The People's Record

Upcoming United States actions:

May 18th: ‘Operation Green Jobs’ March from Philadelphia to Washington, DC organized by the Poor People’s Economic and Human Rights Campaign.

May 18th to 23rd: the  Home Defenders League Week of Action against the banks and foreclosures in Washington, DC.

May 18th to 20th: there is a  weekend of protests against the closure of schools in Chicago.

May 22nd:  Stop the Frack Attack People’s Forum in Washington, DC.

May 25th: Protests against Monsanto everywhere

May 25th to June 3rd: March from Philadelphia to Harrisburg against prison spending.

June 1st:  Get on the Bus For Bradley Court Martial Trial  with buses leaving from Baltimore, MD, Washington DC, New York City and Willimantic, CT.

June 14th to 16th:  Trade Justice Action Camp in Bellingham, WA by the Backbone Campaign

June 24th to 29th: is the beginning of “ Fearless Summer” that starts “ an epic summer of actions.”

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Reblog with your own additions to the list.

Farmers protest against corporate power plant & corrupt government partnership hits 1000th day
May 17, 2013

“Lathi maar maar ke utha lehale anshan wahe/ daktar sahib soochna pahuchain naye mukhyamantri se bataiye da/ hum aapan zamin na dewai/ hame na chahi kuch tumhara.” (Translated: Police beat protesting farmers and remanded them/ We heard a new CM is coming to hear us/ Tell him we won’t give up our land/ We want nothing from you.)

These defiant lines in a created mix of Bhojpuri and Hindi are few of the many composed and sung by Anarkali (52), over the last three years. Her songs are meant to inspire a few hundred fellow farmers, who sit attentively with their farming tools each day, listening to her after the day’s work. On Friday, they assembled at Kachari village in the Trans-Yamuna region of this district, for the 1000th consecutive day. A maha-panchayat of villages was held to mark the occasion.

Under the Purnvas Kisan Kalyan Sahayta Samiti (PKKSS), these farmers have been protesting the proposed 1980 MW Karchhana power plant. Through songs, slogans and speeches about government corruption & corporate land development, the farmers wish to keep up the momentum for their daily assemblage. “We apprise them of their rights, how the government cheated us. They are encouraged not to fall for bribes or be intimidated by threats. This is not compulsory yet the farmers come daily,” said Raj Bahaur Patel, president, PKKSS.

The project was conceived in 2007 under the Bahujan Samaj Party government and about 2,500 bighas of land was acquired from 2,286 farmers in eight villages — Devari, Kachari, Katka-Medhra, Dehli, Dohlipur, Bagesar, Kachara and Bhitar. However, the project, handed over to an undertaking of Jaypee Group in 2009, could never take off due to consistent protests by farmers over compensation, leaving one farmer murdered by police repression.

Last April, the Allahabad High Court allowed the farmers’ writ petitions and stalled the project. The Court stipulated that farmers who had received compensation for their land should either return the money and take back the land or willingly hand over the land for the project. Around 140 farmers did not accept compensation. Those who did are in no condition to repay the amount, causing an impasse which the administration is struggling to break through. Ever since the initial violence gripped the area, the protests have been peaceful, but the farmers complain they are being intimidated by local goons and officials to give up their land and discontinue the protests.

“We will shoot you and your family. Just let the power plant come up you will be taught a lesson, they tell us,” says Sukhdevi, 65, one of the many protesters.

Many of these threats also come from petty politicians, says Mr. Patel. “They approached us for a compromise, first with bribes. When we declined, they have resorted to fear tactics.” Consequently, the farmers have written to the Prime Minister’s Office and the Chief Minister’s Office, listing their apprehensions and demands. Also, in two letters dated August 8, 2012 and October 10, 2012, the farmers mentioned the threats to their lives, while also promising that they were ready to return the compensation but in installments and on their terms.

When Mr. Patel was called in to receive the response on April 15, the special land acquisition officer O.P Singh only inquired about the land possession of each farmer, completely ignoring the threats to the farmers’ lives. The Hindu has a copy of the document.

The farmers have been demanding: restoration of the fertility of their lands, compensation for the loss of farming over the last five years and losses suffered at the hands of police action during protests, an official inquiry into the violence & threats made against them.

Despite Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav announcing that the government would quash all FIRs filed against protesting farmers, eight criminal cases registered against farmers in Karchhana still stand. The farmers, who also reported that their land was wrongfully claimed to be barren, have filed an RTI into it. However, they have received no response yet.

Unlike previous years, when the farmers abandoned farming on the proposed site, they have engaged in some cultivation this season. Yet they remain fearful of violent retribution by goons and intermediaries. “We live in uncertainty. What if they destroy our crops and start the plant? We cannot afford further losses,” says a farmer.

The proposed land includes a large portion of the common property resources in the villages, like the ponds, rearing grounds, connecting paths and grain storage houses.

Notably, the region is turning into a hot-bed for famers’ protests against power plants. In Bara, while farmers have given up on their demands for higher compensation, they are on the verge of launching a movement against the excess extraction of water from the Yamuna.

The farmers have also demonstrated that “men of authority” are trying to create a rift among them to break down their movement. “They are creating false news that there is in-fighting among the farmers,” says Mr. Patel, citing a news report in a highly circulated Hindi daily.

Source

Dr. Vandana Shiva: the “GOLDEN RICE” hoax - when public relations replaces science to promote a technology for creating Vitamin A deficiency
May 15, 2013

Golden rice has been heralded as the miracle cure for malnutrition and hunger of which 800m members of the human community suffer.  Herbicide resistant and toxin producing genetically engineered plants can be objectionable because of their ecological and social costs.  But who could possibly object to rice engineered to produce vitamin A, a deficiency found in nearly 3 million children, largely in the Third World?

