Glen Beck's 'Restore Honor' Rally in DC, Aug. 28, 2010. Still think we can aim the main blow at Obama and the Democrats, and not worry about the fallout? Or just tail behind liberals and Blue Dogs conciliating with this? Time for some serious left and progressive thinking that won't fit on a bumper sticker...
...time to join with us.
by Carl Davidson
About 40 seasoned Progressive Democrat activists from the 4th CD gathered on Aug. 7 at the Candlelight Lounge in Economy, PA for a two-hour breakfast discussion. The hot topic of the day was the District’s Blue Dog Congressman, Jason Altmire, and what to do about him in the upcoming election and beyond.
It was not an easy question. The people in the buffet line putting tasty scrambled eggs, sausage and home fries on their plates were a cross section of Beaver County’s best political fighters—steelworkers, trade union organizers, African-American community leaders, retirees, postal and construction workers, teachers, social workers and day care workers, and a few candidates and local elected officials. Almost all of them had worked very hard four years ago to replace the GOP’s right-winger, Melissa Hart with Jason Altmire in Congress. While there was little naiveté about politicians in this dining room, they had still expected more from Altmire, especially given the distressed condition of the working class and small business in the area.
“We all know what we’re here for,” said Tina Shannon, the President of the 4th CD’s Progressive Democrats of America, as she opened the meeting. “Most important is we want everyone to speak their minds so we can figure out how to work together on this. The floor is open.”
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By Carl Davidson
When 15,000 vibrant and politically engaged people gather in one spot for five days and organize themselves into more than 1000 workshops, dozens of major plenaries and late night parties across five major cultural hot spots, no one article can claim to give a full account and get away with it.
But an event on that scale livened up Detroit, Michigan during the week of June 22-26 at the US Social Forum, when Cobo Hall and several nearby universities were buzzing with thousands of people trying to shape a new world.
I won’t even try to capture it all. I’ll just affirm the common conviction that it was a major happening on the left and a huge success, an inspiration and an affirmation of hope that progress is being made towards a better future. Then I’ll humbly offer my take on it. We’ll start with some highlights and, for those who aren’t familiar with the Social Forum movement, offer a few explanations.
The Forum started on June 22 with a massive march of thousands through the streets of a devastated and de-industrialized Detroit. “I’ve never seen anything like this, in Detroit or anywhere,” said Forum participant and Detroit resident Charnika Jett. “The sense of joy, support, and determination on the part of the people here, both Detroiters and visitors, is just incredible.”
“What an amazing day!” said Allison Flether Acosta of Jobs with Justice. “We held an orientation session for local coalition folks early in the day, then joined the march with the other members of the Inter-Alliance Dialogue and more than 10,000 people for a lively march through downtown! We ended at Cobo Hall, and then convened for the opening ceremonies.”
New entry of the Trade Unions
One important new addition to the young crowd in the streets was the participation of organized labor. According to the AFL-CIO News Blog, “Newly elected UAW President Bob King joined Metropolitan Detroit AFL-CIO President Saundra Williams; Al Garrett, president of AFSCME District Council 25; and Armando Robles, UE Local 1110 president, in leading a march and rally through the streets of Detroit. Chanting ‘Full and Fair Employment Now!’ and ‘Money for Jobs, Not for Banks!’ Participants demanded Congress address the pressing jobs emergency.”
The opening events, unfortunately, were either ignored or strangely spun by the mass media. “This ain’t no Tea Party,’ said Noel Finley, in a scarce account in the Detroit News, somewhat awed by the sight of it all. “The forum is a hootenanny of pinkos, environuts, peaceniks, Luddites, old hippies, Robin Hoods and urban hunters and gatherers.” Indeed it was, with even more variety. And the diverse crowds and meetings grew stronger as the week unfolded. To make sense of it all, some history and background is in order:
Read more!Entretien avec Carl Davidson, économiste “vert“
Carl Davidson à Paris, le 16 juin 2010
Quelles sont pour vous les mesures les plus urgentes à prendre après cette catastrophe ?
Le principal problème est d’arrêter la fuite d’hydrocarbure. C’est un problème technique qu’Obama ne sait pas régler plus que moi, il est donc en train de rassembler les meilleurs scientifiques et techniciens pour y réfléchir.
Dans un second temps, il faut s’assurer que BP paiera pour le nettoyage et je pense qu’il y arrivera sans trop de problème (BP a accepté de payer le 17 juin NDLR). ....
[Full English translation follows]
What do you see as the most urgent measures to be taken by President Obama after this ecological disaster in the Gulf of Mexico? Will the oil spill lead to better laws on renewable energy?
The main immediate problem is to stop the leakage of oil. It is a severe technical problem that Obama does not know any more than I do about how to stop it. So at this point it’s first a matter is putting together the best scientists and engineers engaged in this kind of production to think through a solution. Obama knows that will include BP employees, and others as well.
In a second step, Obama must ensure that BP will pay for the cleanup. I think he will get it verbally without too much problem (BP agreed to pay Ed June 17). Following through is another matter.
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By Carl Davidson
SolidarityEconomy.Net
Washington DC's DuPont Circle area is best known for foreign embassies and sidewalk cafes and a lively night life. But for three mild and sunny spring days this May 4-6, nearly 3500 people stayed inside the Hilton Hotel for the 2010 'Good Jobs, Green Jobs' conference, trying to solve the country's economic problems and the world's climate change crisis.
This was the third and largest gathering to date on the green jobs theme organized by the Blue-Green Alliance, a coalition of several hundred environmental, community and trade union groups pulled together primarily by the United Steel Workers and the Sierra Club. Last year's gathering of 3000, fresh from Obama's victory and several new recession-fighting initiatives, was highly spirited and visionary.
Now a tough year had passed and the mood had shifted. There was still plenty of idealism and optimism, especially among the younger activists, but many were sobered by the fierce resistance of the GOP and finance capital to any timely or significantly large reforms. Climate change was being denied, clean energy legislation was stalled, stimulus spending for jobs was too small, health insurance reform was barely acceptable, and the wars were dragging on.
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By CCDS Participants
More than 1100 people gathered at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina over the April 15-18 weekend for a 50th Anniversary gathering of the veterans of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and its close allies. SNCC was an early vanguard force in the Southern Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, as well as the Black Revolt that spread nationwide in its wake.
The reunion was an outpouring of powerful emotions, living history and inspiring visions of radical democratic change still needed in the politics of today. These were the people, now graying, who had put their bodies and their lives on the line to bring down Jim Crow segregation, gain Black political power and help end an unjust war in Vietnam. In the process, they had won major victories but were also well aware of work still to be done.
People travelled from every corner of the country to attend. They were Black and white, Asian and Chicano, and they came from all walks of life--some arrived in the bib blue jean overalls of the sharecroppers in the Deep South, while others wore dark business suits, colorful dashikis and everything in between. Most of all, their faces beamed with smiles. There were joyful and tearful embraces, many rooted in the pent-up sufferings and memories of those who had fallen, both at the time and over the years since.
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By Carl Davidson
If you're looking for a full-throttled booster of the natural gas industry to be your representative in the Pennsylvania legislature, then Jim Christiana's clearly your man.
But if you're looking for a representative that puts the general public of Beaver County's largely working-class 15th District in first place, and then brings local business into line with their common interests, you'll be happy there's an election this year.
That's the main conclusion I drew from Christiana's 'Informational Event' on the Marcellus Shale and the natural gas industry held at the Shadow Lakes County Club in Aliquippa, PA, at 8am in the morning, Friday, March 5, 2010.
I was surprised at the rather large turnout, around 200, especially at a time of day when most working people couldn't make it. About half the room was filled with men and women in business attire; the other half more typical of the area, retired folks in casual dress, ball caps and leather jackets.
The Marcellus Shale is clearly a hot topic for those who know about it. For those who don't, it's a geological formation, a layer of porous rock, about two miles beneath the surface of most of Pennsylvania's rolling hills and hollows, and that stretches into several surrounding states as well.
Heat and pressure over millions of years have turned the hydrocarbons within the shale into both oil and natural gas. It's one of the reasons Pennsylvania was the country's first major producer of petroleum, before the Texas oil fields were discovered. Every schoolchild learns about the first oil well in Titusville, PA. Most of the 'easy oil' has long since been pumped out, but thanks to new processes known as 'hydraulic fracturing' and horizontal drilling, there's still abundant quantities of natural gas to be had--and thus new fortunes to be made.
