People's Tribune/Tribuno del Pueblo (02-01) Online Edition Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit ****************************************************************** People's Tribune/Tribuno del Pueblo (Online Edition) Vol. 28 No. 2/ February, 2001 P.O. Box 3524, Chicago, IL 60654 http://www.lrna.org ****************************************************************** +----------------------------------------------------------------+ The PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE/TRIBUNO DEL PUEBLO is available on the World Wide Web at http://www.lrna.org +----------------------------------------------------------------+ INDEX to the PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE/TRIBUNO DEL PUEBLO (Online Edition) Vol. 28 No. 2/ February, 2001 Editorial 1. IT'S STILL THE ECONOMY News and Features 2. NEW PRESIDENT, SAME SYSTEM: TIME TO DECLARE OUR INDEPENDENCE 3. GLOBALIZATION'S RELENTLESS MARCH -- POWER GRAB IN CALIFORNIA 4. AFRICAN AMERICANS ARE THE KEY TO DEMOCRACY FOR ALL 5. THE STRUGGLE IS NOT OVER 6. STRONG REVOLUTIONARY VOICES PASS ON, BUT ARE NEVER SILENCED -- THE LEGACY OF MANAZAR GAMBOA 7. KWRU STATEMENT ON INAUGURATION DAY PROTEST 8. FROM RESEARCH TO SOCIAL ACTION 9. GOVERNOR TOMMY THOMPSON OMINOUS CHOICE FOR THE CABINET: VICTIMS SPEAK OUT ON WISCONSIN GOVERNOR'S BLOATED, HEARTLESS BUREAUCRACY Spirit of the Revolution 10. THE ECUMENICAL SPIRIT Music/Poetry/Art 11. 'NATURE'S WAY': A STORY FROM DREAMERSPOINT Announcements, Events, etc. 12. SPEAKERS FOR A NEW AMERICA PRESENTS WOMEN'S HISTORY MONTH, 2001 [To subscribe to the online edition, send a message to pt- dist@noc.org with "Subscribe" in the subject line.] ****************************************************************** We encourage reproduction and use of all articles except those copyrighted. Please credit the PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE/TRIBUNO DEL PUEBLO. The PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE/TRIBUNO DEL PUEBLO depends on donations from its readers -- your generosity is appreciated. For free electronic subscription, send a message to pt-dist@noc.org with "Subscribe" in the subject line. For electronic subscription problems, e-mail pt-admin@noc.org. ****************************************************************** ****************************************************************** 1. EDITORIAL: IT'S STILL THE ECONOMY Don't be too distracted by the ascension of George W. into the White House, and don't look for miracles to save us. What happens to America from here on out has little to do with the policy wonks or the president. This is not about individuals, no matter how detestable. What is being signaled right now is a major downturn in the world's economy. Start with a huge drop in demand for personal computers and, "like a snowball rolling down the side of a snow- covered hill," to quote the song by Smokey Robinson, we got big problems. The great American consumer upon whom all the world has depended to buy, buy, buy the Toyotas, the DVDs, the Super Nintendos, is suddenly having trouble making ends meet. In debt over his or her head with zero savings and now facing layoffs, he or she is not in a spending mood. There are real reasons for caution. Very big companies like Microsoft, Gateway, and Hewlett Packard are signaling earnings way off expectations. Most major companies have to register a 15 percent earnings ratio to be considered robust and the earnings that are coming in are in the range of zero to 4 percent at best, negative at worst. Now factor in layoffs. In Chicago alone, Motorola, Brach's Candy, and Montgomery Ward (a 125-year-old company that is closing) have announced layoffs of over 5,000 employees. These workers will not retrain and get good jobs in the service or computer industry because now those folks are being laid off too -- by the thousands. Dot-coms are closing by the hundreds, sending well-trained tech workers to the unemployment line. The whole picture cannot be appreciated unless we look at the crisis with electricity in California, or the Midwest gas-bill crisis, where giant utilities are trying to extort their earnings out of a depleted populace. Well, you get the beginning of the not-so-pretty picture. Business Week magazine says the picture is just starting to emerge. As one analyst put it, "We haven't really yet looked into the abyss." The new class of disenfranchised, whether working or not, has little but a hope and a prayer standing between them and the forces that will grind them up. Fifty million people in the world are in real SLAVERY and the prospect for a decent life for the billions of people in poverty is not much better. Revolutionaries today are addressing an essential and new contradiction: We live in a world where abundance and joy are technologically possible, but where the continuation of a capitalist economic system guarantees only misery and want. Leadership consists of providing correct answers to these problems. Capitalism is out of answers. We urge revolutionaries everywhere to redouble their efforts to deepen the analysis of the crisis facing us and to build a large propaganda apparatus to get this understanding to the people. Develop answers and strategies which can liberate us. Use the People's Tribune and other media to spread the word and realize this noble work is why you became a revolutionary in the first place! ****************************************************************** 2. NEW PRESIDENT, SAME SYSTEM: TIME TO DECLARE OUR INDEPENDENCE General Electric: 70,000 job cuts. Daimler Chrysler: 21,000. Lucent: 16,000. Motorola: nearly 5,400. LTV Corp.: Chapter 11 and 5,000 jobs lost. The announcements from corporate America keep flooding in daily. We're sinking into a recession, and perhaps worse. "This economy is being balanced on the backs of U.S. manufacturing workers and their families," declared Tom Buffenbarger, president of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers. The brunt of this downturn is being borne the most in the industrial towns, but with a different wrinkle this time. A generation ago, it was in the major manufacturing centers such as Chicago, Detroit and Pittsburgh. Now the spotlight is on America's middle-sized cities and small towns. Places such as Harvard, Illinois -- where Motorola is closing -- or any of the communities where JC Penney closed 45 stores in 2000 and will close another 50 in 2001. The closing of LTV steel is like a giant rock hitting the water in Cleveland, for instance. Forty thousand other jobs were dependent on LTV's own 5,000 jobs, said Michael Polensek, president of the city council. The company accounted for as much as $2 billion in the local economy, he explained. Where will all those jobless people go? "Not everybody can work for Microsoft or on Wall Street. We need to have manufacturing jobs," Polensek told the press. Good point. As President Bush enters the White House, this is the situation that the vast majority of Americans -- those who have to work for a living, who are deep in debt and barely hanging on, or who are homeless and fighting daily for their lives -- are facing. It is the direct result of the capitalists' replacing of humans with robots in the production of society's wealth. What all these people have in common is that they belong to a common social class. This class is constantly growing and is being shut out of an economy