The Infamous Scribbler

"To Lose the Clinics Would be a Way of Dying"

2011-11-17T15:43:00.001-06:00

Over 100 people gathered for a "People's Budget Hearing" in the Chicago Temple at 77 W. Washington on Tuesday November 15. They were upset over the budget that the city was poised to pass, the first budget passed since Rahm Emmanuel was elected mayor. In particular the crowd was upset that the budget would close 6 of city's 12 mental health clinics, privatize all 7 city neighborhood health clinics and layoff over 150 workers from city department of public health.

"Does anyone see Rahm Emmanuel in the building?" the man at the podium asked. The crowd responded loudly, "No!"

"Because the mayor's not here, we have to go to him.... we need to make sure we get the attention of city hall and make sure that they understand that this is an important issue."

The crowd marched across the street to city hall, and up to the the mayors office on the 5th floor. When they got there, a group of 10 or so was already sitting in front of the the mayors office wearing lab coats and signs that plead to keep the cities mental health clinics public and open.

Organizer Matt Ginsberg-Jaeckle told the police gathering around them, "We are here until the mayor comes. We won't let them close our clinics." Later he explained, "The only two ways we're leaving, is if they give us back our clinics, or take us away in handcuffs."

The crowd excitedly chanted, "no clinics, no votes" for several minutes.

The crowd then began to tell testimonies, using themselves as human microphones. People who relied on the clinics testified to how they had been impacted by the clinics and how they were terrified of what they would do if they were cut or privatized.

"It's a matter of expense for me, if Beverly Morgan park clinic is closed, I'll have to go to a private clinic and pay $15 a week. I don't have that money." One of those sitting in said.

Another one described her struggle with depression, "I know I will die if I don't go to my clinic. He (her therapist) means a lot to me because I have no where else to go. I have a family full of mental illness or other disabilities. So this really impacts me. It makes me so mad that I shake and get nervous because I can't deal with my life. I sit there and I cry and I panic and I think that suicide is the way out. And it's not the way out. So far I've made it and I know that this (the protest) is my calling."

Margaret Sullivan shouted from the floor in front of the mayor's office, "from 2003 - 2006 they (her clinic) calculated my medicines and kept me from committing suicide, for which I had a plan that included pills, Dramamine and a bathtub. I'm sure the new mayor doesn't care that I didn't die, but these people," she pointed to those sitting besides her, "these people do!"

Madonna Carter, described her three suicide attempts, and how she struggled with depression since she was 11 years old, "being able to be at the clinic has helped me not want to die every day. " She continued, "to lose the clinics would be a way of dying."

The rally was sponsored by many community, labor, and health groups, including AFSCME Council 31, SEIU Healthcare Illinois Indiana, SEIU Local 1, Illinois Single Payer Coalition, Mental Health Movement, Occupy Chicago, Southside Organizing for Power, and others.

Many in the crowd spoke. One person called the city's budget one for the 1%, not for the 99%. Another pointed out that the biggest mental health clinic in cook county is the cook county jail, as many of those without access to mental health clinics will end up in jail, costing tax payers even more than the clinics would have.

Another activist said that the police 'babysitting' the sit-in could be dealing with other criminals, like those at Lasalle and Jackson in the cities financial district who caused the economic crises.

After 10 hours, those who remained a part of the sit in were arrested by the police. While some alderman expressed regret that they clinics were not provided for in the budget, the budget was passed in a unanimous 50 to 0 vote.

#Occupy the Police

2011-11-10T13:11:00.000-06:00

"In a highly developed society,the Establishment cannot survive without the obedience and loyalty ofmillions of people who are given small rewards to keep the systemgoing: the soldiers and police, teachers and ministers,administrators and social workers, technicians and productionworkers, doctors, lawyers, nurses, transport and communicationworkers, garbagemen and firemen. These people - the employed, thesomewhat privileged - are drawn into alliance with the elite.

They become the guards of the system,buffers between the upper and lower classes. If they stop obeying,the system fails. That will happen, I think, only when all of us whoare slightly privileged and slightly uneasy begin to see that we arelike the guards in the prison uprising at Attica - expendable; thatthe Establishment, whatever rewards it gives us, will also, ifnecessary to maintain its control, kill us....

there is evidence of growingdissatisfaction among the guards. We have known for some time thatthe poor and ignored were nonvoters, alienated from a politicalsystem they felt didn't care about them, and about which they coulddo little. Now alienation has spread upward into families above thepoverty line."

"In the twenties there was asimilar estrangement in the middle classes, which could have gone invarious directions - the Ku Klux Klan had millions of members at thattime - but in the thirties the work of an organized left wingmobilized much of this feeling into trade unions, farmers unions,socialist movement."

"We may, in the coming years, bein a race for the mobilization of middle-class discontent."

-Howard Zinn People's History of theUnited States

The #Occupy movement has done anincredible job of raising class consciousness in America. From WallStreet to the occupations in smaller cities around the country, it'sdemand for more equal wealth distribution and for the lower 99% tohave a greater say in how the economy is run, has agitated millionsof Americans about the unfairness of American Capitalism.

However the movement goes back andforth on a critical issue. How to relate to the police. Manydiscussions have turned into shouting arguments, with some protestersarguing that they want to have good relations with the police,pointing out that they are public blue collar workers, "we'refighting for your jobs" is a common thing to hear them say tothe police. Other activists will argue that the police only existto serve the rich, and point to a long history of police brutalityagainst labor organizers, people of color, and protesters.

Which is it?

Well it's both. Like just about everyjob in this society, the workers face contradictory interests andwill have to go through a dialectical process if they are going tojoin with the forces of liberation.

I was in Ohio for several months,working to repeal Senate Bill 5, an anti-union law that would havelimited the things that public employees could bargain over. Unlikethe 'Budget Repair' bill that Scott Walker pushed in Wisconsin, SB5in Ohio would have taken away bargaining rights from police andfirefighters as well. We successfully repealed the law, with 61% ofOhio voters supporting union rights.

What was surreal was that the victoryparty I attended was at the Fraternal Order of Police lodge.

I'm used to police in riot gearsurrounding a protest march I'm in. It was different to have thepolice fighting for union rights and joining me at the same victoryparty. Many of the police there had never been involved in politicsbefore, but were now becoming involved in labor activism. A few were Republican, but now swore to never vote Republican again.

I was speaking with one of my Anarchistfriends about the discussions within #Occupy about the police. Hedescribed his annoyance with those who fawn over how the police arepart of the 99%, "We're fighting for your jobs, we're fightingfor your jobs, well, I'm fighting for a world where police are notneeded." He then described how in Sweden, the police give ridesto people who are too stoned to drive.

When the Iraq war began, many of usprotesting against the war were called unpatriotic, and told that wedidn't 'support the troops.' We were glad when Iraq Veterans Againstthe War began. Veterans spoke out against a war that did not servethe interests of working people in America or in Iraq.

IVAW helped service members file forConscientious Objector status, and supported those who refused tooppress Iraqi's.

Why is there not a similar group forpolice and #Occupy? How do we get the police to stop serving therich, and to support the 99% of which they are materially a part of?

We have to be smart about it. Whathave we tried thus far? Shouting slogans at anonymous police fromthe picket line? It hasn't been very effective. When was the lasttime you followed the advice of someone you didn't know shouting atyou?

Let me propose two ideas.

1.) We organize the rank and file.Let's talk to our friends and family who are in the police, andorganize a day of police solidarity with #occupy.

2.) Also, we can approach policeorganizations, the Fraternal Order of Police, etc and speak to themin their terms in order to gain their support. Lets talk to themabout their pension, about training, about staffing levels, abouttheir own safety. Let us seek common ground in support of workingclass issues and against austerity.

The biggest obstacle we may face istheir consciousness. They have probably never read Marx, andprobably never will. It will be our task to raise theirconsciousness, through material struggle over their real lifeconcerns as working people, so that they can join us and fightalongside the 99%, instead of against it.

The other obstacle we will face will beour own consciousness in relation to the police. Yes, many policejoin for the barbarity and ability to have a license to oppressothers. It is important to support efforts to hold thoseindividuals, institutions and cultures accountable to the people. Many in #Occupy will say that the police know what they have chosento do is to support the 1% and brutality. Well, not always. Manypolice officers join to be able to serve their community's, and tohave a steady paycheck for their families.

This is more than just a moralquestion, this is a strategic question for the movement - will itattempt to unite all who can be united, will it attempt to peel awaythe layers of support that prop up the system? Or will it take apuritan approach that anyone who has in any way supported the systemas it stands is incapable of change or becoming an ally of the 99%?

Yes, many in the police have put theprivate interests of the rich and powerful ahead of serving andprotecting the public. Like our public governments, we have watchedas private power has hollowed out what we should hold in common.

We need to enlarge the discussion aboutprivate power over our public institutions by asking whether we as asociety want public safety or private security.

Do we want a police force that willtake drunk drivers off the road, help rape victims, break the silencearound police brutality, and protect the rights of the 99%? Or do wewant a police force that will act as strikebreakers, cover-up policebrutality, and serve the interests of the 1%?

Will we automatically write off allthose who are not 'as-left-wing-as-us' as incapable of joining theforces of social justice?

The answer, will be in what themovement does.

Celebrating the Defeat of Ohio Issue 2 in Dayton Ohio

2011-11-09T13:07:00.000-06:00

I was interviewed by the Dayton Informer about the defeat of Issue 2 in Ohio.

http://daytoninformer.com/?p=3157

Repealing SB 5: On the Verge of Victory in Ohio

2011-10-26T12:55:00.000-05:00

This article was originally posted on Working In These Times Blog.
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DAYTON, OHIO—I tried to stay dry in the thunderstorm. I would duck under porches, but quickly became drenched. My feet squished my wet socks as I tromped through muddy yards. My papers, a list of registered voters and fliers, became difficult to read as the ink smudged.

This was the second day in a row that it rained while we were outside knocking on doors and canvassing, trying to repeal Senate Bill 5, the anti-union law signed into law by Ohio Governor John Kasich that makes Scott Walker's "budget repair" bill in Wisconsin look tame in comparison.


SEIU Local 1199 members prepare to canvass door-to-door against Issue 2 on October 25 in Dayton, Ohio.

There are similarities between the two pieces of legislation. Both were passed after Republicans seized control of governorships and state houses in the wake of the 2010 elections. Both bills attempt to limit public employees’ collective bargaining rights. Both bills ban strikes by public employees like teachers and strip unions of the ability to collect automatic dues deductions from members. Both bills aim to make public employees pay more out of pocket for their pension and healthcare.

But there are big differences: In Wisconsin, the bill spared firefighters and police. Ohio's SB 5 would prevent firefighter and police unions, which are already prohibited from striking or joining broader labor federations, from negotiating over training, staffing levels and equipment. Perhaps most extreme, SB 5 would allow local governments to impose a "final offer" that public employee unions would not have legal recourse to appeal.

As soon as the SB 5 was proposed in Ohio, unions and supporters protested outside the statehouse in Columbus. But unlike in Wisconsin, there were no legislators who left the state. Even if all the Democrats left, the Republicans would have still had a quorum. There were no state house occupations, like in Madison.

And things have been different after the bills became law.
While organizers in Wisconsin attempted to turn the popular rage against Scott Walker into recall elections that would replace Republicans who voted for the bill with Democrats who would fight to repeal it, organizers in Ohio began to collect signatures in order to put Senate Bill 5 on the ballot for voters to repeal it themselves.

After collecting more than 1.3 million signatures, Senate Bill 5 was certified to appear on the November 2011 ballot as Issue 2, where voters will have to respond to the question, "Shall the Law be Approved?" A labor and community based coalition, We Are Ohio, began to recruit canvassers and phone bankers to encourage voters to "Vote No on Issue 2" in order to reject the law and repeal Senate Bill 5.

In Ohio, the polls initially showed a large number opposed to the senate bill. One poll showed 54 percent of voters supported repeal (a "no" vote), while only 31 percent planned to vote "yes" to enact the bill.

With no way to convince the majority of Ohioans to vote against teachers, firefighters and police officers, a pro-business group, Building a Better Ohio set out to confuse them.

Ads started airing saying that a "yes" vote would save firefighters jobs. And, disturbingly, Building a Better Ohio took video of a grandmother from a Vote No ad and cut it in a way to make it seem as though she was encouraging a Yes vote.

Voters I spoke with at their doors told me about their confusion. They would talk about "Issue 5," and I'd have to correct them by informing them that Senate Bill 5 is on the ballot as Issue 2. Many had signed the petition to repeal Senate Bill 5, but were uncertain whether to vote Yes or No on Issue 2.

A poll from few weeks ago showed the race tightening, with the number who wanted to reject the bill falling to 50 percent.

However a new poll shows that opponents of the new legislation now have a 25-point lead among voters: 57 percent support repeal, while 32 percent do not. Educating voters is paying off.

There has been a serious effort by my union, the Service Employees International Union, to get new voters registered and to get infrequent voters to the polls. I have helped 90-year-olds sign up to receive ballots in the mail and helped register students on their 18th birthday.

With less than two weeks until the election, the Vote No effort is pivoting toward the final GOTV (Get Out The Vote) effort: reminding people with absentee ballots to mail them in, asking voters to plan their election day schedule, and clearing up any last minute confusion. If we continue to educate Ohio residents and voters about Senate Bill 5 and remind them to Vote No on Issue 2, then Election Day—November 8, 2011—could be the day anti-union legislators around the country realize that if you strip workers of collective bargaining rights, they will fight back.

Immigrant Rights Picket at Wrigley Field: Boycott Arizona!

2010-04-29T11:27:00.000-05:00

This article was originally posted on Gapers Block.

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Immigrants Rights Activists Picket outside Wrigley Field.

Chicago is finally getting some spring weather. In Wrigleyville, thousands of fans are enjoying the weather and catching a baseball game. Jeering the other team has a long history in sports, but today over 200 supporters of immigrants rights picketed outside Wrigley Field to protest against the Arizona Diamondbacks and Arizona's anti-immigrant SB1070 law.

The law forces law enforcement in Arizona to stop "suspected illegal immigrants" and make them prove their citizenship in order to avoid arrest. Leone Jose Bicchieri, the executive director of the Chicago Workers Collaborative explained that the law would "only increase racial profiling in Arizona." Describing what the law tells police to do, "You better go out today and you better stop suspected undocumented immigrants. When you say, 'Well what does that mean?' They say 'well you know, suspected undocumentented immigrants.' That means dark people."

Immigrants and civil rights groups across the country have begun a nationwide boycott against the state of Arizona in order to pressure the state to rescind the law and to prevent other state from passing similar laws.

An immigration rights activist holds a sign that parodies the Arizona State flag.

The owners of the Diamondbacks are among the largest contributors to the Republican politicians who passed the law.

According to Biccieri, the owners "should move the Diamondbacks to a state that treats all people with dignity and respect." He encouraged people outside of Chicago to protest diamondbacks games across the country.
"We love Arizona, we just don't want them to be like the apartheid regime in South Africa."

Lest any Chicago fans worry that the protest was anti-Cubs Bicchieri told the crowd gathered, "If the Cubs ever needed to sweep a series, boy is it this one... We take pity for all the Latino players on the Diamondbacks and all the Latino players like Aramis Ramirez and Alfonso Soriano on the Cubs," who faced the possibility of being arrested in Arizona if they were pulled over and failed to provide documents such as their birth certificates and social security cards.

The protesters are also devising a strategy to stop White Sox and Cubs spring training in Arizona.

Organizers asked for supporters to attend pickets outside Wrigley Field before every Diamondbacks game this weekend. The protests will be before first pitch, Saturday 1st pitch is at 1:20 and Sunday at noon.

Her papers are the U.S. Constitution. Protester at the Arizona Diamondbacks game in Chicago.

Wage Theft Crime Spree: What Will Stop It?

2010-04-27T11:45:00.000-05:00

This article was originally posted on Gapers Block. Factual corrections were made, in the original article, Jericho Products was named, when it should have read Duraco Products.

This feature is supported in part by a Community News Matters grant from The Chicago Community Trust and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

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Victor Hernendez addresses a rally in the state capital in Springfield. Hernendez was a victim of wage theft.

You work assuming you'll be paid, but too often, workers are simply denied what they're owed. It happened to Kim Kambra who worked at Duraco Products in Springwood. "They didn't pay me. I worked over 55 hours a week and they paid me for one week out of the last 10 weeks. My house went into foreclosure and I lost the legal rights to my house even though I still live there."

Kambra was one of many Duraco employees who were not paid. Computer programmer Bill Van Dusen worked for 12 years at Duraco but for three months in 2008 and another three months in 2009, Dusen was not paid. "I had to use the money we saved for our kids' education to pay our bills."
Jericho went beyond not paying their employees. The company "stole our deductions for health insurance and child support. They collected that but didn't pay it to the proper person they needed to pay it to," according to Van Dusen.

However, Duraco's owners have been paid handsomely. Kevin Lynch, one of the owners of Duraco Products would have wild venison for his dogs and chrome parts for his car delivered to the company while three employees' homes went into foreclosure.

Duraco isn't the only company in the Chicago area cheating its employees. Victor Hernendez worked at Park Management in Chicago but is owed 21 thousand dollars from the company. He filed a complaint with the Illinois Department of Labor in 2008, and while the IDOL has agreed with his complaint, Park Management still has not paid him.

Liz Rush, an employee at Renzenburger Warehouses, became active with the Warehouse Workers for Justice after she was forced to work overtime without being paid. "'It's your job. It's your job. You'll get written up,' [managers] say, so we do things with no pay just so we can keep our jobs."

Its not just a few corporations getting away with such behavior. Adam Kader from ARISE Chicago's Worker Center explained, "We see non-compliance [with labor law] as the standard," in low wage jobs.

The study "Unregulated Work in Chicago" produced by the Center for Urban Economic Development at the University of Illinois at Chicago, estimates that "in a given week, approximately 146,300 workers in Chicago and suburban Cook County have at least one pay-based violation. Extrapolating from this figure, front line workers in low wage industries lose more than $7.3 million per week as a result of employment and labor law violation."

"We're not just talking about the underground economy or a few rogue employers," Professor Nik Theodore, who helped write the report, said. "We're talking about some of the largest, fastest growing industries in the Chicago area. Key clusters such as retail, restaurants and grocery store. Caregivers like home healthcare workers and domestic workers. Residential construction, warehouses, segments of the manufacturing sector. Personal services like laundries and beauty salons and building services like janitors and security guards."