That last notion gets us back to the reason for Christiana's meeting. Along the long row of front tables for speakers were reps from the full range of industry-related groups-Chesapeake Energy, Range Resources, EQT Drilling Technologies, National Association of Royalty Owners and, last but not least, the Marcellus Shale Coalition that brings them all together. Notably absent up front, of course, were any local environmental groups, hunting and fishing clubs, trade unions or any others with critical questions or opposition. But then, this was Christiana's show.
"Natural gas," said Christiana, "is used not only for heating and cooking, but in the manufacturing of a wide range of products-plastics, petrochemicals, feeds and fertilizers. Greater quantities here mean prices that are more stable and less money going to empower our enemies overseas." He and others went on with visions of lower heating bills and a new surge in industry-related employment. Natural gas, it seemed, had more uses than aspirin-and all beneficial.
So what's the problem with exploiting the Marcellus Shale? There are at least two of them, one immediate and another more strategic, although all were denied any significance by Christiana and his 'informational' panel.
The more immediate problem is producing natural gas at the threat of a danger to ground water. 'Hydraulic fracturing' is a process whereby large quantities of fresh water is mixed with sand and a cocktail of chemicals, including diesel fuel and other toxics, and then pumping it through miles of underground pipe in the shale. There it is blown into the shale using a powerful explosive charge, fracturing it and releasing the gas. About 25 percent of the liquid brine and toxics returns to the surface with the gas. But most of it remains underground, below the existing water tables.
Industry speakers on the panel claimed there was no threat to the underground water that fed creeks, streams and rivers. The recovered brine was safely stored and reused, thus even making it possible to use less fresh water to make brine in future wells. Christiana then took the occasion to criticize PA's Democratic Senator Bob Casey for trying to change the clean water act to cover fracturing, since Christiana had introduced a resolution in Harrisburg urging Congress to stop Casey's proposal.
When Christiania called for questions, Bob Schmetzer, a retired IBEW staffer and South Heights, PA councilman, told another story:
"Out in Colorado, He explained, "a drilling rig worker was taken to an emergency room in Denver from a spill of the fracturing brine. The nurse caring for him also fell ill from the chemicals and went into heart, liver, and lung failure and was taken to the critical care unit. The Hospital went into CODE Orange, closing down the hospital until the source was found. The driller refused to give the emergency room doctor the names of the chemicals that would have helped treatment. The privacy rules prevent the nurse from saying which chemicals made her or the worker sick. They also prevent the hospital from revealing the employer. This is why Senator Casey is right. Protecting our first responders and hospitals is the right thing to do."
Schmetzer went on to mention more instances elsewhere, calling on Christiana and others on the panel. The PA DEP, he explained, is only reactive to spills and other accidents, when more pro-active protections are called for.
Christiana was quick to reply but avoided the main points. "All this proves it that there's a problem in Colorado," he asserted, "and the people there can fix the Colorado Department of Environmental Protection. As for the Marcellus Shale, there's zero evidence of any problems, and we can handle everything in Harrisburg with our own DEP. Federal involvement is a waste of time and dollars."
Of course there's lots of evidence of Pennsylvania problems, Christiana notwithstanding. Multiple local newspapers have reported spills, dead fish, dead farm animals and other pollution consequences related to natural gas drilling. Even the PA DEP has noted some of them, and issued fines. The DEP, moreover, is undermanned and facing staff cutbacks. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer lest year, "Administration Secretary Naomi Wyatt said the Department of Environmental Protection will see the greatest reductions, losing 138 positions, or about 5 percent of its workforce."
Toward the end, I managed to get the floor: "With all due respect, Rep. Christiana, assertions are not arguments. You've made the case that this is a national industry, and shown us maps of how the Marcellus shale lies under several states. If I were the natural gas industry, I could understand why it would be nice not to have the feds looking over my shoulder, and deal with a dozen small factionalized state agencies instead. But I'm not an industry; I'm a citizen concerned about jobs and clean water and clean air. You've asserted the feds can't do anything right about anything, but that doesn't make it so. Casey's measures are protecting all of us, here and elsewhere, and you need to stop trying to block it."
Christina again was quick to reply. His claims: The PA DEP was all we needed. Harrisburg was doing fine, not like New York state were environmentalists were causing delays that meant delays in jobs. Federal government could do little right, and we had to assert our 'states rights' to protect us from Washington, DC not oil and gas industries, and so on-all the rhetoric straight from the GOP's Tea Party faction. There was terrific applause for him, little for me.
One other questioner at the end raised the more strategic question, about the overall wisdom of taking carbon from under the ground and making energy by putting it into the air. Weren't there more sustainable options? Unfortunately, he was cut off, and the ovations clearly went for Christiana.
The one sided response had a lot to do with the self-selection of the audience. As mentioned, good number worked for the industry in one way or another. But also a good number of the local citizenry, apart from Christiana's GOP supporters, were owners of small pieces of rural or semi-rural land in the county where they still had mineral rights. The deeds of many local homeowners, however, say very clearly that they own nothing of the mineral right beneath their property. Those rights were snookered away long ago. Still, enough folks still had some rights, and they had turned out in good numbers, trying to find out how not to get cheated and still make some good money in hard times. No one could blame them.
My main conclusion of the day? Beaver County residents are still in need of deeper education around the Marcellus Shale issues. It should be a public hearing or conference were all sides are on the platform-the promoters, the alternative critics and those in between. Wider connections need to be made, such as how to shrink carbon-burning energy while growing green energy, and how to grow the jobs for green manufacturing as well. That kind of public democracy would serve all of us well.
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by Randy Shannon
February 26, 2010
Wall Street bankers are investing big bucks in gas drillers as they spread across the state buying up mineral rights and drawing up leases to establish drilling operations. Stock prices of Atlas Energy, Range Resources, and Cabot Oil and Gas are soaring as they race to accumulate ownership of the enormous shale gas deposit in Western Pennsylvania.
There are two big issues arising from the exploitation of the state’s shale gas resource. One issue is fair taxation that remunerates the people of the state for the loss of a resource that cannot be replaced. This is the gas severance tax that drillers pay to all states with substantial gas drilling. The other is protection of our water supply without which our property is worthless and our lives are at risk.
Pennsylvania does not have a gas severance tax. The Republican Party in Pennsylvania used the 2009 budget crisis as leverage to stop the imposition of the severance tax. This cost the state up to $100 million in lost revenue this year, at an equal savings to the gas drillers who can raise their campaign contributions to the Republicans.
The public awareness of this rip-off has grown to such an extent that Governor Rendell has proposed a severance tax for the 2010 budget equal to West Virginia’s. The Democrats running for State Senate and State Legislature are supporting this position. Even Dan Onorato and Jack Wagner, who are taking $thousands from the drillers in campaign contributions, are saying they support a “reasonable” gas severance tax.
The gas drillers have taken a fall back position: if they are going to have to pay a tax, then they want more concessions from the state to give them a free hand in conducting their operations on the ground. In this Beaver County Times article from Feb. 12th (http://tinyurl.com/yap6azf ) the spokeswoman from the Marcellus Shale Coalition threatens to “move resources to shale formations in other states” if Pennsylvania does not make concessions.
This is a tired and overused empty threat. Pennsylvania has the greatest gas deposit in the United States that will last for decades. Drillers are rushing in, not hesitating in case they might have to pay a severance tax like in other states. Most importantly, gas prices are now relatively low, so that the longer it takes to drill, the more we delay, the more Pennsylvania will profit from higher future gas prices.
The shale fracturing or ‘fracking’ process as it is now practiced creates life-threatening environmental issues. To frack one well the driller takes around 6 million gallons of water from local creeks and rivers. They mix in a half dozen volatile hydrocarbons, such as benzene that cause respiratory failure and death in all mammals. They also mix in heavy metals, cyanide, and other chemicals that cause cancer. These chemicals are being released into the water table, on the surface, and in our waterways.
They are also buying up legislators in order to guarantee that their profits are maximized. State Legislator Jim Christiana, whose campaign was funded by the House Republican Campaign Committee, is working overtime for the drillers.