dominated by a tiny minority of millionaires and billionaires who have the power to put one of their two men in the Oval Office, as we all saw in late 2000. The wealthy understand that widespread social discontent will follow the economic downturn. As it does, they will prepare for it by intensifying the power of the police, not only in the biggest cities, but in the smallest towns. This response by the ruling class proves we cannot rely on them; they are our enemies. What's more, it's a fate we don't need to accept. More than ever, these times call for working and unemployed Americans to declare their political independence from the rich man's parties, which have abandoned us, and to organize and win our own victories. This calls for moving beyond the strategy of fighting just the right wing. Doing that will only make our class further dependent on the Democrats and thus on the system that oppresses us. Working and unemployed people, all those who are being abandoned by this system that the Republicans and the Democrats defend, must unite and stand on their own. Our class has to promote our own leaders and build our own party. The more the new technology emerges, the more possibilities for abundance these tools promise, the more absurd and outrageous it is that poverty should persist even one more day. It makes all the difference who holds these new tools. If it's the capitalists, then they use the tools to replace human labor in production, thus cutting off humans from the money they need to buy their survival. No money, no food, no clothing, no home, no nothing. If we the majority seize this technology, we not only win our survival, we win our individual and collective freedom. We'll be free from poverty, free from dog-eat-dog selfishness. We leave forever a world where people live for money and enter a world where we live truly for each other. We already have the numbers. We are millions and billions of hearts and minds. Let us unite and organize to get the power to finally make our ancient visions, hopes and dreams of a new and cooperative society, based on the wealth-creating technology, a reality everywhere in America and the world. ****************************************************************** 3. GLOBALIZATION'S RELENTLESS MARCH -- POWER GRAB IN CALIFORNIA By Steven Miller This past holiday season, suddenly, out of the blue, Californians were confronted with energy emergencies, threats of rolling blackouts, public utilities claiming they would be bankrupt in two weeks and threats of 300 percent increases in electric bills. Wall Street chimed in, claiming that consumers must immediately bail out the $8 billion in losses claimed by Pacific Gas and Electric and Edison. This step was essential, they claimed, if electricity across the country is to be deregulated. How could an electrical system that has been functioning without trouble for decades suddenly be on the verge of collapse? California's power grab is just a local replay of what has been happening globally from Indonesia to England. Global capital is buying up and reorganizing the world's electrical grids to produce what corporations are designed to produce -- profits, not electricity. When, oh when, has deregulation and the so-called "free market" (which is anything but free) ever led to lower costs? Look at what a great job the "free market" has done with health care. It has created HMO monsters that openly defend their right to make a profit by denying medical care. Don't look now, but utility deregulation is coming to a community near you. Utilities first began crying for deregulation in 1996. To "become competitive" they demanded that the state legislature subsidize their bad debts. This was Bailout No. 1. The deal had three main elements: First, the legislature froze electrical rates for four years at 50 percent above the national rate. This led to a transfer of $17 billion from consumers to Edison alone. Once the debts were paid off, the rate freeze would end and consumers would get a 20 percent rate reduction. Now the utilities are demanding Bailout No. 2 -- an end to the rate freeze. The Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights estimates that this would increase a $50 monthly bill to over $600 if current peak times became regular. Hidden behind all the hysterical ranting about bankruptcy is the fact that Pacific Gas and Electric used deregulation to set up a holding company. PG&E Company may be going broke (it buys electricity on the "free market," to be sold to customers), but PG&E Corporation made $753 million in the first three quarters last year, up by 40 percent from 1999. PG&E Corporation sells electricity to the market, and in fact, supplies about 65 percent of PG&E Company's electricity. Second, the state's major utilities had to sell off all power generators, including dams, on the open market. For the first time, these corporations could be out-of-state. Now, much of the state's electrical capacity is controlled by Duke Power, based in North Carolina. This is a critical element to global capitalism's schemes and is strikingly similar to how things work in Liberia or any other impoverished country. For global capitalism, food supplies, infrastructure, water -- anything at all -- are simply assets to be sold or leveraged for profits. Bank of America -- the "California bank" -- is owned by a holding company in North Carolina, and Pacific Bell, the telephone provider, is owned by SBC Company, located in Dallas. Third, deregulation forced the large utility companies to sell electricity to the newly created Power Exchange -- in effect, a market to buy and sell power on an hourly basis. This is a device to ensure national speculation on electricity. Suddenly power brokers, traders and marketers came out of the woodwork. Gene Ackerman, executive director of the Western Power Trading Forum, exulted, "This is legitimized gambling!" The old, stable system of electricity was good at producing power, but there were rules blocking manipulating it for profit. The middlemen can now buy and sell electrical power just like any other commodity. A broker can buy a block of electrical power today and speculate on whether the price will go up six months or six hours from now. This is called "gaming the market." Speculators will buy a block of electricity today that will be produced next September. This electricity will be bought, sold or traded many times before the electricity is produced. If the price goes higher than what was paid --let's say, on April 20 -- then it can be sold at a profit, even though the electricity hasn't been produced yet. Now that the market is deregulated, it is legal to withhold electricity from the market to create scarcity and drive up its price. In an era where power is abundant, it cannot be made profitable unless artificial tricks are used to impose scarcity. Since deregulation effectively began in 1998, the wholesale cost of electricity has increased by 3,900 percent. Power-supplier profits are up by as much as 500 percent! Kenneth Lay of Enron Corp., an energy-marketing corporation, calls this "record-setting levels of profitability." Welcome to the wonderful world of the polarization of wealth. Interestingly, California still has many small municipally owned utilities that are not demanding cost increases. They are still regulated, where planning is still subordinate to the public interest rather than