The study used respondent driven sampling, a survey method where workers referred other workers, allowing the study to establish trust better that other surveys. This method allowed the survey to reach low income front line workers in many different industries, an estimate 310 thousand such workers in Cook County.

Twenty-six percent of workers in the sample were paid less than the legally required minimum wage in the previous work week. Of those who worked more than 40 hours during the previous week 67 percent were not paid the legally required overtime rate.

Many workers faced meal break violations as well. Three quarters of the sample worked enough for a break but 43 percent received no break, had breaks shortened due to employer interruption, or had their break interrupted in other ways.

Of the tipped workers in the study, 15 percent were not paid the tipped worker minimum wage.

Twenty-six percent of the workers in the study made a complaint or attempted to form a union. Of those 35 percent experienced one or more forms of illegal retaliation from their employer or supervisor. Fired, suspended, threatened to call immigration, or cut hours or pay.

This crime spree in wage theft has a real impact on the economy in Illinois.

Theodore explained that it is "bad economics to think we can rebuild the economy on the back of illegal workplace practices." Citing a race to the bottom between companies that have to compete against corporations that don't pay their employees, leading to wages being depressed across whole industries.

Government Regulators have Limited Resources to Enforce Laws

The Illinois Department of Labor is one of the smaller agencies in Illinois. With only 87 employees, the IDOL must respond to 8,000 to 9,000 complaints a year regarding wages.

Bert Rodriguez, Assistant Director of the IDOL, explained that they "try to resolve the issue at our level. Trying to mediate the issue and hopefully get the worker the back wages due or address whatever workplace violation uncovered. In a lot of cases we are unsuccessful in those efforts. In a lot of cases we find uncooperative employers." The IDOL will, "partner with the office of the attorney general... once we make a determination," if the case is worth it.

The Illinois Department of Labor often does not have the resources or authority to pursue the cases it is presented with. Which is why a coalition of community groups called the Just Pay for All Campaign is pushing for a bill that would strengthen the IDOL's ability to seek lost wages and punish employers that steal wages. It would allow the IDOL to pursue cases without needing to go to the Attorney General's office, potentially resolving disputes months sooner than it currently takes.

The bill was sponsored by Illinois Senator William Delgado and passed in the Illinois Senate unanimously. Representative Elizabeth Hernendez sponsored the bill in the Illinois General Assembly.

Delgado worked with the Just Pay for All Campaign and the Illinois Chamber of Commerce to draft a bill that they could agree on. Jay Shapman from the Illinois Chamber of Commerce "felt that the original bill went too far, but came up with a version that we believe will go after the most egregious offenders," Delgado says.

According to Representative Hernendez, "The majority of our business community are following the rules... unfortunately there are business people using this as a model, so it's those few we are trying to get."

Katherine Kolon, a lawyer with the Working Hands Legal Clinic, described the legislation as bringing Illinois' labor law regime into line with other labor laws on the state and federal level. The bill would not raise taxes but would allow the IDOL to fine violators more quickly, as they would not have to go to the Attorney General's office in order to seek redress. The bill will be voted on by the General Assembly in the next few weeks.

Wage theft is coming under increasing scrutiny from the federal Department of Labor. Hilda Solis, the new Secretary of Labor, calls herself "the new sheriff in town," implying a renewed effort to crack down on business that steal from their employees.

On March 31 Solis spoke at UIC to unveil the new "We Can Help" campaign aimed at raising awareness among workers about the DOL's wage and hours divisions. The campaign seeks to let documented and undocumented workers know about their rights and that they can use the DOL. Solis has big aspirations for the 2nd largest enforcement agency in the federal government, "those who break our nations labor laws and prey on vulnerable workers, it ends today."

The Department of Labor under Solis has been able to increase funding back to its 2001 levels, before the Bush administration cut funding to that department. Solis's DOL has hired 250 new wage and hour investigators but, "hopes to do more."

However even with the larger budget and increased staff, the extent of the wage theft leaves the DOL to pick and choose which cases it pursues.

According to Solis, "There is no way in the world we can go after every single complaint, we don't have enough staff to do it. But we can target certain segments of our communities where we know there are abuses going on." Solis wants the DOL to work with non-profits, labor, faith and community groups, to determine where the most egregious cases of wage theft are occurring.

According to Theodore, from 1980 to 2007 federal funding for the Department of Labor's Wage and Hour division declined 31 precent as the workforce increased by 52 percent. With the current staffing levels it would take the DOL 133 years to inspect each workplace once.

Even the "We Can Help" campaign might be woefully inadequate to raise awareness about what workers can do about wage theft. Will a few videos posted online and radio spots spook employers into paying their employees and informing workers of their rights?

Leone Bicchieri, the Executive Director of the Chicago Workers Collaborative explained that it was too early to tell. Bicchieri was "hopeful, but we'll have to see" whether the program has the desired impact.

In many ways the Department of Labor is the public option for those workers who can't afford a lawyer to seek redress for wage theft.

Supporters of the Just Pay for All campaign rally in the Rotunda of the Illinois State Capital in Springfield.

What Needs to Be Done?

Kim Kambra testified to the Illinois General Assembly Labor Committee, saying, "If I steal a piece of pizza, I'm going to jail... [Duraco products] have no consequences for not paying us. They owe us over 25 thousand dollars in wages. It's unfair to all the business that have to compete with them. It's unfair to us with families that have to support them and are losing our houses. The Department of Labor right now has no power to make them pay."

It is a testament to our society that so little is done to stop the practice of wage theft. What can be done to stem the crime spree?

According to Professor Nik Theodore it is important to keep wage theft on the agenda of lawmakers and it is imperative to increase resources to the Department of Labor to handle such cases.

However, workers who have had their wages stolen frequently turn to community groups to get their just compensation. The Chicago Workers Collaborative for example often uses workplace actions, legal pressure and grassroots organizing to get workers their stolen pay back.

According to Leone Bicchieri from the Chicago Workers Collaborative, "The first line of defense is workers themselves being organized. The management of a company can literally sense in the workplace when the workers are united and it changes the dynamic of that workplace."

ARISE Chicago has been able to recover over $3,800,000 in lost wages for workers who have not been paid. The Latino Union has used direct actions at employers who don't pay their workers in order to pressure employers. According to Bicchieri, passing a law is only a step towards stopping wage theft. Community groups need to be prepared to follow up on reports of abuse, and hold employers accountable to the standards in any new law.

Michael Steele: Selling Minorities Real Estate in Lake Michigan

2010-04-22T11:30:00.000-05:00

This article was originally posted on Gapers Block.

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Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele makes Joe Biden look gaffe proof. It seems like every time you turn around on CNN, or load up Huffington Post, Steele is explaining how the Republican Party is the party of one-armed-midgets, Republicans fought to outlaw slavery in the Bill of Rights (it was actually the 13th amendment, not the first 10), and apologizing to Rush Limbaugh.

Which is why I went to the Chairman's appearance at DePaul University. I appreciate good stand up comedy.

Steele's appearance was sponsored by the campus Republicans and the DePaul Cultural Center. An odd combination considering that the Conservative Alliance had once sponsored an Affirmative Action Bake Sale targeting the cultural center and organized pickets against the speakers the Cultural Center invited such as Ward Churchill.

Steele is the first Black person to be the national chairman of the RNC and was to speak on Conservatisms appeal to minority communities. Instead he talked about its lack of an appeal.

When asked , "Why should Blacks vote Republican?" Steele responded without hesitation, "You really don't have a reason to, to be honest. We really haven't really done a good job of giving them a reason to... We have failed miserably in that regard. We have lost sight of the historic integral link between the party and African Americans."

But liberals looking to mock Steele's response should pay attention to the context of the statement. Steele explained that part of what he had been trying to do as RNC chairman was to "turn the elephant." He complained that the Republican Party had used a Southern strategy that alienated minority voters and that he hoped to "reestablish [the Republican Party's] relationship with African Americans."

Steele said that the goal of the civil rights movement has changed. "The fight to get a seat at the lunch counter is done. Your fight now is to own the diner... ownership is what will define your generation. I'm not talking about 'oh I got my own a house.' I'm talking about legacy wealth. I'm talking about stuff that the Vanderbilt's and the Rockefeller's and the Kennedy's did. That is now affordable to you... but your going to have to fight for it."

Steele described ways he had attempted to reach out to blacks by speaking at Black churches, and working with minority business groups. Steele even explained his own experience being denied an interview for a job once they realized that he was black. He encouraged Republicans to reach out to minority voters, despite the disconnect between the two. "You got a big hurdle. 1.) They don't trust you. 2.) They may not like you. 3.) You've got something to offer. 4.) Put it on the table."

Is this the strategy to win the support of minority voters? Is Steele the person to sell the Republican Party to anyone, let alone a group of people who have been alienated from the GOP?

Steele seemed to have trouble grasping what inequality in the present era means. He attempted to say that political interests lead to inequality. "You have an interest, I have an interest... it matters whose interests are bing served, how why and when." Which sort of makes sense. Certainly Wall Street CEO's have a different interest than a single mother living in Austin or Pilsen. Wall Street CEO's are also more likely to have their interest served as well. I don't think Steele meant it that way though.

Steele agreed that he measured equality in a relative sense rather than an absolute sense. "Some people are comfortable with the level of equality that they have, I've just never been one of those people. You may be..... 'I got the job, I got this, I'm good.'" I think Steele meant to say material wealth instead of equality. It would make more sense if Steele was talking about wealth, but he kept saying equality.

What was even more striking was Steele's boring policy wonk answer to a woman who asked about health care. The woman asked, "I have had 2 heart surgeries totaling 250 grand. I have lost my health insurance, and my parents had to move to smaller house. Since you opposed Obama's health care plan, what would you propose?"

Steele didn't display a single empathetic emotion. He did not tell the woman that he hoped she was well, or that he was sorry for her troubles. Instead Steele complained about lawyers who sue malpracticing hospitals and insurance companies. "I don't know how you address health care without addressing tort reform. I don't know how you address health care without addressing the underlying costs to it."

Steele may be reaching out to minorities, but the policies he proposes would negatively impact those same communities. Steele is the consummate snake oil salesman. He wants to encourage minorities becoming millionaires, but wants to cut the welfare programs that people rely on. Steele says he wants to reduce health care costs, but doesn't even lay out a plan for minorities to afford health care. Steele proposes school vouchers which would take even more resources away from the schools that need them.

Democrats Target Immigration Reform - How Far Will They Go?

2010-04-11T15:41:00.000-05:00

This was originally posted on Gapers Block.

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Immigration activists wave American flags at a recent rally.

Immigration rights activists held a large rally Saturday at the Teamsters Local 705 hall in Chicago. Activists were calling on Congress to act on comprehensive immigration reform, and hoped that with the health care bill passed, that immigration reform would be next on the Democrats agenda in Washington. The loud and raucous crowd had immigrants from all over the world including South America, Asian, Africa and Europe.

It seems that immigration will be the next big issue for Democrats. The rally was joined by Senator Dick Durbin, the Senate majority whip and the second most powerful senator in the country. While one speaker urged Congress to ignore "cynics like Rahm Emanual who say that now is not the time for immigration reform," it seems as though they may not have to as Emanual is now stating that he supports taking action on immigration reform sooner rather than later.

Supporters of immigrants have been upset at the slow pace that President Obama and Congress have been taking on immigration reform. Deportations continue to divide families and "many young women are forced into sexual trafficking every year because their immigration status is being used against them, many family members are forced into below minimum wage jobs because their immigration status is being used against them." According to Pat O'Connor, the President of Illinois Police Chiefs Association, which supports comprehensive reform.

Senator Dick Durbin speaks at a recent immigration rally.

Durbin, the son of Lithuanian immigrants, told the crowd that it was time people told the government to "stop dividing our families." He was was optimistic that Republican support could be found for immigration reform. He pointed to Republican Senator Richard Lugar from Indiana, who was the cosponsor of the DREAM Act with Durbin. The DREAM Act would allow undocumented youth without criminal convictions access to residency and college funding.

However, Senator John Kyl of Arizona has announced that Republican senators would filibuster immigration reform if it were brought to a debate in the Senate.

Many in the crowd expressed optimism that immigration reform could be passed within the year or even before May 1st, the anniversary of the largest immigration rallies in the country's history.

I think this is unrealistic. While an immigration reform bill would be good, I don't see how Democrats will be able to pass substantial reform in a short amount of time. Republicans fought tooth and nail against even the most moderate health care reform. Democrats ended up voting on a watered down health care bill that did not even include a public option for health insurance. Democrats essentially were forced into advocating for and passing a health care bill whose guts, mandating individuals to buy insurance from private for-profit insurance companies, were originally Republican policies.

Republicans can see the writing on the wall. Immigration reform would legalize likely Democrat voters who are already here and provide an avenue for future likely Democrat voters to enter the US. If blocking health care reform was to protect corporations that donate to Republicans, then blocking immigration reform will be about protecting republicans own electoral vitality.

What immigration activists need to be asking their congressmen is how watered down is immigration reform going to become? How many compromises will be made with the Republican minority and the dissident right-wing democrats in order to hustle the votes for reform that may not actually improve the plight of immigrants in America?

Chicago Teaching Assistants Strike Averted as University Settles

2010-04-08T15:51:00.000-05:00

This was originally posted on Labor Notes.

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The Graduate Employees Organization at the University of Illinois at Chicago reached an agreement with school administrators late Monday night that union negotiators said met members' demands. Photo: Matt Muchowski.

The Graduate Employees Organization, which represents teaching assistants at the University of Illinois at Chicago, reached an agreement with school administrators late Monday night that union negotiators said met members' demands.

GEO members, Local 6297 of the Teachers (AFT), had been working without a contract since August 2009 and had been in negotiations with the university for more than a year. The major sticking point was the university’s refusal to include tuition waivers in the contract, which the union said would allow the administration to grant partial waivers and make arbitrary alterations to a key economic item for members.

The agreement, which still needs to be ratified GEO members, secured tuition waiver security, a 2 percent increase to the $14,000 minimum yearly stipend, and increased transparency in “tuition differential” charges and other fees.

The differentials create a backdoor tuition that allows departments to charge graduate students for registration, services, and office supplies. The fees vary from department to department, but GEO says some members pay as much as $11,000.

The agreement came after a 13-hour mediation session between the union’s bargaining team and the administration. Hundreds of GEO supporters rallied before negotiators entered the meeting, and continued to rally outside the meeting for most of the day.

GEO was ready to strike if the unions’ demands of tuition waiver guarantees and having a say in supplemental fees were not met. GEO members had voted in February to authorize a strike by 84 percent of the 1,400 members.

The administration may have come to the conclusion that it should cave by learning the lesson of its sister campus, the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, where administrators provoked a two-day strike in November, shutting down many university buildings and sending administrators scrambling to settle.

“Because of your organizing,” said GEO Organizer Jason Leto in a statement, “the bargaining team was able to walk away from the table with a contract that makes important gains, and protects the benefits we currently have.”

Participatory Budgeting in Rogers Park Unleashes the Creativity of the People

2010-04-08T15:39:00.004-05:00

This originally appeared on Gapers Block.

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The residents of Chicago's 49th ward will vote on Saturday to determine what to use $3.1 million of city money on. The far north side ward was covered with fliers urging residents to vote in what is the first attempt in Chicago to use a democratic process for determining how to use infrastructure funds.

Each ward is given a budget to use for infrastructure, and the money is usually spent by the Alderman's office on permanent items such as street lights and pavement repairs. However Alderman Joe Moore in the far north side ward decided to open the process to the community and to let residents vote on proposals created in open committees.

The Mess Hall, an artist space with anarchist tendencies has a display that highlights the various proposals on the ballot. The space has had extended hours and has been packed with residents hoping to find out about the proposals.

Some of the proposals include: street lights, repaved streets, police surveillance cameras, bike lanes, historical markers, dog parks, decorative and educational bike racks and free wi-fi.

Mess Hall has notepads posted next to proposals for viewers to write their own ideas. Hundreds of ideas were written on these pads, and many ideas built off of each other. One line of thought went from creating memorials to birchwood trees that used to reside in the neighborhood, to planting actual birchwood trees, to planting "birchwoods as public monuments to tell the story of colonization."

Mathias Regan of Mess Hall said that he hoped that Roger Park's experiment with participatory budgeting would serve as a model for other wards and cities. Regan called it, "one of the most interesting and exciting projects I have seen." Regan said that "absolutely" the participatory budgeting process created more creative and people oriented ideas than a proposal made in committee secluded from an open and democratic process would have.

The process began in January and each resident has 8 votes to split among 36 different proposals. Residents are able to vote by proof of residency, such as bills mailed to an address in the 49th ward. The money will be spent on proposals in descending order of votes received, since many of the projects cost less than the total money being allocated.

The process has been wildly popular. On the first day that Alderman Moore's office was open to early voting over 100 people voted for the budget. During the 2008 presidential election 9 people arrived to early vote on the first day.

Mess Hall will host a program at 6:30 Friday night on the history of participatory budgeting.

Chicago Teaching Assistants on Edge of Strike: ‘No Waiver, No Labor!’

2010-04-05T15:49:00.003-05:00

This was originally posted on Labor Notes.

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Hundreds of graduate student employees rallied at the University of Illinois at Chicago campus early Monday morning. They're threatening a strike to protect tuition waivers and to put a floor underneath graduate employees’ meager earnings. Photo: Matt Muchowski.

Hundreds of graduate student employees rallied at the University of Illinois at Chicago campus early Monday morning to pressure their administration to protect tuition waivers for teaching assistants.

Members of the Graduate Employees Organization, they will likely go on strike tomorrow if the administration refuses to include tuition waivers for graduate employees in the contract and limit “tuition differential” fees. GEO, Local 6297 of the Teachers (AFT), has 1,400 members. The university has about 25,000 students enrolled.

GEO members have tuition waivers now, but the union says the university’s current offer would allow the administration to grant partial waivers and make arbitrary alterations to a key economic item for members.

Any waiver will become pointless, however, if the administration continues to find other ways to charge students through fees and tuition differentials. GEO organizer Jason Leto likened these fees to “paying for a job.”

GEO is seeking a campus-wide system for regulating and reducing the fees.

Laura Nussbaum, a teaching assistant in Anthropology, said securing waivers and limiting fees are essential to put a floor underneath graduate employees’ meager earnings, about $15,000 in pay annually. Ellen Kang, another anthropology TA, said, “It’s not possible to live off of what we make.”

