by Leonard Rodberg, PhD,
from Physicians for a National Health Program

There is little reform, and no serious cost control, in the health care reform plans that President Obama and the Congress are proposing:

Most people will continue to get their coverage through private insurance companies and will be forced to buy insurance of questionable value.

Employer-based insurance will continue unchanged, with employers free to change coverage at any time, insurers free to change their physician and hospital networks, and employees still locked into their jobs if they want to keep their coverage.

While the uninsured will be mandated by law to purchase health insurance, the Congressional bills place no limit on what the private insurance companies can charge for premiums or how great their deductibles and co-pays can be.

The structure of health care finance is in no way changed, and no serious cost control measures are built into these plans.

The “health insurance exchange” and its “public option,” the only new structural features of these plans, will affect little more than 10% of the population and will have no significant impact on the overall health care system. Those who receive insurance through their employer are not permitted to access the exchange or the public option.

The “public option” must be self-sustaining and follow the same rules as private insurers. Once set up, it will receive no government funds.
The subsidies for low- and moderate-income individuals and families are completely inadequate. Many will find insurance unaffordable, and underinsurance will continue.

Tens of millions of people will continue to be uninsured.

These plans are not reform; they are little more than a placebo, a detour from the path to true reform of our health care system.

For the more click here

***
Leonard Rodberg is a Professor of Urban Studies at Queens College/CUNY and Research Director of the NY Metro Chapter of Physicians for a National Health Program

by Raúl Gutiérrez
from Upside Down World
(IPS) - If the de facto government of Roberto Micheletti remains in power in Honduras, the Central American right may be encouraged to stage further coups against the fragile democracies that have emerged in the region over the last two decades, analysts warn.

The forces of democracy and the international community must continue to exert pressure to reestablish the constitutional order and enable ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, whose term ends in January, to return to office, experts from different countries in the region told IPS.

Ernesto Rivas Gallont, former Salvadoran ambassador in Washington from 1981 to 1989, says the Honduran civic-military coup will have profound implications for several Central American countries if Micheletti's grip on power is consolidated.

"If those who perpetrated the coup prevail in Honduras, there is no doubt that it will embolden the Central American right," the former diplomat told IPS.

"It's hard to admit, but (Fidel) Castro and (Hugo) Chávez are right" to fear that if the coup-mongers consolidate their power, "a series of coups d'état could be unleashed against governments in the region," Rivas Gallont wrote in his blog, referring to statements by the former Cuban president and the Venezuelan president in early July.

"It is only too obvious that the coup has exacerbated differences between left and right, and not just in Honduras," he said.

Zelaya was taken at gunpoint from his house in his pajamas by about 200 troops in the early hours of Jun. 28 and put on an air force plane to Costa Rica. The coup d'état was engineered by the Honduran military, the leadership of the two traditional political parties, and big business.

The ousting of the president came after weeks of political arm-wrestling over the Zelaya administration's plans to hold a non-binding popular vote on constitutional reform on that very day. But analysts say Zelaya was overthrown because of some of his social policies, and his alignment with more radical leftwing governments in Latin America.

The "survey," as Zelaya called it, which could not be legally held because plebiscites and referendums are banned in an election year, would have asked people whether they were in favour or against creating a constituent assembly to amend the country's constitution. Had the "Yes" vote won, assembly delegates would have been elected in the Nov. 29 presidential, parliamentary and local elections.

Pro-coup sectors say Zelaya wanted constitutional reform in order to seek reelection, prohibited by the Honduran constitution, in order to stay in power. The ousted president says that was never his intention, nor was it mentioned in the survey question.

Micheletti, who led the political movement for the military overthrow of the democratic government as former president of Congress, says he will not bow to international pressure. Today he is the interim president of a government that has not been recognised by a single country and has been universally condemned.

The United Nations, the Organisation of American States (OAS), the European Union, the Central American Integration System (SICA) and the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA), among others, have all condemned the coup in Honduras and vigorously demanded Zelaya's reinstatement as the constitutional president.

In contrast, and in spite of these strong pronouncements, only "the Central American right has justified the coup, using Chávez as a pretext," IPS sources said.

For instance, they said, rightwing sectors in El Salvador have recently been supplanted in government after decades in power by the formerly-guerrilla leftwing Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN). "They may be tempted to carry out actions similar to what happened in Honduras, of the kind that have marked our history," they warned.

The rightwing Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) party, which governed El Salvador from 1989 up to June this year, and is now in opposition, deplored Zelaya's "exile" but did not condemn the coup.

"It is also true that President Zelaya committed serious constitutional violations that led other state bodies" to remove him from office, says a paid ad by ARENA published in the Salvadoran media in early July.

The ad also urges Salvadoran President Mauricio Funes to "refrain" from interfering in the Honduran crisis, arguing that "it could affect relations between the two countries."

The Funes administration issued an immediate condemnation of the coup, and two days later at a SICA meeting in Managua, El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua agreed to close their borders with Honduras for 48 hours Jul. 1-2, as a way of exerting pressure on the de facto Micheletti government.

SICA is made up of all the Central American countries: Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama. The Dominican Republic is an associate member.

Funes also hosted Presidents Rafael Correa of Ecuador, Cristina Fernández of Argentina, Fernando Lugo of Paraguay and Zelaya, as well as U.N. General Assembly president Miguel d'Escoto and OAS Secretary-General Miguel Insulza, who waited in San Salvador in solidarity with Zelaya during his failed Jul. 4 attempt to return to Honduras.

Some members of the business community, political leaders and columnists for conservative Salvadoran media outlets have said Funes should learn from what has happened in Honduras, and not attempt to introduce constitutional reforms like Zelaya's.

Salvadoran analyst Leonel Gómez agreed with Rivas Gallont that events in Honduras could lead to more coups against democracies in the region.

"The danger here is that it might motivate other forces to perpetrate other coups d'état like the one in Honduras," said Gómez, who has participated in investigations of corruption and the supply of funds to dictatorships in the region with U.S. Democratic lawmakers Patrick Leahy and the late Joe Moakley.

The expert said that some Guatemalan military officers "would be delighted to receive orders to do the same thing" as their Honduran colleagues.

Centre-left Guatemalan President Álvaro Colom publicly denied that a military coup was being plotted in his country, after Chávez warned of the danger of an overthrow attempt. But Nobel Peace Prize laureate Rigoberta Menchú said vested economic interests in Guatemala could be planning to undermine the rule of law.

Recalling that in the past U.S. governments have "written dark chapters in the history of Central America" through their support for military dictatorships and coups d'état, Gómez urged the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama to "act with greater firmness and in accordance with its principles."

The day after Zelaya was deposed, Obama said "the coup was not legal" and that Zelaya "remains the democratically elected president" of Honduras.

With the exception of Costa Rica, the countries of Central America were governed by military regimes during most of the 20th century. In most cases these regimes were imposed by powerful economic interests in collusion with conservative politicians and with assistance or direct intervention by the United States.

In the 1980s and 1990s civil wars broke out between leftwing guerrillas and the armed forces.