private profit. Many of these, including Los Angeles, now sell electricity back to the power grid at a profit and are talking about cutting rates!! This bounty shows the real lie behind deregulation. Electricity -- like food, housing and most things that humanity applies its creativity and scientific thinking toward -- is abundant, not scarce. If all the bailout money for the utilities had been put instead into solar panels for homes, people would have tiny electric bills. But for capitalism, economics means the management of scarcity -- schemes to create artificial shortages, since every child knows that then prices can be increased. Every electron that flows to your house is bought, sold and speculated on numerous times. This configuration of the electrical grid for profit is what leads to interruptions and "scarcities." It doesn't take a rocket scientist, or even a utility executive, to figure out the impact of these incredible costs on poor families. Poor people and people on fixed incomes will be particularly endangered. Money intended for food or medicine will instead go for heat to stay warm. Who's going to bail them out? Rolling blackouts will cause shutdowns that will threaten anyone who needs energy to live. It is predictable that these cutbacks will lead to deaths. Once again capitalism defends the morality of corporate murder. What ever happened to good old fashioned "family values?" California should certainly seize the large utilities to protect public health and safety and convert them to a publicly owned, nonprofit system. One hundred years ago, when electrical grids were just beginning, there was broad public recognition that energy was too important to be privately owned. Every state formed public utility commissions to assert public authority over electrical prices and guarantee planning in the public interest. Now its time to finish the job. Corporations don't deserve to own the tools that society depends on. Globalization of the world economy is inevitable. The question we all face is whether it will be organized to extend the dominion of corporations or whether we choose a world where society's abundance is planned for the benefit of all. [All quotes are from the Los Angeles Times, Dec. 22, 2000. To find out more about how to fight the power grab, see the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights' Web site at www.consumerwatchdog.org or The Utility Regulation Network at www.turn.org.] [The author is available to speak through Speakers for a New America. Call 800-691-6888, or e-mail speakers@noc.org.] ****************************************************************** 4. AFRICAN AMERICANS ARE THE KEY TO DEMOCRACY FOR ALL By Nelson Peery The Supreme Court's appointing George W. Bush as president of the United States threw the Democratic Party and the independent political organizations into an uproar. President Clinton stated that if all the ballots had been counted, Al Gore would have been elected. The majority of Americans, it seems, had no idea that people could be turned away from polling places or not have their ballots counted. Few African Americans were shocked by the accusations of fraud. In 2000 as in 1900, fraud and denial of the ballot to African Americans is key to the political control of white Americans. Never has this been more clearly demonstrated than in the recent election. Attacking the problem of electoral fraud directly and not dealing with its historic foundation of racism will not work. The politics of African American equality and freedom are changing very rapidly. As one philosopher observed, the more things change, the more they remain the same. Bush nominated African Americans to three key posts, including the all-important secretary of state. While some are quick to declare that blacks have arrived at "the promised land," many are quick to shout "window dressing" or "Uncle Tom!" Both sides are wrong. The African American designees have several things in common. They are exceptionally well- educated, qualified, wealthy and dangerously reactionary. Incidentally, they are black. What has changed is that the upper stratum of African Americans has joined the upper stratum of white Americans to defend their new wealth and privilege. What hasn't changed is the legacy of nearly 400 years of discrimination and racial oppression. That legacy chains the majority of African Americans to a life of dependency and poverty. The civil rights movement that opened doors for the black bourgeoisie did little for the African Americans in the new class of poor. President Clinton made an art of elevating the black bourgeoisie while pushing the black poor, and consequently all the poor, deeper into the ditch of poverty. In November 2000, that legacy meant a majority of Americans was denied its electoral right. Every day, that legacy means that the American poor of all colors are unable to break out of poverty. How can this legacy be abolished? The laws upholding segregation and discrimination are gone, but the reality persists because no law written by politicians can overturn the basic principles of the economic system. In order to change the economic principles that keep us politically impotent, we have to change the system. The path to changing that system is to understand that every act of discrimination against African Americans is an attack on the rights and aspirations of all of America's poor. ****************************************************************** 5. THE STRUGGLE IS NOT OVER By Allen Harris Contrary to what the ruling class has been claiming in recent years, the struggle for color equality is not over. Hiding behind nonwhite conservative academics -- often employed in "white" institutions -- the enemies of the struggle attack the hard-won victories achieved by the civil rights movements of the 20th century, especially in higher education. Essentially, they claim that color discrimination is gone and that affirmative-action programs guaranteeing access to nonwhites should end. The ruling class uses these nonwhite conservatives to wage ideological war not only on affirmative action, but on the "civil rights establishment" and on the very idea that nonwhites face any discrimination in today's America. We don't want to give these enemies a forum here for all of their arguments. It's enough to say that we still live under a system where access to education, employment and promotion at all levels is necessary for an individual's economic advancement. It still matters who gets an education and who doesn't. It matters who gets hired and who doesn't. It matters who gets promoted and who doesn't -- and why. Everybody knows that integration has replaced segregation in all walks of American life. But integration has not ended color discrimination by a ruling class of super-rich that still holds the political power in this country to discriminate, to sow color divisions among the many in order to keep the few on top. The rulers still have the power to make the playing field uneven, and there's no hiding it. Rosa Parks still must resist being moved to the back of today's bus, even if that bus has Oprah's picture on the side. What has been integrated are only America's social classes, from top to bottom. These multicolored classes are growing farther apart economically and more hostile socially. The color line of the 20th century is giving way to the class line of the 21st. A