UNDERPAID AND OVERCHARGED

The rally took place on the final day of mediation between the union and the administration, outside the building where the meeting was taking place. GEO members have been working without a contract since August and have been in negotiations since last April.

Supporters banged on drums and chants from the energetic crowd echoed through campus. GEO members wore their red T-shirts and “GEO—Ready to Strike” buttons. Members authorized a strike in February by 84 percent.

A sister grad employees union, GEO at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, went on strike last November over many of the same issues and won in less than two days. UIC GEO has built a strike fund of $50,000 in preparation for an action.

Nussbaum said most TAs put in 14- to 15-hour days, preparing classes, grading papers, writing exams, and helping students with their papers, in addition to their own studies.

Often Nussbaum has 90 five-page papers to grade, which take about a half hour each. The grading takes up an entire 40-hour week, but Nussbaum also finds herself helping students with few study skills catch up to college-level coursework.

“They have gotten a really good deal out of us so far,” she said.

Undergraduate students have rallied to GEO’s cause. Diana Lloga, a Pyschology and English double major, said she planned on pursuing an advanced degree and commended the grad employees for “setting a standard for years to come.”

English Professor Walter Benn Michaels told the crowd at today’s rally that grad students at UIC were “underpaid and overcharged,” and criticized the “recalcitrant” administration. Michaels said faculty are attempting to organize with UIC United Faculty and that GEO was an inspiration to them.

“In a way I envy you because you have the GEO. You have an organization for collective bargaining, to fight for you,” he said. “We are here for you now and we hope that you will be here for the faculty one day soon.”

Striking graduate employees could soon be joined by clerical and cafeteria workers on picket lines. After working a year without a contract, Service Employees Local 73 will be taking a strike vote next week. At the GEO rally, Chief Steward Joe Iosbaker came to “salute you, stand in solidarity with you, and follow your example. Same employer, same fight.”

Finkelstein Lecture Controversy

2010-03-30T15:35:00.001-05:00

This article originally Appeared on Gapers Block.

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Norman Finkelstein was once a popular professor at DePaul University. He was on the tenure track and was publishing books critical of the occupation of Palestine and the use of the Holocaust to silence critics of Israel's human rights record.

Finkelstein was denied tenure in a dramatic confrontation, where Harvard law professor and torture apologist Alan Dershowitz lobbied DePaul and students supporting Finkelstein occupied the office of the President of DePaul for three days before being kicked out under threat of arrest.

Since that time, controversy has not failed to follow Finkelstein. He was set to speak at St. George Greek Orthodox Church in Chicago on April 16 about his new book This Time We Went Too Far: Truth and Consequences of the Gaza Invasion.

However, on March 24, an event organizer received a letter from the church.

We had a Parish council meeting this past week, I notify everyone on the up coming events that are held at our church, and of course, your event was one of the topics

A few of our board members are attorneys and they are the ones that look into almost everything from the individuals that rent the gym out and if they are covered insurance wise.

they looked deeper into the Professor that will be speaking at our church and they insisted that we couldn't be affiliated with the ideologies of Mr. Norman Finkelstein so I am sorry to say that the church is going to have to cancel and will not be able to rent the gym the night of April the 16th 2010

Please again I am very sorry for the inconvenience."

It's a curious letter. The ideologies of Norman Finkelstein? Did they mean his atheism? His support for international human rights law? Or were these attorneys being spoon fed lies from a Harvard law professor about how Finkelstein, whose parents survived Auschwitz, is some self-hating Jew?

Organizers scrambled in order to find a new venue. They were able to get St. James Cathedral at 65 E. Huron St. to agree to host the event on April 16 at 6pm.

Deno Diamantakos, the parish council president of St. George, has been receiving letters such as this one from Finkelstein supporters.

While Finkelstein is prohibited from speaking on DePaul's campus, the documentary about him, American Radical, will have a screening on April 1 at 6pm at the DePaul Student Center in room 314b.

Reflections on Anniversary of the Invasion of Iraq

2010-03-20T14:04:00.001-05:00

This was originally published on Gapers Block.

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Eugene Cherry from Iraq Veterans Against the War Speaks at Chicago's Anti-War Rally.

Every year around March 20th, I attend an anti-war rally. On March 17, 2010 over a thousand people rallied at Federal Plaza and marched on Michigan Ave. It came as President Obama is intensifying the war in Afghanistan. The protesters seemed to be mocking Mayor Daley's challenge, "where are the anti-war people? They disappeared! They stopped marching!" No, we never did stop marching, even as Daley has continued to antagonize us.

It was March 20, 2003, seven years ago, that shock and awe began and our country invaded and began to occupy Iraq, the second largest source of oil in the world, a country with a civilization that dates back to before the bible was written. I was arrested that day at a protest, like 900 Chicagoans, and many more around the country were.

It was a scary time. Less than two years since 9/11, and it felt like the whole country was against the anti-war protesters. I had nightmares that I was thrown in Guantanamo Bay. Today, the majority of the country is against war in Iraq and most of the country has it's doubts about the war in Afghanistan.

I asked a friend if he was going to attend this year. He would rather apartment hunt. He asked me what difference going to the rally would make. Would it end the war? Would it stop the bloodshed? After we had such massive anti-war rallies before the invasion and those failed to stop it, what difference would this one rally 7 years later, 95 thousand dead Iraqi's later, make?

I have to admit. Every year our numbers dwindle. Every year there are more 9/11 conspiracy nuts. Every year it seems that the war is in the headlines less.

Why do people go to church? Do they expect god to hear their prayers when he has been silent for so long? God has refused to answer their other prayers, would he listen to their choir? Would praying end the sinning and lead us to treat one another as we would want to be treated?

People go to church for other reasons than to throw their change in a wishing well. They go to network, and meet people with similar beliefs. People go to feel a part of something bigger and better than themselves. They go to find out when the soup kitchen meets, how to donate to homeless shelters. They go to admit their sins and lessen their guilt. Likewise me and these rallies.

I enjoy meeting old friends, chatting about who graduated, where we are working, who got married, what kind of organizing we're doing. I enjoy meeting new friends and realizing how much we have in common. Anti-war rallies bring together people from all walks of life - a blues singer with cancer who sells buttons at the rally; a soft-spoken and religious gay nursing student; a friend who realized he didn't want a 9-5 job the day he was introduced to the punk band the Dead Kennedys; the revolutionary who became a janitor to organize the working class; the mother who raised her children to enjoy comic books and activism instead of war; the veteran who asked Iraqis for forgiveness and in the process was called a hero by them; the subway musician who is recovering from being mugged; the college friend I first smoked pot with who is now a union electrician and brings his younger brother to rallies.

I enjoy finding out about the different projects that are happening in the city - Marxist reading groups, Food Not Bombs servings, benefit concerts to stop evictions or in support of immigrants.

Neil from the Save Senn Coalition speak at Chicago's anti-war rally.

We gather once a year on remember our dead. We remember those who died in war, US soldiers, and the Iraqis, Afghanis, and Palestinians. We remember those members of the movement who died here at home, like historian Howard Zinn, dissident alderman Leon Despres, surrealist artist and publisher of Charles H. Kerr Press Franklin Rosemont.

The rally and march becomes a way to remind our neighbors in the city of them as much as it is a reminder of how much more we have to do to end the wars waged in our name.

The war has fallen off many people's agendas. Part of the problem, is that the anti-war movement has no clear base in this country. Unions have workers and their members, civil rights groups have minority groups, feminist groups have women, but who is the anti-war movement to organize? The war touches everything, from how police are trained, to the money spent on war instead of health care to the stripping away of civil liberties. However the war impacts the people in Iraq and Afghanistan most directly.

We could try to organize the military. The movie Sir, No Sir! showed how Coffee Shops near army bases helped turn soldiers against the war. Groups like Iraq Veterans Against the War have assisted soldiers who flee to Canada or who file Conscientious Objector status. There can also be attempts to stop the flow of youth into the military. Chicago is one of the most militarized school districts in the country, and groups like the Save Senn coalition have attempted to push military recruiters off campus and keep JROTC and military academies from preying on youth. It's bad enough many youth have gangs attempting to recruit them, but the military is the biggest gang of them all.

Warehouse Workers Demand Justice

2010-03-16T13:54:00.001-05:00

This was originally Published on Gapers Block.

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Warehouse Workers for Justice Rally Outside the Housewares Show at McCormick Place.

On Sunday, March 14, Warehouse Workers for Justice rallied outside the McCormick Convention Center, which was hosting the International Home & Housewares Show, to demand justice from Bissell, a vacuum manufacturer. Clergy, warehouse workers and community members rallied to call attention to Bissell's role in the firing of workers who were trying to organize a union.

Warehouse Workers for Justice was founded by the United Electrical Workers union and helps warehouse workers organize and fight for their rights. The group has had substantial support from churches in the Joliet area; Baptist, Pentecostal, Catholic and Unitarian Universalist have all provided support for the Warehouse Workers for Justice.

According to United Electrical workers organizer Mark Meinster, Bissell is one of hundreds of manufacturers that store their goods in the Centerpoint Intermodal Center in Elwood, Illinois. Since Chicago is the only place on the continent where all of the major rail lines meet, corporate America has made Chicago the third largest storage warehouse hub in the world, after Singapore and Hong Kong. The Centerpoint Intermodal Center is actually a designated foreign trade zone, so corporations like Wal-mart and Bissell do not have to pay duties on the products shipped through the center until they are shipped out of the center and toward retail outlets.

The companies that store their goods in the warehouses use a system of contractors and sub-contractors to employee temporary employees instead of full time employees. According to Meinster, "It's very easy for these employers to hide behind other companies in terms of liabilities for labor law violations. And that's what Bissell is trying to do here." Warehouse Workers for Justice have filed several complaints with the Department of Labor, and their attempts to meet with Bissell have been blown off. Which is why they felt it was important to take their message to the public, Meinster says. They want to "make sure those retailers [at the convention center] know that they are selling a sweatshop product."

The work that the warehouse workers do was often peril filled. Eric Pano complained of working with dangerous chemicals, while Orlando Riveria described some of the injuries incurred while lifting heavy packages.

Employees of the temp agency Road Link, which does work in Maersk warehouses that Bissell stores its products in, banded together and filed to have a union election in November 2009.. They were all fired the next day.

Michael Montes was promised a job for three years working in the warehouse. He would drive an hour and half each way from his home in Cicero to the warehouse in Elwood for the job. "We were not going to get any holiday pay. Not going to get any insurance. They were cutting our hours. Once they set our pay, they cut that. That's not right. I have 3 kids and one on the way." Montes is now on unemployment and struggling to pay the bills.

Workers I spoke with complained of racial discrimination and even though 90% of home products are sold to women, the women forklift operators in the warehouse were paid $2.50 less than the men.

American Rights at Work claims that 34% of employers fire employees who attempt to form a union.

Amy Goodman Speaks at DePaul

2010-03-13T13:57:00.000-06:00

This was originally Published on Gapers Block.

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On Friday, March 12, Amy Goodman, the host of Democracy Now!, spoke at DePaul University. She was one of the best speeches I have seen in a long time. She covered a range of topics; from the history of colonialism in Haiti, where she encouraged solidarity over charity; to the anniversary of the death of Rachel Corrie and her parents civil suit against the Israeli military, to former secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld's home which was the same home that abolitionist Fredrick Douglas and other slaves were beaten in.

Goodman spoke about the late historian Howard Zinn and how as a teacher at the historically Black Spellman College, he incited students to become active in the civil rights movement. His reward was to be kicked out of the school. However, 42 years later Zinn was asked to return to Spellman, where he gave a commencement speech and received an honorary degree.

Goodman then pointed out that, "Times do change. I hope time changes for DePaul too. I hope it takes less than 42 years for Norm Finkelstein to be invited back," which garnered applause. Goodman described Finkelstein's research as important. Finkelstein was a professor at DePaul who was denied tenure, after he raised controversy over Israel's human rights record in the occupied territories of Gaza.

Finkelstein will be speaking in Chicago on April 16 about his new book This Time We Went Too Far: Truth and Consequences of the Gaza Invasion. Goodman said, "I look forward to being in the audience at DePaul when Norman Finkelstein is invited back to speak and express the courage that he has."

Goodman also described the struggle to have independent media in the US. Her show, Democracy Now!, started on the Pacifica station, which was founded by a World War II draft resister who wanted non-corporate anti-war voices to have an outlet.

Several months after Pacifica opened its Houston station in 1970, the Ku Klux Klan used dynamite to bomb the base of the station's transmitter. The leader of Klan called it his "proudest act." Goodman said that it was because he realized how dangerous Pacifica was because it "allows people to speak for themselves. When you hear someone speaking form their own experience whether it is a Palestinian child, an Israeli mother, an Iraqi aunt or an uncle from Afghanistan, that breaks down barriers, breaks down stereotypes, challenges caricatures that fuel the hate groups. We need a media in this country that builds bridges between communities and doesn't advocate the bombing of bridges."

Goodman criticized the small number of corporate media owners. She said that there are hundreds of channels but few owners. She also cited a study from Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting which found that out of 393 interviews about the pending Iraq war on the four major national news shows, only three of the interviews were with anti-war voices. Goodman encouraged revoking licenses of corporate news media that does not act in the public interest, since the airwaves are public property.

Democracy Now! can be viewed from its website, but Goodman urged people to get the show on WBEZ, citing the dozens of NPR and PBS stations that it already airs on.

Audio of the event is available here.

IL GOP Attempting to Form Patronage Army?

2010-03-11T13:53:00.000-06:00

This was originally posted on Gapers Block.

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I stumbled across this website, http://gopjobsillinois.webs.com a few days ago, and was pretty stunned.

Republicans often criticize Illinois Democrats for running a patronage army of loyal state employees. However this website is encouraging loyal republicans to be given state jobs as well.

Of course new administrations are able to appoint people to implement their vision for the state, to implement the policies that they campaigned on and were elected to enact. What is odd about this website is its tone, a confidence that the GOP will win Springfield back, and a gleeful lust for 6 figure jobs. In particular the site exhibits a tendency towards the corrupt and a disdain for "the awshucks-we're-sorry-for-having-principles-types."

When you click on the Jobs List, it lists different state departments that the Governor is able to appoint heads of. What is disturbing is the partisan descriptions for the jobs. Is the head of the Historic Preservation Society a partisan position?

The site implies that Republicans would only be interested in jobs enforcing Human Rights because, "Check out the pay scale here!"

It describes Homeland Security as "the new patronage place to be." A scary thought that our security and safety be entrusted to partisan hacks instead of trained and specialized experts.

It describes positions on the Illinois Gaming Board as though it were a casino, "Great spot to meet people and make money, come to work every once and a while, too!"

In what should be a scary comment to organized labor, the site claims that the GOP will, "rebuild [the Department of Labor] and remake it so that it is more efficient. Get on board and help."

The site is run by a woman named Jenifer Sims. It is unclear if she has any connections to the Brady campaign, the state GOP, or if she is just a crank writer. Attempts to gain quotes from the Brady for Governor campaign and the Tea Party Patriots were made. Neither gave any quotes.

UIC Graduate Employees Prepare for Mediation

2010-03-11T13:42:00.000-06:00

This was originally published on Gapers Block.

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GEO President Charles Moss delivers petitions to UIC Chancellor's office.

The Graduate Employees Organization of the University of Illinois at Chicago is a union for graduate student employees. GEO members have been working this school year without a contract and are facing a heated battle with UIC's administration.

GEO has been attempting to negotiate a contract with the administration, but has reached a stalemate over a number of issues including guaranteed assistantships. They began mediation with the university and a neutral mediator last week.

On March 10, the day before they began mediation, members of the Graduate Employee Organization of the University of Illinois at Chicago delivered petitions signed by UIC community members urging the university to bargain in good faith and to take the mediation process as serious as GEO does. The petition urged the chancellor to direct the universities bargaining team to negotiate fairly.

Charles Moss, the president of GEO said that GEO, "takes the mediation process seriously. We would rather settle the contract through mediation than go on strike." Moss added that GEO organizers have been putting in a lot of work to obtain a fair contract.

A group of GEO members went to the 28th floor of the University building hoping to give the petitions to Chancellor Paula Allen-Meares. Allen-Meares was at a trustees meeting and the GEO members gave the petition to Assistant Monica Rausa Williams.

Health Care Forum Highlights Debate Within the Left

2010-03-10T14:00:00.003-06:00

This was originally Published on Gapers Block.

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On March 9, the same day that activists rallied in Washington DC to demand health care reform by making 'citizens arrests' of insurance company CEO's, a forum at the University of Illinois in Chicago School of Medicine showed the debates in the Left about whether or not the bills being proposed and voted on by Congress are worth being called reform.

Organized by the Chicago Single Payer Action Network, the featured speaker was Dr David Scheiner, who was President Obama's family doctor for 22 years.

While it was not billed as a debate, opinions about the bill came out. The big issue seems to be, whether or not the health care bills in Congress would be an incremental step towards a universal single payer system (medicare for all), or simply a bailout for insurance companies.

Dr. Scheiner is one of the few doctors in the Chicago area who still does house visits and is a member of Physicians for a National Health Program. Scheiner simply stated, "I last saw [Obama] last 2 ½ years ago. Since that time, over 100 thousand Americans have died due to lack of health insurance."

Dr. Schiener was deeply critical of the right wing and the present health care system, "one of the things you hear Republicans saying, 'you don't want government between you and your patient.' Medicare has never interfered with me.... you can't get around the insurance companies. They're sitting in my room, the insurance representative is there telling me what tests I can get, what doctors I can send them to, what prescriptions I can give."

The large number of uninsured was also a pertinent topic. Chi-SPAN representative Vanesa Beck pointed out that 3200 Black Chicagoans die a year due to lack of health care.

All of the speakers, and the crowd members who spoke wanted a single payer health care system that takes the profit out of health care. Linda Riccio from the National Nurses Organizing Committee described some "horror stories"of the present for-profit health care system. As a nurse she is mandated to report elder abuse however, "if I call the cops, I'll get fired. I called the cops 3 times in a 2 month period.... I was told by the medical director 'don't you realize that we get over a 180 thousand dollars a month from these nursing homes. If you keep calling the dept of public health, they're not going to send their patients here anymore." Now Riccio's hospital has a new policy on reporting elder abuse, the nurse tells a social worker, who tells an administrator, who calls the nursing home, potentially tipping a nursing home off of a pending investigation.