The drillers are unfolding a political offensive to ease their entry into Beaver County. Following their article of complaint in the Times, the drillers are holding a public meeting hosted by Representative Christiana. This “Marcellus Shale Informational Event” will be on Friday, March 5, from 8:00am to 10:00am at the Club at Shadow Lakes, 2000 Beaver Lakes Blvd., Aliquippa. Those planning to attend must call 724-728-7655 to RSVP. This will be a typical sales meeting with hand waving and big numbers thrown out to dazzle the audience into thinking that they, not the drillers, will be the beneficiaries of this wealth.
Based on experiences in central and southwestern Pennsylvania, folks have found that once the drillers gain access to their land, the owners have no say in what is done. People have experienced cancer, blown water wells, dead vegetation, poisoned animals, and polluted water.
The reason for this is that under the Bush administration, the EPA was called off the job of monitoring gas well fracking. The 2005 Energy Policy Act exempted the 247 chemicals and the practice of “fracking” from the Safe Drinking Water Act. Without this “Halliburton Loophole,” the process would be less profitable due to the extensive testing, protective measures, and clean-up that would be necessary to safely frack shale deposits.
Drilling shale gas deposits under the Halliburton Loophole in the western states resulted in tragedy for scattered farm families, but not enough to cause a political backlash. Now that the “wild west” drilling practices that have been so profitable are practiced in Pennsylvania and New York, the impact even from one year of drilling has been measurable.
Judging from the impact of 700 wells on the water supply and the lives and property of the victims, we can project that drilling another 10,000 wells using current “wild west” practices will devastate Pennsylvania communities and possibly destroy potable water for millions of residents. In reaction to this looming disaster, Sen. Robert Casey has introduced the Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness of Chemicals Act (FRAC Act), S 1215, that closes the Halliburton Loophole.
In a brazen act of servility to the greed of the drillers, PA Republican Legislator Jim Christiana has introduced a House Resolution 609 in the Pennsylvania Legislature to express the sentiment that Pennsylvania does not want the Federal Government to enforce the Safe Drinking Water Act in regards to shale gas drilling in Pennsylvania! The resolution cites the expected monetary returns from drilling, the drillers claim that no pollution occurs, and phony issue of states rights not have safe drinking water.
The shale gas drilling is also a big issue in the campaign for Governor. Governor Rendell has given the drillers vast acres of state lands to drill in order to make up the budget shortfall negotiated last year. He has also announced plan to lease tens of thousands of additional acres this year. While Rendell supports the gas severance tax, he has made no effort to counter the assault on the environment.
In reaction to criticism and concern across the state, Rendell announced that he will double the staff of the Department of Environmental Protection to monitor the drilling. However this doubling still leaves the staffing levels below those of two years ago when they were slashed at the demand of the Republican State Senate. Even if the DEP staff were doubled again, the problem is that the DEP has not been charged with protecting our water supplies.
The PA DEP is only “monitoring” activity. It is not enforcing any regulations concerning chemical contamination by the drilling activity. Even worse, the DEP is allowing the drillers to dump drilling water laden with heavy metals and carcinogens into the Monongahela River. The water is highly toxic when recovered from the fracking process and it is placed in tanks and treated to remove the volatile hydrocarbons to meet DEP regulations of volatile hydrocarbons. However, it is then diluted with other wastewater and dumped into the river without DEP testing for heavy metals such as arsenic, selenium, mercury, lead, and other carcinogens. This recently resulted in an official warning to communities using Mon River water for drinking water.
The DEP claims that they cannot test for chemicals in the poisoned water if they don’t know what the chemicals are. And there is presently no requirement for the drillers to reveal the contents of the fracking fluids. Hearings will soon start in Representative Waxman’s committee of the US Congress to look into the fracking chemicals. However, the DEP can act if the people of Pennsylvania demand it. Dumping of unknown chemicals in the river can be halted until their effect is determined. Democratic legislators in Pennsylvania have called for a suspension of drilling until this issue is resolved.
Democratic Party Gubernatorial Candidates Dan Onorato and Jack Wagner have accepted donations from the drilling companies. While they have position papers talking about severance taxes and safe drilling, both candidates have avoided addressing the urgent problem of contamination of our water supply and destruction of farmland and animals. Democratic Gubernatorial Candidate Joe Hoeffel has accepted no money from the drillers and is calling for “strong swift action to ensure drilling is conducted safely and responsibly.”
Robert Schmetzer, vice-president of PA 4th CD Chapter of Progressive Democrats of America, and Democratic Party Chairman of South Heights Borough released the following statement:
“I have been told that Onorato, Wagner, and Corbett took money from the drillers. Please send Jacks position on drilling. The Repubs took a stand on drill baby drill !….. Dems want the gas without destroying Pennsylvania’s land, water, or air as guaranteed in our constitution.
Protection of our people ,their families, and health is the #1 issue….. Bush/Cheney stripped the federal Acts clean of protection. Bob Casey is trying to correct this. 2005 moratorium stripped the Clean water act; safe drinking water act; clean air act; superfund act; and NEPA – national environment policy act. Cheney wanted to pave the highway
for Halliburton energy.
There have been 247 chemicals from MSDS sheets recorded. They have caused air, water and land contamination in Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, and Wyoming by using toxic, carcinogenic and endocrine disrupting chemicals. The companies don’t have to tell what they are pumping underground. The DEP and EPA don’t have any cases of well pollution as told by the drillers.
That is because they don’t have to report to any agency. Presently there is no Federal agency monitoring the frac chemicals because companies don’t have to tell. They also don’t have to tell of any accidents. This issue is explosive and will be a huge issue in this election. Shellshocked…!”
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Note from CarlD: An old friend on mine, who blogs at http://www.politicallyincorrectleftist.blogspot.com/, recently criticized me for being 'confused' about racism, not understanding that conditions had changed for Black Americans and that racism, primarily as attitudes held by whites, was receding, and that I was missing the importance of class. You can read his argument on his blog, but here is one of my replies:
George, I assure you, I don't find anything about a people of a society 'immutable.' Everything changes in time, including people, although as Mao Zedong once put it, rather than change, 'some people die first.'
And as someone who marched 250 miles through Mississippi in 1966, I'm quite aware of the changes that have been wrought even there, especially by harsh and bitter struggles.
But one thing still in need of change is that the 'equality' won in our society still has a white top and a Black bottom, and a white blindspot persists in a large majority of our population in their inability to see it, or if they do, commit themselves to do something about it. Visit any prison or jail, and it will hit you in the face.
I base my views not only on history books, but my social practice today. I live in Raccoon Township, Beaver County, in Western PA. In 1960, it was the most proletarian county in the whole country, and I grew up here, and know more than a little about class. Most of my relatives worked in the mills, and a few of them died there.
Raccoon is 99 percent white, and even the one percent isn't Black. It's more than 90 cent 'white' workers, and I worked this area in the election. When I set up a PDA voter registration table at the township fair, complete with Obama literature, the first message I got an elderly woman was that I was a disgrace, a 'traitor to my race'. Views were more mixed after that, especially among the young. In the end, we got a large minority of voters for Obama, 48 percent, mainly because of the newer and younger workers.
So yes, racism as personal 'attitude' can change. When we went door to door and confronted it, we took the union's line and told people if they had racist fears to 'sit on them, vote your interests, not your prejudices.' It worked fairly well, but not well enough with a good number.
They continue to cling to these 'attitudes' for a reason, namely because there is a social basis for them, which is a Marxist way to look at ideas and attitudes, and this is the heart of my argument with you. As low-income and distressed as workers are in my township, every one of them knows that if they go into Aliquippa, where only Blacks live now, the conditions are far worse. And the Blacks in Aliquippa know, even if they could afford the mortgage on a very modest old house in Raccoon, of which there are plenty of empty ones, and that housing discrimination is illegal, they would look elsewhere rather than put up with the grief they would suffer from those who want to cling to segregated conclaves, however modest they many be.
Is this special status or privilege or inequality or whatever you want to call it in the class interest of my working-class neighbors in Raccoon? No it is not. Not any more than a worm on a hook is in the interests of a fish.
But it is the anchor for their self-defeating 'attitudes' and the secret of the bourgeoisie's rule over them. White identity politics is what imprisons them from seeing their own class interests and the need for solidarity with all the exploited and oppressed. And challenging the structures and policies that identity or 'system of attitudes' rests upon, however difficult, is the key element of our eventual victory.