movement for reform broke the 20th century color line. Only a complete change in the economic system can break the class line. The struggle for color equality is as old as America. The struggles during the entire 20th century by African Americans, Latinos, Asians and Native Americans against discrimination resulted in some of the greatest social reforms in this nation's history. Those gains, those victories must be defended, not attacked. Without them it is impossible for us -- individually and collectively -- to obtain for our children what past generations sacrificed so much to obtain for us. Those victories keep us that much further ahead on the road to the great final goal: a new America where the power of a few to oppress the many is abolished forever. ****************************************************************** 6. STRONG REVOLUTIONARY VOICES PASS ON, BUT ARE NEVER SILENCED -- THE LEGACY OF MANAZAR GAMBOA By Luis J. Rodriguez LONG BEACH, Calif. -- One of the country's leading voices against injustice and poverty -- and a tireless worker for prisoners and the power of poetry and art -- has passed on. Manual "Manazar" Gamboa succumbed on December 13, 2000 to complications from liver and heart failure. He was 66. A convict turned poet, Manazar spent the last two decades conducting workshops in prisons, juvenile facilities, schools, and community centers. I worked with Manazar in the early 1980s. We ran the L.A. Latino Writers Association (LALWA) as well as its Barrio Writers Workshops and a reading series at Self-Help Graphics in East L.A. We also published and edited several issues of ChismeArte magazine, a literary and art publication. In addition, I was on the board of Concilio de Arte Popular when Manazar was its director, and a founder/associate of Galeria Ocaso, which Manazar established in Echo Park. For a time, I lived next to him in a little room off his apartment in Echo Park. I was there during the time his daughter Olmeca Sol was born, and for the first years of her life. Manazar was one of the city's leading Chicano poets. He was also one of my mentors. I met him at a Barrio Writers Workshop when LALWA had its offices in an old downtown Broadway building. I could relate to him as a veterano, a shaman of Chicano barrio life and art. It was Manazar who also took me to Chino prison to participate in the prison workshops there that eventually led to my own work among prisoners and juvenile offenders over the past two decades. "Manazar era un vato de toda madre." In the street vernacular of the barrio world, he was both real and transcendent. He was a man who braved the barrio life of heroin and prison -- yet he was also able to find the art, the soul, the immensity and complexity of this life. He stepped into the paths I was trying to enter. He was an important guide to what I was trying to do with my own literature. According to the Los Angeles Times, Manazar directed more than 2,500 writing workshops for youths in the Los Angeles County juvenile-justice system. For 13 years, he also conducted workshops for prisoners at state correctional facilities such as Chino and Frontera with the L.A. Theater Works, a nonprofit organization based in Venice, California. After I left for Chicago in 1985, Manazar continued his work with art and poetry classes. Since 1989, he was artistic director at the Homeland Neighborhood Cultural Center in Long Beach, where he directed theater and literary reading projects and led writing workshops for adults and children. Manazar was very close to his indigenous Chicano heritage, including his strong Apache ties. It was through his connections that I first learned of the revival of the Sundance among Native peoples in this country and of the Mexika indigenous traditions out of Mexico. As a child, Manazar's family of 12 children worked the crops throughout the San Fernando and Central valleys in California. The family eventually settled in the Chavez Ravine barrio in Elysian Park, where Dodger Stadium is presently situated. In schools he was put down for only speaking Spanish, as many Chicanos were. He eventually turned to stealing and selling weed to survive. Manazar was especially affected by the destruction of Chavez Ravine in 1950, one of the most strongly contested and unjust removals of poor people in the country. While some left the neighborhood after being told by the government to leave, others fought to the end, including with gunfire. Eventually with bulldozers and armed men, the poor shanties and dirt-road streets were razed. Chicanos did not forget the Battle of Chavez Ravine; for decades they refused to go to Dodger Stadium in any significant numbers. Only in the 1980s when the Dodgers recruited Mexican pitching sensation Fernando Valenzuela did this begin to change (today the stadium is full of Chicanos and Mexicanos). But the trauma of this uprooting always informed Manazar's anger and work. In 1954, Manazar faced his first prison term. He was 20 years old. Over the next 23 years, he would spend 17 years behind bars at San Quentin, Folsom, and Soledad. As did many barrio youth of the time, he became a heroin addict. One of the women he loved died in his arms of a heroin overdose in the early 1970s. Soon after he went on a robbery spree and ended up back in prison. But this time while incarcerated, Manazar began to read -- a love that was denied him in his few years of formal schooling. Reportedly he read everything he could get a hold of, including Keats, Shelley, Coleridge, and Blake. Soon he was reading Shakespeare. Despite the foreign-looking Elizabethan English, he studied the plays with an Oxford Universal Dictionary and began to unlock the magic of the words. While still in prison, Manazar sent out many of his first poems. After close to 40 tries, he was eventually published. The editor, a Brazilian professor at the University of Colorado, was the one who gave him the name "Manazar." In 1977, Manazar was released from prison and became active in the L.A. poetry scene. From 1977-1981, he worked for Beyond Baroque, where he started the first cross-cultural reading series and edited the magazine, Obras. Manazar published some of my first literary pieces in that publication. Manazar died at a Long Beach hospice. I heard about his situation barely a week before from poet Ruben Martinez. I called Manazar right away. I said I would see him by the end of the week. Manazar managed to suggest I come Monday or Tuesday of the following week. I called the hospice on Monday to see when it would be a good time to visit; they said he was walking around and generally well around lunchtime. I thought I would see him within the next two days. On Wednesday, the day I had planned to drive to Long Beach, Ruben called me to say he had passed away. I felt terribly saddened that I couldn't see my friend, a genuine warrior. He was a man of words and a man close to the barrio and the heart of this great community. Someday, his work and legacy will have its place; it's too bad, like many of our best artists that this will happen now that he's gone. But for those of us who knew Manazar, who worked with him and were taught by him, he remains one of the most important writers, organizers, activists, and visionaries this country has produced. Descansa en paz, carnal. ****************************************************************** 7. KWRU STATEMENT ON INAUGURATION DAY PROTEST [Editor's