Dr. Scheiner criticized Obama for giving up the fight for single payer. He reminded the audience of Obama's former support for single payer, when Obama would tell crowds that if Democrats controlled both houses of Congress and the White House that they would get single payer. Yet today as President, with both houses of Congress and the White House under Democratic control, single payer "has been off the table from the beginning."

Scheiner understood that there would be some give and take with the final bill but expressed his frustration, "you don't concede at the beginning, you concede later on, when your struggling."

Scheiner pointed out some of the good of the bill, that it extends dependency coverage up to 26 year olds, eliminates prior conditions and reduces denials of care, "those are good."

The bill does not do enough for Scheiner to cover the uninsured or eliminate the high cost of health care. However Scheiner urged support for it, "the medical industrial complex is bitterly opposed to it and they own congress.... we got to have this bill. It's a terrible bill, it has got a lot of fault, it has go some good though. If it doesn't go through Obama will be almost wiped out. He's put to much of his prestige into this thing. If it does go through we've got to work change this thing."

Chi-SPAN activist Vanessa Beck became involved in health reform the hard way, she had a medical crises and has been on and off different medical plans, private insurance, medicare and medicaid, for several years. "Everyone on the panel, we agree that single payer is definitely what we need to create health care justice and an equitable health care system. I strongly disagree with supporting the senate bill. The senate bill transfers ½ a billion dollars to the insurance industry. The insurance industry kills people. We can not support this bill."

The Senate bill makes it easier for Americans to obtain private health insurance but Beck pointed out the deficiencies of that insurance and said, "we think we're buying health care but we're actually helping people we don't know buy yachts."

On the Senate health care bill Beck said that the "minor positives are far outweighed by the negatives." According to Beck, it will help insurance companies get richer, it will require people to buy insurance that does not provide care, and it still leaves millions uninsured. Beck was also highly critical of the Stupak amendment which would make it harder for women to obtain abortions. Beck also despised the health care bills lack of coverage for undocumented immigrants. "20 million of our friends, partners, neighbors, who don't have the correct paperwork... will be left out." Beck pointed out the immigrants already receive sub-standard medical care and are often deported out of hospitals while still sick.

Beck cited a study by Harvard professor Steffie Woolhandler that out that 69% of doctors support single payer and that it would create more 26 million new jobs because of building hospitals and clinics, more jobs than those lost at insurance companies.

"Our actions are so much better spent fighting for national single payer health care that would cover all of us."

A UIC student and member of the American Medical Student Association pointed out that it has been over a decade since health care was seriously debated in Congress and that if the bill does not pass it might be just as long or longer until another opportunity presents itself. "There is nothing stopping anyone from fighting even if the bill passes"

Others in the crowd countered that the number of bankruptcies happening the US as a result of the high cost of medical care will force the issue to come back anyway. Al Nowakowski said that it was a bad bill because of a lack of political will. While a social worker at Cook County hospital said that there "isn't a day we don't see undocumented immigrants." She has had to explain to undocumented immigrants why they get things such as a kidney transplant or medicaid. She complained that it was racist and the crises is not going away whether the bill passes or not.

Martice Chissum, another nurse with the National Nurses Organizing Committee also had a problem supporting the bill in Congress, stating that, "it will throw our patients under the bus." In 1966 Chissum's Great Grandmother was murdered in Mississippi by the Ku Klux Klan, in retaliation for registering Black people to vote. Chissum swore at the funeral that, "your dream will not die." She pointed out that the civil rights movement did not settle after their initial victories but continued forward and encouraged the crowd to not be satisfied with electing a Black president but to keep fighting for social justice.

Retired doctor Hooshi Daragahi complained that supporters of the health care bill were threatening people with Obama losing. "So what?" he asked.

Dr. Scheiner "I'm not happy with this bill, but I can see what's coming.... we have to look at reality. It's nice to be purist but if your purist and defeated, your getting nowhere." Scheiner pointed out that if health care reform reduces the number of unnecessary deaths from 45 thousand to 20thousand, "that's some progress."

Doug Rosenberg, an activist with Chi-SPAN, looked on the positive side. "How often do you get doctors nurses and students together in the same room?" Rosenberg encouraged the crowd not to be a "circular firing squad," and that they "should reorientate ourselves to take advantage of a more powerful coalition that exists right here."

Dr. Scheiner had one suggestion, "Doctors and nurses could change this thing if they got together and worked on it... all we need is nurses and primary care physicians, and we could bring the system to it's knees.... we could have stop work actions. If we stopped seeing anything except for emergencies... we could bring the system to it's knees."

Beck urged the crowd to redefine the possible and called for civil disobedience in the style of the Bacchus 13 who interrupted a senate finance hearing to call for single payer and the Cigna 7 who were arrested blocking the entrance of the health insurance giant.

On International Womens Day, Group Rallies for Mammogram Funding

2010-03-09T13:39:00.001-06:00

This was originally published on Gapers Block.

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Sheila Rogers addresses a crowd of activists.

The Metropolitan Chicago Breast Cancer Task Force protested and demanded better funding for the Illinois Breast and Cervical Cancer Program on March 8, International Women's day.

The IBCCP provides free screenings and treatment for breast and cervical cancer, however over 4500 women are on a wait list because of lack of funding for the program. While over 300,000 women are eligible for mammograms through the program, there is only funding for 33,000 women.

The Metropolitan Chicago Breast Cancer Task Force attempts to end the racial disparities in health care and was applying pressure before the governor announces his budget. An extra $8 million for the IBCCP would eliminate the waiting lists. Another $31 million would double the number of women served by the program.

While 20 activists rallied outside the Thompson Center shouting, "pay for screenings now or pay more later!" Shelia Rogers attempted to gain a meeting with Governor Quinn. Rogers was able to obtain the governor's scheduler's phone number and the group will continue to apply pressure.

Breast Cancer surviver Dorothy Warren works for the support line of the Breast Cancer Network of Strength, "we have a database where we recommend women to get free mammograms because they cannot afford it. without this resource [the IBCCP] we would be lost."

Warren said that the program "saves lives" and described it as a last line of defense for women. "Some women have lost their jobs, they can't afford it but they need screenings. This program is their only resource."

Westboro Baptist Church Embarrass Themselves

2010-03-09T13:37:00.001-06:00

This was originally published on Gapers Block.

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Activists demonstrate against the Westboro Baptist Church.

The Westboro Baptist Church, a hate group that chartered themselves as a church to get away with their harassment of Queer groups, Jews, military families and others, conducted a tour of Chicago on March 8th.

The group of five lonely haters targeted Jewish centers, protesting everything more modern than the middle ages at Hillel's at UIC and the University of Chicago before holding their signs outside of the Israeli consulate.

Hundreds of queer rights activists rallied against the Westboro group. Activists used humorous and satirical signs to mock WBC. UIC student Jason Connell used the appearance of the hate group to raise money for queer rights groups such as Human Rights Campaign, International AIDS Foundation and Chicago based Jerusalem Open House. Donations were named in honor of the Westboro Baptist Church and community thank you cards will be sent from the non-profits to WBC leader Fred Phelps. Connell called it a, "Lemons to Lemonade" situation.

Kurt Esslinger Lee, an Presbyterian ordained minister from the UIC Agape House Christian Campus Ministry said, "We don't care so much about this group of hate, we know that they are not going to listen to anything we say. What we are care about is the closeted, afraid LGBTQ students around UIC who are are taught to hate themselves to think that god is also loathing them, so we reaching out to them to break through that ignorance."

Activists demonstrate against the Westboro Baptist Church.

Video of the event is available through Dogstar7's Youtube Channel.

Satire of WBC is at the Youtube Channel of CrazyPastorFred.

UIC Students, Faculty, Staff Demand, "Chop From the Top!"

2010-03-08T13:33:00.002-06:00

This was originally Posted on Gapers Block.

UIC Students, Faculty and Staff Rally Against Budget Cuts.

Several hundred students, faculty and staff rallied at the University of Illinois Chicago campus on March 4th, to demand an end to budget cuts that target the poor. They rallied in the Quad, before marching around campus and marching to University Hall where the administrative offices for the school are. It was part of a national day of action to defend public education.

SEIU Local 73 chief Steward Joe Iosbaker led the crowd in chants, "They Say Furlough Day, We Say No Way! They Say Cut Back, We Say Fight Back!" and the sarcastic, "They Say Fee Hike, We Say, Yea, Right!"

At University Hall SEIU members served Soup to passer-by's "to prepare us for what we'll be eating if the budget cuts go through." They then sang a parody of Gnarls Barkley's Crazy, "Is UIC crazy? They must be crazy,to think that they can defeat, local 73."

Many UIC professors and staff are being forced to take unpaid furlough days. However their workload does not decrease. Teachers still have to grade the same amount of papers. This has led many assistants and UIC workers to work on their furlough days, essentially amounting to a pay cut.

Teachers plan on taking a joint furlough day on the 8th to protest the budget cuts. Stay tuned for more details.

UIC Students, Faculty and Staff Rally Against Budget Cuts.

In a forum before the rally, endorsers of the day of action spoke out about their grievances with the administration of UIC. The forum was originally intended by the activists to be a debate between organizers and administrators on the issue of cut backs, but the administration refused to attend or participate.

Jes Cook from the Graduate Employee's Organization, an affiliate of the Illinois Association of Teachers that represents graduate assistants and employees spoke about GEO's current negotiations with the UIC administration. Their contract expired with the beginning of the school year on August 15, 2009, and negotiations have been slow. At stake in the negotiations is a pay raise, a guarantee of assistantships and tuition waivers, teaching and research loads, and the amount of staff support. "in the behavioral science building we had to fight to preserve our staff people."

According to Cook, "it seems that whatever the deans want - happens, and that impacts people ability to continue in school."

GEO members at UIC recently authorized a strike. Cook said that GEO, "would rather avoid it but we will do what we have to do to get a contract." The strike could take place after GEO's negotiations go through the mediation process. This would come on the heels of the succesful GEO strike at the University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign, were graduate employees were on strike for one day before the administration caved to their demands.

Christine Boardman, the president of Service Employees International Union local 73, which represents service staff and cafeteria workers at UIC discussed the republicans on the UIC board of trustees and how Democrats in Springfield, "lack the political will to pass what they actually need, which is a tax increase," to prevent cuts in basic services, assistance for the developmentally disabled, k-12 schools and in higher education.

SEIU Local 73 will have its own strike authorization vote soon, "we are gonna have to shut this place down." Boardman explained that the right kind of work stoppage was crucial, "not everything has to be a long term strike.... to get the point across."

Darold Burnum, a professor of management described faculty attempts to unionize. The UIC United Faculty is attempting to become an affiliate of both the American Association of University Professors and the the American Federation of Teachers. One of the reasons many faculty wanted a union was so that their employment would not be dependent on the whim's and good graces of their deans and managers. A standard bearer in union contracts is a grievance procedure that concludes with a decision by a neutral arbitrator. Burnum gave the example of a teacher who won UIC's Silver Circle Award, but because she was on a year to year contract, her dean told her that she was to be fired. Only after the Tribune threatened to run an article about her being fired was she offered her job back. A grievance procedure would protect teachers rights.

UIC Students, Faculty and Staff Rally Against Budget Cuts.

Report Shows UIC Administrators Deceiving Public

One of the reasons why students, faculty and staff protested budget cuts, is that they were completely unnecessary.

Accounting professor and AAUP treasurer Howard Bunsis wrote a report that analyzed the University of Illinois' financial condition. Bunsis spoke about the report on the day of action.

Bunsis Analysis of UIC Financial Condition January 2010

Bunsis found that according to the University's own financial statements, "the university is well positioned to continue its strong financial position."

Bunsis wrote his report based on the university's 2008 statements and it's projected budget for 2009 and 2010. Bunsis has come under some criticism for not using the most up to date information, however he points out that the University, despite being a public school that is legally obligated to share it's financial records, has not released it's already completed and audited 2009 statements. Bunsis explained that he had "one simple request: open the books."

Bunsis explained that while the state of Illinois was with holding money for the university, the money is still going to be allocated to the university and "reneged and delayed do not mean the same thing."

Bunsis said that there are alternatives to furlough days that the university never considered. He gave the example of tax company H & R Block, who are busy during tax season, but look at slow business during the rest of the year. Bunsis point out that H & R Block doesn't lay everyone off but instead borrows short term against future income.

Bunsis asked the all important question, "what is going to happen when the state repays the money? Are you going to give that furlough money back [to UIC workers]?" He continued, "whats the point of making a profit off the backs of hard working people? This is not a profit making institution. This is an institution of higher education and of learning. They really should not be looking to make the greatest profit possible, that's not the goal. The goal is to educate and create citizens who can make a better society, not to build profits."

Bunsis reminded the crowd that the decision to force furloughs on teachers and staff was made top down and that a teachers union is need to make sure that all voices were heard.

National Day of Protest to Defend Public Education

UIC was one of many schools across the country where protests took place on March 4. Students protested the tuition hike at universities in California. High School students rallied outside Chicago's city Hall. Students at the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee occupied their Chancellor's office and 18 were arrested after pepper spray was used on them.

All of this comes on the heels of the Obama administrations endorsement of the firing of union teachers in Rhode Island. The 'turnaround' of the poorest school in the state was decided when teachers refused to accept pay cuts and to work longer hours. Many of the teachers felt that they already worked long hours and that this was an attempt to crush their union and blaming them for the real problem the school faced - the poverty of the district.

Howard Bunsis commented on Obama's speech defending the firings, "he sounded like Reagan when he fired all the air traffic controllers," referring one of the key moments in modern union history, where many historians have considered it the defining moment in the decline of organized labor in the United States.

Photos by Rachel Hewitt

Jobs With Justice Tells Wall St. "You Broke It, You Bought It!"

2010-03-04T13:31:00.000-06:00

This was originally posted on Gapers Block.

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A crowd of 100 gathered in Federal Plaza on March 3, to demand that Congress tax Wall St in order to provide for a jobs bill. The rally was planned while Senator Bunning was filibustering a bill that would have extended unemployment benefits. Now that Bunning has withdrawn his filibuster, organizers used the opportunity to point out how much more needed to be done.

Organizer Susan Hurly explained, "What they did last night to extend unemployment for 30 days is rather pathetic in the light of the crises that we are facing. We are here to say that we need more, we need a federal jobs program" with better and long unemployment benefits. She continued, "Wall Street broke it, they gotta buy it."

The Senate Soup Kitchen intended to highlight the need for a jobs bill.

Northwestern University Community Fights for a Living Wage

2010-03-03T13:25:00.002-06:00

This was originally published on Gapers Block.

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The Rally

On Wednesday February 24, despite a chilly 27 degree day, over 400 Northwestern University students rallied outside a meeting of the university's board of trustees to demand a living wage for cafeteria workers at the school. It was a high point in the student anti-sweatshop movement at Northwestern.

Tom Breitsprecher, a lead cook who has worked at the Northwestern University cafeteria for 31 years, said that this was the largest demonstration he has seen on campus since an anti-war rally in the early 1980's.

According to Northwestern University activist Matthew Fischler, the average cafeteria worker at Northwestern makes a measly eight to nine dollars an hour. This poverty is compounded with the fact that the health insurance offered by Sodexho still includes expensive co-pays and premiums that many employees can not afford. It becomes especially difficult for many workers who lose their health benefits when their hours are cut during winter, spring and summer breaks.

According to Breitsprecher, "Many workers on campus live in government subsidized housing. Even if they are offered a discounted health insurance plan, many can't afford the premiums. Many qualify for food stamps for their families... if the government subsidizes workers, aren't they really subsidizing a company that pays such low wages?"

The Northwestern Living Wage Campaign is seeking to raise the wages of cafeteria workers to $13.23 an hour plus full medical benefits. This is the wage that the Heartland Alliance has determined is the minimum needed to have a wage that sustains the basic needs of a family.

According to Fischler, the living wage campaign hope to pressure the university to adopt a code of conduct which sets the terms of agreements for contractors, "if you are going to work for Northwestern you have to pay your workers a living wage." The students also hope to pressure the university to give cafeteria workers benefits that university employees enjoy such as access to the library, and community events.

Alan Cubbage the Vice President for University Relations for Northwestern said that it's a good thing that students are involved in and care about this issue, however the university was taking a neutral role, claiming that their only responsibility was to contract out the services the students require. The universities official position was that the issue of wages was one between the workers unions and food catering company Sodexho.

History professor Nancy MacLean said, "right now our vice president for business and finance says that Northwestern can't do this. Says that we can't afford it. I speak as a former administrator and former chair of the history dept, I'm gonna tell you a secret, administrators always say this at first. They say this when they don't understand what a priority something is. When they [the board of trustees] look out the windows they will see what a priority this is." Maclean pointed out that Northwestern had a large endowment of more than six billion dollars.

It was a point that Lou Weeks, the organizing director of HERE local 1 expanded upon. Weeks discussed the 1984-1985 strike of clerical workers at Yale University, and how three months later they doubled their wages. "I imagine that you all will be told that you are going to have to make some choices and that if you choose to organize for a living wage then you are choosing to raise your own tuition or your choosing to limit other funding on campus or choosing to make some other false choice."

Tom Breitsprecher explained, "I want to emphasize that we the workers on campus are a part of Northwestern. ...they pay Sodexho millions of dollars... the university asks the food service to put on special events to enliven the campus experience. The university even provided the food service with a special menu to celebrate Black History Month. So the administration would be disingenuous to suggest that they would not be interested in something as unimportant as food service... Even though food service, housekeeping and other personnel are not on the university payroll, the university knows that we are essential to building a sense of community that will endear you to your alma mater long after you graduate."

Cafeteria employee Rafael Marquez told the crowd, "The university is not these buildings it's you all." Nancy MacLean rallied the crowd by telling them, "I teach history, you are making history."

The Student Movement

The Living Wage Campaign is only the latest in a series of pro-labor campaigns at Northwestern. Students had previously pressured the university to become a member of the Workers Rights Consortium. The WRC was formed by United Students Against Sweatshops to be an independent monitor of sweatshops that manufacture university apparel. The WRC has expanded its scope to monitor university contracts as well.

However, according to Matthew Fischler, Northwestern has not signed onto the WRC's Designated Supplier Program. The Designated Supplier Program essentially gives the WRC teeth and has universities divest from companies that do not meet the WRC's labor standards. Northwestern is different from other Chicago area schools in that it does not have a committee which advises its president and board of trustees on labor issues, ethical contracting issues, or fair business practices.

