Nation call, with more
than 170 organizations endorsing the One Nation call by mid-August. It
was so strong that the AFL-CIO leadership could no longer ignore, nor
could it keep a distance from, the call for October 2nd. In mid-August,
the AFL-CIO decided to support this effort and to mobilize its members
across the entire East Coast corridor for the march.</p>
<p>In August and September, the WERC co-conveners issued many
statements explaining the significance of the AFL-CIO's endorsement of
the October 2nd action, while also insisting on the need for crystal
clear demands that give precise content to the call for jobs, peace and
justice.</p>
<p></p>
<p>This question of "Which Demands For October 2nd?" is indeed a
central question. As expected, the AFL-CIO and the leadership of the
One Nation coalition issued a call for the demonstration with no
demands -- just with the general themes of jobs, peace and justice.
They did not want any independent, fighting demands that would place
the demonstrators in contradiction with Obama and with the Democrats.</p>
<p></p>
<p>NAACP President Ben Jealous went so far as to explain on a
national organizing conference call that one of the main objectives of
One Nation was to build an ongoing coalition that could ensure the
re-election of Obama in 2012.</p>
<p></p>
<p>But herein lies the contradiction that was underscored in the most
recent statement from the WERC campaign: The AFL-CIO leadership,
because of the failure of Obama to budge even slightly on his
pro-corporate agenda, was compelled to call upon union members and
their community allies to march and rally in the streets of the
nation's capital in their own name.</p>
<p></p>
<p>The rank and file -- as well as union officials and union bodies
at all levels -- are going to march in Washington on October 2nd
because they are angry and want their pressing demands to be met.</p>
<p></p>
<p>The call for October 2nd is being seized upon by working people to
express the need for independent demands to build a fightback in
defense of workers' interests -- for independent trade unionism.</p>
<p></p>
<p>In this framework, the main sectors of the U.S. antiwar movement
decided to organize a "Peace Table" and an antiwar feeder march and
contingent on October 2 in Washington that is focused on the call for
an immediate end to the wars and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan
and for bringing the war dollars home now.</p>
<p></p>
<p>Efforts are also under way to organize independent contingents --
or "tables" -- of youth, immigrant rights activists, single-year
health-care advocates, and public housing activists.</p>
<p></p>
<p><strong>Opening the Discussion on Need for a Labor Party</strong></p>
<p></p>
<p>Tens of thousands - if not hundreds of thousands - of working
people will be gathering on October 2nd with banners and picket signs
expressing heartfelt class-struggle demands. This is extremely
significant, as it points to the contradiction between the sentiments
to affirm the independent demands of the labor movement (and hence the
independent of the trade unions) and the efforts by the One Nation
leadership to attempt to channel this movement into open support for
Obama and the Democrats.</p>
<p>But, at the end of the day on October 2nd, the coalition that will
capitalize on the sentiment in the streets will be One Nation.</p>
<p>This makes it imperative in these conditions to counterpose the
need for an independent political instrument to fight for the demands
advocated in the streets on October 2nd -- that is, the need for a
Labor Party.</p>
<p></p>
<p>That is why we fully support the latest WERC statement titled,
"After October 2, What Next?" This statement reads, in part:</p>
<p></p>
<p>"We [WERC] are dedicated to encouraging working people and their
unions to act independently of the Democratic Party so that we can take
the first steps toward creating an independent political voice and
instrument of our own -- one that is dedicated entirely to the needs of
working people. After all, working people are ... tired of voting for
Democrats who implement basically the same corporate agenda as the
Republicans.</p>
<p></p>
<p>"Working people are looking for alternatives to the Democrats and
Republicans. As the unions begin to embrace the full range of demands
that correspond to our needs and confront the government with them,
workers and their unions will see that the next logical step will be
for the unions to lay the foundation for a party of their own -- a
Labor Party."</p>