As remarked by Mary Lou Guerinot, the author of the Commentary on Vitamin A rice in Science, one can only hope that this application of plant genetic engineering to ameliorate human misery without regard to short term profit will restore this technology to political acceptability. Unfortunately, Vitamin A rice is a hoax, and will bring further dispute to plant genetic engineering where public relations exercises seem to have replaced science in promotion of untested, unproven and unnecessary technology.

The problem is that vitamin A rice will not remove vitamin A deficiency (VAD).  It will seriously aggravate it.  It is a technology that fails in its promise. Currently, it is not even known how much vitamin JA the genetically engineered rice will produce.  The goal is 33.3% micrograms/100g of rice.  Even if this goal is reached after a few years, it will be totally ineffective in removing VAD.

Since the daily average requirement of vitamin A is 750 micrograms of vitamin A and 1 serving contains 30g of rice according to dry weight basis, vitamin A rice would only provide 9.9 micrograms which is 1.32% of the required allowance.  Even taking the 100g figure of daily consumption of rice used in the technology transfer paper would only provide 4.4% of the RDA.

In order to meet the full needs of 750 micrograms of vitamin A from rice, an adult would have to consume 2 kg 272g of rice per day.  This implies that one family member would consume the entire family ration of 10 kg. from the PDS in 4 days to meet vitaminA needs through “Golden rice”.

This is a recipe for creating hunger and malnutrition, not solving it.

Besides creating vitamin A deficiency, vitamin A rice will also create deficiency in other micronutrients and nutrients.  Raw milled rice has a low content of Fat (0.5g/100g).  Since fat is necessary for vitamin A uptake, this will aggravate vitamin A deficiency.  It also has only 6.8g/100g of protein, which means less carrier molecules.  It has only 0.7g/100g of iron, which plays a vital role in the conversion of beta-carotene (precursor of vitamin A found in plant sources) to vitamin A. Superior Alternatives exist and are effective.

A far more efficient route to removing vitamin A deficiency is biodiversity conservation and propagation of naturally vitamin A rich plants in agriculture and diets.

The following is a list of sources rich in vitamin A which are used commonly in Indian foods. (microgram/100g)

(Amaranth leaves) Chauli saag= 266-1,166 -

(Coriander leaves) – Dhania = 1,166-1,333 

(Cabbage) Bandh gobi = 217 

(Curry leaves)-Curry patta = 1,333 

(Drumstick leaves)-Saijan patta1 = 283 

(Fenugreek leaves)-Methi-ka-saag = 450 

(Radish leaves)-Mooli-ka-saag = 750 

(Mint)-Pudhina = 300 

(Spinach)-Palak saag = 600 

(Carrot)-Gajar=217-434 

(Pumpkin (yellow))-Kaddu = 100-120 

(Mango (ripe))-Aam = 500 

(Jackfruit)-Kathal = 54 

(Orange)-Santra = 35 

(Tomato (ripe))-Tamatar = 32 

(Milk (cow, buffalo))-Doodh = 50-60 

(Butter)-Makkhan = 720-1,200 

(Egg (hen))-Anda = 300-400 

(Liver (Goat, sheep))-Kalegi = 6,600 - 10,000 

Cod liver oil = 10,000 - 100,000

In spite of the diversity of plants evolved and bred for their rich vitamin  A content, a report of the Major Science Academies of the World - Royal Society, U.K., National Academy of Sciences of the USA, The Third World Academy of Science, Indian National Science Academy, Mexican Academy of Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Brazilian Academy of Sciences - on Transgenic Plants and World Agriculture has stated, Vitamin A deficiency causes half a million children to become partially or totally blind each year.

Traditional breeding methods have been unsuccessful in producing crops containing a high vitamin A concentration and most national authorities rely on expensive and complicated supplementation programs to address the problem.  Researchers have introduced three new genes into rice, two from daffodils and one from a microorganism.  The transgenic rice exhibits an increased production of beta-carotene as a precursor to vitamin A and the seed in yellow in colour. Such yellow, or golden rice, may be a useful tool to help treat the problem of vitamin A deficiency in young children living in the tropics.

It appears as if the world’s top scientists suffer a more severe form of blindness than children in poor countries.  The statement that “traditional breeding has been unsuccessful in producing crops high in vitamin A” is not true given the diversity of plants and crops that Third World farmers, especially women have bred and used which are rich sources of vitamin A such as coriander, amaranth, carrot, pumpkin, mango, jackfruit.

It is also untrue that vitamin A rice will lead to increased production of beta-carotene.   Even if the target of 33.3 microgram of  vitamin A in 100g of rice is achieved, it will be only 2.8% of beta-carotene we can obtain from amaranth leaves 2.4% of beta-carotene obtained from coriander leaves, curry leaves and drumstick leaves.  Even the World Bank has admitted that rediscovering and use of local plants and conservation of vitamin A rich green leafy vegetables and fruits have dramatically reduced VAD threatened children over the past 20 years in very cheap and efficient ways.  Women in Bengal use more than 200 varieties of field greens. Over a 3 million people have benefited greatly from a food based project for removing VAD by increasing vitamin A availability through home gardens.  The higher the diversity crops the better the uptake of pro-vitamin A.

The reason there is vitamin A deficiency in India in spite of the rich biodiversity a base and indigenous knowledge base in India is because the Green Revolution technologies wiped out biodiversity by converting mixed cropping systems to monocultures of wheat and rice and by spreading the use of herbicides which destroy field greens.

In spite of effective and proven alternatives, a technology transfer agreement has been signed between the Swiss Government and the Government of India for the transfer of genetically engineered vitamin A rice to India.

The ICAR, ICMR, ICDS, USAIUD, UNICEF, WHO have been identified as potential partners.  The breeding and transformation is to be carried out at Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore, Central Rice Research Institute, Cuttack and Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana and University of Delhi, South Campus. The Indian varieties in which the vitamin A traits are expected to be engineered have been identified as IR 64, Pusa Basmati, PR 114 and ASD 16.