note: This statement was issued by The Kensington Welfare Rights Union about their protest in Washington, D.C. against the inauguration of George W. Bush.] Over 100 members of KWRU and our supporters gathered at 6 a.m. at the KWRU office in North Philadelphia this morning. Filling two buses, we spent our trip participating in an Economic Human Rights School. We taught our newer members and supporters about the rights guaranteed to us all by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, including the rights to housing, jobs at living wages, and health care. We traveled to D.C. to protest the inauguration of George W. Bush and his nomination of Tommy Thompson to head the Department of Health and Human Services. We want the world to know that George W. Bush and Tommy Thompson are human-rights violators. Their agenda is to privatize what's left of welfare and put it in the hands of companies like Lockheed Martin, so they can profit off the backs of the poor. All of the roads around the Mall had been closed. The buses took us as close as they could to our destination. We then walked through 10 blocks of deserted streets in the heart of the capital. The only people on the street were military police in combat fatigues at each corner. The only sounds were distant sirens and the hum of helicopters, hovering motionless nearby. We started our march at the Organization of American States, where we have filed a petition charging that the 1996 welfare reform law is a violation of basic economic human rights. We marched through the streets, lifting our voices in chants and songs in the freezing rain. We came upon the throngs of Republican faithful, there to witness the inauguration. We were greeted with jeers, taunts, and shocked looks. We ended our march at the Department of Health and Human Services, where we set up a tent city, called Bushville 2001. We carried two large American flags as well as our signs and banners. We sat down on the wet ground that we covered with plastic sheets and sang our freedom songs. What the media didn't report was that there were literally tens of thousands of other protesters there. We could hear their chants from many blocks away. With chants like "Hey Hey, Ho Ho, Tommy Thompson has got to go!," and "What do we want? Human Rights! When do we want them? Now!," we attempted to enter the Health and Human Services building to deliver our grievances in person. We were literally pushed out the door by the police inside. We stayed outside, blocking entrance to the building, and announced that we will be back, that so long as children are going without basic nutrition and mothers are forced to live without homes in the richest country in the world, we will continue to press our cause for economic human rights in America. The KWRU dedicates this day's actions to the memory of Bob Kasen, on his birthday. The memory of this great leader of the labor movement and friend of the poor lives on. ****************************************************************** 8. FROM RESEARCH TO SOCIAL ACTION By Tom Hirschl [Editor's note: The author is a professor of rural sociology at Cornell University.] Like many Americans in the early 1980s, the sight of homeless people in the streets and parks of our nation's largest cities alarmed me. Why had this hideous deprivation appeared? Who are the homeless, and how did they become homeless? As a new Assistant Professor of Sociology, I decided to do my part by finding answers to these questions. My goal was to research the causes of homelessness, given my belief that a problem can be successfully tackled only when its root cause is well understood. By the early 1990s, my own work plus the work of others pointed to a clear and logical system of causality. I changed my research focus and took up a program of teaching and social action. The rest of this article describes the evolution of my thinking, and the particulars about how I developed the new approach. What is interesting about homelessness is that both poverty and affluence play significant causative roles. It is well established that the social safety net in the United States is badly frayed in comparison to other wealthy countries. We spend far less on family support and public housing, and our public medical system denies access to many. This national characteristic was accentuated by the recent "welfare reform" bill that effectively cut the rolls in half while the poverty rate did not decline, and there was no appreciable wage gain within the unskilled work force. The reorganization of cities around affluent markets is no less responsible for the surge of homelessness. Low-cost housing is constantly pushed aside by the gentrification of neighborhoods, the explosion of electronic commerce, the remaking of downtown's as sports/convention centers, and the orientation of shops around high-end consumption. Nowhere is this more evident than in Northern California where the expansion of Silicon Valley is accelerating the gentrification of the south bay and San Francisco, and moving aggressively into once blue-collar Oakland. These twin trends are cheered on by city hall. From Rudy Guiliani's sweeping the homeless out of mid-Manhattan, to Jerry Brown's implementation of an advanced fiber optic network in Oakland, the message seems clear: Our cities have no use for poor people. As urban rental prices escalate and unskilled wages stagnate, the poor are pushed out, locked out and written off. Homelessness is the logical outcome. The solution to homelessness is equally logical: make the government responsible for the well-being of its people. Yet policies that ensure an adequate supply of affordable housing, effective public health, and a living wage are beyond the pale of current policy discussions. The popular idea that private charity and the nonprofit sector can replace the government is a smoke screen for policies that favor the rich. All of this suggests to me that ending homelessness cannot be accomplished by winning one out of various policy options, but rather by independent political action. Middle-class incremental policies go nowhere within this configuration of politics and society. New social forces are needed to shake up the entire structure of a society that allows wealth and poverty to mature side by side. When a physician becomes convinced that a particular drug saves lives, he/she is no longer free to conduct controlled experiments on the drug because doing so is a death sentence for the control group. My situation is similar to this physician. Having determined the cause of homelessness, ethical considerations demanded that I move into research and teaching on ending homelessness. With these thoughts I made contact with the Kensington Welfare Rights Union (KWRU) in Philadelphia, a contact point for the broader Poor Peoples' Economic Human Rights Campaign (PPEHRC). The PPEHRC is led and directed by organizations of the poor, yet receives support from many sectors of society. KWRU Director Cheri Honkala is a formerly homeless mother who, along with a "war council" of poor and homeless members, sets basic policy. But the PPEHRC is structured so that college students and others play important roles. From maintaining a PPEHRC presence on the Internet, to administration, and neighborhood organizing, many have given their time and talents. Because my teaching emphasizes basic principles about how to change