<p></p>
<p>The WERC campaign has announced that it is organizing a conference
in the spring of 2011 "to promote this fightback around labor's
independent demands and to discuss how best to advance the struggle for
a political party of working people, a Labor Party."</p>
<p></p>
<p>We urge our readers and supporters to contact the WERC organizers
at <a href="mailto:wercampaign@gmail.com" target="_blank"><wercampaign@gmail.com></a> if you are interested in attending
this conference and promoting this campaign. You can also visit the
WERC website at <a href="http://www.wercampaign.org" target="_blank">www.wercampaign.org</a>.</p>
<p></p>
<p>The time is now to build this fightback movement.</p>
<p></p>
<p>* * * * *</p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p><strong>SIDEBAR ARTICLES</strong></p>
<p></p>
<p><strong>Is Obama Reining in Wall Street?</strong></p>
<p>What about Obama's recent Financial Stability Bill -- another one
of Obama's so-called big victories during the first two first years of
his administration?</p>
<p></p>
<p>Economist Jack Rasmus, in an interview with<em> The Organizer</em>
newspaper on this topic, points out that the bill should rightly be
called the Minimal Financial Monitoring Bill. The<em> Wall Street
Journal</em>, Rasmus notes, explained in an editorial that the bill was
"not as tough as we feared." In fact banks stocks rose 2.4% the day
after the bill was passed. The banks liked the bill.</p>
<p></p>
<p>The bill does not break up the monopoly stranglehold of the big
banks, as was feared. The top 25 banks will continue to control 59% of
all financial assets. The bill's final version also removed a tax of
$50 billion that the banks were to have to pay the Treasury for
receiving federal bailout funds. The advocates of tough bank
regulations measures had proposed this tax. But it was abandoned.</p>
<p></p>
<p>What has been created is an oversight agency that is supposed to
prevent the kind of speculative binge spending that led to the Great
Recession that began in 2007-2008. But this oversight agency was
allowed also sorts of exemptions and loopholes big enough to drive a
Mack Truck through.</p>
<p></p>
<p>Over-the-counter swaps, amounting to $600 trillion in derivatives,
are now to be traded through a clearing house, instead of on the open
market. This is the only monitoring that will exist. How the oversight
will work is anyone's guess, however. At any rate, the new clearing
house is not to become operative until one year from now, and at this
point its mandate is still very vague. The fact is that the derivatives
will continue to expand, under a slightly altered form. The banks'
trading desks will not be suppressed. This is where the great bulk of
the derivatives' trading takes place.</p>
<p>Rasmus noted in his interview that during the past year there has
been a huge surge in derivatives' trading. It is estimated that 35% of
all Goldman Sachs trading is in derivatives, all earning exceedingly
high profits. Hedge funds amount to another immense source of profits.</p>
<p>Another form of regulation was to be the so-called Volker Rule,
wherein banks would not be allowed to use their own resources for
financial speculation. But here again the loophole is egregious: Banks
are allowed to move their speculative ventures off shore to circumvent
the Volker Rule.</p>
<p></p>
<p>"This whole bill is a big façade," said Rasmus. "The fact is that
the Federal Reserve will be the supervising agency of last resort, and
the Fed is the favorite agency of the banks." It's a question of the
fox guarding the chicken coop.</p>
<p></p>
<p>Another provision of the Obama bill calls for the creation of a
Consumer Protection Agency for banking transactions. But this agency,
too, will be placed under the responsibility of the Federal Reserve.
"The fact is," says Rasmus, "that the Fed agrees with Wall Street,
which means that there will be no real oversight over the federal
bailout funding. And there will be a one-time-only audit."</p>
<p>This minimal monitoring bill, as Rasmus calls it, will do nothing
to ensure that the banks begin lending money to the productive economy.
The whole government plan, including its financial monitoring, is
premised on the need to stabilize the banks. Any regulatory effort to
undermine the profitability of Wall Street, where profits are exacted
largely outside the sphere of production, was excluded.</p>
<p>There is no call, as some had Democratic Party liberals had hoped,
to demand that Wall Street should be taxed for their transactions.