Dr. M.S. Swaminathan has been identified as “God father” to ensuring public acceptance of genetically engineered rice.  DBT & ICAR are also potential partners for guaranteeing public acceptance and steady progress of the project.

Genetically engineered vitamin A rice will aggravate this destruction since it is part of an industrial agriculture, intensive input package. It will also lead to major water scarcity since it is a water intensive crop and displaces water prudent sources of vitamin A.

The first step in the technology transfer of vitamin A rice requires a need assessment and an assessment of technology availability.  One assessment shows that vitamin A rice fails to pass the need test. The technology availability issue is related to whether the various elements and methods used for the construction of transgenic crop plants are covered by intellectual property rights.  Licenses for these rights need to be obtained before a product can be commercialized.  The Cornell based ISAAA (International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Application) has been identified as the partner for ensuring technology availability by ensuring technology availability by having material transfer agreements signed between the representative authority of the ICAR and the “owners” of the technology, Prof. I. Potrykus and Prof. P.  Beyer.

In addition, Novartis and Kerin Breweries have patents on the genes used as constructs for the vitamin A rice. At a public hearing on Biotechnology at U.S. Congress on 29th June 2000, Astra-Zeneca stated they would be giving away royalty free licenses for the development of “Golden rice”.

At a workshop organized by the M. S. Swaminathan Research Foundation, Dr. Barry of Monsanto’s Rice Genome initiative announced that it will provide royalty-free licenses for all its technologies that can help the further development of “golden rice”.

Hence these gene giants Novartis, Astra-Zeneca and Monsanto are claiming exclusive ownership to the basic patents related to rice research.  Further, neither Monsanto nor Astra - Zeneca said they will give up their patents on rice - they are merely giving royalty free licenses to public sector scientists for development of “golden rice”.  This is an arrangement for a public subsidy to corporate giants for R&D since they do not have the expertise or experience with rice breeding which public institutions have.

Not giving up the patents, but merely giving royalty free licenses implies that the corporations like Monsanto would ultimately like to collect royalties from farmers for rice varieties developed by public sector research systems.  Monsanto has stated that it expects long term gains from these IPR arrangements, which implies markets in rice as “intellectual property” which cannot be saved or exchanged for seed.  The real test for Monsanto would be its declaration of giving up any patent claims to rice now and in the future and joining the call to remove plants and biodiversity out of TRIPS.  Failing such an undertaking by Monsanto the announcement that Monsanto giving royalty free licenses for development of vitamin A rice like the rice itself can only be taken as a hoax to establish monopoly over rice production, and reduce rice farmers of India into bio-serfs.

While the complicated technology transfer package of “Golden Rice” will not solve vitamin A problems in India, it is a very effective strategy for corporate take over of rice production, using the public sector as a Trojan horse.

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Detroit’s emergency manager outlines slash & burn “restructuring” plan: Slash wages & city services, privatization
May 14, 2013

Detroit’s emergency manager released a report on Monday, outlining a “comprehensive restructuring plan” for the city involving savage cuts to city workers’ jobs, wages and pensions and the shutdown of services to a large section of the population.

Michigan Governor Rick Snyder appointed Kevyn Orr, a former Washington, DC bankruptcy attorney, as emergency manager on March 14. Under the state’s emergency manager law, Orr was mandated to issue a preliminary Financial and Operating Plan within 45 days.

The plan was drawn up in close collaboration with Andy Dillon, a former hedge fund manager and Democratic Speaker of the State House of Representatives, picked by Snyder as state treasurer.

The report begins with a lie, claiming that measures about to be unleashed in Detroit are aimed at improving the “governmental services essential to the public health, safety and welfare of its citizens.” In fact, the aim is to extract every penny possible from the working class to pay back an estimated $9.4 billion in debt, which currently costs the city $246 million to service, or 19.3 percent of the General Fund budget.

Orr’s former law firm, Jones Day, represents some of the same Wall Street banks—including Bank of America and UBS—that have profited from its financial misery.

In the report, Orr paints a dire picture of the financial state of Detroit. Unemployment has tripled since 2000 and is now officially at 18.3 percent. State revenue sharing has fallen by $160 million, or nearly 50 percent from its peak of $334 million in 2002. There has been a 40 percent decline in income tax since 2000, with a loss of $145 million.

These conditions are an indictment of the capitalist system. They point in particular to the devastating impact of the financial crash of 2008, which led to hemorrhaging of the auto industry, a wave of foreclosures and sharp cuts in federal and state aid. But nowhere is there any suggestion that the corporate and financial elite should be made to pay for the catastrophe they wrought. As a hatchet man for the banks, Orr, like Obama and the Republicans in Washington, is seeking to exploit this crisis to further enrich the financial criminals at the top.

According to Orr his plan has three principles. The first is “improving public safety and promoting reinvestment in the city.” These are code words for ridding the city of “undesirable” elements, including large numbers of unemployed and impoverished workers, and making way for the redevelopment plans of multi-billionaires like Little Caesars owner Mike Ilitch and Quicken Loans CEO Dan Gilbert. Already hundreds of low-income and elderly tenants are being evicted from apartments in the downtown area targeted for the development of upscale housing and shopping.

The second principle, according to Orr, is “evaluating and restructuring the City’s long term liabilities.” This means slashing the pensions and medical benefits of tens of thousands of retired city workers and their families. In his report, Orr complains that there are now more retirees, 18,500, collecting benefits, compared to 10,000 active city workers. The emergency manager, he states, plans to “reduce or eliminate certain healthcare costs for both active and retired employees” and “suggest modifications to the [pension] plans…”

The third principle is “evaluating and streamlining the City’s operations,” which entails an acceleration of the plans by Democratic mayor David Bing to downsize the city by eliminating services in areas deemed too poor or under-populated.