According to historians, Costa Rica escaped the general trend largely because of the abolition of the army, announced by then president José Figueres (1948-1949, 1953-1958, 1970-1974) on Dec. 1, 1948. The measure came into force in 1949, in spite of an attempted military coup to prevent it.

Meanwhile in Honduras pro-Zelaya protesters are blocking highways, the curfew has been reimposed, and talks in Costa Rica between Micheletti's and Zelaya's envoys, mediated by Costa Rican President Oscar Arias, are in a deadlock.

from Weekly News Update

The International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF), which represents 656 unions worldwide with 4.5 million members, issued a call on July 17 for its members to carry out protests against Honduran shipping. The federation said it was expressing opposion to a June 28 military coup which replaced Honduran president José Manuel Zelaya Rosales with a de facto government. “We have to put real pressure on the Honduran military to allow the country to revert to democracy,” ITF general secretary David Cockroft said.

The federation said the call to action was likely to affect the loading and unloading of the 650 ships that fly the Honduran flag. This is a “flag of convenience,” according to the ITF--“a low-cost cosmetic ship registration by companies with no link to the country and no intention of employing its citizens onboard.”

On July 3 ITF-affiliated unions in El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua protested the coup with demonstrations at the borders with Honduras--in El Amatillo, El Salavdor; Izabal, Guatemala; and Los Tres Pasos de Frontera, Nicaragua. Transport workers from Venezuela and Mexico also participated. (ITF press releases 7/10/09, 7/17/09; Prensa Latina 7/17/09; TeleSUR 7/17/09)

In other news, Father José Andrés Tamayo, an activist Honduran priest and 2005 Goldman Environmental Prize recipient, was in Tegucigalpa on July 16 to participate in protests blocking the highway to the north of the capital. Tamayo, a leader of the environmental movement in Olancho department whose life has been threatened repeatedly, went into hiding briefly on July 1 after escaping a military attack on a roadblock in the countryside [see Update #996]. At the Tegucigalpa protest he noted “the large number of women and men of advanced age. This means that they have a spirit of courage and have lost their fear. We’re coming to a stage where people are taking on the struggle personally as a people. This generates much more force and resistance, because the people are no longer trusting the media, the police, the business owners and the traditional politicians…. [O]nly the people defend the people.” (Minga Informativa de Movimientos Sociales
7/16/09 from Comunicaciones Vía Campesina)

by Maggie Phair
A Socialist WebZine Exclusive

Book Review
American Radical: The Life and Times 0f I. F. Stone. By D. D.. Guttenplan, 2009
Illustrated. Farrar, Straus & Giroux; 473 p. hardback; $35.

Historian D. D. Guttenplan traces the life of Isador Feinstein from birth; his conflict with his father, who wanted him to work in the family furniture store; his recognition of American anti-semitism and his consequent changing his last name to Stone; through his career as a journalist and his eventual publication of the famous “I. F. Stone’s Weekly.” In this, he was supported by his wife, Easther, who handled all matters of circulation and subscription.

Guttinenplan reports Izzie’s membership and chairmanship of the Camden, New Jersey Socialist Party in 1928, and his lifelong friendship and admiration for Norman Thomas; plus his eventual departure from the socialists first for the New Deal and the Democratic Party and ultimately to his long-time status as an independent. I had personally been told that Stone was a leader in the Young People’s Socialist League at age 14, but Guttenplan doesn’t mention this. Historical omission or party myth?

Guttenplan does misstate that Michael Harrington entered the SP with the Schactmanites. Harrington actually joined the SP during his Catholic Worker Days, took much of YPSL including the membership list with him into the Schactman group, then returned to the SP, eventually joinng the Social Democrats USA, (SDUSA) where he was attacked by Schactmanites for not being sufficiently pro Vietnam war. Ultimately, Harrington helped to found the Democratic Socialists Of America (DSA). I was in the New York SP at that time though not a Harringtonite.

Stone always believed that liberals, Communists, Socialists, Anarchists, Trotskyists should work together on common goals. Stone supported the Cuban Revolution; celebrated the creation of Israel but asked why Israelis would inflict the same suffering on Arabs as the Nazis had inflicted on Jews. Stone called the Soviet Union a vast prison,. “not a good society and it is not led by honest men.”. He opposed the Vietnam war. Stone always supported free speech. All governments, he said, lie.

Of course, the FBI followed Stone and his family without finding any evidence that he was a spy or Communist—just an independent radical. Stone frequently stated his belief that if other radicals or governments took actions of repression, that would soon lead us to a garrison state. How close did we come under Cheney/Bush?

Read this book if you want a history of U.S. radicalism from 1928 forward.

***
Contact Maggie Phair here maggiephair(at)gmail.com

by Billy Wharton
A Socialist WebZine Exclusive

After an episode of speculative euphoria, popular anger may target many things – promoters previously consider with high esteem, exotic financial instruments and all sorts of illegal schemes. But, what is not often questioned is the financial system itself. Jamaicans bilked out of millions by scam artist Carlos Hill may be asking just such questions as they wrestle with the legal side of the financial system. Hill, Jamaica’s version of Bernard Madoff, conned more than 40,000 investors out of a total of $7 billion. Now, nearly two years into the investigation, victims are being told to expect the recovery of only pennies on the dollar. The problem now is not the evasive Hill, but a greedy North American auditing firm.

Fresh off a 10-year sentence in US Federal Prison for mail fraud, Carlos Hill employed the time honored strategy of an operator – tell the people what they want to hear. Irrational stock euphoria ran as high in Jamaica in the 1990s as it did in many other parts of the world. Wild stories about individual investors converting thousands into millions became standard mythological fare. Yet if even a few of these stories were based in fact, such opportunities had waned by the early 21st century. Expectations did not. Hill’s Cash Plus Company met these desires with an offer of a 10% monthly return. This was not a pyramid scheme, he argued, because Cash Plus offered a diversified set of assets – in the distribution, gaming, telecommunications, entertainment, security development, industrial and financial services' sectors. (Jamaica Observer, 3/4/2007)

By 2008 the bubble had burst on Wall Street and at Cash Plus. An increasingly evasive Hill drew the attention of Organized Crime investigators Jamaica and the ire of mainstream bankers. Then, as the global stock market went into freefall, Cash Plus ceased payments to investors. Hill was arrested, the company declared bankrupt and investors scrambled to recoup losses.

Here the story takes an interesting departure from the Madoff case. Though Madoff appears to have done a fairly skillful job of secreting away his profits, Hill left substantial physical assets – estimated in the billions. This raised the expectations of investors who hoped to reclaiming something approaching 50 cents on the dollar. That is, until Pricewaterhouse Coopers (PwC) appeared on the scene.

PwC is an American company which offers auditing and advisory services globally. The company has had its own scandals including the 2007 Tyco case in which they admitted to carrying out a multi-billion dollar accounting fraud. Despite this, a Jamaican court appointed PwC as the administrator of the Cash Plus assets. Here begins the second, legal round, of investor fleecing.