There was no call to nationalize the consumer credit markets, as other
liberals had demanded. There was no call to close the banking offshore
tax shelters. This is why Wall Street and the banks were pleased, over
all, with Obama's Financial Stability Bill. --<strong> The Editors</strong></p>
<p></p>
<p>* * * * * * * * * *</p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p><strong>Is Obama's Health-Care Reform Benefiting Working People?</strong></p>
<p></p>
<p>There was great media hype when the Congress voted to approve
President Obama's health-care reform program. Today, many months after
the plan was adopted, the harsh realities of this Obama plan are
beginning to emerge in the media.</p>
<p></p>
<p>While the bulk of the plan goes into effect in 2014, some
provisions of the plan are already being implemented. This includes the
provision that extends a young adult's health-care coverage under
his/her parents' plan from age 25 to age 26, and the provision that
mandates health-care coverage for children with prior conditions for
certain ailments. No sooner were these provisions announced, however,
than the private insurance health-care rates shot up between 25% and
28% for all insurance policy holders. (quoted in<em> San Francisco
Chronicle</em>, August 18, "Insurance Rates to Rise")</p>
<p></p>
<p>And these rate hikes are taking place before the main provisions
of the health-care plan have even been put into action. Rate-payers can
expect astronomical fee hikes in the years to come.</p>
<p>What about the highly touted cost-containment provisions in the
Obama bill?</p>
<p></p>
<p>More and more articles are appearing in the specialized press that
show that the loopholes in the sections pertaining to cost containment
are huge -- so huge to dismiss any idea that costs will be kept in
check. Instinctively working people know this without any need of press
clippings. For decades they have been gouged by the private health-care
insurance companies, one of the most greedy and hated institutions in
the country.</p>
<p>Another aspect of the health-care bill that is beginning to gain
notice within the trade union movement is the provision that allows
companies with collective-bargaining agreements with unions to ditch
their health-care plans and dump them onto Obama's new "health-care
exchanges" -- while only incurring very slight penalties.</p>
<p></p>
<p>Dumping the union health-care plans would gut the unions'
collective-bargaining agreements. It would represent a huge blow to the
unions and would downgrade all the organized workers' health-care
plans. --<strong> The Editors</strong></p>
<p></p>
<p>* * * * *</p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p><strong>Obama: A Champion of the Environment?</strong></p>
<p></p>
<p>An article in the<em> San Francisco Chronicle</em> (August 15)
describes Obama's first 18 months, with Nancy Pelosi as House Speaker,
as the period with the "most productive Congress in recent memory." The
accomplishments mentioned include the Obama health-care plan, the
federal stimulus program, financial regulation, and an activist
environmental agenda.</p>
<p>Let's take a look at this last claim.</p>
<p></p>
<p>The Deep Horizon oil spill in the Gulf Coast is not one that can
be blamed on the Bush administration. It was Obama himself who accepted
huge contributions to his election campaign from the country's oil
companies, including the British-owned BP. In exchange for these hefty
donations to the Democratic Party coffers (it should be noted that
these companies finance both major political parties), BP was released
from having to produce an emergency disaster plan for their deep-water
drilling project in the Gulf Coast.</p>
<p>This corruption scandal was not that of Bush. It was Obama's own
environmental protection agency that waived this requirement for BP
because of its funding to the Obama campaign. Deep Horizon is now the
nation's biggest environmental disaster ever. It has become known
throughout the South as "Obama's Katrina." It's a disaster that has
destroyed not only precious flora and fauna, it has destroyed the
livelihood of millions of people who live off of fishing and
fish-processing (and all other spinoff industries), tourism,
transportation and more.</p>
<p>And to add insult to injury, all the sludge that is being removed
in the BP "cleanup" is being placed in highly toxic dumps right in the
middle of the Black and Latino communities along the Gulf Coast
seabord. This is the kind of environmental racism reminiscent of the
Cancer Corridor just north of New Orleans, where deregulated industries
abutted the Black townships, poisoning the poorest of the poor who
could not afford to move elsewhere. (Hurricane Katrina exposed to the
entire world this Cancer Corridor and the deathly toll it had taken on
the primarily Black residents of the area.)</p>
<p></p>
<p><strong>Five Years After Katrina</strong></p>
<p></p>
<p>Today, five years after Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans remains a
city that has expelled its majority Black population, has refused to
preserve or rebuild public housing, and therefore, in practice, through
the "laws of the market," has prevented the right of return of the
Black majority to this historic city.</p>
<p>Without public housing, and without public financing that would
allow the Black residents to rebuild their homes, hundreds of thousands
of erstwhile citizens of New Orleans have been permanently displaced --
much like the Palestinians from their homeland.</p>
<p></p>
<p>Hurricane Katrina did in one day what the wealthy white
establishment had long hoped to do: gentrify the city through a process
of ethnic cleansing. New Orleans is now run by a majority white City
Council, the first time in more than 70 years. The city has rebuilt
hotels and casinos, not housing for the poor.</p>
<p>Glen Ford, the editor of the Black Agenda Report, wrote the
following about New Orleans today, five years after Hurricane Katrina,
and about the mini-Katrinas that are taking place across the country
against Black people:</p>
<p>"[I]n New Orleans, on the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina,
a small, hardly noticed protest outside what used to be a public
housing project in the St. Bernard section of New Orleans, took place.