The city, Orr writes, has already developed strategies to address what he calls the “surplus land” issue, using three neighborhood categories (steady, transitional and distressed) to determine whether services in these areas will continue. This strategy, which would be incorporated into the comprehensive plan, would include a “coordinated program of foreclosures, demolition, public/private partnerships and targeted investment.”

In a press conference Monday, Orr said that the privatization of trash collection, transportation and other services were “all on the table.” He pointed to nearby Pontiac, Michigan as a model for his plan.

In that city, as the New York Times recently noted, the EM “overhauled labor contracts, sold off city assets and privatized nearly every service Pontiac once provided to citizens…Its Fire Department belongs to a nearby township. The city’s payroll, once numbering more than 600 workers, now amounts to about 50 public employees. Even parking meters have been sold.”

Other parts of Orr’s plan include:

* Reviewing “options for shared services and contract services” for the Detroit Fire Department, which has been slashed to the bone, leaving only 812 ill-equipped firefighters to cover 139 square miles.

* The possible full privatization of the Department of Transportation, which has already outsourced management duties and cut routes for its depleted bus fleet and employees.

* Turning “daily operations and programming” of the city’s remaining 17 recreation centers “over to experienced entities capable of providing improved services,” which would include “fee-based programming provided by third party operators.”

* The selloff of the Department of Public Lighting.

“The Emergency Manager believes that it is in the best interest of the citizens of Detroit for the City to exit the power supply business,” he writes. Beginning in 2014, the city will “pare down the current number of streetlights from approximately 88,000 to approximately 46,000,” providing lighting only to the “main thoroughfares and population centers.”

The first step will be to transform DPL into an “authority” with the power to issue debt. Once the city pays for infrastructure improvements, the system will be handed over to a “third party,” most likely the electric monopoly DTE Energy. Three years ago, the City Council and Bing administration approved a $150 million deal to buy 100 percent of the city’s power from DTE Energy, replacing the electricity produced by the city-owned lighting department. Before becoming mayor, David Bing, sat on DTE’s board of directors for two decades, and former DTE CEO Anthony Early was the chairman of his election campaign.

Also being targeted for privatization is the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department, one of the largest municipal water departments in the nation. Orr writes that he will evaluate all options regarding public assets, including “entering in partnerships with other public entities, outsourcing of operations and transferring non-core assets to other private or public entities in sale, lease or other transactions.”

In regards to labor costs, Orr says the city has “made great strides” under the Consent Agreement reached between the city government and the governor last year, “in reducing costs imposed by its numerous active and expired collective bargaining agreements between the City and various labor organizations.”

This included the unilateral implementation of “City Employment Terms,” which froze or reduced active employee benefits, reduced or eliminated pension and retiree medical benefits and imposed a 10 percent wage cut. It also gutted seniority protections, expanded management rights, changed shifts, hours of operation and overtime procedures and revised or eliminated job classifications.

Nevertheless, Orr complains that these concessions have not been uniformly applied to all bargaining units. The emergency manager’s “labor strategy will be developed with a view that any concessions are equitably distributed across” the city’s entire workforce.

While the emergency manager law suspends the city’s duty to bargain under the Public Relations Act and empowers him to “reject, modify or terminate” collective bargaining agreements, Orr states that he has willingly negotiated with the unions. In this, he is counting on the complicity of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) and other unions to reach what he calls a “consensual agreement” and block any resistance by workers to the demands of the banks.

“Overall, employee headcount ultimately may be lower in the future than it is today,” he adds. At the same time, a new “compensation structure” will be established to retain “high performing individuals,” by which he means the army of highly paid consultants and turnaround specialists he is bringing in to help loot the city.

On the eve of the report’s release, Orr’s press secretary Bill Knowling said, “Unless we change and restructure city operations, it’s not going to get any better. That’s a message to the capital markets… If we stop providing services, and basically stop functioning as a city and only paid our debts but kept collecting taxes, we couldn’t pay it off in 20 years.”

Here Knowling may have said more than he intended. The essential purpose of Orr’s plan is to transform the city into little more than a cash machine for the banks and big business. To pay off the wealthy bondholder in the next few years, instead of twenty, will require the suspension of city services for virtually everyone but the well-to-do and a limited number of workers who service them.

As for his boss, Orr made it clear he is essentially a dictator for the banks and oblivious to the concerns of the working people in the city. “The public can comment,” he told WWJ radio, “but it is under the statute, it is my plan and it’s within my discretion and obligation to do it. This isn’t a plebiscite, we are not, like, negotiating the terms of the plan.”

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Greek workers walk out to protest ban on teachers’ strike
May 14, 2013

Greek public sector workers walked off the job on Tuesday to protest against a government decision to ban a strike by high-school teachers, shutting down several schools and reducing staff at hospitals to a minimum. Invoking emergency legislation, Prime Minister Antonis Samaras has threatened teachers with arrest and dismissal if they go ahead with a planned walkout on Friday that would disrupt university entrance exams, as he tries to show Greece’s foreign lenders that Athens is sticking to unpopular reforms.

The action on Tuesday was the latest in a string of anti-austerity strikes since 2010, when Greece adopted severe budget and wage cut measures as part of its international bailout. The turnout was not near someone of the movement’s larger demonstrations; turnout in demonstrations last year topped 100,000 at times. But activists insist that they are committed to fighting for humanity.

“Our message, that we fully condemn these policies, was sent, despite the low turnout,” ADEDY’s general secretary Ilias Iliopoulos told Reuters. “The government must make up its mind and show that it does care about students and teachers.

The conservative-led coalition wants teachers to put in two more hours of work each week to reach the average levels of high school teachers’ working hours in Europe, and transfer 4,000 of them to remote parts of Greece to plug staffing gaps.