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Two days ago, at almost six o'clock in the evening Cuban time and when, given its geographical location, night had already fallen in Haiti, television stations began to broadcast the news that a violent earthquake -- measuring 7.3 on the Richter scale--had severely struck Port-au-Prince. The seismic phenomenon originated from a tectonic fault located in the sea just 15 kilometers from the Haitian capital, a city where 80% of the population inhabit fragile homes built of adobe and mud.
The news continued almost without interruption for hours. There was no footage, but it was confirmed that many public buildings, hospitals, schools and more solidly-constructed facilities were reported collapsed. I have read that an earthquake of the magnitude of 7.3 is equivalent to the energy released by an explosion of 400,000 tons of TNT.
Tragic descriptions were transmitted. Wounded people in the streets were crying out for medical help, surrounded by ruins under which their relatives were buried. No one, however, was able to broadcast a single image for several hours.
The news took all of us by surprise. Many of us have frequently heard about hurricanes and severe flooding in Haiti, but were not aware of the fact that this neighboring country ran the risk of a massive earthquake. It has come to light on this occasion that 200 years ago, a massive earthquake similarly affected this city, which would have been the home of just a few thousand inhabitants at that time.
At midnight, there was still no mention of an approximate figure in terms of victims. High-ranking United Nations officials and several heads of government discussed the moving events and announced that they would send emergency brigades to help. Given that MINUSTAH (United Stabilization Mission in Haiti) troops are deployed there-- UN forces from various countries-- some defense ministers were talking about possible casualties among their personnel.
It was only yesterday, Wednesday morning, when the sad news began to arrive of enormous human losses among the population, and even institutions such as the United Nations mentioned that some of their buildings in that country had collapsed, a word that does not say anything in itself but could mean a lot.
For hours, increasingly more traumatic news continued to arrive about the situation in this sister nation. Figures related to the number of fatal victims were discussed, which fluctuated, according to various versions, between 30,000 and 100,000. The images are devastating; it is evident that the catastrophic event has been given widespread coverage around the world, and many governments, sincerely moved by the disaster, are making efforts to cooperate according to their resources.
The tragedy has genuinely moved a significant number of people, particularly those in which that quality is innate. But perhaps very few of them have stopped to consider why Haiti is such a poor country. Why does almost 50% of its population depend on family remittances sent from abroad? Why not analyze the realities that led Haiti to its current situation and this enormous suffering as well?
The most curious aspect of this story is that no one has said a single word to recall the fact that Haiti was the first country in which 400,000 Africans, enslaved and trafficked by Europeans, rose up against 30,000 white slave masters on the sugar and coffee plantations, thus undertaking the first great social revolution in our hemisphere.
Pages of insurmountable glory were written there. Napoleon’s most eminent general was defeated there. Haiti is the net product of colonialism and imperialism, of more than one century of the employment of its human resources in the toughest forms of work, of military interventions and the extraction of its natural resources.
This historic oversight would not be so serious if it were not for the real fact that Haiti constitutes the disgrace of our era, in a world where the exploitation and pillage of the vast majority of the planet’s inhabitants prevails.
Billions of people in Latin American, Africa and Asia are suffering similar shortages although perhaps not to such a degree as in the case of Haiti.
Situations like that of that country should not exist in any part of the planet, where tens of thousands of cities and towns abound in similar or worse conditions, by virtue of an unjust international economic and political order imposed on the world. The world population is not only threatened by natural disasters such as that of Haiti, which is a just a pallid shadow of what could take place in the planet as a result of climate change, which really was the object of ridicule, derision, and deception in Copenhagen.
It is only just to say to all the countries and institutions that have lost citizens or personnel because of the natural disaster in Haiti: we do not doubt that in this case, the greatest effort will be made to save human lives and alleviate the pain of this long-suffering people. We cannot blame them for the natural phenomenon that has taken place there, even if we do not agree with the policy adopted with Haiti.
But I have to express the opinion that it is now time to look for real and lasting solutions for that sister nation.
In the field of healthcare and other areas, Cuba--despite being a poor and blockaded country-- has been cooperating with the Haitian people for many years. Around 400 doctors and healthcare experts are offering their services free of charge to the Haitian people. Our doctors are working every day in 227 of the country’s 337 communes. On the other hand, at least 400 young Haitians have trained as doctors in our homeland. They will now work with the reinforcement brigade which traveled there yesterday to save lives in this critical situation. Thus, without any special effort being made, up to 1,000 doctors and healthcare experts can be mobilized, almost all of whom are already there willing to cooperate with any other state that wishes to save the lives of the Haitian people and rehabilitate the injured.
Another significant number of young Haitians are currently studying medicine in Cuba.
We are also cooperating with the Haitian people in other areas within our reach. However, there can be no other form of cooperation worthy of being described as such than fighting in the field of ideas and political action in order to put an end to the limitless tragedy suffered by a large number of nations such as Haiti.
The head of our medical brigade reported: "The situation is difficult, but we have already started saving lives." He made that statement in a succinct message hours after his arrival yesterday in Port-au-Prince with additional medical reinforcements.
Later that night, he reported that Cuban doctors and ELAM’s Haitian graduates were being deployed throughout the country. They had already seen more than 1,000 patients in Port-au-Prince, immediately establishing and putting into operation a hospital that had not collapsed and using field hospitals where necessary. They were preparing to swiftly set up other centers for emergency care. We feel a wholesome pride for the cooperation that, in these tragic instances, Cuba doctors and young Haitian doctors who trained in Cuba are offering our brothers and sisters in Haiti!
Fidel Castro Ruz January 14, 2009 8:25 p.m. Translated by Granma International
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Obama, the Democrats
By Carl Davidson
BEAVER COUNTY, PA -- I've been hearing from too many left activists who are simply fed up with the Democrats and want to leave the electoral arena -- and just when the battles there are getting really interesting, even if we don't have prospects of major victories. To my way of thinking, our present task is to deepen the divisions there, not walk away from them.
The sooner we stop thinking of the "Democratic Party" as if it were a single entity, the better off we will be. That's why "Democrat control of Congress" is an illusion. The GOP Blue Dog faction in the Democratic Party combined with the regular GOP make it at least a draw. That's why everything positive gets gutted and turned into its opposite.
The progressive majority's forces are pretty much limited to the Progressive Caucus, the Black Caucus and the Latino Caucus, and not even all of them. We are a minority force in those upper spheres, not an emerging majority like we are at the base. We can grow to a larger minority in Congress, but to get a true majority, we'd likely have to split both major parties, and we are not close to having that strength yet.
Otherwise, we are mainly limited to passing things where there is a deep divide in finance capital and other big capital at the top, and where one side of it becomes an indirect ally. That may be shaping up on the Afghan war.
But small and medium-sized capital, as well as some larger sectors of productive capital, have yet to stand up to finance capital on HR 676 even though it's in their interest to do so. We'll just have to continue our "long march through the institutions" to get it. A carbon tax, immigration reform, and EFCA are going to be even more difficult.
At this point, we have two interconnected mass democratic tasks. Building the left-progressive pole inside and outside the Dems with groups like PDA and other independent forums, and dividing the GOP right to smash the Teabaggers and their allies. Neither is easy, but starting with a clear head helps a lot.
Here in Beaver County in western Pennsylvania we have about 200 or so PDA people and another few dozen Beaver County Peace Links activists. Almost all are blue collar workers or retirees. We, in this sense, are the active antiwar forces here, as well as the active left-progressive side of the spectrum among the unions and a few other groups.
There isn't much else, save for the Tom Merton Center, the religious-liberal-green-anarchist bunch in nearby Pittburgh. Together with the unions, they pulled out 10,000 for the G20. We took part in it as best as we could. All told, about 6,000 of the 10,000 were from the wider Pittsburgh region and the nearby campuses. That's our activist core viewed more widely.
Nonetheless a majority of our county, and certainly a majority of Dem voters, are critical of the wars -- but they have yet to take any action other than voting. It's our task to find the activities they will take up, like coming to a vigil or attending an antiwar educational, or even just honking their horns at our weekly vigils.
For the Healthcare not Warfare Afghan war protests here a few weeks ago, we got out about 60 people in the rain and cold. Not bad, considering. At least half those attending were wearing their union jackets. Besides us, the speakers were union folks and local Dem officials, plus Tim Carpenter from PDA. The speeches pushed and warned Obama, but didn't attack him personally. They told him what he had to do in order to succeed.