...</p>
<p></p>
<p>"A relatively small group of New Orleans activists gathered in the
rain outside the project to protest the visit to the city by President
Obama, whose housing policies spell doom for the entire concept of
public housing in the United States.</p>
<p></p>
<p>"When Katrina struck, the Bush administration's Department of
Housing was quick to call for demolition of all the public housing
units in New Orleans, even though most of the buildings were
salvageable. The residents were locked out, 3,000 of them, like
hundreds of thousands of others across the country since the early
Nineties, victims of corporate greed for the land the projects sit on
and a racist prejudice that holds that Black and poor people are
inherently dangerous when concentrated in one place. Katrina was simply
a convenient excuse to get rid of public housing in New Orleans, where
four major projects were demolished.</p>
<p>"In New Orleans and elsewhere across the country, the poor who are
evicted from public housing are expected to disperse, get out of the
way of corporate development that serves the needs of other people, and
be quiet. But this weekend, the former residents of the St. Bernard
project refused to scatter and be silent. They had earlier built a tent
encampment nearby, called Survivors' Village. Now they denounced
President Obama and his friend, Warren Buffett, the multi-billionaire
hedge-fund baron who is developing the site of their former homes under
a new name, Columbia Parc, for a new class of residents.</p>
<p></p>
<p>"The Obama administration has taken the anti-public housing
policies of Bush and previous presidents to a new level, with a plan to
abandon any federal commitment to building and maintaining housing for
the poor. Instead, fat cats like Warren Buffett and huge private
banking institutions will inherit the nation's public housing
properties. In New York City, the Citigroup bankers now own a piece of
13 public housing projects -- a taste of what Obama has in store for
what remains of America's public housing stock."</p>
<p></p>
<p>Just as Obama and the Democrats delivered more than 32 million
healthcare clients to the private insurance companies to fuel their
already exorbitant profits, so is he turning over the stock of public
housing, a conquest of bitter class struggles waged by unionists and
civil rights activists, to the speculators and land barons.</p>
<p></p>
<p>Those millions of Blacks, the disinherited and dispossessed who
voted for Obama and cried tears of joy when he was elected, many hoping
they would finally by able to return to New Orleans or to their homes
in Selma, Ala.; or to their public housing projects in Seattle, feel
sorely betrayed. Despite all the exhortations by Jesse Jackson Jr. and
Al Sharpton for them to vote again for Obama and for the Democrats, the
scenario of days past -- massive abstention -- is lurking once again on
the horizon.</p>
<p></p>
<p>The anger that is simmering in the Black community and that will
be expressed in massive abstention is also looking for a political
avenue to express itself. An opinion poll reported by Black Agenda
Report revealed that more than 65% of the Black people polled were
anxiously hoping for the creation of a third party for Black people. --<strong>
The Editors</strong></p>
<p></p>
<p>* * * * * * * * * *</p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p><strong>Obama's Foreign Policy: The Afghanistan Quagmire</strong></p>
<p></p>
<p>The media have by and large heralded the Obama decision to draw
down the number of U.S. troops in Iraq to 50,000 troops, all of whom,
or so we were told in Obama's nationally televised speech, are meant to
keep out of any combat duties. Their main duty, we were told, is to
train the Iraqi police and army so that they can now take matters into
their own hands. Barely one week had passed after the combat troop
withdrawal was announced, however, than U.S. troops were again engaged
in combat on September 5 in a Baghdad district. A syndicated cartoon
the day after this battle in Baghdad showed Obama proclaiming, "Mission
Semi-Accomplished."</p>
<p></p>
<p>Obama has gone out of his way to remind the American people that
he "kept his promise" and scaled down U.S. intervention in Iraq. This
announcement did not receive enthusiastic support from the public, as
Obama had hoped. Not only did the images of renewed combat in Iraq
belie the claim that troops were no longer in harm's way, but the
intensified war in Afghanistan had now become a sequel to the Iraq war,
not the "good war" that the U.S. ruling class had loudly proclaimed.</p>
<p>Success of U.S. policy in Iraq? Hardly.</p>
<p>Clearly, Iraq had become a lose-lose situation for the U.S.