These measures would allow the government to dismiss about 10,000 part-time teachers when their temporary contracts expire, causing outraged unions & citizens alike to call for the 24-hour strike on Friday and rolling strikes next week.

The government responded by invoking a law that allows it to mobilize workers in the case of civil disorder or natural disasters.

ADEDY had disagreed with the high school teachers’ decision to hold a strike on the first day of exams because it would inconvenience students. However, it opposed the government using emergency laws to pre-emptively ban the action, saying this was undemocratic and violated workers’ constitutional rights. ADEDY and GSEE, Greece’s largest private sector union, are also planning a four-hour work stoppage on Thursday.

More than 1,000 high-school teachers marched to parliament late on Monday, holding banners reading: “No to the civil mobilization and this terror!” and “It won’t pass”.

GSEE and ADEDY represent more than half of Greece’s workforce, which has been shrinking rapidly during the crippling recession after years of austerity. As unemployment grows, unions may not yield as strong of turn outs as they have when they had higher membership, but the increasingly impoverished people of Greece will not tolerate limitless government oppression.

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On the anniversary of Martin Luther King’s poor people’s campaign: ‘We will march to ignite the revolution King called for’
May 11, 2013

Happening now! - The Poor Peoples March #PPCmarch2DC is entering the Baltimore center city. March to WashDC 40 miles. Source

Historically (wikipedia):

The Poor People’s Campaign was a 1968 effort to gain economic justice for poor people in the United States. It was organized by MLK Jr,  the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and carried out in the wake of King’s assassination.

The Campaign demanded economic and human rights for poor Blacks, Chicanos, Native Americans, and Whites. After presenting an organized set of demands to Congress and executive agencies, participants set up a 3000-person tent city on the Washington Mall, where they stayed for six weeks.

Along these lines, Melissa Harris Perry will be hosting a two hour conversation tomorrow on her MSNBC show about poverty. The conversation will be starting from the presumption that poverty can be abolished, and will be focused on tactics for accomplishing that extremely important goal. I don’t usually recommend programming on corporate media (& I’d bet they’ll dance around actually saying the word ‘capitalism’ in the conversation tomorrow) but Melissa Harris Perry’s show is usually packed full of meaningful analysis and useful facts for discussing the week’s current events.

curiouskitty:

thepeoplesrecord:

whitehouse:

Share the news: Our economy added 176,000 private-sector jobs last month, while unemployment dipped to its lowest rate since December 2008. http://at.wh.gov/kGdc9

Share the news - Barack Obama is a war criminal.

Share the news - poor people don’t know what you’re talking about, we’re still jobless or over-worked & underpaid and yes, poor. 

Share the news - we want a private-sector DEATH. We want private-sector abolition!

Share the news - it was a really bad idea for the White House to get a Tumblr. You are not welcome here. 

Share the news!

Why would you want to get rid of the private sector when that’s the sector that actually produces the majority of jobs and actually produces money rather than spends it?

Because of this silly little idea we value called democracy. Because in the private sector, driven not by the will of the public or the well-being of the people, but rather by the undemocratic profit-motive, terrible things happen.

A few examples from the last couple of weeks:

• Private fossil-fuels companies are able to literally high-jack our natural resources and destroy our air, water, and health without recourse. (Think Progress) If our productive sector was public, and not private (aka: capitalism was abolished), then we could vote at our workplaces to prevent these types of terrible decisions that are so bad for most of us but so good for just a few.
• Factory owners/capitalists are able to make unsafe decisions about work conditions, resulting in their over-worked, underpaid, exhausted, exploited wage-slaves dying by the hundreds as a direct result.  (The Guardian) 
• Media is purchased by corporate owners who prevent fair & honest coverage about the terrible decisions the ruling class makes for the public. (The Nation)

One of the many problems with a productive sector driven by competition, instead of democratic will, is that corporations eventually win those competitions. Competing businesses eat each other up, and then a few large corporations, led by a few capitalist oligarchs, purchase the democracy that their corporations exist in. So our private sector eats our public sector, we get 0 democracy, and the capitalist oligarchs get all the power, all the money, and everything they need to destroy everything that belongs to all of us.

Concentrating power in the hands of a few instead of the will of the many, is problematic. It leads to disaster. It leads to devastation. We HAVE to change the system. There isn’t another choice.

That’s why. Thanks for asking!

Nestlé chairman denies that water is an essential human right
April 22, 2013

The current Chairman and former CEO of Nestlé, the largest producer of food products in the world, believes that the answer to global water issues is privatization. This statement is on record from the wonderful company that has peddled junk food in the Amazon, has invested money to thwart the labeling of GMO-filled products, has a disturbing health and ethics record for its infant formula, and has deployed a cyber army to monitor Internet criticism and shape discussions in social media.

This is apparently the company we should trust to manage our water, despite the record of large bottling companies like Nestlé having a track record of creating shortages:

Large multinational beverage companies are usually given water-well privileges (and even tax breaks) over citizens because they create jobs, which is apparently more important to the local governments than water rights to other taxpaying citizens. These companies such as Coca Cola and Nestlé (which bottles suburban Michigan well-water and calls it Poland Spring) suck up millions of gallons of water, leaving the public to suffer with any shortages. (source)

But Chairman, Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, believes that “access to water is not a public right.” Nor is it a human right. So if privatization is the answer, is this the company in which the public should place its trust?

Here is just one example, among many, of his company’s concern for the public thus far:

In the small Pakistani community of Bhati Dilwan, a former village councilor says children are being sickened by filthy water. Who’s to blame? He says it’s bottled water-maker Nestlé, which dug a deep well that is depriving locals of potable water. “The water is not only very dirty, but the water level sank from 100 to 300 to 400 feet,” Dilwan says. (source)

Why? Because if the community had fresh water piped in, it would deprive Nestlé of its lucrative market in water bottled under the Pure Life brand.