If we didn't take this approach, working with local Dems, I'd guess we could get out less than 10 people, if anyone bothered at all.
Our next project is to make use of Bob Greenwald's Rethink Afghanistan from Brave New Films. One of our allies showed it last month at a college in the next county. Plus finding ways to work with the Steelworkers on their new collaborative with the Mondragon Coops.
If you think our strategy is reducible to "supporting Obama," you don't understand it. To be precise, our strategy here is to aim the main blow at low-road neoliberal finance capital and its right wing populist allies, allying with high road neoKeynesian initiatives at the top, while developing the left-center coalition among labor, minorities, women and youth at the base.
We do that in the form of expanding our PDA group; it's platform is Out Now, HR 676, Green Jobs, the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), Carbon Tax and Debt Relief. Within that, among the advanced, a few of us do revolutionary socialist education that targets neo-Keynesianism as well. We work with Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, and that way we grow CCDS in size, too.
That's the political and class substance of it. Where Obama stands, and where we stand in relation to him, depends on the ebb and flow. We oppose him where he's wrong, support him where he's right, and defend him versus the racist onslaughts of the right.
So yes, I'm suggesting that people elsewhere do likewise -- although I'm well aware that conditions vary, and adjustments are required.
If one of the left antiwar coalitions thinks they can pull off a march on DC, we'll probably rent a bus or two, fill them, and go to it. If we do, we'll try to network horizontally with others like ourselves, perhaps even meet after the march for a confab of some sort.
But we are not interested in wasting energy or resources getting into national pissing matches and intrigues over slogans and speakers. We'll simply bring the slogans that make sense to us. But in the end, the antiwar forces need to be reoriented and rebuilt at the base, in alliance with the growth in class struggle activity around the economy.
That's what we're doing, and have been doing for some time. Other approaches may point to the future as well, and I'm wide open to hearing about them.
Carl Davidson became widely known in the American left as a national officer of SDS (1966-68), as a writer and editor of the New Left newsweekly The Guardian, and as a leader of the anti-Vietnam war movement. In later years, he took up the study of the social impact of technology and the revolutions in communication and high-tech production. Together with Jerry Harris, he is the author of CyberRadicalism: A New Left for a Global Age.
If you like this article, make use of the Paypal button here or at http://solidarityeconomy.net
Most recently Carl worked as webmaster for Progressives for Obama, an independent left-progressive voice in the campaign (now renamed as Progressive America Rising). He is also a leader in the U.S. socialist movement, serving as a national co-chair of Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism. A longtime resident of Chicago, he recently moved back to the Western Pennsylvania milltowns where he was born and his family resides.
The Steel City’s ‘State of Siege’
By Carl Davidson
Nearly 10,000 protesters marched through the streets of Pittsburgh on the last day of the G20 this Sept. 25 afternoon, delivering a powerful message for global justice that was expressed with a brilliantly colored display of unity, militancy and diversity.
Peace and justice groups demanded an end to wars and occupations, trade union contingents demanded green jobs and fair trade, women and people of color raised the banners of equality and empowerment, and young people called for a sustainable and liberated future in a new world.
“Will we make any difference?” Rick Kimbrough asked me a few hours earlier as we headed down a parkway heavily secured with police cars at every exit on our way into town. Kimbrough is an old high school friend, an African American steelworker with 37 years in a huge Beaver County mill that’s now shutdown and gone, Jones And Laughlin Steel. When I asked him to join me the day before, he was fired up to go already, until he heard a nephew had taken a bullet as a bystander in a senseless street fight. When he heard his nephew would do OK, he called back, ready to ride in with me and join the United Steel Workers contingent in ‘the People’s March’ at the close of the G20 sessions.
“We’ll make SOME difference, but not nearly enough, and not yet,” was my reply. “These G20 people think they can run the world as they please, but we have to show them they can’t, that there are limits, at least until we can grow stronger, and turn things around completely.” I asked Rick if he had ever been to something like this before. No, he’d been to political, union and civil rights rallies, but this was different.
We turned to discussing the news from the previous day, mainly about the efforts by anarchist youth, a thousand or so of them, to stage actions on a variety of targets, and march on the G20 without permits. They had a number of skirmishes all day and into the night with the highly militarized police, who made use of tear gas, pepper spray and rubber bullets. Some 82 protesters were arrested overall, and the day had seen numerous smashed windows and trash cans sent rolling into the streets.
Far worse, the Pittsburgh riot police, on the night of Sept 24, swept the university neighborhood streets, downtown Oakland, clean of students with pepper spray and tear gas canisters. Students were trapped on stairwells by riot police above and below and gassed. Students were gassed in closed passages between dormitories. They had committed no crime, no offense, no discourtesy, no disrespect, but had simply been walking to get a bite to eat, or to visit a friend, or to study, or stand around in the cool night air and talk with friends.
The media accounts had worried Rick’s family about his participation. In fact, a number of other Beaver County workers I had asked to take part flat out said “No!,’ they had no interest in playing tag with heavily armed cops who were largely inexperienced--and my assertion that today’s march would likely be large and peaceful didn’t count for much. In fact, it was entirely peaceful on this last day—no windows broken, and only one arrest.
“What’s the deal with breaking windows? Don’t they realize that’s just a big diversion that waters down the message?” Rick asked about the previous night. I tried to explain that anarchists didn’t necessarily share our message, and could be manipulated by police and provocateurs. But young people had minds of their own, often having to learn things the hard way. He agreed, turning the talk back to his nephew, and venting his anger against the criminal profiteers selling guns to kids in his neighborhood. “I’ve seen too much senseless street violence,” he concluded, “I’ve got no patience for it.”
When we hit Pittsburgh, our attention turned to trying to park downtown near the Steel Workers building, so we would have the car nearby at the end of the march. Nice idea, but no way it was going to happen. Every downtown exit was blocked until Oakland, near the university. We tried twice to double back, and were turned back by police and blockaded streets.
Security was tough and serious. The militarized police, more than 6000 of them brought in from across the country, had shut down normal commerce and movement of people in the city. The city was placed in a real, not a virtual state of siege.
Finally, Randy Shannon from Beaver County’s Progressive Democrats of America got us on the cell phone. He’s across the river on the South Side, the closest spot he could find. So we picked him up, and made our way to Oakland, and luckily found a parking lot right near the head of the march.
As we neared the top of a steep block and reached the staging area, Rick got a little wide-eyed at the first thing we saw, a contingent of 200 Tibetans, some with monk robes and beating drums, and all with red and yellow flags and banners. So I gave him a quick crash course in who’s who—the Tibetans are protesting what they see as a raw deal from China threatening their Buddhist culture, the young people dressed in black with masks are mostly the anarchists we were taking about, the people with checkered scarves and green, black red and white flags are pro-Palestinian, the women in shocking pink are Code Pink, a militant peace group, and so on.
“This is wonderful, all kinds of people are here,” was Rick’s conclusion. I suggested we look for union caps and jackets, or people in fatigues with Army veteran’s stuff, and we’ll find the folks we’re looking for. Right away, Carl Redwood Jr. from the battles in the Hill District, a low-income African American neighborhood, comes over to talk. I met him at a teach-in two days before. We fill Rick in on the issues around the new Penguin stadium and gentrification.
As we neared the front ranks, I spotted Michael McPhearson, a national leader of Vets for Peace I knew through United for Peace and Justice. When I introduce Rick, it turns out Mike has folks in Aliquippa, so they are quickly making connections.
There were two groupings up front. Randy had connected with his daughter, a University of Pittsburgh student, and was positioned with the Thomas Merton Center antiwar people. Rick and I were with the Iraq Vets Against the War group along side them. Aaron Hughes, an IVAW national leader, came up to greet us. He and Rick were soon talking about post traumatic stress and it impact on communities when soldiers return. “I still haven’t spotted the Steel Workers,” I told him, “but let’s just stay here until we do.”
Suddenly the march moved out, and we’re in the front ranks, about four rows back. It’s a long walk, more than a mile, but fortunately, almost all of it is downhill. After we’ve gone twenty blocks or so and are on a little rise, I walked backwards and looked for the end. I couldn't see it; we were still filling the streets. It meant we numbered somewhere between 5000 and 10,000, and we could declare a victory for the day. Progressive activists had beaten back attempts at intimidation.