This has not stopped student activists from organizing for justice. The students began organizing in the fall of 2009, meeting with workers and making sure that all of their unions were on board with the campaign. Then in November, the students collected 800 signatures on a petition which they presented to President of Northwestern Morton Shapiro. Shapiro has been gracious and diplomatic in meeting with students about the issue, but has not yet ceded serious ground on the issues.

Tom Breitsprecher told me what the students were going up against. "The university is going to try to string them out and play the waiting game and see who is going to graduate and if the sentiment will stick around. I think this [rally] is a good start."

The living wage campaign plans on continuing this struggle and had a meeting planned with President Shapiro to discuss community benefits for workers.

The Unions

The subcontracted workers at Northwestern are represented by three different unions. The janitorial staff are members of Service Employees International Union Local 1, the student center cafeteria workers are represented by UNITE/HERE! and the dorm cafeteria's are represented by Service Workers United. The student center cafe has been union for 20 some years while the dorm cafeteria workers have only been represented by SWU for a few years.

This is an interesting group of unions to all be signed onto the same campaign.

UNITE/HERE was formed in 2004 as a merger of the Union of Needletrades, Industrial, and Textile Employees and the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees union. It seemed to be the perfect marriage. UNITE had money but faced the outsourcing of its members jobs. HERE had been expanding its membership and needed resources to continue to do so.

The newly combined UNITE/HERE formed a partnership with SEIU to organize food service workers, and formed Service Workers United, a joint local that had a national scale, representing workers from coast to coast. However, the leadership of SEIU came to run SWU national. Contracts for different bargaining units are sub-contracted out to SEIU and UNITE/HERE locals to be serviced.

This began to unravel though as the former leaders of UNITE attempted to leave the combined UNITE/HERE and formed a close alliance with SEIU. This has led to a major conflict between HERE and SEIU.

Two different visions of union organizing are at stake in this battle. HERE placed its emphasis on leadership building, which takes time, but builds a cadre of rank and file organizers who should be able to withstand the pressures of an organizing campaign. SEIU has placed more emphases on increasing the density of union members quickly, often, according to critics, at the cost of agreeing to poor contracts that do little to protect workers.

That all these competing unions have agreed to support the Living Wage Campaign should be considered a testament to the importance of a living wage.

The Problem with Democratic Lt. Governor Applicants

2010-03-03T13:06:00.002-06:00

This was originally posted on Gapers Block.

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In case you haven't noticed yet, you can now submit your resume to be considered by the Illinois State Democratic Central Committee to be slated and become the nominee for Lt. Governor. You can find detailed instructions at http://www.ildems.com/ltgovnominees.htm

Perhaps more entertaining than applying yourself, is sorting through the resumes and applications of those who think that they can achieve what Scott Lee Cohen could not. Over 40 applications have been submitted so far and are posted on the Illinois state Democrats website. What seems to jump out to me is that many of these candidates, with little experience with elected office, seem to think they can play in the big leagues without going to training camp.

While more experienced pols like Arthur Turner, who came in 2nd place in February's election, and State Representative Mike Boland have yet to submit their applications, many of the posted applications point to candidates who have not been tested in the flames of a campaign.

While the decision that the State Central Committee of the Illinois Democrats makes will be watched closely, it won't give citizens the chance to see how the candidates deal with the pressures of a campaign.

Instead of seeking thousands of votes, the candidate will only need 38.

Granted, this is a seat with little actual power. However it is a seat that has launched political careers for people like Paul Simon and Pat Quinn.

What's interesting is that many of those submitting their applications don't realize who the hiring committee is. Some of the most powerful politicians in Illinois will be deciding on who the nominee is, so why do many of the applications seem like these are candidates who are trying to get this job the easy way? It would seem that they think that working over a crowd of 38 is easier than collecting signatures in the cold, fund raising, cold calling voters at dinner time, and getting blisters from knocking on doors.

However this is a crowd of 38 that are going to be looking for someone who can bring them some benefits. I expect some serious political deals to be made in order to determine the new nominee. If you are not willing to campaign for office, are you willing to bargain for office?

Health Care Reformers Rally to Pressure Obama's Summit

2010-02-25T12:53:00.001-06:00

This was originally published at Gapers Block.

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Rally attendee's hold signs to signify the number of people who die in Illinois everyday that health care reform is not passed.

The evening before President Obama's Health Care summit, over 300 Chicago activists rallied in the Chicago Temple to demand passage of a health care bill that would extend coverage and hold health insurance companies accountable. The rally was organized by Health Care for America Now! and was one of several rallies across the country.

The crowd at the rally challenged a representative from Senator Dick Durbin's office. Durbin has not yet signed a letter in support of the public option that is being passed around the Senate. The crowd began to shout, "Sign the letter! Sign the Letter!"

Andy Kurz, the former CFO for Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Wisconsin, told rally attendees that, "I'm not here tonight to convince you the bill is good, far from it. I am here to say that this bill is necessary." Kurz explained that while much was compromised in the bill, that abolishing prior conditions, extending dependent coverage and other reforms will reduce the cost of medical care and make it important to pass the imperfect bills in Congress.

Rev. Greenfield speaks out.

Baptist Minister Larry Greenfield asked the crowd to "fight terrorism." He pointed out that there have been 8521 American lives lost by or in response to terrorism since the Oklahoma City bombing. However there have been 294,000 died since 1994 because they did not have health coverage, a sad statistic that Greenfield equated to terrorism.

Will Wilson speaks to the crowd.

AIDS activist Will Wilson described to the crowd what living with AIDS was like and how as a result of his insurance company stopping payments on tests he needed two years after finding out he had AIDS, "I found myself unemployed due to the side effects of the [AIDS treatment] drugs, nearly 100 thousand dollars in debt and homeless."

Wilson is able to get health coverage through the Ryan White Care Act, which provides federal money and state matching funds to act as a payer of last resort for people with HIV/AIDS. It covers Wilson's medical costs and prescription drugs, but to be eligible for the act, your income must be less than ten grand a year. Abolishing prior conditions would allow Wilson to get a job with a better income, and to get regular health insurance.

Service Employees International Union - Health care Illinois President Keith Kelleher spoke about, "the health care worker who has spent decades of her life caring for others but cannot afford quality health-care for herself. Health care workers without health care, in this country, isn't that a disgrace?" To cheers from the crowd.

What's the Future of Education in Chicago?

2010-02-24T12:51:00.001-06:00

This was originally published on Gapers Block.

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The Chicago School Board voted yesterday, the 24th of February, to approve the closing of a school, the phasing out of another, and the turn-over of management at 5 others. Despite a large crowd that opposed the cuts and complained of being excluded from the process, it appears that Renaissance 2010, the city's plan to increase charter schools, and privatize schools, was victorious in the school board.

It was in this context that I attended the The Public Square's discussion on Chicago charter school's on February 23 to hear James Thindwa, the former head of Chicago Jobs With Justice and current Civic Engagement Coordinator for the Chicago Alliance of Charter Teachers and Staff speak. The Public Square is a joint project between Chicago Public Radio and the Illinois Humanities Council's Cafe Society. The discussion was held at the Chicago Public Radio West Side Bureau.

Alice Kim, the director of the Public Square, described the goal of these Cafe Society events was to have strangers engage in discussion about issues and promote engagement with democracy.

James Thindwa kicked off the discussion. He discussed the need to have teachers, who have the day to day immersion in the school system, have their collective wisdom used to shape school policy. He criticized the idea that businessmen should be the only ones making decisions about schools. Thindwa also discussed the narrative that has been sold to convince people to support charter schools, attacking teachers union's.

Supporters of the charter schools talked about choice for the students and about poor teachers at public schools. However union negotiator Michael McNally struck a chord when he discussed how the the economy failed the students. While charter school supporters often talk about teachers failing students, McNally asked, when students come to school from homeless shelters and are not given the resources they need, what do you expect?

Thindwa reminded the crowd of Mayor Daley's veto of the 2006 big box living wage bill. Thindwa pointed out that Daley always puts the onus for children's success on parents, but they he denied a pay raise for those same parents, who are forced to get 2 or 3 jobs to make ends meet, how are those parents supposed to be involved with their child's school?

I was struck by what one teacher said. When she was discussing tests that students were trained to take with a colleague, and her feeling that they don't necessarily show whether or not the student will be a success, her fellow teacher said, "we don't make contracts with the children." I found it very striking. That corporate contracts can be signed and must be adhered to, while there is no such contract with students.

An audio recording of the event will be available at http://vocalo.org/user/cafesociety

Health Care Activists Rally Against Insurance Company "Death Panels"

2010-02-18T12:49:00.002-06:00

This was originally published on Gapers Block.

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On February 16, 2010, about 150 people attended a rally outside the Chicago offices of the death panel Aetna. While Aetna claims to be a health insurance company, the statistics tells a different and morbid tale.

The rally was organized by Health Care for America Now!, a project of Citizen Action Illinois, to publicize their report "Health Insurers Break Profit Records as 2.7 Million Americans lose coverage." The report publicized that the combined profit of the top 5 health insurance companies was up 56% to $12.2 billion in 2009. The companies were able to make such a sickening profit by literally allowing their paying customers to become sick. They dumped paying customers who became a liability, and denied coverage to those who apply. This ended up growing the number of people on public assistance and those without any coverage. The report claims that "people without health insurance coverage are more likely to delay care, to get less care, and to die when they fall ill."

The report cites one study which claims that 52 million Americans will be without coverage in 2010. That is 1/6th of the United States, with no realistic way to afford health care.

Activists Rally Outside Aetna.

Aetna CEO Ron Williams made 24.3 million and owns 194.5 million in unexcercised options. Meanwhile Aetna spent $2.8 million to lobby against health care reform.

The rally was held outside of Aetna's corporate offices on Madison and Whacker during the afternoon rush hour

John Gaudette from Citizen Action, the Illinois Health Care campaign Director said, "Every day we delay getting health care passed 6800 people lose their insurance, 2050 go bankrupt 123 die, the CEO of Aetna makes $93,000." to boos and jeers of "murderer."

Gaudette continued and expressed his view of the right-wing Teabaggers, "It's not about government being a tyrant, we need government to free us from the tyranny of the insurance companies. When they can set up death panels to tell us what kind of care we get, ration care, tell us what is and is not covered, kick us off the rolls- even though you pay for 20 years - for absolutely no reason... when we talk about about death panels, remember who is doing it, it's the person on the 12th floor up there," he said as he pointed towards Aetna's office building.

Other speakers told personal stories of going bankrupt, of being denied care for prior conditions, kicked off plans for hitting the age of eligibility for social security, and even for being diagnosed with HIV/AIDS.

Melody Brynne DeGagne, a Illinois Moveon.org Central Council Coordinator choked back tears describing her experience being hit by a drunk driver and being given substandard care because of a lack of health insurance. As a result of her being pushed out the door with major injuries less than a day after being hit, she is forced to use a cane to this day. "I would love to stop hurting. I would love to stop being in pain every single day of my life. I would love to be healthy and my government is standing in the way of this."

David Borris Addresses the crowd.

David Borris, who owns a small catering company explained that, "We are allowing Aetna, United Healthcare, and Humana to perpetrate a World Trade Center disaster every 8 months." He continued, "I'm a small business owner. I work with thousands of small bi owners across 12 states with the Main Street Alliance. When we look at what the biggest impediment to creating jobs is, for us it is that we can't afford the health coverage to create the jobs."

There was frustration at the rally at the Democratic majority and Obama for not pushing health care through. Borris told me that if Barack Obama had been president in 1965, his parents would have been dead at age 60 because Medicare would have never been passed. Dan sherry complained about Obama's lack of courage, shouting, "Grow a pair!"

Retired doctor Hooshi Daragahi attended the rally, and was handing out fliers for the protest on the anniversary of the War. Daragahi explained to me that 950 billion dollars had been spent on the war, when that money could have gone to people's needs like health care. "There is one solution to the problem. Single payer health care for all. Just like any rational civilized society should have. Anything else is just a shame."

John Gaudette encouraged rally attendees to contact their congressmen and to push for the passage of the house health care reform, but to fix the Senate bill to include a public option. When I asked him whether the public option would allow health insurance companies to continue dumping the sick and elderly, whom they see as liabilities, onto the public option and continue making profit, he explained that he views the public option as a step towards regular health coverage for the uninsured. It would take the clinics and other half steps and fix them. It would also provide competition to make the corporate health providers stop acting like death panels and start providing care.

An activist speaks out against denying care to those with 'prior conditions.'

Sold Out Premiere of Disturbing the Universe Impresses Chicago Crowd

2010-01-23T12:45:00.002-06:00

This was originally posted on Gapers Block.

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On Jan. 22, William Kuntsler: Disturbing the Universe, a documentary about the legendary left-wing lawyer, premiered to a sold out crowd at the Siskel Film Center in Chicago. Directed by William Kuntsler's daughters Emily and Sarah Kuntsler, the film looks at the life and cases of one of America's most controversial lawyers.

William Kuntsler fathered Sarah and Emily late in life, and when he died, they were still young, so the movie became a way for them to know their father in a more adult way. It became a way for them to shed the simple childlike images of their father, and come to know him in a complex way.

The sold out Chicago premiere was hosted by the Next Gen, the young lawyers group of the Chicago chapter of the radical National Lawyers Guild. The theater was filled with activists, lawyers and law students. The amazing thing about the showing was how many people in the crowd had met or knew William Kuntsler.

National Lawyers Guild Next Gen members Sarah Gelsomino and Robert Luderman at the Chicago premiere of Disturbing the Universe.

Any movie dedicated to a leftist with as much courage as Kunstler is worth watching. It will introduce him and the cases he worked on to a whole new generation of activists, law students and lawyers. The number of important generation defining, culture shaping, legal precedent setting cases he took is astounding.

National Lawyers Guild member Elizabeth Fink with Directors Sarah and Emily Kuntsler.

Kuntsler's clients included: freedom riders, who broke Jim Crow Laws in an attempt to integrate interstate bus travel; the Berrigan brothers, Catholics who used homemade napalm to burn draft cards during the Vietnam war; the Chicago 8, the hippies and yippies who demonstrated against the war outside of the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago; the prisoners who revolted against inhumane conditions in Attica prison, the American Indian Movement supporters who occupied the town of Wounded Knee to protest against the treatment of first nation people; Gregory Johnson, who burned an American Flag as a protest outside the 1984 Republican Convention and led to a Supreme Court case legalizing flag desecration.

There have been many movies and books about the Chicago 8 conspiracy trial and the comedic antics of Abbie Hoffman, as well as the barbaric treatment of Bobby Seal, who was bound and gagged in the courtroom. However, the lack of attention paid to the AIM occupation of Wounded Knee and the prisoners revolt in Attica makes this movie's focus on those cases much more important.

The scenes of the Attica revolt were powerful. What was terrifying, though, was watching the massacre that occurred when Governor Nelson Rockefeller ordered the state police to suppress the rebellion, leading to the deaths of 39 people, including the 10 prison guards held captive by the prisoners. Later reports proved that all the guards had been indiscriminately slaughtered -- not by the prisoners, as the state initially claimed, but by the state police. The scene ended by showing the state police shouting "white power" in a primal victory cry, unveiling the truth of the American penal system.

The movie showed Kuntsler's provocative style. At one point singer Harry Belafonte discussed the AIM trial. Kuntsler had Belafonte and the actor Marlon Brando sit behind the AIM defendants. When Brando asked Kuntsler if this might be perceived as jury tampering. Kuntsler replied, "everything is jury tampering."

The movie included footage of Kuntsler in court and audio of some of his arguments. His winning Supreme Court argument in defense of the first amendment right to burn or desecrate the flag was quite powerful. He discussed how the first amendment was there not for the ideas we like, those never needed the protection of the first amendment, rather it was there for the ideas we despise and find reprehensible.

I question the film's attempt to separate Kuntsler's '60s and '70s era radicalism from his later cases once he settled down and attempted to raise his family in the Bronx. The film tries to portray his earlier cases as absolute right vs. wrong, civil rights vs. tyranny, peace vs. war, social justice vs. injustice. The film asks how someone who took those cases could take some of the clients that Kuntsler took in his later years.

Among the disputed clients: Larry Davis, a black man who was accused of killing six New York Police in a shootout; Yusef Salaam, one of several black teens accused of beating and gang raping a Wall Street accountant in Central Park; Palestinian El-Sayyid Nosair, who was accused of assassinating right-wing rabbi Meir Kahane; and John Gotti, the head of the Gambino crime family.

A sold out crowd gathers in the lobby of the Siskel Center after the Chicago premiere of Disturbing the Universe.

I feel that many of the cases he took in the Bronx era could be defended from a leftist perspective anyway. In the cases of Larry Davis and Yusef Salaam, the media immediately painted both of them as heartless murderers. What was the difference between these cases and the lynchings in the south of another generation?

In the case of El-Sayyid Nosair, a Palestinian who stood trial for shooting a racist, anti-arab rabbi, the movie quotes a derider of the Palestinians, Alan Dershowitz, in wondering why a left wing Jew like Kuntsler would defend the man. The answer is obvious to those who are informed about the occupation of Palestine, and the racism hurled against Palestinians, but not so obvious to an apologist for torture like Dershowitz. Dershowitz actually produced boos and hisses at the Chicago premiere -- no doubt from Chicago activists who remember Dershowitz's role in denying tenure to Norman Finkelstein.

Besides, the movie details how Kuntsler was vindicated on many of those later cases. Yusef Salaam was acquitted based on DNA evidence, El Sayyid Nosair was found not guilty based on a lack of witnesses, and Larry Davis was found to be acting in self defense.

The one client who may seem hard to defend based on leftist ideals is mafia don John Gotti. Why would Kuntsler defend the head of a mob family? Was it just for a paycheck? Doubtful, Kuntsler only took cases he believed in. However, even if Kuntsler didn't find common ideological ground with Gotti, he could have found other reasons to defend Gotti. People remember Clarence Darrow for defending labor leaders and teaching evolution, but he became famous for defending the millionaire murderers Leopold and Loeb. Johnny Cochraine, might be remembered for defending millionaire celebrity wife beaters, but he worked on dozens of civil rights and police brutality cases; even some Black Panther members were his clients.