In the subtitled video below, from several years back, Brabeck discusses his views on water, as well as some interesting comments concerning his view of Nature — that it is “pitiless” — and, of course, the obligatory statement that organic food is bad and GM is great. In fact, according to Brabeck, you are essentially an extremist to hold views opposite to his own. His statements are important to review as we continue to see the world around us become reshaped into a more mechanized environment in order to stave off that pitiless Nature to which he refers.

The conclusion to this segment is perhaps the most revealing about Brabeck’s worldview, as he highlights a clip of one of his factory operations. Evidently, the saviour-like role of the Nestlé Group in ensuring the health of the global population should be graciously welcomed. Are you convinced?

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Three killed, 13 injured in weekend gun violence in Chicago
April 22, 2013

Three people have been killed and at least 13 others wounded in gun violence throughout the city since Friday afternoon.

Donald Holman, 37, was shot three times in the legs about 7:45 p.m. Friday in the 1100 block of North Menard Avenue, authorities said.

He was taken to Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood, where he later died.

Lucas Zimmerman, 34, was found unresponsive with multiple gunshot wounds in a convenience store parking lot in the 3900 block of North Kimball Avenue shortly after midnight Saturday.

Witnesses told police Zimmerman was shot in an alley in the 3300 block of West Irving Park Road before stumbling to the parking lot, police News Affairs Officer Hector Alfaro said. He was shot in the arm and face, Alfaro added. Zimmerman was pronounced dead at the scene.

A male was shot to death in the 1700 block of West 44th Street about 4:49 a.m. Monday in the Back of the Yards neighborhood, police said.

He was taken to John H. Stroger Jr. Hospital of Cook County in critical condition, but died shortly thereafter, police said. The Cook County Medical Examiner’s office confirmed the death, though the male’s identity was withheld until his family could be notified.

At least 13 other people were wounded in gun violence throughout the city this weekend.

The most recent non-fatal shooting happened about 6:12 p.m. Sunday, when two men were shot in the Calumet Heights neighborhood. Both men were shot multiple times in the 9000 block of South Kingston Avenue, police said. They were both taken in “stable” condition to Advocate Trinity Hospital.

Source

Most often the gun violence in Chicago disproportionately affects young people of color. Here is some background on the violence in Chicago:

Since 2008, more than 530 young people have been killed in Chicago, making it the youth murder capital of the country. The vast majority of these deaths—almost 80 percent—have happened in 22 Black and Brown majority neighborhoods. In 2010,nearly 700 Chicago school children were shot, and 66 of them died. Last year, 24 school children were killed and another 319 were injured by gunfire.

“It’s never stated, but clearly understood: If 530 white children had been killed in a five-year period in any city in the U.S., it would be considered a national emergency. When white children die, it prompts press conferences, soul-searching and demands for change. When Black children die, it is dismissed as “Black on Black” crime and met with calls for more police or finger-pointing at Black parents.” - Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

Police ‘cleaning up’ Detroit by kidnapping the homeless, stranding them in other cities
April 22, 2013

Imagine that you are homeless in Detroit. You have an area where you know you are safe, where you can find food and shelter if you ask. Now imagine that a cop grabs you from the street, throws you into a van, drives you to the edge of the city or even a suburb and then kicks you out. That’s what the ACLU is accusing the Detroit PD of doing.: they filed a complaint with the Justice Department against the DPB this week.

The complaint comes at the end of a year-long investigation into claims that the department routinely drove homeless people to areas unfamiliar to them, leaving them to get back on their own. They will approach homeless people, especially in tourist areas like Greektown, force them into vans and drive them miles away, the complaint alleges. Sometimes the officers would even take what little money they had, leaving them with no recourse but to walk back to the city. Sometimes the homeless victims would even be left in neighboring towns and suburbs like Dearborn and River Rouge.

Speaking for the ACLU of Michigan, staff attorney Sarah Mehta told the local CBS affiliate:

“DPD’s practice of essentially kidnapping homeless people and abandoning them miles away from the neighborhoods they know – with no means for a safe return — is inhumane, callous and illegal. The city’s desire to hide painful reminders of our economic struggles cannot justify discriminating against the poor, banishing them from their city, and endangering their lives. A person who has lost his home has not lost his right to be treated with dignity.” (source)

The ACLU was contacted by the St. Peter and Paul Jesuit Church Warming Center, a homeless shelter. They told the organization about several homeless people who were “taken for a ride” by DPB officers. One such story came from Andrew Sheehan, a 36-year-old who used to be homeless but is now working at a grocery store:

“I had my back turned to him and I did not see him approaching, and the first thing he did was he kicked me. He didn’t identify himself as an officer and he kicked me and told me to get up. I asked him if I was free to go. He told me no.” (source)

The organization has published the stories of five homeless people who were kidnapped and harassed by Detroit police. According to the ACLU’s complaint, some of the homeless who were taken had to walk many miles to get back to downtown shelters. This puts them in danger from a variety of sources, especially in the middle of winter.

The ACLU has asked the Department of Justice to investigate the allegations. They have also asked the city to issue a directive to police officers to desist this practice immediately.

This is unconscionable, but it’s not new. Removing the vagrants and undersirables from where the “regular” people might be upset by them is an old practice, according to Samuel Walker, a police accountability expert:

“This is a familiar story with a long history in policing. You do wonder what did this Police Department learn from the consent decree experience?” (source)

Detroit’s Chief of Police, Chester Logan, declined to comment, saying that he had not yet seen the complaint. The AP was also unable to get comments from Mayor Dave Bing or the city’s emergency manager, Kevyn Orr. Not surprising.

This bad economy has seen an uptick in the homeless situation. Yes, it makes some of us uncomfortable to see them, perhaps because we see more of ourselves in them than we would care to admit. But ignoring the problem won’t solve it and taking these people to the edge of town and exposing them to danger is not the way to handle it. Detroit’s police need to look inside and find their better nature before they get someone killed.