Rick picked up on all the rhythmic chanting. “The people, united, will never be defeated!” seemed to suit him best, while “This is what democracy looks like!” was my favorite for the day. As we come in sight of the Hill District, I’m informed that a feeder march of the residents numbering about 500 has merged with us, as have a number of other groupings with feeder marches throughout day.
Eventually we decide to stand to the side and wait for the USW contingent to show up. This meant we got a terrific review of the march’s composition: large banners from the Green party went by, followed by a huge HR 676 Single Payer health care contingent, then several hundred young anarchists in black with black flags, the Gay and Lesbian people, more environmentalists, then Middle East peace militants. Finally we spotted the large blue USW flags, with dozens of people in union T-Shirts, perhaps 50 in all. I waved to Maria Somma, a Steel Worker organizer. Interestingly, the front banner is featuring the rights of immigrant workers. Plenty of ‘Good Jobs, Green Jobs’ placards are also visible. We fell in at the back of the contingent, carrying our own placard with a picture of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and a demand for jobs.
The taller downtown buildings provided and excellent echo chamber for our chants and drum beats, so spirits were high as we turned the corner to the rally scheduled at an open plaza near the City-County Building.
“We had this successful people’s march today only because we FOUGHT for it, every step of the way” declared Peter Shell of the Thomas Merton Center’s Antiwar Committee from the platform. He delivered a powerful indictment of the federal and city tactics designed to disorganize the protestors and dampen the turnout. “Look at all these militarized police brought in here from everywhere. They have taught us an important lesson, even if in a small way, about what it’s like to live under and occupation, and why we have to increase out efforts this fall to end the occupations in Iraq, Afghanistan and Gaza.”
Lisa Jordan of the USW Education Dept spoke for the steelworkers. “The G20 is undemocratic and unrepresentative,” she stated. “They only speak for the CEOs; there is no voice for the workers.” She pledged the solidarity of the USW with all the ongoing fights for global and social justice.
We listened to a few more speeches, but the crowd was breaking up. One contingent would go on to the East Side within a few blocks of the convention center, where the G20 was wrapping up, and thus technically getting within ‘sight and sound’ of the gathering. It was a thin concession to what was really needed.
Rick had a bum leg, injured years back in the J&L tin mill when a sheet of metal sliced a tendon, and it was giving out on him. Given the restrictive logistics, we called it a day. Getting to a bus to get back to our car was hard enough—we had to pass through three barriers of hundreds of police, including a long line of German shepherd police dogs that looked forlorn behind their uncomfortable muzzles. The bus quickly filled, and in twenty minutes, we were back at the car and headed home.
Since the G20 bigwigs were also headed toward the airport, which is located near the border of Beaver County, security was even more intense on the highway on the way back. “It’s all overkill,” said Rick. “They just want to use us for practice. We’re just a training exercise for them, and it’ll be turned against us even more somewhere down the line.”
As I dropped him off at home, I reminded him to check the news. “The cameras all loved your picket sign; you may get your fifteen minutes of fame, and can brag to your grandkids.” When I got home and turned on the news, however, reality sunk in. There were a few brief snippets about our huge march today, followed by great detail about how many windows and storefronts had been smashed the night before, complete with charts and maps of targeted areas, and lots of footage of broken glass, with kids in black masks, while cops do their best to round them up or disperse them.
Randy Shannon called to check in, making sure we made it back OK. “In that state of siege,” he summed up, “the march today was a shining example of the courage and determination of those of us who understand the need to fight for the First Amendment.”
But on the wider messages, if we’re ever to get beyond preaching to the choir of the militant minority, and instead break through to the progressive majority, we’re going to have to find the ways and the forces to do things differently.
Carl Davidson is a writer for Beaver County Blue, and a long-time organizer going back to the 1960s New Left. Today he is a national co-chair of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism and a national board member of the US Solidarity Economy Network. He is author, along with Jerry Harris, of 'Cyberradicalism: A New Left for a Global Age.' If you like this artile, make use of the PayPal button at http://carldavidson.blogspot.com
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Photo: USW Blue-Green Rally at G20 for Green Jobs, Clean Energy
By Carl Davidson
Beaver County Blue
One of the first things you see entering Pittsburgh from the Fort Pitt Bridge is that the United Steel Workers, headquartered in this working-class town, are determined to deliver a strong message to the G20 bigwigs.
“Jobs, Good Jobs, Greens Jobs Now!’ declared the huge five-story-tall banner draped from the top of the even taller USW headquarters building that faces the Golden Triangle and its hotels. Despite squads of militarized police, some in their Ninja turtle outfits, no one anywhere near the downtown area can miss it.
Today I’m headed for the day-long ‘Teach-In on Human Rights, Global Justice and the G20’ organized by the USW at their 4th floor conference center. Later in the afternoon on this gray, drizzly and humid Sept 23 day, I plan to hear Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz speak in the low-income Hill District, and attend a labor-environmentalist rally and concert featuring local politicians and rockers.
The street heat protests are planned for the last two days, Thursday and Friday, Sept 24-25. So far, the police have been going out of their way with petty harassment of out-of-town protestors—getting permits mixed up, trying to stop a Free Food bus, challenging small encampments. Some Green Peace people get busted today for hanging a huge banner on one of the bridges, but arrests and scuffles so far are minor.
I arrived early, just in time for the freshly brewed coffee and wide array of muffins and pastries that will load my blood sugar and won’t help my waistline—but who can resist? The TV cameras are there, and the room is filling up with union people and activists from near and far. The press is focused on Richard Trumka, the new president of the AFL-CIO who’s very popular here in Western Pennsylvania. He came from the coal mining area about 40 miles south of the city, where he started as a leader of the United Mine Workers of America.
“I’ve been given the job of ‘framing’ the discussion here today,” Trumka began, but warns us he won’t be around for criticism if he doesn’t do a good job. He’s got to take off early and meet with the top labor leaders from the other 20 or so countries here for the G20 event.
Trumka gave us a big picture. “From 1946 to 1976, the productivity of the American worker and our wages rose together and nearly doubled. But from the late 1970s, and especially after Ronald Reagan, things changed. Our productivity continued to rise, but our wages stagnated, and now are declining.” He followed with a good definition of neoliberalism, urging us to use and understand the term, and how it produced the cycle of consumer debt and the financial bubbles leading to the recent crash.
The neoliberals of both parties, he continued, have tried to put labor and its allies “in a policy box with six sides”—labor ‘flexibility,’ shareholder value primacy, globalization/ off shoring, ‘personal’ responsibility over all, small government to a fault, and economic ‘stability,’ meaning austerity for us. He explained the hidden trap and fallacy in each one of these.
“We make it, and they take it, that’s what it boils down to on wealth creation,” Trumka concluded, noting that it was unacceptable. Labor wasn’t about to be imprisoned in the box defined by neoliberalism, but was going to break out of it. It was clear that the new AFL-CIO chieftain was sharp as a tack, well-versed in political economy, and not about to be easily bamboozled by anyone.
Lisa Jordan of the USW took the podium as Trumka headed for his G20 meetings. “I can’t help but report what I saw driving in here yesterday and today,” she said. “A long caravan of paddy wagons, and for what? Just waiting to arrest us and scare other people away. She added that the USW would stand up to it at the rally tonight, and especially at the large ‘People’s March’ on Friday. She urged a large steelworker turnout from the locals. “We want to see a sea of our banners, so bring out our people and every local banner you can get.”
Jordon outlined the upcoming speakers and breakout sessions at six different roundtable spots on the floor—topics included labor in Latin America, the corporate agenda, the WTO, anti-sweatshop legislation, race, gender and globalization, and several others.
I picked one on economic development battles in the Pittsburgh region. The town I’m from, Aliquippa in Beaver County, is one of the hardest hit in the area and matches the ‘boarded up communities’ phrase in the session’s description.
Barney Oursler of Pittsburgh United leads us off with an account of Pittsburgh’s contrasting areas of downtown glitter, which extends along the high-tech corridor out to the airport, with the grime of neglected neighborhoods and depressed river valley mill towns. “What’s the first word that comes to mind when you hear the word ‘development?’ he asks. “Profits, big ones,” someone answers.” “That’s exactly right,” he says, “and more often than not, it’s the elites that benefit, not the rest of us.”