The PwC administration prevented Carlos Hill from liquidating company assets. It also allowed PwC to put themselves on the clock. Estimates at hourly consultation fees range from US$175 to US$450 or, about more than double what a local Jamaican firm might charge for equal work. To pay the resulting fees, the court has set aside four large properties the value of which amounts to more than $350 million. As a result of this second bilking, PwC informed investors this week that they should ratchet down expectations to something like a recovery of 5 to 16 cents on the dollar. Further fees will be associated with the sale of each Cash Plus asset.

Cash Plus and PwC, two faces of the global financial system. One a sleazy gutter-capitalism peddled by operators like Madoff and Hill. The other perfectly willing to use legal means to strip the carcass dry. With every disaster a new opportunity emerges. Respectable capitalists swoop in quickly– operating in complete legality but equally willing shake down as many people for as much money as possible. PwC has employed the amazing hubris and grotesque efficiency typical of capitalism. No carcass to slim; no pocket book too picked.

***
Billy Wharton is the editor of The Socialist and the Socialist WebZine. His articles have recently appeared in the Washington Post, Monthly Review Webzine, The Indypendent, Common Dreams and Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal.

from Syracuse.com
July 20, 2009

J. David Edelstein, 90, of Syracuse, passed away peacefully July 20, 2009, at Crouse Hospital, surrounded by his wife and children. Dave was a professor of sociology at Syracuse University and Northern Illinois University. He was an ardent socialist all his life and was affiliated with the Independent Social League, Solidarity and the Socialist Party USA. His study of voting in unions culminated in a book that was co-authored with Malcolm Warner, Comparative Union Democracy: Organization and Opposition in British and American Unions. His comparison of social democracy in some European countries with the tenets of democratic socialism has particular relevance to today's economy. Dave is survived by his wife, Ruth R. Greenberg-Edelstein; children, Daniel and June; grandchildren Susan and Jacob "Jake"; a niece; and two nephews. He will be greatly missed.

Read David Edelstein's pamphlet:
Social Democracy Versus Revolutionary Democratic Socialism

from Wikipedia

The Socialist Party of America (SPA or SP) was a democratic socialist political party in the United States, formed in 1901 by a merger between the three-year-old Social Democratic Party of America and disaffected elements of the Socialist Labor Party which had split from the main organization in 1899.

In the first decades of the 20th Century, it drew significant support from many different groups, including trade unionists, progressive social reformers, populist farmers, and immigrant communities. Its presidential candidate, Eugene V. Debs, won over 900,000 votes in 1912 and 1920, while the party also elected members of the United States House of Representatives (Victor L. Berger and Meyer London) and numerous state legislators and mayors. The party's staunch opposition to American involvement in World War I, although welcomed by many, also led to prominent defections, official repression and vigilante persecution. The organization was further shattered by a factional war over how it should respond to Russia's Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 and the establishment of the Communist International in 1919.

After endorsing Robert LaFollette's presidential campaign in 1924, the Socialist Party returned to independent action and experienced modest growth in the early 1930s behind presidential candidate Norman Thomas. After the 1920s, however, the Party's appeal was weakened by the popularity of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, the superior organization and tactical flexibility of the Communist Party under Earl Browder, and the resurgent labor movement's need for friendly government policies. A divisive and ultimately-unsuccessful attempt to broaden the party by admitting followers of Leon Trotsky and Jay Lovestone caused the traditional "Old Guard" to leave and form the Social Democratic Federation. While the party was always strongly anti-Fascist, as well as anti-Stalinist, the SP's ambivalent attitude towards World War II cost it both internal and external support.

The SP stopped running Presidential candidates after 1956, when its nominee Darlington Hoopes won fewer than 3,000 votes. In the party's last decades, its members, many of them prominent in the labor, peace, civil rights and civil liberties movements, fundamentally disagreed about the socialist movement's relationship to the Democratic Party domestically and how best to advance democracy abroad. In 1972–73, these strategic differences had become so acute that the Socialist Party shattered into three successor groups.

by Billy Wharton
from Links: Journal of International Socialist Renewal

July 19, 2009 -- Consider it a symptom of a larger disease. A fervent commitment to defend the profit margins of private industry seems to be a national religion for politicians in the United States. No matter how deeply the private sector mucks up society, some senator or representative or, if things get really out of control, president will appear to rescue the day for the corporations all in the name of justice for the citizens of the US. Like any religion, this process has highly crafted rituals. First a confession, then march the sinners around at one hearing or another, then mete out acceptable penance and then all is forgiven.

It is difficult to tell whether the US House of Representatives-sponsored “America’s Affordable Health Choices Act” is the penance or just straight forgiveness. The bill purports to be the solution for United States' health-care crisis. Representative Christopher Dodd went further, calling it, “The bill we all have been waiting for and fighting for, for 60 years.” Curbs on industry excesses, a public option and high-sounding rhetoric about universal care all dress up the fundamental motivation of the bill -– find a way to prolong the life of an already failed private health insurance industry.

Of course, failure is a relative term. Private health insurance companies are quite efficient at completing the task they were designed to carry out: accumulating profits. In 2006, for instance, health-care companies accumulated more than US$10 billion in profits. Not surprisingly, they are far less able to deliver health care. About 50 million people or 16% of the US population, have no health insurance, another 30 million more can be considered under-insured and about 20,000 die each year from treatable illnesses.

Americans have developed two responses to this unjust system –- avoiding care and filing for bankruptcy. A recent Kaiser Family Foundation poll indicated six in ten Americans had either delayed or deferred necessary medical care in the last year. The four who do attempt to use the health-care system, will likely face the prospects of high fees and, ultimately, indebtedness. The majority, some 52% by last count, of personal bankruptcy claims are, therefore, the result of debts related to health care.

The bill does little to address the structural failures of private corporations. Instead of a single-payer plan which would address the problem of cost and coverage by eliminating private health insurers, thereby opening access, the House bill proposes coercive mandates to herd the great mass of the uninsured toward private plans. Key to this is a focus on keeping costs low in the private plans. The problem is that there are only two ways to do this -– offer high-fee, high-deductible plans or offer plans with bare-bones coverage. Both maintain high profitability for the corporations, while fuelling the logic of health-care avoidance and debt accumulation.

Some of the uninsured may resist this drive into private health insurance plans designed for corporate profitability. The House of Representatives, under the advice of President Barack Obama, has therefore designed an intricate system of coercive penalties. Americans will either have to prove enough hardship to qualify for the public option or pay a 2.5% penalty on their annual income. Considering the high costs of monthly health-care premiums, we can imagine that many may opt to pay the fine in order to avoid the higher costs of a private plan.

To make up the difference, the House bill proposes the issue of “affordability credits” in order to, “reduce cost-sharing to levels that ensure access to care”. Where will these credits, read taxpayers' money, be headed? Directly to the private health insurance industry. Here again the new logic of the Obama regime is put to work. Instead of using the state to solve social problems by nationalising, or socialising industry, the administration chooses to toss taxpayers' funds at the private sector. All the while, they employ free-market language –- increased competition, market areas and individual responsibility -– to cover what is essentially a transfer of public funds to large corporations. No wonder nary a word of protest has been uttered by the normally vociferous private health-care industry.