Source

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New York fast food workers turn up heat in bid for better pay
April 4, 2013

Hundreds of fast-food restaurant workers in New York City are expected to walk off the job on Thursday in what organizers said would be their largest rally yet for better pay.

Employees from familiar chains such as McDonald’s Corp, Wendy’s and Yum Inc’s KFC are seeking to roughly double their hourly pay to $15. They also say they want the right to form a union without intimidation or retaliation.

As many as 400 workers from more than five dozen restaurants around New York City have committed to turn out for protests planned at various locations, said Jonathan Westin, director of Fast Food Forward, which organized Thursday’s actions and is backed by labor, community and religious groups.

That turnout would be twice as large as in November, when the city’s fast-food workers also walked off the job, Westin said.

And, he said, the majority of employees from some individual fast-food outlets have vowed to participate in Thursday’s actions.

“It’s going to be difficult for these businesses to operate this time,” Westin said.

The nearly $200 billion U.S. fast-food industry long has been known as a employer of teenagers and students.

But the 18-month “Great Recession” that began in December 2007 helped change that. It destroyed thousands of middle-income jobs and forced more adults to seek part-time, largely minimum wage work flipping burgers and manning fryers.

In his State of the Union address in February, U.S. President Barack Obama proposed raising the federal minimum wage as a way to help lift some workers out of poverty - a plan critics said would kill jobs by burdening small businesses with higher costs.

The state of New York is already on that path. Its recently passed budget included plans to raise the state minimum wage, now at $7.25, to $9 by the end of 2015.

But even with that 24 percent hike, New York’s minimum wage would remain below the roughly $11 hourly pay needed to lift a family of four above the poverty line.

Such pay-boosting efforts are welcome but not enough for workers struggling to make ends meet, said fast-food employee Joseph Barrera, who plans to join Thursday’s protests.

The 22-year-old says he has earned $7.25 per hour for the 10 months he has worked at a KFC restaurant in Brooklyn. Even with a side job as a freelance mechanic, he still stretches to cover rent on his basement apartment that has no windows or heat.

“Anywhere where the cost of living is very, very high, $9 is not enough. Everyone should be able to make a living wage,” Barrera said.

McDonald’s Corp, the world’s biggest fast-food chain by sales, in November said that the majority of its namesake U.S. restaurants are owned and operated by independent business men and women who offer pay and benefits competitive within the quick service restaurant industry.

Source

In related news, a McDonald’s job ad in Massachusetts requires a bachelor’s degree & two years of experience for a cashier job. 

captainkiryu:

peacewillfindyou:

thank you.

too bad we waste tax money on dipshits who dropped out of high school instead of putting into education

-_- Yeah, that’s the problem.

We spend too much money on poor people, those scum in our society who are personally, psychologically, emotionally, financially & socially distressed, and we just give EVERYTHING away to people whose personal conditions are so terrible that they give up any chance of earning a living wage (or at least one that doesn’t involve breaking or selling their own body) all so that those greedy bastards can live a life of poverty & incarceration and be subjected to dehumanizing comments like yours.

Our problems definitely aren’t because we spend too much money creating “criminals” with policiies that systemically target people of color and our problems definitely aren’t because the U.S. spends more money on their imperial wars of terror than the whole rest of the world combined spends on their militaries: see infographs here.

And our problems certainly aren’t created by a system in which corporations have more freedom & power in our democracy than ordinary citizens and happily use that power to line their own pockets & leave everyone else dis-empowered with scraps to fight over.

Nope - it’s the fault of “dipshits” who drop out of school. The nerve of those people, being poor & feeling inadequate! 

Jerk.

(Source: thepeoplesrecord)

LGBT equality must go beyond marriage
March 27, 2013

It is undoubtedly unconstitutional to exclude any couple from the institution of marriage in the 21st century. Any justification for doing so relies on the Bible, an illegitimate basis for interpreting the Constitution, or on some false conception of what marriage and procreation actually are in America today (and possibly a false conception on what marriage and procreation ever were, in the history of humanity). We’re asking ourselves the wrong questions, though, if we think that asserting the unconstitutionality of a same sex marriage ban is the same thing as fighting for a more just, equal, and free world.

Whether you agree with Catharine MacKinnon that a ban on same sex marriage is really just sex discrimination (Rick can’t marry John because Rick is a man; Rick could marry John if Rick was a woman), or that sexual orientation should be a protected class under the Equal Protection Clause in its own right, meaning that the government must have a narrowly tailored compelling interest in distinguishing based on sexual orientation, or that even without being a suspect class, distinguishing couples on the basis of sexual orientation fails even a rational basis test because there is no reasonable justification for the distinction (as Massachusetts’ high court found in Goodridge), DOMA’s unconstitutionality seems obvious. The same Constitution, however, purportedly ended slavery in the 1860s and segregation in the 1950s. But walk through any prison or down any urban block in America and you won’t be convinced those holdings led to racial equality.

The right to marry has been called the civil rights issue of our era, but we should be disturbed by this, and ashamed that in an era of economic inequality rivaling only the booming ‘20s right before the crash, an era when the resources of entire continents are extracted for the enjoyment of a tiny handful of the super rich elsewhere, that the civil rights battle of our time is to gain entry for gay men and lesbians into an institution originally meant to protect wealth, social structure, and male dominance.

As Michael Warner argues in his book The Trouble With Normal, the gay rights movement has lost the transformative vision held by the Stonewall Inn patrons of the late 1960s—drag queens, queers, male prostitutes, and homeless youth who wanted not to assimilate to the oppressive and homophobic mainstream culture but to be left alone by the NYPD—or the ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) activists of the 1980s, who wanted not compromise, rhetoric, or meaningless reform, but a revolution in the way the government, the healthcare industry, and society in general understood and addressed the AIDS pandemic and its victims.