government, and a gradual withdrawal had become necessary if for no
other reason than to step up the military occupation and war in
Afghanistan and its neighboring countries, where the "real threat of Al
Qaeda" is supposedly lurking.</p>
<p>But even in Iraq, the U.S. war and occupation continues. Not only
will U.S. combat troops return immediately to Iraq if the situation on
the ground deteriorates, but the U.S.-installed puppet regime is in
permanent turmoil and requires constant intervention by the United
States to attempt to prop it up and provide a semblance of stability.</p>
<p></p>
<p>Now the drive is on to have the puppet regime in Iraq accomplish
what could not be accomplished under an open U.S. military occupation
of Iraq, with visible U.S. combat troops on every other corner -- and
that is the privatization of the nation's electrical grid, and, most
important, of its oil resources.</p>
<p>This explains the recent stepped-up attacks by the Iraqi regime on
the oil workers' and electrical workers' unions. Their union leaders
have been jailed, their offices shut down, their leaders barred from
leaving the country. The aim is to destroy the main centers of
resistance to the drive to privatize these huge resources on behalf of
U.S. transnational corporate interests.</p>
<p></p>
<p>The Iraqi puppet regime did not dare carry out this privatization
plan under U.S. direct occupation. Now, with the fig-leaf cover of a
national "sovereign" government, this puppet regime must now take on
the unions and the resistance of the people, who know that they must
keep their cherished resources for themselves if they are to have any
future whatsoever.</p>
<p>The battle lines are being drawn in what appears will become a
major class battle in the coming weeks and months. The leaders of the
oil and electrical workers' unions are working closely with USLAW to
try to travel to Algeria for the Open World Conference in November. If
they are able to leave the country to reach Algeria, this linking up
with the fighting wing of the international labor movement will be of
immense significance worldwide.</p>
<p></p>
<p>As to Afghanistan, the only words that come to mind to describe
the situation are "Vietnam-style quagmire."</p>
<p>The firing by Obama of outspoken Army General McChrystal is just
the most visible expression of the deepening crisis in the summits of
the U.S. government over what to do in relation to Afghanistan. Many
analysts are writing stories in the mainstream press that indicate that
Afghanistan is an endless pit that will only continue to suck
much-needed financial resources from the United States without any hope
of establishing a stable government in Kabul and without any likelihood
of military success over a disparate group of rebel forces.</p>
<p></p>
<p>The debate over what to do in Afghanistan is raging in the press
daily, especially as more stories are reported about the widespread
corruption in the Karzai government (the latest story being the crisis
in the Kabul Bank), in a situation where there is no real "alternative"
to Karzai.</p>
<p>Because of his growing political crisis and because of the growing
number of body bags coming back from Afghanistan, the American people
are rapidly turning against what was once described as the "good war"
-- as opposed to the "bad war" in Iraq. A recent poll showed that 62%
of the people now support the "rapid withdrawal" of U.S. troops from
Afghanistan. At a time when federal and state budgets are being
drastically cut for lack of funding, more and more people are demanding
that money must be used for social programs at home, not for wars
abroad.</p>
<p>The parallels to Vietnam and the word "quagmire" keep coming up in
the letters to the editors or on the radio talk shows.</p>
<p>But the Obama administration is still plunging ahead in
Afghanistan, with a recent decision to increase the war spending in
that country and sending more combat troops to this war zone.