As the House of Representatives trots out its 1000-page bill complete with 360 amendments from the Republicans, objections are sure to emerge. Obama and Congress will face harsh, and not entirely unjustified, criticism from fiscally conservative Democrats and Republicans. Most will base their arguments on the Congressional Budget Office estimate that the plan will cost more than $1 trillion over the next ten years. Others will play the small business card, arguing that a disproportionate burden may fall on this sector. A few right-wing libertarians will object to the coercive penalties, but this criticism might be done far more skillfully from the left. Yet, the fact remains that the institutions and the logic that fuelled the health-care crisis will survive. In fact, those who can claim the largest market share in the health-care industry will enhance their position.

What is evident in this debate is the decomposition of the neoliberal capitalist project born in the 1990s. No longer able to peddle the gospel of unfettered markets, corporate United States has returned to its origins by making a parasitical living off of state funds. If now the public sector can no longer be automatically discredited ideologically, it will be bankrupted financially. Obama was more correct then he knew when he commented, in relation to comments made by Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin, “You can put lipstick on a pig, but it is still a pig.” Americans would do far better, in regards to the private health insurance industry, with a plate of bacon than a bill for lipstick.

Meanwhile, somewhere in the US House of Representatives there lies a 13-page bill called HR 676. This Act would create a publicly funded National Health Insurance Program -– a single-payer system. Single-payer health care would guarantee full medical coverage to every person in the US and would be funded through combining the budgets of existing programs with a payroll tax shared by employers and employees and a tax on wealth.

Its existence marks the urgency of the crisis; its elimination from health-care reform discussions marks the narrow parameters of “the possible” in Obama’s Washington. This confirms the ideas of left-wing advocates of single-payer health care, that only a mass social movement can make such fundamental changes as the elimination of the private health insurance industry possible. The rallying cry for such a movement might be a slogan from the Black freedom struggle of the 1950s and 60s –- 99 and a half per cent free just won't do.

Billy Wharton is the editor of The Socialist magazine and the Socialist WebZine. His articles have recently appeared in the Washington Post, Common Dreams, Monthly Review Zine, Dissident Voice, NYC Indypendent and the Links Journal of International Socialist Renewal.
billyspnyc(at)yahoo.com

by Kim Petersen / July 17th, 2009
from Dissident Voice

Freedom from Wage Slavery
Waking Up: Freeing Ourselves from Work
By Pamela Satterwhite
Publisher: Humming Words Press (2009)
ISBN: 978-0-9649465-1-4

Every effort under compulsion demands a sacrifice of life energy.

– Nikola Tesla, quoted in Waking Up: Freeing Ourselves from Work

Tesla’s quotation captures the reality of the working world for many people. People trudge off to work, do work, return home, recuperate, and go to work the next day. Most people will do this five days a week for most of the year.

Who likes having to work five days a week, having the days and hours of their week decided by someone else, receiving a few weeks in the year as a vacation time, or having to obey orders from a boss? This is the situation for the masses of people who are workers. Capitalist society is structured such that most people are either unemployed or wage slaves.

Pamela Satterwhite has written a book, Waking Up: Freeing Ourselves from Work, that seeks, as the title states, to free people from the wage slavery, job drudgery, and submission. At its core, Satterwhite reveals that freedom from work is achieving social justice: freedom from exploitation, racism, warring, etc.

The author asks questions: “Is survival at work the highest good? The goal, the objective? …to endure …in a job?”

Satterwhite likens workers to stressed caged animals and bosses to “masturbatory puppeteers” who get off on controlling the labor of others. This is inculcated in the public education system where students submit to teachers, who submit to their principals.

She derides submission to authority. She finds this to be unnatural.

Satterwhite refers to capitalists as podrunks (a term abbreviated from author Mark Crispin Miller’s pitiful-power-drunk few) and sometimes as vampires. They control the labor.

Satterwhite harkens to Friedrich Engels that labor is capital. Therefore, if people work together and share in the work, they create the wealth. Her solution is simple: a mass movement to end wage work. Solidarity and cooperation are crucial.

Satterwhite finds that most people are complicit in the system, caving in for some infinitesimal portion of political power (which she defines as “the ability to induce others to labor”). She relates one striking example of selling out in which English parents allowed their 7- to 11-year olds to become commercials selling products to other children.

She acknowledges that solidarity is difficult to maintain, being always under assault by the system, which is designed to wear people down and make them complicit.

Podrunks are Machiavellian; they oppress and wield racism to their ends. They seek to atomize and separate the workers. This is accomplished by instilling fear among them.

She argues that work can be worse than slavery. Slave owners had vested interests to care for their slaves. Podrunks can always hire new workers.

Satterwhite criticizes the illusion/con that work is a sharing of wealth. She says workers have three sources of power: the ancestors, the earth, and each other. She laments that most people don’t pay attention to the earth in them.

She analyses progress, that lofty term that is used to justify the system — the system that separates people into classes. They order and we obey. The orders, Satterwhite argues, compel people to carry out all kinds of morally repugnant work that leads to environmental destruction, mass killing, and genocide.

Nonetheless, Satterwhite argues, “Human solidarity will easily trump the politics of ‘divide and conquer’ when we decide to look at our ancestors’ stories unvarnished …”

Satterwhite calls force the podrunk’s mantra. Culture is a tool to confuse and demoralize people. Freedom, she holds, will come when people build their own cultures.

“Podrunks are organized. So must we be.” The people must grab control.

Many people call for a retooling of capitalism. Satterwhite says capitalism has to be ditched. She finds the notion of saving capitalism from itself silly. She focuses on the needs of the masses of people and not a system that enslaves the people and renders them soulless.

What to Do?

wakingupbookcoverSatterwhite first seeks to answer the question: What do we want? Step-by-step planning is required, as well as solidarizing. She sees this being achieved through mutual aid and fellowship, Earthships (living in harmony with the environment), a product and services exchange, refusal of division work, and freeing children from coercive education.

She identifies the starting points as: boycotting big corporations, organizing via the internet, building bridges, claiming the commons, and the general strike.

Parecon is another take on gaining freedom from capitalist work drudgery and submission to podrunks. Forging a solidarity with pareconists would broaden and strengthen the movement against wage slavery.

Re parecon, Satterwhite responded by email: “There are many points on which [pareconist] Michael Albert and I agree. Where we differ, I think, is probably in our analysis of the problem.” Satterwhite continued, “I think that in order to be effective advocates and activists for our future freedom without bosses we have to premise our advocacy and action on correct analysis. When I read elaborate visions of our future freedom that are offered because they’re ‘rational,’…’make sense’…etc. I’m not convinced that that analysis has been done.”

One wonders what convincing evidence of analysis is — certainly not irrational and nonsensical visions. Important to both visions, however, is solidarity.

Satterwhite writes in a relaxed, colloquial style. A few times I found myself lost, wondering about quotations. Who is speaking? Nonetheless, the book is eminently readable.