The case in point offered several times over the day is the Pittsburgh Penguins demanding $750 million from the city for a new stadium, and getting it. The main opposition came from ‘One Hill,” a coalition of mainly African American groups in the Hill District, which both the new stadium site and is targeted for gentrification. One Hill fought the Penguins corporate core for restrictions on expansion and a community benefits accord. They got a deal worth $10 million, but the battle goes on.
“We have a different problem,” I interjected. “We have no development even to demand a piece of in Aliquippa, and we used to be the home of one of the world’s largest steel mills.” I went on to briefly describe some local discussions about opening a closed hospital as part of our larger battle for ‘Medicare for All, Healthcare not Warfare, ‘ as well as some discussion we started around rebuilding locks and dams on the local rivers for green barge transport and green energy infrastructure. Steffi Domike of the USW Associates staff picks up on the latter point. “The Pittsburgh plateau is a good region for wind farms, but we’d have to modernize the energy grid to get the most from it.” We agreed to follow up with more discussion on the implied projects in the weeks ahead.
One thing is quite clear about the Steelworkers. They are very serious, from President Leo Gerard’s speeches down to the brochures in the lobby, about getting beyond traditional business unionism and fighting for a major green industrial policy and new structural reforms to get out of the economic crisis. Moreover, they want to do it in a way that benefits the entire working class. This is why they are putting resources behind the Blue-Green alliance with environmentalists and the ‘Green for All’ projects associated with Van Jones and his inner city youth programs. The steelworkers know they can’t do it alone, and need all the allies they can muster. What the union is doing during the G20 week is only incidental to this broader effort.
Two videos were also highlights of the teach-in. A short version of “The Battle of Seattle” was previewed, showing labor’s role in the anti-WTO global justice demonstrations going back ten years. Leo Gerard, now USW president, who appeared in the film, told those who just watched it that the union had bought up a good number of the two-DVD versions and combined it with a number of educational tools. “We’ll make in available to you for showing in your local groups or at house meetings. All we ask is that you have people sign in, and send us the lists.”
The other video was on the super-exploitation of workers in Bangla Desh, and show horrific scenes of the harsh conditions at sites deconstructing old merchant freighters for salvaged metals. “This goes beyond abuse of workers,” said Charlie Kernaghan of the National Labor Committee. “This is murder at the hands of these bosses.”
As the afternoon sessions drew to a close, a group of us got a ride up to the Monumental Baptist Church in The Hill district. Literally near the top of the hill near the center of downtown Pittsburgh, the 100-year-old African American church, with a long legacy of involvement in social justice causes, had offered its grounds for a ‘Tent City’ of out-of-town protestors.
This afternoon, the church had also opened its sanctuary for a speech by Joseph Stiglitz, economist and Nobel laureate. A former top insider with the World Bank, Stiglitz was fired from that body for exposing and speaking out against the disastrous impact of its policies in many parts of the world. When combined with his critique of the Obama administration’s more dubious concessions and Wall Street bailouts, he has gained rock star status among global justice activists.
After an introduction by John Nichols of The Nation, Stiglitz made a small concession to the G20 by noting that adding a few countries was better than the G8, but still, some 170 countries around the world were on the outside of these deliberations.
“But make no mistake about what going on here,” he warned. “Even if we had waged war on many of these countries, we could not have done as much damage in many parts of the world as that done by indirectly by the policies of these global powers. The question is not whether we have to change our ways, but how, and by how much.”
The claim that the global recession was over was simply not true, Stiglitz went on, especially given growing unemployment. “Nor is it likely to end anytime soon. They’re simply deploying money in the wrong direction, bailing out the giant banks rather than a greater job-creating stimulus. What has happened to the banks that were supposedly ‘too big to fail?’ They’ve only gotten bigger, and their lobbyists are still thwarting needed regulation.”
Leo Gerard of the USW was next up and picked up where Stiglitz left off. “Pay attention to this number, 30 million!” he told the crowd. That’s the true number of unemployed in this country. That’s what you get when you add up those looking for jobs, those working part time when they want more, and those who have given up, what they call the ‘labor reserve.’ You can tell be my accent that I’m a Canadian, and to give you some idea of the scale, 30 million is a greater number than every human being in my native country.”
“We need jobs,” Gerard continued, “we need good jobs, and we need green jobs. What make a good job? It’s a UNION job that can support a family, and we need a second stimulus to create them and a financial transaction tax on Wall Street speculation to pay for it all.”
Emira Woods of the Institute for Policy Studies and a native of Liberia brought the voice of the third world to the discussion. “What the G20 powers do,” she explained, “is prevent the poor countries to act in their own interests and determine their own future.” She stressed the need for ‘people power’ to bring change.
Carl Redwood Jr. brought it all back to the realities of Pittsburgh. Speaking for the Hill District Consensus Group, he told the story of the battle over the Penguin stadium to this crowd, where the problems just outside the church’s doors were staring everyone in the face.
We gathered up our crew a little early to head back downtown in time for the rally in Point Park. Out on the sidewalk, Redmond came up and said, “Hey, Aliquippa guy! I heard you at the union hall earlier.” He tells me he was a reader of the Guardian back in the 1970s, when I was a writer there. We agree to stay in touch around the Green Jobs and Health Care campaigns. Making new connections is what these activities are all about.
We wind our way down the wet streets. It’s drizzling again, and still hot and humid. At a light, a UPS truck pulls up beside us, with side doors open. ‘Where is everyone?” he laughs, noting that it’s rush hour and the only crowds you see are batches of cops on every other corner. “It’s like Sunday afternoon with a Steelers game on!”
Point State Park is a large and pleasant open space at the tip of the ‘Golden Triangle,’ the site of the historic fort at the forks of the Ohio. Here the Monongahela and the Allegheny rivers come together to form what the French explorers called “La Belle Riviere, or beautiful river, their translation of the Iroquois and Seneca word ‘Ohio,’ meaning roughly the same thing.
This night, however, it had a split personality. Part of it was fenced off and occupied by militarized police and the Secret Service, wanting it as a command center for the same reason the French and British armies did more than 200 years ago: it’s a strategic location. The other part was a huge double stage with a terrific sound system and giant video screen. The Steelworkers, the Sierra Club and Al Gore’s climate change group had gone all out to claim at least part of the space to deliver their message to the G20.
The question of the moment was whether the weather and oppressive police presence would prevent a crowd from forming. As I enter the area divided off for the rally, a youth street theater group was putting on a performance in front of a long line of cops in their new camouflage gear. The kids were having fun, while those in uniform tried to look stern. Inside, people were surveying the literature tables, food stands and cheering on the local opening bands. There were only 500 or so there, but once the speakers got going and more musicians warmed up, the crowd quickly grew to about 5000—enough to make it a success, given the circumstances.
A young speaker started off the rally. "Thomas Jefferson said that every generation needs a new revolution," said Alex Loorz of Kid vs. Global Warming. He noted that some adults weren’t worried about the worst effects of climate change because it was 50 years away. But in 50 years, he said, "my generation won't be dead, and neither will our grandchildren, but if we don't act now, it is my generation that is going to pay for it."
State Senator Jim Ferlo also welcomed everyone, stressing the need for a large and unified movement. “We need a powerful force to counter these pinheaded pundits in the media who want to cater to all this nonsense coming from the right wing!”
Next Joe Grushecky and the House Rockers, a local band, really got the crowd fired up. They gave us a very polished mix of Springsteen tunes with their own original numbers full of steel city grit and energy. They would be followed later by Big Head Todd and the Monsters.
Leo Gerard took center stage for the USW the third time this day, but was still in good form. “A wind turbine is made of 200 tons of steel and 8,000 parts," he shouted out, and this crowd knew exactly what he meant. "Imagine what we could do if we could turn not just this country's jobs, but the world's jobs green. Imagine if we had the will!” PA Governor Ed Rendell followed him on the stage, and likewise committed to green and clean energy innovation on the state level.
A number of local Democrats have got the Steelworkers message, and it was evident at this event. Only a new industrial policy with major structural reform is going to create jobs on a scale needed to rescue Pennsylvania and the rest of the Rust Belt. Only political will combined with street heat could challenge the G20. But a good number also are still dragging their feet, captured by the Blue Dogs and bowing to the neoliberal anti-government tirades of the far right. This is going to be a critical battleground in the months ahead.