Afghanistan is now Obama's war.</p>
<p></p>
<p>And this is not all. The U.S. administration is beating the war
drums against Iran. The pressure and sanctions against Iran have been
tightened. And this is not all bravado. There are major sectors of the
Army and military establishment that are openly calling for a military
attack on Iran in the name of stopping the so-called ability of Iran to
enrich enough uranium to produce an atomic bomb. The situation in
relation to Iran is very dangerous and ominous. U.S. policy-makers, led
by Hillary Clinton, seem to be reaching the point of no return when it
comes to a military strike against Iran.</p>
<p></p>
<p>What is making such a decision difficult, however, is the
knowledge that this could further inflame the situation in Iran and the
Middle East, at a time when U.S. military forces are already strained,
not to mention that they are becoming bogged down in a war without end
in Afghanistan.</p>
<p></p>
<p>* * * * * * * * * *</p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p><strong>What Happened to Obama's Promise to Support Immigrant
Workers?</strong></p>
<p></p>
<p>Obama is being raked over the coals by the likes of Glenn Beck and
Rush Limbaugh -- two high-profile right-wing TV journalists with deep
coffers -- for his administration's decision to intervene, through the
Department of Justice, in putting a stay on four of the most outrageous
provisions of Arizona's racial profiling State Bill 1070.</p>
<p>It should be noted that Obama only intervened to halt -- not
repeal -- the most egregious provisions of this bill after more than 1
million people took to the streets on May 1st, 2010, and another
150,000 people marched in Phoenix, Arizona, on June 29, to protest the
law and to demand that Obama intervene to reverse this racist and
unjust law.</p>
<p>The right-wing pundits and Tea Party movement have all taken the
side of Arizona's governor, Jan Brewer, who insists that the polls
prove her right and who says that Obama's Justice Department
intervention has only made her more popular. Opinion polls, if they are
to be believed, show that before the Obama intervention on SB 1070, 56%
of the people polled supported SB 1070, whereas after the Justice
Department decision, the percentage of those polls jumped to 62% in
support of Jan Brewer and her law.</p>
<p></p>
<p>How to explain these polls and this situation in Arizona?</p>
<p>There can be no doubt that the failure by the ruling class --
under all recent administrations -- to enact a real immigration policy
in the interest of undocumented immigrants and working people as a
whole, combined with their failure to provide jobs and to stem the
disastrous effects of the Great Recession on the working-class
majority, has created a situation where undocumented immigrants have
become the easy scapegoat for all the ills of capitalism. The
undocumented are easily portrayed as the "ones who are taking my job"
-- when, of course, this is not the case at all.</p>
<p>The lack of a federal immigration reform plan has permitted states
to take it upon themselves to impose their own immigration policies. In
fact, there are 21 other states that have similar laws to SB 1070 in
their legislative dockets.</p>
<p></p>
<p>The irony is that Obama's immigration policies are no different
from Bush's policies. If anything Obama's are worse. Under Obama, more
undocumented immigrants have been deported per year than under Bush,
though the raids are not the high-profile raids of factories. Obama has
been more careful about keeping a lower profile. Instead, undocumented
immigrants are being rounded up and deported one by one by the police,
working hand in hand with ICE. The deportations go under the media
radar, but they are no less vicious. With the new Secure Communities
program enacted by the Obama administrations, the repression and
deportations are only like to increase.</p>
<p>Reeling from all the attacks by the Republicans and the Tea Party
movement, Obama put off a campaign promise that he would push hard for,
and enact, a Comprehensive Immigration Reform in 2010. For close to six
months, Obama refused to even touch the immigration issue, not wanting
to give the right wing further fodder to go after him.</p>
<p></p>
<p>But because of the deep anger within the Latino communities and
within the labor movement over the systematic abuses of undocumented
immigrants, Obama calculated that it was worth the Democratic Party's
short term and long-term prospects to raise the need for such an