Satterwhite has drawn upon a variety of sources from personal anecdotes, dreams, literature (Herman Melville, Virginia Woolf, etc.), media (especially cinema), self-disclosure, economists (Karl Polanyi, Immanuel Wallerstein, Friedrich Engels, etc.) to the psychologist Erich Fromm, the scientist-inventor Nikola Tesla, other writers on topic of work like Jeremy Rifkind and Studs Terkel, and even Martin the Warrior mouse.

Satterwhite quotes often the writings of Barack Obama, and she goes easy on him because he “may well have concluded that the people aren’t ready to roll, and who could argue…” I would argue: because a person who runs for the presidency is, usually, a person who covets leadership (among other attributes such as fame, power, money, etc.), and it is a leader’s job to lead the people and not be led by them … otherwise that leader is merely a follower. (As an aside, I eschew leadership and followership. In a system with representative “leaders” and politicians, they should serve the informed masses of people and not impose on the people. However, that is another topic.)

Can freedom from work be achieved? Satterwhite points to the workers’s victory in the tiny Caribbean country of Guadeloupe following a 44-day general strike as a start. Does this sound promising?

Waking Up: Freeing Ourselves from Work can be read online at The Nascence to End Work or you can request a free hard copy (a donation is appreciated). Pamela Satterwhite can be contacted at nas2endwork(at)gmail.com.

Kim Petersen is co-editor of Dissident Voice. He can be reached at: kim(at)dissidentvoice.org.

from Weekly New Update on the Americas

On July 11 seven US trade associations—including the American Apparel & Footwear Association (AAFA), the US Association of Importers of Textiles and Apparel (USA-ITA) and the US Chamber of Commerce—sent a letter to US president Barack Obama on the situation in Honduras. The letter stressed the “particular importance” Honduras has “for the US textile and apparel supply chain” and called it “the linchpin to the Western Hemisphere supply chain for this sector. Honduras is the third largest market for U.S. textile mill products (U.S. exports were $1.4 billion in 2008), the fourth largest supplier of apparel to the US market and the largest [Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA)] supplier to the United States.”

The trade associations said nothing about restoring democracy or the constitutional order but emphasized the need for “[p]redictability and stability,” which “are absolutely critical to US companies, especially in these difficult economic times.” (Fibre2Fashion 7/11/09)

In contrast, a July 9 letter to US secretary of state Hillary Clinton signed by 35 Latin America experts from US universities insisted that “[a]nything less than the urgent restoration of President Manuel Zelaya to office would be an usurpation of the will of the Honduran people.” “[C]oncessions of any kind to the coup government…would create a terrible precedent, showing other anti-democratically minded and power-hungry individuals that it can be worthwhile to carry out a military coup in order to advance their political agendas,” warned the authors, who included Harvard emeritus professor John Womack, author and filmmaker Saul Landau, Central America expert Hector Perla, and authors and Central America experts Greg Grandin and Dana Frank. (El Financiero (Mexico) 7/9/09, some from Notimex; Common Dreams 7/9/09)

On July 10 the de facto government received support from a city council member in Santiago, Chile. “It appeared to be a common, ordinary coup” at first, Lucía Pinochet Hiriart said, according to the satirical and investigative Chilean weekly The Clinic, but later it turned out that “the one who wanted to carry out the coup d’état was Zelaya.” He “makes himself out to be the victim,” she said, but his own allegedly unconstitutional acts left the military no choice but to do “something unconstitutional.” Pinochet Hiriart, who represents the exclusive Vitacura neighborhood in eastern Santiago, is a daughter of late Chilean dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet Ugarte, who seized power from elected president Salvador Allende Gossens in a bloody 1973 coup. (Qué (Spain) 7/10/09 from EFE)

from Wikipedia
Frantz Fanon (July 20, 1925 – December 6, 1961) was a psychiatrist, philosopher, revolutionary, and author from Martinique. He was influential in the field of post-colonial studies and was perhaps the pre-eminent thinker of the 20th century on the issue of decolonization and the psychopathology of colonization. His works have inspired anti-colonial liberation movements for more than four decades.

Although Fanon wrote Black Skin, White Masks while still in France, most of his work was written while in North Africa. It was during this time that he produced works like, L'An Cinq, de la Révolution Algérienne, or Year Five of the Algerian Revolution, later republished as 'Sociology of a Revolution" and later still as 'A Dying Colonialism'. The irony of this was that Fanon's original title was "Reality of a Nation", however the publisher, Francois Maspero, refused to accept this title. He also wrote an important work on decolonization, The Wretched of the Earth[4]. The Wretched of the Earth was first published in 1961 by François Maspero and has a preface by Jean-Paul Sartre.[5] In it Fanon analyzes the role of class, race, national culture and violence in the struggle for national liberation. Both books established Fanon in the eyes of much of the Third World as the leading anti-colonial thinker of the 20th century.

by the SPUSA National Action Committee

July 7, 2009 - The Socialist Party USA condemns the coup recently carried out in Honduras by the military and backed by a section of the Honduran elite. We call for the immediate reinstatement of democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya. We also support the call made by pro-Zelaya protesters to have all charges against Zelaya dropped. Finally, we demand an independent investigation into the brutality and murder carried out by the Honduran military while repressing pro-Zelaya protests.

Although Zelaya was elected in 2005 on a mild center-left reform platform, deteriorating economic conditions, the refusal of the elite to implement even the most basic reforms and pressure from popular movements have pushed his Presidency in a more militant direction. Honduras remains the third poorest nation in the hemisphere with 40% of the population living on less than $2 a day. To combat this, Zelaya attempted to implement reforms such as, raising the minimum wage by 60%; a move which infuriated elites who fired workers or ignored the new regulations. Popular organizations have supported Zelaya in this process by initiating a series of strikes and mobilizations in the name of wealth re-distribution and social equity.

Honduran elites have disregarded these movements, choosing to use parliamentary process and the security forces to preserve political and economic control. They have attempted to paint Zelaya as a puppet of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. "What I believe we were seeing was the evolution of a democratic dictatorship," Elizabeth Zuñiga of the Nationalist Party stated. Such illogical hyperbole mirrors the false proclamations issued by elites in Venezuela and Bolivia in the face of challenges by leftist governments and popular movements. The Honduran elite care little for democracy. Their sole concern is the maintenance of social and economic privileges.

The new left in Latin America has demonstrated a consistent commitment to organize itself democratically. Endless elections in Venezuela have been combined with electoral victories in Bolivia, Ecuador, Uruguay and Nicaragua. In each case, electoral campaigns have been backed by grassroots mobilizations of a myriad of worker, community and indigenous groups. This has had a general democratizing effect in the region, which has served to reverse the history of US-backed military coups and dictatorships. The elite coup in Honduras is an attempt to return to a bankrupt political model. But the people of Honduras are resisting.

As socialists, we therefore stand firmly with the popular movements in Honduras who are demanding that President Zelaya be returned. As socialists in America, we also recognize the negative role that US foreign policy has played in the region. We pledge our solidarity to the people of Honduras as a means of repairing the damage done by the US government. We share in the sentiments recently expressed by President Zelaya, "Do not bring weapons. Practice what I have always preached, which is nonviolence. Let them be the ones who use violence, weapons and repression.”

