For many activists Thanksgiving is a day filled with conflicting emotions. Family get together or Native American genocide day? Communal food or turkey slaughter? Below is a letter sent by a veteran Green activist to his daughter submitted for your Thanksgiving Day consideration:

by Mitchel Cohen

I sent the following to my daughter, Malika, who'd invited me to her and her mom's house in LI for Thaksgiving dinner. (What makes this harder is that I rarely get to see her any more, as she's away in school in Boston.)
Your thoughts, por favor!

Hiya Malika!

On the one hand I want to spend time with you and this is a good opportunity.

On the other I already almost wrecked Jennifer's Thanksgiving Party a couple of years ago because I was so pissed off at people who wanted so much to be part of this annual national ritual that they put their minds and consciences on hold and joined in slaughtering over 80 million turkeys every year! (Last year I had vegetarian Thanksgiving meal in San Francisco with my Brother Robert, Susan (Cathryn's sister) and her boyfriend Chris. Patrick couldn't come, he was sick.

On the one hand, I love the taste of a well prepared ORGANIC turkey. (The non-organic ones are basically poison, filled with arsenic andother bad chemicals.)

On the other, I am at war with myself over understanding the need to be a vegetarian yet loving to eat turkey, chicken and fish.

One trip to a slaughterhouse would cure anyone -- or almost anyone -- of their illusions or blindspots over how animals are raised, tortured, slaughtered and packaged. You'd have nightmares for the rest of your life.

Still, I do eat chicken, fish and sometimes turkey. But to do so ON DEMAND of this kultcha? No, I will not join in that sickness.

Why not? Am I so special? Would one person's withdrawal from that illness make a difference to anyone except myself?

I need, on Thanksgiving, to APOLOGIZE to all the animals I caused to be murdered by my participation in this carnivorous game.

I need to give THANKS to them for helping to sustain me by sacrificing their own lives.

And to all the people of the world for providing me -- at great sacrifice to themselves -- with the tools I use to write, with the metals and plastics I use every day in computer and pen, with the clothes on my back as the workers die from brown lung in the clothing factories, with the cars I passenger in as people are blown up en masse in Iraq and Afghanistan so the US can have a pipeline for oil to feed its cars. And not only the US ....

Every day just by living in this kulcha I partake in a vast web of complicity with evil, even as I try to extricate myself to the degree possible, even as I try to rip apart that web, tear it down, replace it with a more human, animal-friendly, and ecologically sustainable world.

Let alone the slaughter of American Indians that this holiday was designed to conceal.

I know a number of people are going up to Plymouth Rock in Massachusetts to commemorate "National Genocide Day" with various American Indian groups. I'm not going. That, too, is ritual, and a futile one at that -- speeches, long bus ride, nothing accomplished.

But I do love the taste of turkey .... and good (not canned) cranberry sauce. And organic yams. And the love and friendship of family and comrades.

Your mom will say, "oh shit, here we go again." Yes indeed.

Malika, of course, OF COURSE I want to see you, to be with you. But I think I'd better stay away, for fear of ruining your Thanksgiving .... or of ruining my own.

What do YOU think?

I'm pretty torn up over this. On the one hand .... on the other ....

Hey, maybe you can come in to the City on Friday instead and we can celebrate RESISTANCE, go to a movie, and eat a great vegetarian meal -- and give REAL thanks to those who've gone before and who resisted this celebration of death disguised as fun?

Love,
Mitchel

***
Also, have a look at Mitch's 2003 article Why I Hate Thanksgiving

by The Women’s Commission of the Socialist Party USA,

November 2009 - A major provision of the health care bill being put forward by the Obama administration—and opportunistically maneuvered through the House of Representatives, and next the Senate, by the Democratic leadership—shows just how disregarding the US government continues to be when it comes to abortion rights.

This provision would expand the scope of the Hyde Amendment—that nasty piece of national legislation that since 1976 has prohibited the use of federal funds for abortion—to include private health insurance plans partially subsidized by the federal government. This means that additional millions of women would be denied abortion as one of their health care options. Its inclusion in the health care bill is an outrageous capitulation by the Obama administration to the Catholic Church, religious fundamentalists, and Congressional conservatives and hypocrites of both the Democratic and Republican parties. We must fight back: No national health care system that denies the right to abortion on demand! Repeal the Hyde Amendment!