immigration reform. Obama made such an announcement in a nationally
televised speech on July 1st.</p>
<p></p>
<p>The content of the speech made it clear that Obama's plan is fully
in sync with the Kennedy-McCain bill, which despite its strong
bipartisan support, was never enacted by the Congress, so deep are the
political calculations and divisions within the ruling class over this
question.</p>
<p></p>
<p><strong>Obama's Actual Proposals</strong></p>
<p></p>
<p>Obama's plan calls for tightening border security (meaning
increased militarization of the borders), criminalizing any new
"illegal" immigration, increasing employers' sanctions (for hiring
undocumented immigrants), and extending the guest-worker programs
through an AgJobs bill -- all in exchange for a largely vague promise
to create a "path to legalization" for the estimated 12 million
undocumented immigrants currently in the United States. Also included
as a carrot in this deal is the promise to implement the Dream Act, a
measure that would provide citizenship to undocumented students or to
youth who serve in the military.</p>
<p>This "path to legalization" is not an amnesty, as occurred in
1986. It is a measure that could demand that many, if not most, of the
12 million undocumented immigrants would have to "touch back" to their
countries of origin and get at the "back of the line" to apply for
legalization. In the worst-case scenario, this could mean the outright
deportation of millions of people, many of whom would have little or no
means of survival in their countries of origin given the heinous
consequences of the US-imposed free trade agreements on those countries
and their economies.</p>
<p></p>
<p>The Obama immigration reform plan, and his tepid policies, are not
pleasing anyone -- a phenomenon that is true across the board with
most, if not all, of Obama's plans. The right wing is describing
Obama's reform plan as an "amnesty" plan because of its promise of a
path to legalization. Never mind that this plan had the full support of
the Republican Party a short while ago (before the schisms that led to
the formation of the Tea Party wing of the Republican Party). Never
mind that this plan has already resulted in Obama sending an additional
$30 million in federal funding to beef up the border patrols.</p>
<p></p>
<p>But many in the Latino wing of the Democratic Party, the Latino
Caucus, are not happy with the Obama plan since they understand the
pervasive anger among the main Latino and immigrant rights'
organizations.</p>
<p></p>
<p>Many of these politicians and community leaders have openly
criticized the Obama administration's decision to tighten border
security. Many have denounced the heightened numbers of deaths (a
record high) in the Arizona desert this summer of immigrants attempting
to cross into the United States.</p>
<p>A few of these politicians and community organizers have even
pointed out the hypocrisy and shortcomings of Arizona Federal Judge
Bolton's decision on SB 1070, which, for example, continues to allow
day laborers to gather on the city streets in search of a job but
nonetheless penalizes an employer for picking up and hiring an
undocumented day laborer.</p>
<p>At the root of all this controversy is one undeniable fact: Ever
since the spring of 2006, when 7 million immigrants and their working
class allies took to the streets and actually held a one-day strike,
the first-ever nationwide strike in this country, the situation has not
been the same. There has been a growing polarization over this
question, with a growing number of voices calling for full legalization
for all undocumented immigrants.</p>
<p>True, the raids and deportations over the past three years have
put a big damper on the size of the pro-immigrant demonstrations. But
the grassroots organizing, and the growing alliance between labor and
immigrant activists, has continued to deepen. The 2010 May 1st actions
were again enormous in many cities, including Los Angeles, Dallas,
Denver, and Phoenix.</p>
<p></p>
<p>A related arena in the battle over immigration concerns the 14th
Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. In recent months, right-wing
Republicans, led by Sen. Alan Simpson of Wyoming, have spearheaded a
nationwide movement, to amend the 14th Amendment's provision to
disallow children born in the United States to immigrants to
automatically have U.S. citizenship. --<strong> The Editors</strong></p>
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