In the end, this separation shows how hindsight is 20/20. To the directors, seeing their father take controversial cases when they were little girls, they didn't understand how this was the same kind of case as civil rights cases from the '60s. However, if they had been living with their father in the '60s, maybe they would have felt the same fear that they felt as he defended Yusef Salaam.

The cases Kuntsler took often had personal impacts for him. Kuntsler spent time in prison based on contempt of court charges during the Chicago 8 trial, and after he defended the El Sayyid Nosair, Jewish activists would rally every day outside of his Bronx home, calling him a self-hating Jew and a traitor.

Many attorneys in the crowd testified to how Kuntsler inspired them to join the legal profession. DePaul University Law Professor Jim Cavise discussed the AIM trial in 1974 and how Kuntsler asked Cavise, straight out of law school, to find a case that would allow the elders and medicine men to hold a ceremonial drum session before court opened. Cavise found a case, and Kuntsler held a hearing where he argued the case like it was Supreme Court law. They were successful and for the rest of the trial, before every court appearance, a ceremony was held. Cavise also described some of the strategy sessions where a peace pipe would be passed, claimed that it was "a mind expanding experience for all of the lawyers."

Cavise told another story from the AIM trail. During opening statements AIM members started raising hell and were dragged out kicking and screaming, "as they were being dragged out Bill stood up and started calling the judge every single name in the book, and of course what happened was that Bill was dragged out of the courtroom too. Later on I said, not that it was the wrong thing to do, but what made you jump up?" Kuntsler told Cavise, "There's no way that someone's going to drag my clients out of the courtroom without dragging me with them."

Many of the law students in the audience were wondering how to become an
activist lawyer like Kuntsler. The movie showed how even Kuntsler did not start as a radical lawyer. He began as a run of the mill lawyer, and even authored a book, The Law of Accidents. Many students wanted to know how to go from that to representing radicals.

As NLG member Elizabeth Fink said, "You have to want to do it, have to not be afraid. Wake up every morning choosing it." The movie discussed Kuntsler's admiration of Michelangelo's David statue. It is one of the few art pieces that display David before he throws the stone at Goliath, before he made his entrance into history. It is the moment where David has to decide whether to throw the stone or not. Whether to take a risk or to disappear back into the crowd, with no one the wiser. Kuntsler believed in those David moments.

Loyola University law student Susie Bucharo said the movie and Kuntsler's life and work "was definitely inspiring. It's easy to feel in law school like you have to go with the flow and not challenge things." She continued, "The law only deserves that respect if it's worth that respect. What this movie teaches us is that some laws ought to be challenged. It's a different way of approaching this profession."

Chicago Education in Danger of Being Parking Metered

2010-01-14T13:02:00.000-06:00

This was originally posted on Gapers Block.

"They never thought of the children first," Lillie Gonzalez exclaimed to several hundred people's applause at Malcolm X college. The small, but feisty, Latino community activist was speaking at the Democratic Alternatives to Renaissance 2010 conference organized by the Grassroots Education Movement (GEM) and the Caucus of Rank and File Educators (CORE) on January 9, 2010. Gonzalez was "one of the lucky ones," who was able to stop the closure of Peabody Elementary School in 2009 in Chicago's Near West Side. The planned closure of the more than a century old school was a part of Renaissance 2010, Chicago's program to privatize its public schools.

"Renaissance 2010 and 15 years of mayoral control are 15 years of failure." Explained Kenwood Community Organization organizer Jitu Brown. Describing the conference, Brown stated, "we want to begin to project what we think should happen in our schools... Our vision, not a corporate vision."

President Obama's appointment of Arnie Duncan to the Secretary of Education made the conference particularly important. "The first thing that Arnie Duncan did as US Secretary of Education is fly to Detroit and promise Detroit Public Schools major federal funds if they were to adopt the Chicago model," Pauline Lipman, a professor at the University of Illinois Chicago, explained.

Lipman pointed out that, "Renaissance 2010 is a partnership between Mayor Daley and the most powerful financial and corporate leaders in the city. What is their goal?" she asked before answering "to train a low wage workforce and to support real estate development. That's their education agenda. Their strategy is to hand public school to private operators, undermine the teachers union, phase out local school councils, the only democratic community voice we have, and replace neighborhood schools with selective enrollment schools and gentrifying neighborhoods."

"They have a long term plan. If they don't kick you off this year, they will pick you off next year." Lipman explained.

The conference allowed organizers and activists from a number of schools to discuss the issues they face. Sarah Jefferia discussed the successful fight to keep Clemente from adopting staggered start times to the school day. Calena Mujica discussed the work that Chicago Youth Initiating Change was doing, while Mary Glass from the Milwaukee Professionals Association came down to learn from the Chicago activists who had been on the front lines of the struggle against privatization.

One student from Senn High School described fighting the closure of the school backed by Alderman Mary Ann Smith.

It was a presentation that interested Jim Madigan, a Democratic candidate for Illinois State Senate in the 7th district. Madigan attended the conference to learn about "the concerns parents have about the desire to privatize all the other public assets in Chicago. Folks here are raising some good questions." Madigan said, "this is a very grassroots anti-machine conference, and for that reason alone I thought it was a good thing to attend."

One of the highlights of the conference was the announcement of CORE's slate of candidates for the May elections in the Chicago Teachers Union. CORE is known for it's progressive positions and fighting spirit as well as being the only CTU caucus that elects its candidates. Karen Jennings Lewis, CORE's candidate for President of CTU, explained the perception of Chicago schools as failures. "We have been told for the past 30 years that the public schools in this country are abysmal. It is a lie. It was a lie then and it is a lie now." As for school closings Jennings explained that, "The closings have nothing to do with scores," but are a part of a plan to commodify the city's educational resources.

CORE's candidate for vice-president in the CTU elections is Jackson Potter. Potter is a CTU delegate at Social Justice High School in Little Village, was a writer for SUBSTANCE newspaper, and is active in a number of social justice struggles including the anti-war movement. Potter pointed out that Chicago has one of the most militarized public school systems in the country, and that instead of training students to be "cannon fodder" for "unethical wars" the government should be providing high quality education and good union jobs. Potter has helped students to organize against military recruiters on their campuses.

This willingness to speak out on important issues is one of the things that has made Potter a target for those in the teachers union that don't want to take such as activist role. Potter is fighting against a challenge to his eligibility to run for office in the CTU.

In 2005 Potter worked at Englewood High School, which was closed as a part of Renaissance 2010. While Jackson fought to keep the school open, ultimately it was not enough. Potter then took a study leave and continued to pay his member dues to the CTU and was told that there would be no break in service from the union.

However, after CORE gained steam, the leadership of CTU claimed that since he was not a regular teacher, he could not run for office in the union.

Potter sees this as an attempt to undermine internal union democracy and has recruited Tom Geoghegan and Mike Persoon of Despres, Schwartz and Geoghegan in the legal battle that has followed. Potter explained that they had moved for discovery, and were going to put Marilyn Stewart, president of the union, on the stand. Potter believes that the evidence "will show clearly that they are playing games and that they have one standard and rule for their caucus and another for caucuses that they deem a threat."

Potter and CORE are aware that the CTU leadership might be seeking to delay resolution on the question of his eligibility to effectively keep him off the ballot. However CORE has a "plan B," in which Potter will step down and CORE will elect another VP candidate, if necessary.

The activists at the conference felt that what they did would have an impact. Lipman from Teachers for Social Justice explained, "What we do has national significance. The New York Times tied the death of Darien Albert at Fenger High School to spikes in violence, to school closings, and questioned the wisdom of the strategy. They used our language and analysis based on our five years of resistance."

Community organizer Brown told the activists at the conference, "people in this room have had the tenacity to say no to privatization, no to schools being closed, no to teachers having their rights taken away, no to children being trained for the prison industrial complex."

"The people that are closing your schools, the people that are pushing bad policy at our schools. They are working together all the time... we need to be working together after this conference."

Female Metal Vocalists Who Kick Ass

2010-01-05T18:03:00.007-06:00

Heavy metal is a genre that invite testosterone filled lunatics. Who needs lyrics when you can bash your head into a cement wall? Who needs biting social commentary when you can beat up some sweaty car repair guys in a mosh pit?

Women have hardly been the target demographic for metal. Yet, more women are becoming fans of metal and performing in metal bands. While many female vocalists go for the 'I'm singing pretty to contrast with the heavy guitars' vibe, there are several female lead vocalists who fuckin' devastate. They growl, snarl, shout, scream and do some wicked cookie monster voices.

This shift from pretty feminine vocal stylings from female vocalists like Amy Lee from Evanesence, Lita Ford, Christina Scabbia of Lacuna Coil and Sarah Jezebel Deva of Cradle of Filth to growly more demonic vocals in the groups profile below, could be a sign that women in metal will not confine themselves to the role of stripper, or eye candy.

Many of this new breed of female metal vocalists have biting social, political and sometimes feminist commentary in their lyrics.

When Johan Liiva left the Swedish melodic death metal group Archenemy, few would have expected to be a defining moment for extreme music. Archenemy had been one of the major groups of the Gothenburg metal scene and their decision to hire Angela Gossow as their lead singer told the entire metal community that women can shatter eardrums just as good as men.

I played Archenemy for a friend once, she complained of Gossow, "That sounds like death." I think it sounds hella awesome.

Gossow, a vegetarian, has several songs to imply anti-war and liberal Existentialist themes. The song 'Rise of the Tyrant' criticizes war while the song "Revolution Begins" urges freedom,

"Who are they to tell you what to do?
The stage is not set, the road is not chosen
You fate not preordained"

Check out the video for "We Will Rise".

"Tear down the walls
Wake up the world
Ignorance is not Bliss"

Walls of Jericho singer Candace Kucsulain doesn't hide her feelings about the state of politics. "Fuck the American Dream!" she screams in the track American Dream. Maybe her distaste for Americana came from watching the groups home town of Detroit rot as a result of corporate America's policies. Kusculain rails against the female beauty industry in "All Hail the Dead",

"Struggle to fit the mold, as she makes her self sick, it should make us all sick.

With our brainwashed minds, as they die fighting beauty.
Because we're slaves to the system
We can't go on like this, let the dead be dead.
You corporate fuck, it's time to fight this.
The status quo, it's time to fight this.
Our broken families, it's time to fight this.
Your billboard barbie, it's time to fight this.
Let the dead be dead, all hail the dead."

Alissa White-Gluz of the Canadian metal band The Agonist mixes growls with actual singing, to great effect. "Does history guide you or do you set out to change it?" White-Gluz whispers before thrashing guitars and sweep picking pummel listeners and she begins to scream in "Business Suits and Combat Boots." The video features a business man pick pocketing a homeless person, and photos of caskets returning to the US from Iraq, while the lyrics condemn animal testing, racism and the beauty industry. Their video for "Thank you pain" actually premiered on the website for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

The Los Angeles based Otep, founded by their singer Otep Shamaya, is more than just a band with some conscious lyrics, Shamaya is actually engaged in social change and politics. She actually spoke at the 2008 Democratic National Convention! In the song Confrontation she uses a grungy voice to speak out,

"Riot gear, the slaves are here
Piling corpses high

Its the rich man's war
But its the poor that fight

More capitalist crimes,
More enemies than allies

No WMD's - who gives a fuck
If they die"

While the video for Warhead mocks the paranoia of US militarism. Blast beats and palm muted riffing keeps the song chugging along while the video shows a picture of George W. Bush with the caption "The king of lies Is alive" Shamaya screams, "He lied, they died, keep the peasants terrified!"

In "Smash the Control Machine," Shamaya mocks right wing media with a catchy yet heavy song that easily lends itself to pogo dancing - or mixed martial arts against a yuppie.

"Then they outsourced my job
And gave a raise to my boss
Bailed out the banks but billed me for the loss

They say we must submit
And be one with the Machine
Because the Kingdom of Fear
Needs compliance to succeed

So waterboard the kids for fun
It's all the rage
And play born-again American"

What is the future for female metal singers? They need to have the media take them seriously as musicians, and not eye candy. Every year Revolver magazine, one of the most popular heavy metal magazines, prints it's list of 'hottest chicks in metal.' Where is there list of the 'hottest dudes in metal'? The misogyny of our society is unfortunately well represented in the taste makers for metal. Instead of seeing these singers as important artists or ass-kicking vocalists, they are seen as cheerleaders with tattoos and Slayer shirts. The metal world and music industry need to stop this and treat theses bands as more than metal with tits.

On Intergallactic Speciesism, Leftist Escapism, and Cinematic Messiah Complex's - What Avatar tells us about Cinema and its Relation to the Real World

2010-01-02T14:53:00.006-06:00

Avatar, the most expensive movie ever made, has, before it even premiered in theaters, become a turning point for cinema. Critics, film producers and cinemaphiles have recognized that unless the movie was a complete plop, it would change movie making forever, and with the movie premiering at number 1, it seems their predictions were accurate. I saw the movie opening night, and it does look incredible. The 3-D added depth to the film without being a cheesy gimmick. The high definition motion capture set a new standard for realism in computer generated animation. The movie is sure to become a science-fiction/fantasy classic along with movies like Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Star Trek, Terminator, and Batman.

However, what exactly are the repercussion Avatar's success will have on the film industry and American consciousness? What do the plot, the new movie making technology and America's obsession with being someone else mean for where we are and where we are going?

The world of Avatar is a science fiction version of Iraq. Humans occupy parts of the world of Pandorum, and seek to drill for a mineral called 'unobtonium.' We are never told what the mineral is used for, but it apparently sells for quite a bit of money back on earth. The Na'vi are the native people on Pandorum and these 10 foot tall blue warrior hippies are not friendly to the mining operation. Played by an ensemble of Black actors, the Na'vi represent a number of forces opposed to American imperialism.

The movie follows Jake Sully played by Sam Worthington as he is hired by a blackwater inspired corporate military operation to protect the mining operation. Worthington's character is paralyzed from the waist down and is hired to be a part of the “Avatar” program to place his mind in the body of a Na'vi in an attempt to convince the Na'vi to leave their home and allow the miners to drill it.

Through the course of the movie, Sully further identifies with the Na'vi and come to turn against the corporate operation. By the end of the movie he has switched sides and leads the Na'vi as they attack the mining operation in a high-tech vision of a jungle based Lawrence of Arabia, or Avatar – Dune in a jungle.

Avatar openly encourages anti-war and anti-corporate themes, it encourages armed rebellion and mutiny against the metaphorical US corporate powers. The metaphors in the movie have a left wing and progressive perspective.

Avatar explores racism between humans and the na'vi, who while an intelligent life form are certainly not human. It's a theme that's being explored in other movies, such as District 9 and the kids movie planet 51. While District 9 was disappointing in that for a movie that was a thinly disguised metaphor for apartheid in South Africa, it depicted Africans in a negative light, these movies raise interesting questions about a rapidly approaching post-human society. What rights would humanity extend to extra-terrestrials? In past film history, it is always the aliens who conquer humanity, but this string of films has been suggesting that perhaps we should fear humanity conquering the aliens? Is this a metaphor for how we should fear Western imperialist conquering the third world?

While some critics have chastised Avatar's plot for being predictable action movie fare, Annalee Newitz (http://io9.com/5422666/when-will-white-people-stop-making-movies-like-avatar?skyline=true&s=x) has commented on a white messiah complex in the movie. The way the movie presents one of the white conquerors becoming the leader for the indigenous people and leading them to victory has raised shadows of Dances with Wolves, the Last Samurai, Lawrence of Arabia and others. She comments that a movie industry dominated by white directors will continue to assume that the audience is white and need a white character to bridge the gap in order to understand the non-white characters. Consider how many white journalists where in Ghandi, or the fact that the Indian pacifist leader was played by a British actor, or that the film being produced about Mao will be filtered through the lens of a white journalist (http://www.cinematical.com/2007/07/16/robert-de-niro-making-mao-zedong-film/).

What aggravates me is the messiah complex in film period. How many times do we have to see this tired Christ parable play out? A chosen one, prophesied to lead the people to glorious new horizons, even if it costs his his life. In Avatar, Ewa, the goddess mother nature of Pandorum, picks Jack Sully by having it's seeds float around him, a prophesy that the Na'vi interpret as a sign that he will play an important role in their future.

I've seen this before, with Neo “the One” in the Matrix, Anakin Skywalker being prophesied to bring 'balance to the Force' in the Star Wars Prequels, John Conner leading humans to victory over the machines in the future of the Terminator, the fetus in Legion “the only hope humanity has of surviving' an onslaught of murderous angels and even Jebus himself in in Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ. There are probably a thousand other big budget movies with this same messianic plot.

Why is it that we look to fiction for heroes to save us instead of saving ourselves? Since these movies are myth, they are all vying for which messiah story will replace that aged myth of western civilization- Christianity. Most American's probably know less about Christianity than they do the pantheon of gods we have created from Superman and Wonder Woman to the Terminator and Rambo. There is a lot of money riding on such a paradigm shift in myth belief. The more money people spend on 'entertainment' the less they spend at Church. Capitalism's myths come to replace feudalism's myths.

Avatar does more than just comment on the real world through metaphor, it has a physical relationship with the material world. The movie cost close to ½ billion dollars. Funding from Fox Studios and James Cameron made Avatar a major business enterprise employing thousands including the actors, animators, and camera-crew.

We should consider what avatar means in a world where millions of people spend days living their fantasy's through avatars in games like World of Warcraft, movies like Harry Potter and tv shows in general. Why is it that entertainment for Americans amounts to escaping the real world and pretending to be someone else? We are living through the height of the worst economic crises since the 1930's and escaping into fantasy is easier than facing a life without guaranteed health care and possible foreclosure. What will it take for Americans to live their own lives instead of living vicariously through fiction?

The left has praised the film. On the Maoist blog Kasama, both Mike Ely and Eric Ribellarsi have praised the fact that a movie so militantly opposed to current US military operations is the number one film in the country at the moment. However are they living their own fantasies of rebellion and race traitorism through the movie? At what point does the American Left stop critiquing movies and start a true rebellion?

Consider the race this movie has already set off to go 3-D in theaters and soon home entertainment systems. When Microsoft released Windows Vista, it raised the bar on the basic computer hardware needed to operate the operating system, making it necessary for many consumers to buy newer computers, and creating more toxic digital waste.

This has a real impact in the places where all the toys Americans dispose of originate from. Many human rights groups have pointed out the horrific conditions in mining operations in the Congo, where Coltan is mined. Coltan is a mineral needed for liquid crystal displays used in laptops, cellphones, and flat screen tv's.