No the Coup!
Return Zelaya!
Justice for working and poor Hondurans!

by SPUSA International Commission

The brutal repression of the popular upsurge against Iran's ruling clique of Islamic clerics only postpones the inevitable. Iran's theocracy has lost the confidence of its people, as militant protests continue on the streets of Tehran.

The Socialist Party USA stands with the people of Iran in demanding an immediate end to arbitrary rule and the holding of genuinely free and open elections. We believe that the complete separation of religious institutions and the state is an essential prerequisite for a democratic society. Every resident of a nation should have the same rights and privileges, no matter what her or his religious belief may or may not be.

Women have been systematically oppressed under the rule of the mullahs in Iran. It is the Socialist Party's hope that the insurgency in Iran will lead to a new society where women are guaranteed full rights. Women should be able to fully participate in the workforce. They should be able to dress in accordance with their own wishes, and not have their life style be coerced by those holding rigid interpretations of religious dogma. It is time for Iran to move beyond outmoded puritanical repression, and to recognize the equal rights of gays and lesbians.

Iran is a wealthy country, with immense oil resources and a highly educated populace. Nevertheless, poverty is widespread, and corruption endemic. Independent trade unions are persecuted and strikes are crushed. Although the popular movement protesting the theocratic regime's autocratic policies has been a broadly based, inter-class, coalition, segments of the movement have presented a more radical critique. The Socialist Party USA supports the Iranian Left, with its base in the working class, in the call for an economic program that will provide essential services to all, while narrowing the vast gap between rich and poor.

Barack Obama and the U.S. government are not interested in a democratic Iran. For decades, the United States has shored up reactionary theocracies such as Saudi Arabia, where it found it served its imperial interests. The Iranian people remember the U.S. role in overthrowing the popular regime of Mossadegh in 1953, leading to the return of the Shah, a repressive dictatorship that lasted until the popular revolt of 1979. Iranians will make sure that the government that replaces the current theocracy will continue to maintain its independence from U.S. foreign policy.

Iran's effort to develop nuclear power has caused disquiet in the region. Nuclear power is a threat to the future of the planet. There is no valid reason why a country with vast oil resources should rely on nuclear power for energy. Iran should be in the forefront in converting from oil to sustainable alternative energy sources, particularly solar power. The Socialist Party USA has consistently opposed the use of nuclear power in the United States, and we call for a rapid conversion here to alternative energy sources.

Nuclear power frequently acts as a precursor to nuclear weapons. The problems confronting the Near East will not be resolved through wars. Furthermore, nuclear weapons only make a volatile situation more dangerous. The Socialist Party USA believes that the entire region should become a nuclear free zone. This would mean that Iran would forego the development of nuclear weapons, as Israel dismantles its arsenal of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.

The popular insurgency in Iran is of historic importance. It has demonstrated to everyone that a reactionary theocratic regime cannot provide a desirable alternative to capitalism. It is up to us in the United States, and in the rest of the industrialized countries, to build a democratic socialist movement that can pose a positive alternative to religious fundamentalism.

by Matthew Andrews

Massive protests in the streets have been a tool of popular resistance as old as the cities where they take place. Yet in the US today it is common to hear people say “protests don't work.” Even seasoned veterans of the antiwar movement who have organized some of the largest protests in recent memory will make this declaration. Since 2001 we have seen the number of people mobilizing in the streets rise and fall. Some fatigue is understandable. But is the era of mass protest over? We had better take a closer look at this tactic before passing a blanket judgment.

Our ability to mobilize large numbers of people in the street depends on a number of factors, namely the political mood of the country, current events, and functioning organizations that can lead. Taking stock of these factors, it is not surprising that we are at a momentary low point. The political mood of the country is either enamored by our new Democratic president, or fatigued by years of protest with few tangible rewards. Everyone is reeling from the housing market crash, the bank bailouts, soaring unemployment, deteriorating working conditions, and unabated environment devastation. Many grassroots organizers are second guessing if we have the power or the energy to fight back.

Through all these escalating struggles, the antiwar movement remains a cornerstone of political dissent – as well it should be in a country with troops all over the world. The antiwar movement continues to radicalize young people and provide political organizing experience. Regrettably, the leadership of our major antiwar coalitions have failed to build a united movement. It's been years since the antiwar movement has united to build a demonstration, let alone any other project or campaign requiring more complex and ongoing coordination.

We must not allow the current low level of mobilization to color our attitude toward mass protest. Like any tactic, it requires the context of a strategy in order to be effective. A liberal perspective has frequently dominated the antiwar movement. Under this model mass demonstrations are just another form of lobbying that gives power to the bargaining team – the professional liberals. After we march, there isn't much for us to do but wait until the next election cycle so we can campaign for Democrats and lobby them again as loyal supporters. The last thing the liberals want to do is jeopardize their relationship with liberal Democrats. These politicians are their connection to power. No matter how slow progress seems to come, they will maintain their relations in order to cut a deal. Their bargaining power with politicians comes from their ability to discourage embarrassing acts of protest. This strategic perspective has demoralized rank and
file antiwar protesters.

We cannot pin our hopes on US politicians heeding popular opinion when we are not prepared to act beyond one peaceful march on a Saturday in Washington DC. These protests cannot be expected to veto war plans, overturn injustice, or establish our rights. What protests can do is provide an event around which large numbers of people will be introduced to the movement. The ideas we develop, relationships we build, and organizations we create will give a protest its deeper significance. The mass protest should not be counter-posed with other acts of resistance before or afterward. Rather it is an opportunity to do outreach and generate broad participation in a collective act of protest.

From this radical perspective, mass protests do more than register popular opinion on an issue. They represent the power of the movement. It signals to the ruling class that they cannot tell us what to think anymore, and if they don't change policies, they may soon lose control over what we do. When we work together and share information, it means the mechanisms the ruling class uses to control us are being broken down. Racism, sexism, regional isolation, and indoctrination are all levers of power against us. Nationally coordinated demonstrations must be organized to announce a movement that is resisting and circumventing those levers of power.

Our challenge is no longer to convince people that the wars are wrong, but that we can take action to oppose them. We must build unity among current antiwar forces representing radicals, veterans, pacifists, students, workers, community groups and other organizations. While the groundwork for unity must begin with conversations and small actions at the local level, it must lead toward a national mass protest. A successful event of this sort could represent the rebirth of the antiwar movement and send a clear message to the war-makers in Washington that the people will not consent to unending wars.

A successful movement must place clear demands on policy makers. Progress toward meeting those demands is an important measure of success. But we should also consider other measures, such as changing popular opinion, influencing popular culture, and building institutions that empower people. We must measure these successes ourselves and not wait for the corporate media to admit we have won anything.

The G20 will bring heads of state to Pittsburgh in September to discuss economic policy. With the antiwar movement's National Assembly coincidentally also meeting in Pittsburgh in July, this presents a unique opportunity for a dialog between movements. The struggles against war and corporate pillage must share a symbiotic relationship rooted in an understanding of their interconnectedness. In the current context of the global economic crisis and full assault on government social spending, the G20 may possess the most potential for the next mass protest.

