[Peace-discuss] ] Obama, the Tea Party & Why We Need a Labor Party (from /Socialist Organizer/)

[John W.]

If there's ONE thing we learned from the 60s, it's that there will NOT be a
Revolution here in Amerika.


On Sun, Oct 10, 2010 at 5:37 PM, E. Wayne Johnson <ewj at pigs.ag> wrote:

 It's an interesting read.
>
> The people are waking up to the fact that they've been Gypped.  Slowly,
> though.
>
> The Tea Party is made up of a lot of different kind of folk.  Some of them
> are neo-connish for sure.
> The neocons have money to burn and a big horn to toot and  enough green
> cash to astroturf the TeaParty.
> But a lot of the Tea Partiers are anarcho-libertarians and paleocons.
> There are even some like Ernest Hancock and Karen Quinn-Tostado
> who are left-leaning progressives and influence the TeaParty.  You can find
> the antiwar
> wing of the TeaParty in the blogs and chats fuming about how the "TeaPotty"
> has been
> co-opted.
>
> I personally don't have any use at all for Sarah Palin.
>
> Boehner (Boner) is a likewise meretricious dilwad and
> will not be any significant change over Nancy P. Lousy.
> There isn't any lesser evil amongst them.
> If you are up to your chin in smelly liquid cat shit, and some one
> flings a bucketful of festering dog shit at you, do you duck?
>
> The system is lining the TeaParty up for a railroad job down a dead end
> path
> hoping to cop the political spin and defuse the anger that drives the
> TeaParty.
>
> What is yet to be seen is what will happen to the TeaParty
> after it has been thoroughly SWAKed by Karl Rove's GOP...
> if it will have enough anger to go home, wash off, and come out again.
>
> Some like Quinn-Tostado are calling for a National Strike.
> If anyone could agree on what it's for, a National Strike would be a great
> idea.
>
>
>
>
> On 10/10/2010 10:38 PM, David Johnson wrote:
>
> *EXCELLENT ANALYSIS AND WELL DOCUMENTED ARTICLE ABOUT THE OBAMA
> ADMINISTRATION,THE DEMOCRATS, AND THE NATIONAL SO CALLED " LEADERSHIP " OF
> LABOR AND CIVIL RIGHTS ORGANIZATIONS.*
> **
> **
> ----- Original Message -----
> *From:* intexile at iww.org
>
> *Sent:* Saturday, October 09, 2010 1:38 PM
> *Subject:* [ Obama, the Tea Party & Why We Need a Labor Party (from
> /Socialist Organizer/)
>
>
>
>  THE ORGANIZER NEWSPAPER
>
> P.O. Box 40009, San Francisco, CA 94140
> Tel. (415) 641-8616; fax: (415) 626-1217
>
> email: theorganizer at earthlink.net
>
> website: www.socialistorganizer.org
>
> PLEASE EXCUSE DUPLICATE POSTINGS
>
> (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!)
>
> THE ORGANIZER NEWSPAPER
>
> P.O. Box 40009, San Francisco, CA 94140 Tel. (415) 641-8616; fax: (415)
> 626-1217
>
> email: theorganizer at earthlink.net
>
> website: www.socialistorganizer.org
>
> PLEASE EXCUSE DUPLICATE POSTINGS
>
> *SPECIAL SUPPLEMENT*
>
> (September-October 2010 Issue)
>
> *Obama, the Tea Party & Why We Need a Labor Party*
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> "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."
>
> 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!"
>
> "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!"
>
> 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?
>
> *Who Is Responsible for the Deteriorating Economy?*
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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%.
>
> 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.
>
> *Why Obama's Reversal in the Opinion Polls*
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> The* San Francisco Chronicle*, 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.)
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> The* Wall Street Journal* 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.
>
> Alan Greenspan is quoted in the same* Wall Street Journal* article as
> stating that the economy is spinning into a "double-dip recession" that
> could fast become a major economic depression.
>
> 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.
>
> *The Federal Deficit and Obama's Response*
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> *What About Obama's Tax Policies?*
>
> 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?
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> *Is Obama Really Delivering Health Care to Working People?*
>
> Many of the "liberal" sectors of the mainstream media such as the* New
> York Times* 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.
>
> Little by little, the harsh realities of this Obama plan are beginning to
> emerge in the media. [See sidebar article.]
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> And Missouri is just one of 18 states where the Tea Party has placed a
> similar referendum on the ballot.
>
> *What About Obama's Promise to Pass EFCA?*
>
> 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).
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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?
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> *Resistance Widespread Throughout the Labor Movement*
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> Other signs of resistance include the following:
>
> - 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;
>
> - 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."
>
> - 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.
>
> - 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.
>
> - 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.
>
> - 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* vs*. Goliath fight for the heart
> and soul of what at one time was one of the most militant and progressive
> unions in the country.
>
> *October 2nd One Nation March in Washington*
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> *Opening the Discussion on Need for a Labor Party*
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> That is why we fully support the latest WERC statement titled, "After
> October 2, What Next?" This statement reads, in part:
>
> "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.
>
> "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."
>
> 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."
>
> We urge our readers and supporters to contact the WERC organizers at
> <wercampaign at gmail.com> <wercampaign at gmail.com> if you are interested in
> attending this conference and promoting this campaign. You can also visit
> the WERC website at www.wercampaign.org.
>
> The time is now to build this fightback movement.
>
> * * * * *
>
>  *SIDEBAR ARTICLES*
>
> *Is Obama Reining in Wall Street?*
>
> 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?
>
> Economist Jack Rasmus, in an interview with* The Organizer* newspaper on
> this topic, points out that the bill should rightly be called the Minimal
> Financial Monitoring Bill. The* Wall Street Journal*, 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> "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.
>
> 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."
>
> 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.
>
> 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. --* The Editors*
>
> * * * * * * * * * *
>
>  *Is Obama's Health-Care Reform Benefiting Working People?*
>
> 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.
>
> 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* San
> Francisco Chronicle*, August 18, "Insurance Rates to Rise")
>
> 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.
>
> What about the highly touted cost-containment provisions in the Obama bill?
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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. --
> * The Editors*
>
> * * * * *
>
>  *Obama: A Champion of the Environment?*
>
> An article in the* San Francisco Chronicle* (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.
>
> Let's take a look at this last claim.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.)
>
> *Five Years After Katrina*
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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:
>
> "[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. ...
>
> "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.
>
> "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.
>
> "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.
>
> "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."
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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. --* The Editors*
>
> * * * * * * * * * *
>
>  *Obama's Foreign Policy: The Afghanistan Quagmire*
>
> 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."
>
> 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.
>
> Success of U.S. policy in Iraq? Hardly.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> As to Afghanistan, the only words that come to mind to describe the
> situation are "Vietnam-style quagmire."
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> The parallels to Vietnam and the word "quagmire" keep coming up in the
> letters to the editors or on the radio talk shows.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> * * * * * * * * * *
>
>  *What Happened to Obama's Promise to Support Immigrant Workers?*
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> How to explain these polls and this situation in Arizona?
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> *Obama's Actual Proposals*
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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. --* The
> Editors*
>
>
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