The irony of Avatar is that despite its metaphorical criticisms of imperialism, the movie may spark the need for the entertainment industry to have a higher demand for mineral mined in blood diamond type conditions.

While the Left may understand the message the movie is trying to send, to many Americans seek to ignore such messages. Whether it be the movie studio producers who don't care what message a movie has as long as it makes money, or regular people who seek any kind of opium to avoid facing the real world.

What I wonder is how long until US marines in Iraq or Afghanistan claim the Na'vi warriors for themselves? How long until US soldiers occupying a foreign country name their squads after the Na'vi, paint Na'vi icons on their bombs and boost each other before a battle by quoting from Avatar?

Taqwacore and the Real Threat: Interview With Marwan Kamel From Al Thawra

2009-12-31T12:52:00.000-06:00

Marwan Kamel is full ofcontradictions. Opinionated yet relaxed, a punk rock puritan whoexperiments with the sacred cows of punk. His father is Algerian,but lived in Syria before coming to the US and his mother is Mexican. Growing up in the rust belt city of Waukegan north of Chicago, Kamelhas been a strong voice in the 'Taqwacore' movement, a movement builtby Arab and Muslim Punk Rockers.

I attended college withMarwan, where we would often discuss internationalizing anarchism andanarchist ideas. I remember one conversation we had about theinternational symbol of Anarchy, the cirlce A, being eurocentric,becuase it didn't exactly carry over into non-latin based languages.

On New Years Eve 2009, I metMarwan for Coffee and to discuss music, politics, and the band thathe sings and plays guitar in: Al Thawra. As we see, Marwan isinterested in more than a punk aesthetic, or touting mindless chaosas anarchism, or music that gives people a little chuckle. He isinterested in music that goes beyond a quirky oddity, and becomes a a real threat to the dominant order

Marwan discusses Al Thawra.

Matt: A couple of ourfriends are on the Palestine freedom march.

Marwan: They're going toGaza?

Matt: Trying to. They'restuck in Egypt.

Marwan: It's funny causeall that international crossing is so much more complicated. The onething with the Middle East is that everything is more complicated. Something that should take like 20 minutes takes 4 fucking hourscause of all the complicated political situations and shit. A friendof mine came to the us from Palestine. He was 19 years old. Like 2years ago. The visa to get the us was easier to get than the visa toJordan. Going to Jordan is the hard part. Getting to the US is theeasy part. They give visas to the Palestinians easier than anybodyelse cause they just want to get them out. Just leave.

Matt: I saw last night thatAl Thawra posted a new song on Myspace about the Seige of Gaza.

Marwan: Yea and this morningI got hate mail.

Matt: What did it say?

Marwan: It said, 'Burn Gazato the ground.'

Matt: Was it from someonewho had been a fan of the band or just some random dude?

Marwan: Dude, I don't evenknow. Just some person sent em a message..... it was like.... Idon't know man. The one thing I've noticed about our stuff vs... Ihate to play this race to the bottom... like I'm more impressive thanyou or whatever, when it comes to, like, vs. the kominas or theseother Taqwacore bands, or supposed Taqwacore bands, I've noticed withus, we always end up catching the heat from these other bands. Like the Komina's are lighthearted and funny about it. I look at itlike the Sex Pistols vs. Crass, y'know? They're like the more funpop aspect of it, being sarcastic.

I've noticed like, in someways being South Asian is like daisy or whatever is like a little bitmore politically friendly, cause their Pakistani. But when yourArab, everyone fucking hates you. It's like being the public enemyof this current, I don't know what to call it. Status quo in the US.

It seems like with us we'reunder a different paradigm. It's like, oh, they're being serious,their talking in Arabic. Fuck them.

Matt: I haven't listened tomany of the other Taqwacore bands. I know you guy's cause I knowyou. I've read a few articles about the other groups cause you wenton tour with them. A group like Vote Hezbollah, are they a littlemore jokey?

Marwan: Yea it's all ajoke. I think that's the difference. When you want to be serious,it's more threatening to people. I'm not really sure. I kinda fellinto the whole Taqwacore thing anyways. I didn't set out to create aTaqwacore band. It just happened. I put my music on Myspace andthese dudes found me on there. And they sent me the book and theidea of a tour came up. So I wasn't sure where I fit in with thewhole thing. I still really don't know where I fit in with it.

Matt: you wanted to create aDoom / Crust band and everyone says, 'oh, you're like this', and yourlike 'I am?'

Marwan: Yea exactly. It'skinda like you end up wanting to create something, and someone elselabels it. Which is what ultimately happens with any group.

Matt: You mentioned earlierthat your writing for a blog about Palestine?

Marwan: Oh yea. That'ssomething I'm just starting up. So I'm not sure what my angle is. It's called palestinenote.com. I'm also writing formideastyouth.com. The palestinenote.com one seems real serious.

Matt: Are these site youstarted yourself or....?

Marwan: No I'mcontributing. So much of my writing is not that serious in ajournalistic sense. I ended up interviewing a band in Syria becauseit interested me. I wanted to talk to them, so I was like, 'fuck it,lets do an interview.' But this site seems serious some of theirwriters are dudes who have written for the New York Times and shit.

I asked Marwan about thedocumentary movie about the Taqwacore scene, "Taqwacore: theBirth of Punk Islam." The movie featured Al Thawra.

Marwan: It's all bullshit. Documentaries are like half fiction. One of the things I noticedespecially when we were working on that films: 'Ok, that was great,but can you guys do that again in the light?' 'What? I thought thiswas a documentary?'

Matt: All the great historicphotos were posed. Iwa Jima, the Red flag over the Reichstag.

Matt: Tell me about when thefilm crews became interested in filming you guys. Have you seen ityet?

Marwan: Yea, I saw thedocumentary. It's interesting because .... I don't know if the filmmaker, Omar Majeed, set out to make a definitive piece on thismovement. I don't know if it was supposed to be encyclopedic in somesort of way. I don't think so. In terms of being a narrative, it'sa good narrative. But I don't think it does justice to the story ofall the bands that were involved. I'm not saying that necessarily Iwant to see more of myself... but it seemed like... instead of thesame 500 word article that they keep printing over and over and overagain. It ended up being an hour and ½ article. Like one of thosearticles, like the Rolling Stone piece.

The camera crews startedcoming, in like 2007. I was talking to these dudes online and theidea of a tour came up. I bought a ticket to Boston, one way. Ididn't fuckin' know these kids or nothing, I was just diving into itblindly. I had no idea who was even going to pick me up from theairport. The first thing that happens is we pull into Bossum'sdriveway, and we had to stage it again, like 4 times before we got itright. So that was my first experience with a camera crew. I waslike 'what is going on?'

Matt: You mentioned some ofthe other articles and they are all sort of the same. They treat itas a novelty. “Oh look at all these Arab kids playing punk music.” I feel like they aren't digging any deeper than that. You told meon the phone that maybe there wasn't anything deeper than that. But... I feel like there is some sort of consciousness shift goingon.

Marwan: In America?

Matt: Well, with this quoteunquote Taqwacore. I remember I went to an United Muslims MovingAhead event at DePaul once. I was playing my guitar in the quad, soI brought that with. And some guys were like you should go up therewith the hand drum guy, do a little thing. I was like 'Ok, I wasn'tplanning on it, but sure.' We talk to the organizer of the event and– oh! apparently there's some prohibition in the...

Marwan: Dude that's fuckingretarded.

Matt: against stringedinstruments

Marwan: Dude, that's thebiggest bullshit I ever fuckin' heard.

Marwan: It's weird thatthese innovations of theology and ideology from the 1700's haveinfiltrated so deep into the consciousness of Muslims that its likecreated this idea that it's always existed like that. Part of thereason why that coverage [of Taqwacore] always ends up being the sameis cause that type of Islam is the monolithic Islam that the media inthe US projects. In some sort of way, there is an Orientalist tingein everything they write about us. It returns to the originalexotification of the East. It treats us like clowns. Like, 'howweird.' What they don't understand is that there have always beencritics like that.

There was one group inArabia in the 8^th century the Najdiyah,they formed acommune-like society. Their theological position was that is thereis no one able to become the Imam, then we can do away with theposition completely. And they also said that the land belongs toeveryone. It's sort of a forerunner to socialist ideas.

What they don't understandis that those type of criticisms have always existed. Out of thatsame movement was a group that supported women as imams.

Matt: You had mentioned tome a few years ago that you wanted to write a book on theseAnthropological type things. Precursors, stuff embedded within Arabhistory and culture that could be the basis for a non-Europeansocialism. Like how socialist and anarchist ideas have always beensaid to have come out of European struggles, but maybe not. Did youever actually write that, did you do research, what's the status?

Marwan: I started. I losttouch with it. It's like that sometimes. You know you startsomething and lose your train of thought. What's interesting is thatsome kid started that. I forget his name though.

Matt: You ever think aboutgoing back to grad school to continue on a project like that?

Marwan: I don't know dude,but I need to go back to school for sure though.

It's interesting tojuxtapose the paradigm of Western society. If you look at us on adifferent historical trajectory than the Middle East. So you have tomake it relevant and indigenous to Mid-East culture. One reason whythey don't work is that they are viewed as outside ideas. In somesort of way it needs to speak to people. If you think about it, alot of the ideology, like anarcho-syndicalism, it's dealing withindustrial society, but a lot of those societies in the Mid-Eastaren't even industrialized yet. It's totally different It's likeRussia at the time of the revolution,

Matt: or like China, it wasmostly peasants at the time of the revolution.

Marwan: but then there isthe ultra fucking capitalism of the gulf.

Matt: Like the United ArabEmirates. Building man made islands in the shape of a globe so BradPitt can buy one.

Marwan discusses his music.

Marwan: Like when they talkabout decadence, that's fucking decadence. That's just ridiculous. People don't identify with that. Everyone else in the Mid-East don'thave any sort of cultural similarity with them. It's so different. 'everything is for sale.'

Matt: I saw you guys play ashow at Boogie Not Bombs and one of the things I liked about your setwas how in your last song you brought all those drums and gave themout to the audience. Is that something you do regularly, where youtry to make it more interactive?

Marwan: Yea that was fun. The traditional concept of shows is that you go and watch someoneperform. But you own it more if you get people involved. 'Oh, it'smy show too.' It democratizes the show. It takes it off the stageand puts it in the hands of people. It's analogous with politicalconcepts. One of the interesting things about how we fuse music ishow Mid-East music is based a lot on improvisation. So that ties itwith the democratization thing to. Leave the format open for peopleto put their own muse into. So we try to do that as often as we canbut sometimes we don't have enough drums. It's a good way to endsets. Cause then you don't need to have an ending that lets peopledown, cause they will just have fun anyway. Ultimately that's whatshows are about, having fun.

Matt: Most of the time,

Marwan: Unless it's aboutPC posturing. Making people feel bad about doing shit. 'It's yourfault.'

The only time I did that wasin New York. It wasn't even politically motivated, it was cause Ihate New York. I was just trying to piss them off.

Matt: Would you say thereis a rust belt twinge to the group?

Marwan: Post-modernpost-industrial deal? Yea. That's the cool thing about Chicago. Even the punk hardcore in the 80's it tended to be more experimentalcause it wasn't tied down to these things on the east coast.

We go outside for a smoke

Marwan: Going back totalking about Taqwacore being threatening. These articles love tosee people shit on Islam, but not on the West as well. If your notbeing honest about everything, your not being honest. You have to beself-critical.

Matt: Al Thawra doescriticize both. You don't fall into Christopher Hitchen's paradigm. The liberal hawk. "Oh Islam needs it's own enlightenment. Theyneed to accept Western values. That's why we need to invade. Makethem look like us. Give them McDonalds.” A group like Al Thawrais a counter argument to that. "We don't need you to bomb the Mid-East to give us your supposed freedom. We know how to makefreedom ourselves."

Marwan: Absolutely. Like Isaid, those criticisms have always existed. There is nothing newabout it. People don't know how big Islam is. They have this onemonolithic image of it. It seems a lot of those bands play intothat. It seems less threatening. It seems more of a marketing ploythan anything else.

Matt: What do you think ofall these protesters in Iran? Or as I call them the twitteratti? Doyou think they have a liberatory vision for Iran after they topplethe theocracy or are they pro-western?

Marwan: I don't know howmuch of it is genuine democratic feelings or peoples uprising or howmuch is involvement of foreign organization.

Matt: It's kinda hard totell.

Marwan: That's one of thethings about those covert ops. It's all about hiding it. Make itlook like a people's uprising but maybe its with the support of theCIA or MI5. Of course I support that movement of people but I don'tknow if I want to be outright supporting it. Cause, I don't knowwhats genuine about it. Is it a liberatory vision? I don't know. If it's a ploy to end up with a McDonalds in Teran they might as wellstop right now. You'll just end up with a different tyrant.

One of the thing about themanipulation of public opinion here is that the people who supportedthe Shah are supporting the protesters. One of the Shahs relativesgave a press conference in Paris during the riots after the electionwhere he was crying for that girl who died. I was like, 'yea righthe doesn't care about that girl.' He was like, 'just put me back inpower.'

Matt: This last decadethere has been this big interest in ethnic punk. Gypsy punk. Recognition of Latino punk groups in Pilsen, movie Behind theScreams, the movie Afro-Punk, now this movie about Taqwacore. Therehas always been this non-white punk, but it's getting its ownrecognition and the mainstream is acknowledging that it exists inways that it hasn't before. Any thoughts?

Marwan: It's about musicalprogression. Do you want it to be the same or move on. I hope itdoesn't become a tokenizng thing. That's denigrating in a lot ofways. 'Hey man we're not racist we have a black friend.'

Matt: Punks not racist, wehave Bad Brains.

Marwan: haha yea. That'swhat I'm saying. It goes back to making it indigenous to yourcultural context in some way.

Matt: There are two ways tospin this question- why is punk rock so attractive to thesemarginalized communities? Or do you feel like picking up the westernrock sound and prototype for a band and adapting it to thesedifferent communities... is this just a different kind ofassimilation?

Marwan: Yea theassimilation aspect is always played into this in an interesting wayfor me. How do you negotiate assimilation and your identity? Ifound interesting in Taqwacore that we weren't coming form the samecultural context, but we identified with each other. Having thisidentity conflict out in the open. You feel neither here nor there. Our context might be different than Afro-punk but I think it has alot in common with Latino punk. Your here but your not quiteAmerican. But when your there, your fucking American. If I'm herein the US, who is the first person picked at the airport for aspecial screening? Me. But when I'm there, their like, 'oh he'sAmerican.'

Matt: I remember you toldme once about how when you visited Syria the secret police werefollowing you.

Marwan: That;s a totallydifferent topic man. The secret police in Syria... it's interesting. There was one journalist from France who covered us. A warphotographer correspondent, he had been to North Korea and Cuba andhe said, 'it's the only country I stayed in where there are police infront and behind you.' It's insane, the state security apparatus ison top of dissent. It think it's opening up some. When I wasinterviewing that band in Syria. They said they are more computersnow but it hasn't improved much. I think it's being censored ortheir keeping tabs on people.

Matt: You always readreports about 'the great firewall of china' and how all these countryhave censorship blocking stuff. I go on youtube and watch newsclips,and some say 'this is not available in your region.' Not even fromsome 'terrorist state'. Stuff from England, but it's like copyright,trademark, what's the difference? It's a censorship based on profit.

Marwan: Yea it's a differenttype of censorship. That's one of the reasons I haven't been pissedoff about how the media has been covering this Taqwacore thing. Because that sensationalism plays into that aspect of creatingprofit. They have to make it sensational. I understand it, I don'tthink it's right, but they're covering us in this way because theirmotivation is profit.

Marwan: Going back toidentity punk thing... it's poignant now to have these identity punkmovements because it has something to do with the faceless globalizedworld. Finding out who you are and maintaining your identity isimportant in that kind of thing. To break the homogeneity of thatkind of world. Your either a soldier in their army or a facelesssweatshop worker. Just to be like 'no, I exist' is really important.

Matt: Al Thawra is thecultural and artistic face.

Marwan: One of the thingswere trying to do with Al Thawra is that our process, at first wetook punk and put mid-east on top. This new album is the reverse. You get a different result.

Throughout this experience,there has been these magazine articles, but the one thing I have beengoing back to is how I originally started doing things in the 'Do ItYourself' fashion. I started getting in contact with these kids inthe Mid-East. Their motivations for feeling different are differentthan mine. They can feel like outsiders and identify with that insome sense. There are always some people feeling marginalized ordifferent everywhere. Rock music isn't that prevalent in theMid-East yet, so it takes someone to do it, for it to take root.

Matt: There are two sidesto rock music. On one hand they credit Levi jeans and rock music totoppling the Soviet Union. On the other hand this is a music thathas its roots in the blues and the African American experience. It'sa double edged sword maybe.

Marwan: Rock music is acultural ambassador. It plays into that dialectics. It some waysit's Westernized, but in some it's trying to be Eastern. I hate touse those terms but just for the sake of understanding. It'sbringing this music that foreign but it's gives people a space toempower themselves. So it's a dialectical process. Your using thatkind of ascetic to empower yourself to do something.

Matt: Dialectics,contradictions, shades of gray...

Marwan: To say that weexist in the gray, and we're OK with it is one of the most importantthings about our music. We don't fit here or there but it's alright,we are who we are.

Cafeteria Workers Prepare for Union Contract Fight

2009-11-08T16:47:00.005-06:00

DePaul Cafeteria Workers (left to right) Quiendolyn Wilkens, Alan Camacho, Nathan Arnold, and Chanteen Hardaway.

On November 7^th, over 100 cafeteria workers, students and activists gathered at the Stir It Up Conference held at DePaul University in Chicago to organize for a better contract. DePaul is the largest Catholic university in the United States and it has a contract for its cafeteria with Chartwells, a division of Compass group. Compass is the largest catering corporation in the world with an annual profit close to 7 billion British pounds. Compass group has food service operations in schools, corporate offices and major events throughout the world.

Even though Compass is a Fortune 500 company, with a CEO who makes more than 750 thousand dollars a year, Compass treats the cafeteria workers who make its wealth like the liver they often chop. Low pay, substandard health care, lack of proper training and poor management are some of the complaints of many of the workers at the DePaul cafeteria.

Represented by Service Workers United and Serviced by UNITE/HERE Local 1, the workers contract expires in March and they looked forward to changing DePaul's cafeteria and gaining a stronger contract.