Perhaps the pessimism expressed toward protest organizing reflects a resentment toward relying on the tactic almost out of habit. The antiwar movement has devoted most of its educational efforts toward explaining the middle east and US foreign policy, with relatively scant attention to how popular movements wield power. Perhaps we have mistakenly left this to the domain of leaders. The National Assembly may represent a new organizational formation for the antiwar movement to include its base in forming the strategy. If it succeeds, it will be in part because mass protests bring new people into the movement, and a new political culture to the people.

by Diane Walsh

(Vancouver, Canada) Sex workers in two provinces are challenging Canada’s solicitation laws in different ways but with a common desire—to work and live with greater dignity.

In the province of Ontario, a Charter of Rights and Freedoms case is well underway and is based out of Toronto. The suit is being handled by well-known activist lawyer Alan Young. As he’s an Osgoode Hall Law professor vital case preparatory work is being performed by articling students.

The calendar is marked for October 5, 2009. The Ontario Superior Court is scheduled to hear what’s become of this on-going constitutional challenge that has the aim to strike down three sections of the Criminal Code. These include: prohibitions on keeping a bawdyhouse, living on the avails of prostitution and communicating for the purposes of prostitution.

In Vancouver, British Columbia it’s clear that the action is moving at a much slower pace. A judicial roadblock has been put in the way. On December 15 2008, Supreme Court Justice W. F. Ehrcke of British Columbia refused to proceed to hear the claims brought forward by the plaintiffs which are, Downtown Eastside Sex Workers United against Violence Society and Sheryl Kiselbach.

Ehrcke’s ruling indicates that claims may only be brought by a currently-practicing sex worker. And because Kiselbach declared herself a former sex worker she is deemed to have no legal standing. She’s believed to have no case with which to proceed.

In other words the Justice would only listen to a practicing sex worker.

Some critics of the ruling have suggested that this tends towards a sort of “Gotcha!” mentality, that— despite the thinking that one isn’t supposed to surmise about what’s going on in a Justice’s mind—under present law—it could be argued that such a person could be considered a defendant in Ehrcke’s court and not a legitimate Charter [of Rights and Freedoms] appellant.

“Catch 22” legal chicanery of this nature obstructs those seeking a more progressive and constructive application of Canada’s human rights laws in dealing with sex work.

Fortunately, in Ontario, there’s no question that better legal process can be reported.

According to Alan Young who’s leading the challenge there: “Bringing this case is of utmost importance because, despite the fact that prostitution is a legal occupation, the current Criminal Code provisions operate to deny sex workers safe legal options for conducting their legal business. Ultimately this fight is destined to go all the way to the Supreme Court.”

The appellants—Amy Lebovitch, Valerie Scott, and Terri Jean Bedford—are sex workers.

They want the laws struck down as unconstitutional. They will argue that they violate their Charter rights to life, liberty and security of the person, as well as their Charter right freedom of thought, belief, opinion and communication.

To be clear, Lebovitch does not favour legalization of sex work. It’s decriminalization she seeks. “The movement is toward exemption, not unlike the decriminalization paradigm operating in New South Wales Australia at this time.”

Decriminalization is commonly confused with legalization, but there are key differences. Legalization is viewed as a potentially overbearing state overseeing and regulating sex workers. While decriminalization would simply remove specific sections of the criminal code from the law books.

Meanwhile the City of Vancouver seems to have tacitly accepted the need for sex workers to protect themselves. Susan Davis, a long-time spokesperson for sex workers’ rights, reports that she’s been granted an opt-out to operate a safe house. The safe house is to be a self-managed workplace with working safety central to its operation.

In effect, the city of Vancouver is said to be operating an informal blind-eye policy while the legal battles resolve themselves. The city’s general approach encourages constructive city-community relations as it works with self-policed sex workers in creating this safe house-initiative template.

Workers and clients can feel protected from the violence and extortion so often a feature of the street world; and police are relieved of the requirement to investigate and process responsible workers, secure in the knowledge they are maintaining good order and a concern for community safety.

Nearby in Victoria, Jody Paterson has helped to establish a cooperative where a percentage of trade proceeds go to job-option alternatives and drug programs for workers who want to leave the trade. Paterson, who once served a three-year term at Prostitution Empowerment Education Resource Society (PEERS), in Victoria is also known for putting pressure—some say shaming—Canadian unions to take up the safety for sex workers’ cause. For her, the issue is one of workers’ rights.

Paterson’s and PEERS’ work have resulted in a much improved social support network for workers. Yet the Victoria community has yet to hear a great deal about this union-activist piece of the story since mainstream publications have yet to take up the subject in any great depth.

Nevertheless, workers’ access to resources and information continues to improve together with their opportunities to combine and mobilize. It is to be hoped that the Charter litigation will soon be supported by the appropriate Trades Unions. Since these issues are undoubtedly workers’ rights issues, the strong and interested support of organized labour must be natural and urgent.

Libby Davies has been busy putting pressure on fellow politicians. For more than a decade, the Member of Parliament (NDP, Vancouver East) has sought changes in sex work-related laws at the municipal and federal levels. Davies and her colleagues managed to get an all-party Commons review committee to study sex work safety.

“The report does not go as far as to recommend decriminalization—which is what I wanted—but it says that three [political] parties believe that the state should not intervene or prohibit consenting adult sexual activity,” Davis explains. She believes that the language in the report is pivotal.

Davies backed the safe house initiatives in Vancouver. “Of course, it is quite controversial,” says Davies, who met with women’s committees in the B.C. Federation of Labour and the Canadian Labour Congress. “Unions are very interested in this issue,” she continues, noting that, the women’s committee of BC Federation of Labour is somewhat divided on the issue, not unlike the wider feminist community.

“Some feminists say sex work is inherently exploitative, but I think that is an unrealistic position. The key question is to differentiate what is consensual adult behaviour and what is harmful. Using the analogy that there is violence in marriages, our response is not to ban marriage.”

Davies adds, “It is far preferable to have a place run by sex workers themselves; they have control of comings and goings; they have people close by to monitor what is going on. Sex workers are in incredible danger, especially the street sex workers.”

Davies predicts that a successful lawsuit in tandem with progressive community support “will create almost a compulsion in Parliament to have-to embrace the safe-house concept.”

Davies plans to put forth a private member’s bill in support of decriminalization. This parliamentary motion would ask that those running a safe house be given exemption from the Criminal Code under right to life, liberty, and—importantly, security, [thus] protected by the Charter. This suggests that the police could simply not enforce the controversial aspects of the Criminal Code that are being disputed in court, until the results could be analyzed and more proactive and sensible policy measures can be developed and executed in concert with sex workers themselves.

Davies and Paterson are closely watching the Ontario case, which also emphasizes safety concerns. Lebovitch explains that fear of being arrested by police means that sex workers are more inclined to work alone rather than in groups of two or three, which would be much safer.

The bottom line is that sex workers and their advocates want to ensure that sex workers are no longer a segregated labour class having to work under inhumane conditions and on the wrong side of the law.

“You would hope that everyone would agree that we should be allowed the same rights and freedoms that others in Canada experience,” says Lebovitch. “People should not be afraid of us. We are not home-wreckers, immoral women. We are mothers, daughters, friends, lovers.”