society, I looked to the PPEHRC to provide living examples. So far, so good. My students and I have participated in PPEHRC marches and workshops held up and down the East Coast, and stayed informed via the Internet. Overall the experience has been positive, and sometimes downright inspiring. The PPEHRC's new Internet-based "University of the Poor" affords opportunities for others to learn their ideas and techniques, to join the struggle of the poor against poverty. From my perspective, this is an important process to research and teach about, as well as to support and engage. ****************************************************************** 9. GOVERNOR TOMMY THOMPSON OMINOUS CHOICE FOR THE CABINET Victims speak out on Wisconsin governor's bloated, heartless bureaucracy [Editor's note: The Welfare Warriors, a Wisconsin group of public- aid recipients, drafted the letter below to be sent to members of the U.S. Senate, urging them to oppose Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson's nomination to be U.S. secretary of health and human services.] As victims of Tommy Thompson's welfare purge in Wisconsin, we are writing to urge you to oppose the nomination of Tommy Thompson to secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. Thompson's heartless leadership on welfare policies has plunged Wisconsin's low-income communities into insecurity and danger, while actually killing as many as 100 African American babies under one year old. Under Thompson's rule, taxpayers have been forced to finance bloated welfare bureaucracies, massive welfare fraud, and heartless suffering. The Apartment Association of Southeast Wisconsin reports that as many as 3,000 Milwaukee families are evicted each year now, compared to 700 before W2 [Wisconsin's "reformed" welfare program] began. The University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee's Employment and Training Institute researched the reasons for Wisconsin case reductions and found that 42 percent of mothers whose families were removed from W2 are employed by temporary agencies, causing instability and financial hardship. Thirty-three percent of the families removed had no employment income whatsoever, causing horrible suffering among the children and the community. Only 16 percent of the moms removed from welfare actually earn enough for their families to survive!!!! This is not a success. This is a living nightmare. According to Start Smart Milwaukee Report 2000, Milwaukee's infant mortality increased 37 percent in the African American community since W2 began in 1997. That equals an additional 26 Milwaukee babies who have died each year under Wisconsin's harsh welfare policies. Children are dying for several reasons: * W2 denies all cash assistance to pregnant women, forcing a pregnant woman to work until the day she gives birth. Even women restricted to bedrest by a physician are denied cash assistance by Thompson's policies. * W2 requires single mothers to leave their infants 90 days after birth to work full time or perform community service jobs full time. Ninety percent of W2 moms have no automobiles. They must use public transportation, and so they have to take babies, even sick babies, outside in cold or hot weather, from bus to bus early in the morning and late evenings. * W2 harshly sanctions moms who stay home with sick babies, hospitalized babies, etc., often even when a physician states that the sick infant needs the mother's care. * W2 delays authorization of child care, often for many weeks, causing mothers to rely on inadequate caregivers until approved for child care. Perhaps you fear taking a stand against Tommy Thompson because U.S. voters might not care about the suffering endured by poor single mothers and children who need government support. However, the taxpayers do care about the government expenditures for welfare. Under Thompson's regime the welfare costs have skyrocketed despite the miniscule number of families actually receiving any type of support. Although Thompson tries to maintain that his welfare programs are costly because he provides more benefits, this is simply not true. In fact, child care was free before W2 and was provided for both employed moms and post-secondary student moms. Now employed moms and moms on W2 must pay a costly co-payment and student moms are denied child care. Privatization and duplication of services has bloated the welfare budget drastically. In 1986, Wisconsin welfare cost $548 million for 299,700 recipients. After W2, by 1999, Wisconsin welfare cost $589 million for less than 40,000 recipients! (Wisconsin Legislative Fiscal Bureau). What's more, each year the private welfare agencies in Milwaukee keep $33 million in profits -- unrestricted funds -- and $47.2 million in surplus dollars, and the DWD kept another $46.2 million (WLFB). Most of the remaining Wisconsin families on welfare live in Milwaukee, where, despite the huge drop in caseload, all of the Milwaukee County employees and administrators (hundreds) retained their jobs while five new private agencies took over the administration of W2. To justify this shockingly bloated bureaucracy, moms are forced to comply with repeated appointments with both private W2 workers and county workers. This unnecessary overabundance of workers and appointments has caused many families to "voluntarily" opt out of receiving food stamps while employed or disabled. As a consequence, receipt of food stamps has dropped by 40 percent. Only one quarter of eligible poor families in Wisconsin now receive food stamps, and 35,366 families had to seek food from food pantries in 1999, compared to 26,814 in 1995 (Hunger Task Force of Milwaukee). Taxpayers should also know that Thompson's new welfare system is both extremely expensive and lawless. Two private W2 agencies, Maximus and Goodwill, admitted to "improperly spending" (frauding) over half a million welfare dollars ($554,000) on non-welfare projects, including trips to New York and Arizona to secure welfare contracts there, jazz festivals, parties, and logos on fanny packs. Tommy Thompson did not recommend they be criminally prosecuted, nor did he withdraw their lucrative W2 contracts (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel). If Thompson is confirmed as HHS secretary, the nation's taxpayers will eventually be forced to finance massive welfare fraud, bloated welfare bureaucracies and heartless suffering among low-income communities. (All low-income workers suffer when single moms are forced to take any job, anywhere, for any pay.) Please oppose Thompson's nomination. Thank you. If you have any questions, please call us at 414-342-6662. ****************************************************************** 10. SPIRIT OF THE REVOLUTION: THE ECUMENICAL SPIRIT by Leonardo Boff [Editor's note: Leonardo Boff is a laicized Franciscan priest, professor at the State University of Rio de Janeiro, and author of over forty books on liberation theology. This article is a response to the recent Vatican document "Dominus Iesus." This reprint excerpts from the full statement which was translated by Fr. Michael Seifert and which appears online at http://www. uca.edu.ni/koinonia/relat/233e.htm. It was also reprinted in the National Catholic Reporter, November 24, 2000.] Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger is not teaching the essence of Christianity. Without the essential, none of the arguments of the document can be sustained. Two items are most serious: he leaves aside the law of love and he has no place for the decisive importance of the poor. For Jesus, as we find in the entire New Testament, love is all (Matthew 22:38-39), for God is love (1 John 4:8, 16), and only love can save (Matthew 25: 34-47), a love that must be unconditional (Matthew 5:44). None of this is found in the cardinal's document. Worse yet is the fact that there is no mention of the poor. For Jesus and the New Testament, the poor are not just one theme among many. The poor are the starting point where one begins to understand the gospel as the good news of liberation. The poor stand as the final criteria of salvation or damnation. It is useless to belong to the Roman Catholic Church, to have all the means of salvation, to submit yourself heart and mind to the hierarchical system, to take unto yourself all revealed truths, unless you have love, for without love, you are nothing (1 Corinthians 15:2). If we have no love for the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the refugee and the prisoner, no one -- not me, not Ratzinger -- can hear the words of the Beatitudes: "Come to me, blessed of my Father, take possession of the Kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world" (Matthew 25:34), because "when you do this to one of these least ones, you did this to me" (Matthew 25:45). The question of the poor is so essential to the tradition of Jesus that when Paul went to verify his doctrine before the apostles in Jerusalem, these demanded of him the care of the poor (Galatians 2:10). The theological tradition of the church has always correctly argued that where Christ is, there too is the church. Christ is in the poor; thus the church must also be in the poor. Not only in the poor who happen to be good workers, but also purely and completely in those people who are simply poor. There is a form of negation of the living God that only ecclesiastics can pull off -- by speaking of God, of God's revelation and of God's grace, but without showing any sort of compassion for the poor and wretched. These are not speaking of the God of Jesus who did in fact hear the cry of the oppressed, and who came down to save them, but of an ecclesiastic fetish designed by human beings in their thirst for power. We are moving toward a single world society. This world society has the face of the Third World, because 4 billion people -- of a total of 6 billion, according to the data of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund -- live beneath the level of poverty. Who is to wipe the tears of these millions of victims? Who will hear the cry that rises up from this wounded earth, from the hungry and marginalized tribes of the earth? This document has no ears for such tribulation. And the one who deafens himself before the cry of the oppressed can have nothing to say of God, nothing to say in the name of God. This document closes out the second millennium with a kind of Christianity that should not be prolonged out of respect for the mystery of God who reveals God's self in history, out of love for Jesus Christ, whose meaning and message were meant for all and were never meant to diminish or exclude anyone, out of respect for the other Christian churches who keep alive the memory of Jesus, and out of respect for the other religions and spiritualities by means of which God has visited salvation and grace upon all human beings. In the new millennium, there will come forth a new Catholic ecumenicism like that being developed in the hierarchy by those who have been converted to the gospel idea of service and promotion of the faith, and in Catholic and Christian communities with an ecumenical spirit founded in the mystery of a living encounter with the spirit and with the resurrected one, at the service of men and women, beginning with the most poor and most miserable, in communion with and in dialogue with others who live out the spiritual dimension of human existence. It is the mission of each and every one of us to revive and promote the sacred call of the Divine and Mystical that burns within each and every human heart as well as in the entire universe. Without this sacred call, we will not save life, we will not be able to guarantee a hopeful future, neither for the human family nor for our common home, the Earth. ****************************************************************** 11. 'NATURE'S WAY': A STORY FROM DREAMERSPOINT by Leslie Willis Part I -- To Splatts "Please place your hand on the screen. Thank you, Renee ... (purr) ... I am sorry but access beyond City Limits is denied. Would you like to speak to an attendant?" This was routine and happened every time I tried to cross the city line to visit my people in Shanty Town (or "Splatts" as the natives there affectionately refer to the unpaved village with no shields overhead to protect it from the elements). "I cannot hear your reply, Renee." "That's cause I ain't said nothing yet, you moron." "I am sorry you are having difficulty, Renee. Please limit your reply to 'yes or no' and speak directly into the interface." "Yes - Yes - Yes." Nothing I like more than talking to invisible assholes. It's always a long, drawn-out affair answering all the questions. And in the end, it depends on the whim of an attendant whether I can see my mother or not. I have used the pull of my "benefactor" before, but since I'd refused the last cosmetic surgical procedure he wanted performed on me, my status as his dependent was up in the air. I'd already been through several transformations to keep him happy -- new face, boobs, fat sucked out here and put in there. I was currently sporting what he called the Egyptian Queen look (long, slanted eyebrows, straight nose.) But they hadn't even got a chance to finish the Egyptian look and get rid of the pout in my mouth (left over from last year's "French Maid") and he decides he wants me turned into a little boy. Once I heard the details of what they were going to do to me, I just couldn't go through with it. But I know the routine well at City Limits and place my bags in the receptacle outside the door and presto it opens. Inside, the gray, carpeted walls just slope to form seating. They have nothing you can throw (except maybe your fists) in here. This (I have been told) is how prisons are constructed. The rooms are molded according to their function with no movable parts. I end up in another little gray room with a table that wells up out of the floor and has grown a screen and a few other devices. The air freshener is so strong, my nose itches. "Well, Renee, I have to ask, why can't you provide a place for your mother in the city?" "She doesn't want to move," I told this fat-faced man with a mouth that slacked down on one side into a leer. I bet he can't get that fixed, I thought, probably keeps coming back. "I see. What does she think about you being a prostitute?" If his mouth slacked any more he'd be drooling. "I am not a prostitute, sir." "Excuse me then, hostess. Well, to tell the truth Renee, in this office we read hostess as whore." He was drooling now. "Sir, I just want to visit my mother. I can't change what I do for a living, can you?" "Don't get your britches in an uproar." He looked at me like he doubted I owned a pair. Well you can guess the rest. I got through the gates, but not until he'd gotten past those of a lifeless Egyptian Queen. I