I caught a few tunes from Big Head Todd, and then headed back to Beaver County for the night. The next two days will put the spotlight on battlegrounds of a different sort, in the streets with the police and in the realm of public opinion over what is really going on behind the closed door deliberations of the G20. Stay tuned!
[Carl Davidson is a writer for Beaver County Blue. He is also a national co-chair of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism and a national board member of the US Solidarity Economy Network. He is author, along with Jerry Harris, of 'Cyberradicalism: A New Left for a Global Age.' If you like this article, make use of the PayPal button at http://carldavidson.blogspot.com] ]
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By Carl Davidson
Beaver County Blue
The ‘G20' is a big deal in Pittsburgh, with multiple stories in the local press and TV, even though many everyday citizens are wondering what it’s really all about and whether it’s worth all the fuss and expense.
“I know all the big shots from around the world are coming, I see that on the news” my dad told me last week. “But what do they actually do behind all those guards and closed doors?”
It’s a good question. The ‘big shots,’ of course, are all the top political and economic leaders of the world’s nineteen largest economies, with the European Union added to make twenty. And lots of people would love to be a fly on the wall when they start wrangling over who’s really to blame for the latest financial meltdown and how to recover from it.
I told my dad, for starters, that they’re cooking up schemes to have the rest of us pay off the gambling debts of Wall Street speculators while they ship more jobs overseas. That’s why the unions are going to be in streets, along with the environmental people, the antiwar movement, and everyone else. He’s dubious that it will do any good, but I told him I’ll be in the thick of it, and I’d let him know what happens.
So today I headed for one of the first actions, a mass march for jobs, sponsored by the ‘Bail Out the People Movement.’ It’s a coalition pulled together by a number of left and community groups, with an assist from the Western Pennsylvania United Steel Workers and the United Electrical Workers. The organizers have picked Pittsburgh’s low-income African American ‘Hill District’ as the launch site, and it couldn’t be a better one, since this is the heart of the neighborhoods that need jobs the most. The route is a little under a mile, and ends at the edge of downtown, in an open space behind the Civic Arena.
Coming into town on the parkway, the first things that hit you are the giant ‘Pittsburgh Welcomes the World!” banners on the large corporate lawns lining the highway. Next is a higher density of police cars. Finally, there’s a blizzard of orange detour signs re-routing traffic so the sports arenas and casinos can function while the security zones go up around select areas downtown. I maneuvered through it all, and made my way through bleak blocks with boarded-up storefronts to the ‘Tent City’ on the grounds of the Monumental Baptist Church near the top of ‘The Hill.’ I find a tenuous place to park on a rise that gives me an excellent view for photos.
It’s immediately clear this is going to be a spirited and colorful march, but of a militant minority. The weather is good, but on the hot and humid side. Nearly 500 people are there, and perhaps half of these are from out of town. There are a number of preachers around, some ladies from churches in their Sunday finery, a number of people with UE T-shirts and Steelworker ball caps, and dozens of young people putting together picket signs and adjusting sound systems. In brief, all the components of the coalition are there, but this is going to be a relatively small kickoff march rather than a massive outpouring.
I started to survey the crowd and right away run into Scott Marshall from the ‘People’s Weekly World.’ He’s been in town for a week covering the AFL-CIO convention, which just ended.
“Whaddya think?” Scott asked. “Multiply by 100, and it would be terrific,” I answered. I added that I thought the media overkill on the supposed threats of violence and the city’s dragging out the permit process until the least minute had taken a toll. “They’re getting very clever on dealing with us, and we have to find ways to counter it.”
Next I ran into some friends from the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism from New York City and Los Angeles, who traveled from both coasts in vans. The tables of the main sponsoring left groups with the ‘People’s Bailout’ coalition are prominent. From Pittsburgh, there’s a sizable group from the Thomas Merton Center and its Pittsburgh Antiwar Committee, as well as Paul LeBlanc, a local leftist professor and antiwar leader. He reported favorably on the large educational sessions held over the weekend.
A Pickup truck with a decent sound system got positioned in the middle of the line of marchers. It’s playing ‘Ain’t No Stopping Us Now!’ and as the line moved, the chants begin: “We want a J-O-B, so we can E-A-T! is a popular one, as is ‘We’re fired up, won’t take no more!” Since it’s all downhill, it’s an easy hike. I describe a few historic sites we passed to some out-of-towners, like the Crawford Grill, center of the Pittsburgh jazz scene for decades, as well as the home of the famous Pittsburgh Crawfords and the Negro Baseball Leagues of which it was an important part.
Waiting for us at the rally site at the other end were Pennsylvania State Senator Jim Ferlo and his assistant Mikhail Pappas. Ferlo has long used his Harrisburg Senate position to advocate for labor, civil rights and antiwar causes, and today is no exception.
We’re welcomed to the rally by Rev. Thomas Smith of the Monumental Baptist Church. He started off by answering my dad’s question: “These G20 people are here to make deals that benefit the corporations; they’re not here helping the workers, or the rest of us in the communities.” Our efforts today are only the beginning, he reminds us, there’s much more to come, in Pittsburgh and elsewhere.
Senator Ferlo was next. “We’re here to speak out to right our countries wrongs, not only here but around the globe. Capitalism is in deep crisis. Some here may say capitalism IS the crisis. In any case, we have to press for a sustainable economy that works for us, the majority of the working people.”
Ferlo then took up a topic that had everyone buzzing all day. The morning’s Post Gazette including an article based on an interview with Obama, where the President said, in relation to the G20 protests: “I was always a big believer in — when I was doing organizing before I went to law school — that focusing on concrete, local, immediate issues that have an impact on people’s lives is what really makes a difference; and that having protests about abstractions [such] as global capitalism or something, generally is not really going to make much of a difference.
The Senator was furious with Obama. “This is worse than misguided and a major miscalculation; it’s intellectually dishonest. It was people in the streets that put him there. It was mass protests that built the unions, that got rid of Jim Crow, that won rights for women. This is the problem with the whole top layer of the Democratic Party in dealing with these attacks from the far right. They’re acquiescing to it; they should hang their heads in shame-and I’m telling you this as an active and registered Democrat. We have got to rise up and turn this around.”
“If we had a hundred more elected Democrats like him,” said one protester standing next to me in reference to Ferlo. “It would be a whole different ball game.”
Brenda Stokley followed up. She was with the Katrina and Rita Hurricane Survivors Committee, and delivered a blistering indictment of the government’s ongoing failures to deal with these crises. “There’s no reason for people to be homeless, no reason for people to be without jobs. We need these for survival.”
One speaker stood out in his ability to command the attention of almost everyone. Fred Richmond, a vice president of the United Steelworkers and an African American, started off by asserting that “the issue of poverty is central to labor’s agenda, and not just in this country, but globally.” He went on to describe in some detail exactly what the AFL-CIO would be pressing on the G20-fair trade, green jobs, a ‘Tobin Tax’ worldwide on financial speculation, a ’second stimulus’ on a global scale to spur job growth and the transition to clean energy and a green economy.
Richmond also put the earlier critique of Obama in a larger perspective. “This president is under a heavy and fierce attack from the far right. What he’s going through is unprecedented, unless you go back to Roosevelt. We have to back him up, but we also have to make sure all of them act in our interests.” Some were dubious on this point, but most of the crowd took him very seriously.
I missed a few of the final speakers, since I was making a point of connecting with some of the Progressive Democrats of America activists there. Western PA’s 4th CD was represented, as well as a group in from Akron, Ohio, who was passing out PDA’s ‘Healthcare, Not Warfare’ placards to use for the rest of the week. We exchanged stories of our dealings with the rightwing ‘Tea Bagger’ rallies in various places, plus the days to come.
Two important events are up soon for the remaining days of the G20. One is a union-sponsored rally in Point Park on Wednesday, Sept. 23. The negotiations for the permit there have been contentious, because the police and Secret Service wanted the same spot as a staging area. On Thursday, Pittsburgh’s anarchist youth will be heard from in one way or another-no one is quite sure what they will do. And Friday, Sept. 25, there will be ‘the big march,’ with the area’s peace and justice movements at the heart of it. Stay tuned!
[Carl Davidson writes for Beaver County Blue, the online voice of the 4th CD Progressive Democrats of America. He is also a national co-chair of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism. If you like this article, make use of the PayPal button at the top of this site]
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