The legal team and the Crowns from the Attorneys General of Canada are due to argue the case, in Ontario, in the fall of 2009; however, the case is likely to be resolved eventually by the Supreme Court of Canada where it could take a couple of years to render a judgment.

British Columbia’s case is now in the air, having been scuttled by last December’s surprise ruling of Justice Ehrcke hence the need for re-grouping in the Vancouver community for the moment.

by Herman Benson
from Benson's Union Democracy Blog

On his trips to China, Andy Stern may have learned how to hone his union managerial skills. The authoritarian rulers of China go beyond simply punishing critics; they go after the victims' lawyers to teach other lawyers the painful consequences of helping dissidents. Stern can pay well to hire an army of his own lawyers to harass lawyers who represent his opponents.

When the 150,000-member SEIU Local United Healthcare Workers-West, under its president, Sal Rosselli, was a normally self governing local and it dared to criticize Andy Stern's policies, it was compelled to retain lawyers to try to ward off Stern's moves to destroy its autonomy. Now that Stern has taken over the local, ousted all its officers, and seized its treasury, his appointed trustees are not content with mere total authoritarian control. They are moving against the lawyers who represented UHW in its days of independence.

Rosselli and the former officers of UHW have resigned from the SEIU and set up a new union, the National United Healthcare Workers; they are challenging the SEIU for representation of those 150,000 healthcare workers in California. The dispute could be resolved by collective bargaining elections sponsored by the NLRB for private employees and public employee relations boards for local government workers. No such elections will be fair and square democratic contests. The SEIU begins the campaign with an enormous treasury, swollen by the seized assets of UHW, and with a big staff. Rosselli's NUHW enters with an empty coffer and must painfully piece together campaign money and staff salaries. But at least elections will give workers a chance to decide.

Now comes SEIU's double legal assault: one set of lawyers is retained to confront Rosselli and a host of former UHW representatives on charges like "stealing" SEIU "property" e.g., mailing lists. Another set of lawyers is hired to confront the lawyers who represented the old autonomous UHW. The effect of these suits, and apparently the intention, is to make it extraordinarily difficult for the dissident NUHW to campaign for support among healthcare workers. They can be so tied up in defending themselves in court that they will have few of their meager resources left for election contests. In contrast, with guaranteed dues and agency shop fees from a million and a half workers, the SEIU remains loaded with cash.

Harassing legal action, like that against Rosselli and his union supporters, is nothing new and does not seem to require special comment. As part of the "normal" repression of union dissidents, it brings no credit to Stern for imaginative inventiveness. But the action against Rosselli's lawyers does seem to introduce a kind of China refinement.

In their guise as the new representatives of UHW, and their reputed replacement as the former legal clients of one of UHW's former law firms, Stern's trustee- attorneys are bombarding the firm with an extensive list of burdensome demands. Their suit in California state court, against the firm of Siegel and Lewitter and 100 unnamed "Does," demands they produce every scrap of paper and electronic blip ("correspondence, files, memoranda, billing records, and other documents and materials") that are in any way related to its services for the autonomous UHW and its former officers, now removed.

The suit of the Stern-appointed trustee goes far beyond a mere fishing expedition for data. Its effect, if successful, would make it difficult for the Rosselli team and its National Union of Healthcare Workers to mount an effective legal defense. By taking over UHW-W and its treasury, the trustee has already deprived Stern's critics of money, forcing them to seek voluntary donations from supporters. The suit would compound that disability by depriving them of experienced legal representation. The trustee-attorneys ask the court for "injunctive relief enjoining and restraining Defendants, and all of their principals, associates, agents, servants, employees and all persons acting in concert with them, and each of them, from providing any form of legal services or representation to the Former Officers with respect to any matters relating directly or indirectly to Defendants' former representation of UHW-W, and from disclosing to any subsequent counsel for Former Officers any of the confidential information of UHW-W which Defendants obtained in the course of their representation." They want more than data and disqualification. They want money: "damages," costs, legal fees.

The Siegel firm insists that it must resist these sweeping demands because it must respect the confidential limits of its attorney-client relationship. In rejecting any attorney-client assertion, the trustee-attorneys claim that they, as UHW's current legal representative, have the right to any material produced for it. But equating the status of a democratically elected leadership with an officialdom imposed arbitrarily is a misleading stretch. The Siegel firm, in representing UHW-W through its democratically elected officers, was obligated to protect the rights of the members by defending their democratically elected officers. The trustee-attorney represents the Stern administration which appointed it. A more apt comparison would be between the democratically elected leaders of a small nation and a replacement Quisling officialdom imposed by a tyrannical oppressive invader.

The trustee-attorney may have certain extensive technical legal rights over the trusteed UHW. In contrast, the Siegel firm asserts a legal responsibility to protect the interests of its clients. In the context of current events, that claim is buttressed by the moral standards of fair play, decency, and democracy.

Andy Stern began with the proclaimed goal of helping to liberate workers of the world from oppression. Along the way, he has taken a devious detour. He is busy liberating an army of high-paid lawyers to torment union dissidents and their attorneys.

For more information on current struggles for union democracy, visit the Association for Union Democracy.

from Stanford University

Chilean poet and political hero, Pablo Neruda is often viewed as a visionary. While many of his poems have a political content, many do not and he is often more commonly known for his love poems, and his lyrics filled with nature metaphors. However, his political activity and membership in the communist party propelled him to political leadership. He was even nominated for president, but declined in support of Salvador Allende.

His political identity took a big leap in its development when he lived in Spain, working as consul in Barcelona. Later he lived in Madrid, all the while developing close friendships with Spanish poets including Garcia Lorca, Alberti, Guillen. The Spanish Civil War begun in 1936 disturbed and upset him; he suffered the brutal death of his friend Garcia Lorca at the hands of Franco's troops, and he witnessed bombings of Madrid. In 1937, he returned to Chile to works on his poems and to organize anti-fascist solidarity. There he formed the Alliance of Intellectuals and participated in the electoral campaign of the leftist Frente Popular (Popular Front).

"Peace rules in Chile - Pablo Neruda"
Walter Womacka (1973)

He developed his Marxist thinking in Canto General, the "General Song" of Chile, where he pays tribute to indigenous leaders of the Americas, political heroes, historical battles and the natural , political and social histories of Latin America. In 1948, Chilean President Gabriel Gonzalez Videla launched a program of open persecution of labor unions, of the Communist Party, and particularly, Neruda. Although President Gonzalez Videla was a Radical and part of the Frente Popular (an alliance of Communist and Radical Parties), and had given three seats in his cabinet to communists, mining strikes in 1946 provoked general strikes, leading to an escalating social conflict with spurred the President to impose a state of siege. US government pressure to eliminate communism in Latin America spurred the conservative in the Chilean Congress to outlaw the Communist Party, and a hunt began to arrest all involved. As a result, Neruda went into hiding and then into exile, living in France, Mexico, Guatemala, and other parts of Europe. Two-thirds of "Canto General" were written in 1948-49 while he was in hiding.