walked the two miles to Splatts, letting the cool breeze blow the now-sour air freshener stench off of me. I always come this way, avoiding the road, and wandering up over the hill and down this long, sloping grass corridor. I avoid the ravines, where some pretty bad actors can hide out, but I feel freer strolling through this meadow, moving steadily away from that clammy oppressiveness than anyplace else I've ever been. People in Splatts are so hard up, most people wouldn't willingly pay the price for this kind of freedom. Besides, even though they're far away from the God-awful bureaucracy of the city, they're not free from interference. Beside the occasional raid by the police (that can be every bit as bad as any pogrom ever was), every pervert and low-life criminal thinks Splatts is a playground. At least they used too. Now that people are organized to protect themselves, they're not preyed upon as much. But when I was 12, I was snatched up by Donny (my so-called benefactor) who promised me a life free from want. Six years later, you see where it's got me. "Baby, my baby." My Mom always does a double take on me, tries to pretend she didn't have trouble recognizing me, then she starts crying and calling me her baby. "Stop crying, Mom, I'm here, and I brought goodies with me." Not that I don't want her to hug me, but I always feel so bad when we first meet, that I have to pull away. "Look at the stuff I brought, Mom. I was almost able to get everything on your list." We went through the food, medicine and bandages. And I even surprised her, when I pulled out a soft leather bag full of the electronic paraphernalia she'd requested. "Oh, this is great, Renee, you don't know how vital this is to us." She was hugging me again. My older sister Spring came over with her newborn baby and we sat outside the shack watching Mom make biscuits with the bag of flour I brought, in a contraption she called a wood-burning stove. Both Spring and her baby looked pale and a little sickly, but she was really glad to see me and kept kissing me on the cheek. This was when Anne dropped by to see me, which turned out to be more than a social call. "You know we're trying to organize support in the city for the revolutionary movement," she told me between bites of biscuit. "We have to rely on people who live in the city and we wondered if you could help us with this task." This was how it started for me and it changed my life. It definitely made it more dangerous, but now I didn't just have to grit and bear it, I had a different future to work for. Maybe it wouldn't be mine, but the thought that it would be someone's almost made it my own. Underground Journal entry, July 4, 20__ Part II -- To Joy July 15, 30__ Dear (melon sweet) Arvy, Even though it's only been a week, I am aching for you to be snug against me. And I want only you to bring me the sigh of relief I crave. But I must stop this train of thought right now as my head is spinning and I may faint. Hee-hee-hee. You will be happy to hear that my affection and appreciation of you has lately been enhanced by contrast with the content of my history studies. You know that my Aunt and I continue to wade through the Underground Journals. Last night, I was reading an entry about Renee (excerpt included). The poor thing lived such a life of torment. She did find a way out (so to speak) by becoming involved in the fight for a better future. When I think of us, I realize what a debt we owe to her and the others who could only dream of our joy. It's hard to believe what was done to her, forced to endure mutilation and savage abuse for her daily bread and a chance to help those who truly loved her. You know what a history buff I am, but sometimes it actually sickens me to read about the atrocities committed against nature -- I have to move back and ask why. Why? The answer I have been in the process of formulating is that such perversion of human relationships was rooted in the exploitative conditions that were the backbone of the economy. At some point in our primitive development it might have been "natural" to capture or bully another human being into doing your bidding. When survival of the species required much physical exertion and scarcity required sacrifice -- it may have been the natural way, somewhat like creatures in the wild today. However it came into being, or was part of our makeup in those primitive years of roaming the African plains, this savageness can't compare to the incredible cruelty that existed as "civilization" began to develop with exploitation very much intact. In fact, it took on all the trappings of civilization: legal writs, religious tenets, cultural mores, etc. The human spirit, the wellspring of pleasure, was so severely bent and confused as to be unrecognizable to us today as "love." And yet all throughout those years, many still dreamed of natural love and nurtured it, like tiny sprouts in the desert, watered, I'm sure, by their tears. If only they could be with us here today, where we do not own each other, or need to pay each other for anything. Like flowers in a garden, we are free to blossom amongst one another and enjoy our day in the sun. Arvy, I am so grateful that our love has nothing to do with the want of things -- only the desire in our hearts and the joy we feel in each other's arms. Until you return, I shall continue my longing for you. Love, Leena ****************************************************************** 12. SPEAKERS FOR A NEW AMERICA PRESENTS WOMEN'S HISTORY MONTH, 2001 Our speakers are unique because they come from some of the most intense struggles against poverty. Along with solutions to the problems that face our country, they are at the cutting edge of understanding what is happening and why. Here is a sample of the speakers we promote. * Ethel Long-Scott, director, Women's Economic Agenda Project * Marian Kramer, co-chair, National Welfare Rights Union * Cheri Honkala, director, Kensington Welfare Rights Union * Brooke Heagerty, co-author of the book, "Moving Onward: From Racial Division to Class Unity" * Laura Garcia, editor, People's Tribune/Tribuno del Pueblo newspaper * Diane Dujon, editor of the book, "For Crying out Loud: Women's Poverty in the United States" * Maureen Taylor, chair, Michigan Welfare Rights Union Call 800-691-6888 for more information on speakers, e-mail speakers@noc.org, or visit our Web page at http://www.lrna.org/speakers. +----------------------------------------------------------------+ For Women's History Month, 2001, Speakers for a New America is proud to re-issue a print that is aesthetically pleasing and inspiring. This work was designed by one of our speakers, Chicago-based artist Sue Ying. This print applauds the dynamic role of women in pursuit of social change. We encourage you to order this print, and also to contact us about booking a speaker in your city for the month of March. To order the Women in Revolution poster, send $25 for each print (21"x27") and $75 each for one print signed by artist. Mail check or money order to: Speakers for a New America, People's Tribune Speakers Bureau, P.O. Box 13201, Flint, Michigan 48501. +----------------------------------------------------------------+ HEAR OUR SPEAKERS ON PT RADIO: http://www.lrna.org/ptradio +----------------------------------------------------------------+ ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytrc-02.11.01-09:38:32-13304