Chanteen Hardaway has worked as a cashier at DePaul's cafeteria for six years, and was nervous before the conference because she had never spoken in public before. During her speech, she broke into tears describing how, “It really hurts me because I know I can't afford a lot of stuff for my kids. I just feel that it's really unfair.” She said, “We need better wages and free health care. I want to take my kids to the doctor without needing to use public aid.” Hardaway emphasized Chartwells' responsibility to its workers, “I shouldn't have to use the government when I work for a company that makes multi-billion dollars a year.”

Over 100 students and community members attended the conference.

Chartwells worker Alan Camacho pointed out that the average wage for Chartwells workers was half the living wage for one person and that many workers had families that they needed to support, “it really impacted me when DePaul was running coat drives and feed the homeless and hungry [food drives], and right there in the student center, in the cafeteria, people's kids are going hungry.”

Camacho explained, “there's someone working here for 20 years and they make the same amount of money I do, and I've been here 4 years.” Further, “the managers get bonuses based on how much money they spend, and if they spend less money [on workers] they get more money [for themselves].”

69 year old Nathan Arnold has been cooking for over 50 years and worked at DePaul's cafeteria for the last 10 years. Arnold explained, “My Academy Award is the smile on your face after you eat one of my meals.” However he was baffled by how Chartwells treated it's employees, “I just didn't understand how people were allowed to get away with certain things. How they treated the employees. I hadn't been here 2 weeks and I heard a supervisor cursing out a pastry chef and a sous chef.”

Arnold told the Conference attendees, “I made more money 30 years ago than I do now. It's sad how the corporate world can take and abuse when we supply their need. We place the caviar on their plate and they shove us crumbs.”

Changes in management cost Quiendolyn Wilkens $400 a week, as Chartwells cut her hours from 45 hours a week to 32 hours a week. She described how after requesting for more hours, management retaliated by cutting her hours more. With two children to raise, she became a “mad black woman on a mission” even though she initially knew little about the union, she was one of the first to become active in it. “It wasn't about me, it was about everybody else that was going through what I was going through.”

According to Wilkens, “My manager can not come down and make up quesadilla just like that., They can not do the work that I do.”

The Union has been able to help workers improve their shop. According to Hardaway, “when the mangers try to fire us for something stupid, we have the union behind us. They [the managers] try to come up with some pretty ironic stuff to fire us about. Some people have gotten their jobs back.”

Camacho described a fight the union had with the managers. Chartwells would hire temporary workers from temp agencies to prevent regular employees from becoming eligible for health and vacation benefits or from gaining overtime pay. When Camacho and other workers confronted management about it, they were threatened, even though the contract prohibited this temp worker practice. After confronting the manager over this issue, the company hired 4 new permanent employees. This is an example of the union fighting for the unemployed in the worst recession since the 1930's.

UNITE/HERE Local 1 researcher Kyle Schafer explains Compass groups wealth.

The cafeteria workers at DePaul have a union contract through Service Workers United. SWU was a joint organizing project through UNITE/HERE and SEIU to unionize food service and cafeteria workers. The different bargaining units are serviced by different SEIU or UNITE/HERE locals, in DePaul's case, the contract is serviced by UNITE/HERE local 1. The Chartwells workers may switch their bargaining agent from SWU to HERE Local 1, as frustrations mount over the weak contracts that SWU negotiated.

In a sign of solidarity, DePaul students who live at the social justice themed Vincent and Louis House cooked lunch for conference attendees, including cafeteria workers who usually cook food for the students.

Arnold was of the initial organizers for the union and stated that he did it “not for the benefit of me, but for the benefit of you the students who are going to need future jobs that your going to need, for my co-workers that are still going to be working in 10 20 years.” An excellent point considering that several baristas at Chartwells were former students at DePaul.

Arnold stated, “I am so proud to see that the students are coming forward with this union and doing something for themselves. We all are the union and together we'll make this world a better place.”

Coffee and Shifting the Political Paradigm

2009-11-01T20:25:00.004-06:00

I used to work at a coffee shop. There are lots of stories I could tell about it - the sweatshop conditions, the harassment of union activists, the unsanitary workplace, the incompetent managers. However I want to talk about the size of coffee cups.

We had three sizes of coffee cups - in order of smallest to biggest - Tall, Grande, and Alto-Grande.

People often get confused about the names of the sizes. Why the funny Italian names? Why can't we call the cup sizes Small, Medium, and Large?

Have you ever had coffee in Europe or South America? They serve it in espresso sized cups. That's a regular size of coffee internationally. The fact is that the smallest size coffee you can order in the United States is still considered Tall compared to what an actual regular cup of coffee would be in the rest of the world.

This mirror's America's obsession with making everything bigger and eating greater proportions of food. It's not good enough to have a car that gets you around, you need a gas guzzling monster truck. These large coffee cups represent an aspect of American Affluenza and our domination of the world. Only America has the free trade deals and military might to import so much of an upper drug in order to keep it's work force artificially stimulated and artificially attentive.

There are different kinds of people who order coffee. Some only want a little, some want a big caffeine fix. Then there are the undecideds - those who want some coffee, but do not know how much they want.

As a cashier I would prompt those undecideds and ask them what size coffee they wanted. They would hesitate. They didn't want to be extreme and order a 'small' or a 'large' so they would gravitate towards the 'medium' size. However it isn't an actual medium. It's actually quite a large amount of coffee.

Likewise with politics in America. We have shifted so far to the right, that what counts as left wing is actually quite a bit to the right of the rest of the world's left-wing.

Those who don't think about what coffee size they want gravitate towards what they perceive to be the middle. Likewise those who don't think about politics much gravitate towards what they see as the middle - which is not a genuine political center.

Review of "American Radical: The Trials of Norman Finkelstein"

2009-09-13T20:07:00.016-05:00

An abridged version of this review appeared on the website for Proximity Magazine. You can read it Here.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

I was at the world premier tonight for "American Radical, the Trials of Norman Finkelstein," a part of the Underground Film Festival at the Siskel Film Center.

Finkelstein was a professor of mine at DePaul University and he has gained fame and controversy for his books critical of the occupation of Palestine. Finkelstein was denied a tenure position at DePaul and I was one of the students who organized protests in support of his bid for tenure. I was a part of the occupation of DePaul President Fr. Holtschneider's office. Finkelstein was a fantastic teacher and an excellent academic.

I was looking forward to this movie, and was glad to see a large crowd at the opening including many DePaul Alums who knew Finkelstein and participated in rallies in support of his tenure bid. Unfortunately the directors David Ridgen and Nicolas Rossier were unable to make this screening, but one of them is supposed to be at the screening later this week.

The movie is a deeply personal one and is almost psychological in its approach. While it covers Finkelstein's politics and research, it really only skims and briefly touches upon his books. I suppose it would make a dull movie to discuss proper citation and research, something that much of Finkelstein's work looks at, exposing fraudulent Isreali apologists. However I would have enjoyed the movie to describe the occupation of Palestine a bit more so audiences would understand it.

What I did enjoy in this documentary was the personal history of Finkelstein's family. I knew the basics, that his parents were Holocaust survivors, progressives, and that he gained a great deal of his integrity and willingness to speak for radical causes from them. It was great to see photos of the family raising Norman and his siblings in New York, to hear audio of his mother, to really understand the impact that his parents experience had on him.

The footage of Finkelstein's lectures in Canada are classic Norm. While he is very gracious, allowing those who disagree with him to speak, he is willing to raise his voice to assert that he will not let those who shed "crocodile tears" for the victims of the Holocaust to use his parents memory to justify the subjugation of Palestine.

I wish there was more footage on Finkelstein's academic battles, from his battle to have Princeton grant him a PhD after writing a dissertation that was critical of Zionism, to the denial of Tenure at DePaul. The movie covers those events, but does not go into detail.

One thing that particularly bugged me was Alan Dershowitz's appearance in the movie. Dershowitz is a Law Professor at Harvard University, and a minimalist and apologist for the worst kinds of occupation and torture committed by the US and Israel. Dershowitz has spoken in support of legalizing torture in the US, and offering torture permits for US soldiers to interrogate prisoners by sticking red hot needles under their finger nails. Dershowitz actively lobbied DePaul University to deny tenure to Finkelstein.

What irritated me about Dershowitz's appearance in the movie was that he showed himself to be a complete idiot and a pathological liar. I don't mind if Dershowitz wants to show the world what a fool he is by appearing in the movie, but he repeated several factually inaccurate statements. While Finkelstein has done an excellent job of exposing Dershowitz's false claims in the book "Beyond Chutzpah" I feel a need to assert the accuracy of the Dershowitz's statement on how Finkelstein was hired at DePaul.

Dershowitz claims that it was radical left wing faculty who wanted to bring Finkelstein into DePaul. I have been working on a history book about DePaul, and all the available evidence I had shows that it was students who originally brought Finkelstein to speak at DePaul, and it was students who suggested to Finkelstein to apply for the open position in the political science department. It was students who rallied to support Finkelstein obtaining a tenure track position, and students who rallied in support of Finkelstein obtaining tenure. There were no anti-Finkelstein student rallies at DePaul. Many conservative students who took his classes came to like him and found him to be a fair and challenging professor.

Of course Dershowitz could have found that out, if he did his own research on the subject.

The film follows Finkelstein to Lebannon and Palestinian refugee camps, interviewing family friends in Palestine and Palestinian youth who are inspired by Finkelstein's speeches to look at Jews as potential partners in peace instead of as enemy occupiers. It mentions Finkelstein's ban from Israel, but I would have liked to seen actual footage.

One thing that the movie captured well is Finkelstein's self-doubt and yet his integrity. He is constantly wondering if he should not 'give them something to use against me' or if he should simply tell the truth. He is a truth teller to the point where it has ruined his academic career.

Two of his greatest lines in the movie were responding to personal criticism leveled against him. To those who suggested that he is maladjusted and unable to come to terms with his Jewish identity, he responds that even if that were true, what consequence does it have on his writings and historical fact? If Einstein had a maladjusted personality, what consequence would it have on his physics? He also addressed the criticism of his tone. Often academic supporters of his will state that they agree with Finkelstein's research, but they disagree with acerbic tone which he presents it. Finkelstein responds that there are certifiable war criminals teaching at major universities, people like Henry Kissinger and Donald Rumsfeld, so why should his tone be targeted unless it is because he is exposing ugly truths?

I wish the movie touched on the wider witch hunt against left wing professors in America. The fact is that Finkelstein is only one of many academics who are being targeted by the right wing, including Ward Churchill, Bill Ayers and others.

I enjoyed the movie. It was sympathetic to Finkelstein without putting him on a pedestal. It showed his personality, his humor, his anger and his sadness well. I hope it will lead people to discuss Norman Finkelstein, and his contributions to truth and justice. Finkelstein doesn't describe himself as pro-Palestinian but rather pro-truth and justice.

Discussion with the Director

I spoke with one of the film's directors, Nicolas Rossier, after the films second showing in Chicago. It was great to talk with him, I could tell he took his role as a documentary film maker serious. He explained that David Ridgen and he had begun filming Finkelstein several years earlier, first just an interview for a documentary, but as they found him to be an interesting personality, they continued to film him, uncertain of what they would use the footage for. After Finkelstein was denied tenure and students protested, they realized that they needed to put the footage together because this was a personality and a story that people needed to know.

I was able to talk to Rossier about a few of my concerns with the movie. I was concerned that the movie was sympathetic to Finkelstein the man, without agreeing with his politics. I asked Rossier about this and he said that they specifically did not want to make a propaganda piece for Finkelstein. He discussed how Alan Dershowitz had a movie made about him that was nothing more than a propaganda film. Taking it's name from Dershowitz's plagiarized book "the Case For Israel." It regurgitated Dershowitz's claims and failed to provide anything beyond a platform for Dershowitz's falsehoods.

Rossier explained that they didn't feel like now was the right time for an outright pro-Finkelstein movie. Rossier, a Switzerland native who lives in the US, claimed that making movies against the Vietnam war would have been difficult to make during the actual war, but that now that time has passed, Americans have come to accept the immorality of the war. He said that maybe 20 years from now, a movie vindicating Finkelstein would be made.

The more I think about this, the more I'm skeptical about that premise. There were several award winning anti-war documentaries that came out during the Vietnam war such as Hearts and Minds, In the Year of the Pig, and Winter Soldier. Further, I'm not so sure that that Americans have really come to accept the immorality of the Vietnam war. This despite being confronted with the actions of the US military in Vietnam during and ever since the war.

I feel like the 'American Radical' falls in with a number of other films about radical leftists that while sympathetic with them, do not justify them or defend them. The comparison I made was that "The Case for Israel" is 'Inglourious Basterds' while 'American Radical' is 'The Baader Madoff Complex.'

Why is it that Tarrantino's 'Inglourious Basterds' can revel in it's violence and historical inaccuracy, while a movie like 'The Baader Meinhoff Complex', which is also about shooting Nazi's, has to chastize the revolutionaries. The difference between Brad Pitt and Baader and Meinhoff is solely in their ideology. One is a hillbilly American who leads a squad of ass kicking Jews, while the other two are Communists trained by the Palestine Liberation Organization. One is praised as an American hero, the other two become villains.

'American Radical' helps a great academic become well known, but I still feel that there needs to be a movie that outright defends Norman Finkelstein.

http://www.americanradicalthefilm.com/

Labor Day 2009 Wrap Up

2009-09-09T03:08:00.008-05:00

On the First Monday of September, most American workers had the day off to celebrate Labor Day. While International Labor is May 1st and has it's roots in the Haymarket riot in Chicago, the American Labor Day became a holiday as President Grover Cleveland attempted to gain the support of organized labor, days after he order federal troops to crush the strikers at the Pullman Rail Yards.

I do not recall Chicago having very active Labor Day's in the past. One year I was in Pittsburgh and attended their Labor Day Parade- it was fantastic. Every union came out to march, and crowds lined the sidewalks to watch the parade.

This last labor day was very active for me in Chicago.

I began by attending the Congress Hotel Picket Line. The workers there, members of UNITE/HERE Local 1 have been on strike for the last 6 years, as they struggle for decent health and pay from the hotel. Dignitaries on hand included Governor Pat Quinn, Jesse Jackson, Author and Minister CJ Hawkings and Aldermen Fioretti and Preckwinkle. The politicians led a delegation inside the hotel to speak to management and to ask that the Hotel find a settlement with the union.

picket line

picket line

picket line

After the rally at the Congress Hotel, I traveled over to Federal Plaza to take part in the immigration Rally.

Video of the march entering federal plaza.

Coffins representing the number of deaths on the border

Children in chains representing the criminalization of immigrant youth.

SK hand tools employees, members of Teamsters Local 743 who are on strike after their employer canceled their health insurance without telling them.

Photo of the crowd at Federal plaza.

A Video of the crowd at Federal plaza.

After the Immigration Rally I took the CTA to the South Side of Chicago, historic Pullman, for the annual Labor Day Picnic and Rally. On the ride there I spoke with one of the founders and leader of the Workers Party of Belgium. Pretty cool.

The crowd at Pullman.

Groups that tabled at Pullman.

Jesse Jackson Jr. speaks to the crowd.

Jesse Jackson Jr speaks to the crowd.

Armando Robles of the United Electrical Workers Talks to the crowd.

A speaker discusses labor disputes at Petes Food Market.

A speaker discusses the Latino Union.

Rich Berg of Teamsters 743 speaks.

Jesse Jackson speaks to labor day rally.

Solidarity Forever is sung.

Historic Pullman building.

The University of Chicago is the World of Warcraft of Chicago Schools

2009-08-27T17:56:00.001-05:00

I worked through a temporary employment agency the other day and had an interesting experience.

Temp agencies are notorious for substandard pay, benefits, and hours. They are often used instead of full time, union workers. However as economy has been driven into the ground by wall street greed, many are finding themselves with no other option than to seek temp work.

One assignment I was sent to was for the Chicago Public School's Office of Literacy. The office was coordinating an event where elementary school teachers would be trained on how to use their school books by the private corporations that make the books. My job was to help teachers park, set up lunch and help check teachers out. Not tough work, but it struck me how odd the whole thing was.

If I were a teacher, I wouldn't want some corporation to tell me how to teach. Teachers are dedicated public servants, who are interested in educating the youth, while this book company cares only about its profits.

When the temp job was finished and I was able to go about my day, I decided to head down to the University of Chicago. I am interested in entering Graduate School and wanted to speak to someone in the History Department to ask about their program.

I got off the temp job at 3 and thought that, like most other offices, they would close around 5. When I made it to the office at 4:15, I saw a sign posted on the office door that said that the office would close at 4:00 pm during the Summer. You can imagine my frustration.

As I wandered around the campus, unsure of where or what to do next, I marveled at the Gothic Buildings, the Ivy Growing up the sides of buildings, the stone sculptures of knights and maidens around the windows, and the gargoyles crouching from the rooftops. It looked oddly medieval in a city that is known for its industry. Instead of railroads, slaughterhouses and steel mills, it was sheer fantasy.

I also noticed that the doors to the buildings only had doors on the inside of the quad. There was no street access to the buildings, but you had to be inside the green park like quad to enter the buildings.

I came to the realization that the University of Chicago has little, if any, connection with reality. It is the World of Warcraft of Chicago academia. Intellectually stimulating, yet designed to keep you on your butt doing nothing to fix the problems of your life and of the world. The University of Chicago isn't going to do anything to give Chicago teachers freedom, in fact the school eradicated it's education department because it was to practical. It isn't going to help unionize temp workers, the school was the birthplace of neo-liberalism.

What we need are schools that teach people practical lessons as well as the theoretical understanding of the world. Philosophy and practicality. Electrical work and Anthropology. Farming and Neichze. Janitorial Maintenance and Chomsky. Only then will we have an education that develops people for the real world.

Beggers and Living at Home on the Rise

2009-08-22T19:33:00.000-05:00

A sure indication of the economy's major league fail, is the number of beggars that I see in my day to day activities. It has gone up dramatically.

It's scary to think that a year ago I would see maybe one beggar on the walk from the Metra to the Blue Line Jackson stop.

Today, I saw five beggars on that walk from the Metra to the Blue Line alone. I saw more on the train and in other neighborhoods.

I also talk to more and more of my friends who are forced into living at home, living in the suburbs because they can't afford rent while jobless in the city. They pray that their parents are able to maintain their jobs, while my friends social lives are put on hold living with their parents.