Queer communities, despised by mainstream culture with their radical tolerance, their embrace of stigma and their rejection of repressive societal norms, have much to teach society. The cultural and sexual revolution embodied by the Stonewall riots, in which gay pride meant refusing to assimilate, refusing to have the right kind of sex with the right kind of people at the right time and in the right place, refusing to marry and have children and move to the suburbs and quiet down, and especially refusing to go to Washington in a suit and ask for permission to do so, has been corporatized and sanitized.

Now, the “movement” is nothing more than a distraction from the extreme inequality and injustice experienced by the gay and transgender homeless youth, who make up 40 percent of all homeless youth, 58 percent of whom are sexually assaulted (as opposed to 33 percent of their straight counterparts), and 62 percent of whom commit suicide (as opposed to 29 percent of their heterosexual peers). It is also a distraction from the inequality and injustice felt by trans people and AIDS patients, who still struggle to find employment, healthcare, housing, physical safety, and acceptance.

To me, the struggle for gay marriage feels like a cop-out, an admission that this is the best we can or should want. Of course the Supreme Court should strike down DOMA as unconstitutional. But we should not fail to recognize that it is merely a struggle for formal equality for white, wealthy, well-behaved gays and lesbians and not a transformative movement for a better world. When the Supreme Court issues its decision announcing the Constitutional right to marry for all, as I believe it will, we should not celebrate too hard for too long. We should get back, as quickly as possible, to fighting for a fairer, queerer, more tolerant and less well-behaved world.

- The Lone Pamphleteer

Jim Crow for kids: Schools prepare children for life behind bars
March 26, 2013

Gone are the days of children dreading a trip to the principal’s office or spending their lunch time in detention. Instead, children are now facing the possibility of being dragged out of their classrooms in handcuffs for conduct violations, such as a schoolyard brawl or being accused of stealing a student’s lunch money.

Increasingly, children of color and children with learning disabilities are being prepped for a life in the American injustice system as police officers have become as common of a figure at schools as the nurse. After the Newtown massacre in December, police presence in schools across the country jumped leaving the authorities to deal with school children just as they deal with criminals, in an arrangement commonly referred to as the “school-to-prison pipeline.”

Recent cases of criminalization include a 12-year-old junior high student who was handcuffed and arrested for doodling on her desk in New York City; a 13-year-old Florida boy arrested and charged with disrupting a school function after passing gas; and a 6-year-old child handcuffed and arrested for throwing a tantrum in Georgia.

More guns, officers aggravate injustice

In his recent gun control proposal, President Obama slipped in a call to staff schools with police officers, further exacerbating the school-to-prison pipeline that unequally marginalizes black and Latino children. According to a study by the Civil Rights Data Collection—one that covered 85 percent of the nation’s students and 72,000 schools—black students are three and a half times more likely to be arrested than their white peers. The study also showed that 70 percent of students arrested were either black or Latino. Running in sync with the National Rifle Association’s call to put armed guards in every school, Obama’s plan will only intensify the school-to-prison pipeline, endangering children of color across the country.

Students with disabilities are also the victims of these harsh policies. Officers already receive very little training on how to handle suspects with mental disabilities, but even less so when it comes to children. Even though 8.6 percent of children in public schools have been found to have some sort of disability, they make up 32 percent of the youth in detention centers.

In a prison system that author Michelle Alexander has called “The New Jim Crow,” mass incarceration has led to one in six Latino men living behind bars, people of color making up 60 percent of the prisoner population and more black people in prison than there were slaves before the Civil War began. These same principles used to lock up people of color for petty “crimes” have found a way into classrooms, preparing these children for the racist injustice system they are statistically likely to encounter later in life by forcing them into the prison system early.

Not only have more security guards and police officers resulted in more bogus misdemeanor arrests, but they drain the already scarce funding for schools. School districts have spent upwards of $51 million on school security, while other much more vital aspects of education go underfunded, especially in poor urban neighborhoods of color.

A child is not a criminal

School-to-prison pipelines have been under fire recently with the expansion of the police state into elementary and middle schools, especially in places notorious for racial discrimination. In October, Meridian, Mississippi was sued for operating a pipeline where students were denied basic constitutional rights once they were arrested and taken to juvenile court. About 86 percent of the students in the Lauderdale Country School District are black, and every single one of the students referred to the court for violations were students of color. Not only were these students arrested, but they were denied legal representation, detained without probable cause, and weren’t advised of their Miranda rights.

Texas isn’t far behind when it comes to criminalizing students for minor infractions, such as disrupting class. According to The Guardian, the state tallied more than 300,000 Class C misdemeanor arrests in 2010 because of zero-tolerance policies and increased police forces on school grounds.

But this extension of the New Jim Crow has been found to have been the worst and the largest in Florida. According to the Orlando Sentinel, 12,000 students were arrested 13,870 times in public schools last year. Black students made up 46 percent of the referrals, even though they make up only 21 percent of the Florida youth.

According to the Center for Behavioral Health Services and Criminal Justice Research, these arrests make for long-lasting psychological damage to the student. Incarcerated youth are more likely to exhibit symptoms of oppositional defiant disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and anxiety issues. Detained students are also more likely to lose ground academically from juvenile detention. According to a study done on inner-city Chicago high school students, those arrested in the first two years of high school were six to eight times more likely to drop out than those who hadn’t been arrested.

Instead of focusing on education, school-to-prison pipeline policies are preparing America’s youth for a life in the injustice system. Scare tactics, zero tolerance policies, and police forces are quickly threatening the future of millions of young students. But this criminalization won’t end for them when they graduate high school because, as Alexander states, “mass incarceration in the United States has, in fact, emerged as a stunningly comprehensive and well-disguised system of racialized social control that functions in a manner strikingly similar to Jim Crow.”

- Graciela
The Boston Occupier
Larger graphic here