Here is some background on the Hyde Amendment. Named for its sponsor, Representative Henry Hyde (R-Ill), this law began wending its way through Congress in June 1976, as an amendment to the Health, Education, and Welfare (now the Health and Human Services) budget. Designed to exclude women on Medicaid from full reproductive health services by prohibiting federal funding for abortions, it was the first direct attack on the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision of 1973. After political jockeying by Republicans and Democrats, the bill passed in September 1976,

After court challenges to its constitutionality were rejected, the Hyde Amendment went into effect in August 1977. It was both a response to, and encouragement for, agitation and violence by such virulent anti-abortion groups as Operation Rescue and Army of God.

Since 1976, the Hyde Amendment has been inserted each year into the HHS budget, often without debate. That is, it has been kept on the books for over 30 years thanks to Democratic and Republican Congress-people and Presidents, alike. In the 1980’s, Congress widened its scope to include federal employees and their dependents, Native Americans, military personnel and their dependents, federal prisoners, and low-income residents of the District of Columbia.

Now Congress is at it again, this time using the motivation and arguments underlying the Hyde Amendment to deny even more women abortion access. Clearly, immediate actions are called for—not only to block the anti-abortion provision of the Obama health care bill, but also to demand the repeal of the Hyde Amendment.

So join us to get the word out about the Hyde Amendment and the Obama health care bill. Let’s make sure that the public is aware of how Obama and the Democratic leadership are curtailing women’s rights in the guise of health care reform. Let it be widely known that the Democratic Party has given up all pretence of being pro-choice.

The radical Left needs to offer an alternative to the liberal, mainstream organizations such as NARAL and NOW, whose placating strategies make them complicit in the ongoing assaults on abortion rights. From our position outside the Democratic Party, we can and must present the much-needed voice of socialist feminism—one that places abortion access in the context of socialized health care, human rights, social and economic justice, and independent political action.

More travesties like the Hyde Amendment and the anti-abortion provision of the Obama health care bill will be perpetrated unless we continue to demand an end to restrictive state and federal laws, to the wholly inadequate number of abortion facilities and providers, and to health care discrimination levelled against young, low-income, and immigrant women, and women of color.

Only our persistent and militant grassroots efforts will bring about the repeal of the Hyde Amendment and the defeat of the Obama health care bill. Through collective action, we can achieve our fundamental objective: a comprehensive system of socialized health care within a society that guarantees the right to reproductive freedom and health care justice and equity, and that ends all forms of violence against women.

by Stewart A. Alexander & Billy Wharton
Socialist WebZine Exclusive!

Nov. 23, 2009 - The Socialist Party USA stands in solidarity with the University of California (UC) student protesters. Higher education should not be treated as a commodity, whose price is determined by supply and demand. Receiving an education is a social right. Insuring a free, quality and open national higher education system is far more important than any war or new weapon or bank bailouts. An educated population makes for a more democratic society. Restricting access to the UC system through exorbitant tuition is an attack on democracy itself.

Tens of thousands of students in the UC system have experienced a political awakening. Instead of giving the support necessary for students to excel, the UC Board of Regents is attempting to impose a 32% increase in tuition. Suddenly, the UC system has been transformed from a place of scientific discovery and intellectual inquiry into a site for politicians to dump California’s enormous budget deficit. Thousands of students throughout the university system have responded by organizing demonstrations and building occupations. Arrests and police repression have not stopped the movement. It continues to grow in numbers and courage daily in defense of the right to receive an education.

This year’s proposed 32% increase is not an isolated instance. Since 1999, tuitions at the 10 UC campuses have tripled. The cost for one year of tuition would now be $10,300. This does not include expenses for text books, housing and food. Many students believe the tuition hikes will force them to drop out or attend community colleges. This, coupled with the deep economic recession demonstrates that a university education is increasingly becoming a distant thought for many working families.

The student protests have also been given the flavor of labor demonstrations, as students, adjuncts and full-time faculty members join the mobilizations. This has led to the opening of classes to the entire community through outdoor lectures and discussion sessions, and serious critiques of the university’s labor practices especially when it comes to the working conditions of adjuncts. Grad students have adopted the undergraduate demand to stop the tuition hikes and have added demands for fair labor practices and an end to the privatization of the university.

Socialist Party USA member and Peace and Freedom Party candidate for California Governor, Stewart Alexander, has linked the problems in California to the policies of the Democrats and Republicans. “The leaders of the two corporate parties,” he writes, “have chosen to protect the interest of big capital over students’ futures.” Indeed, what is so brilliant about the UC protests is their complete unwillingness to accept what has been packaged as a “reasonable” “we all have to make sacrifices” policy. Let the rich pay for the budget crisis they created.

As democratic socialists, we stand in solidarity with the student protests. We encourage all students, especially those at publicly-funded universities, to draw inspiration from the UC protests. Democratic socialism advances our just demands that everything that make us human be guaranteed. Food, employment, healthcare, housing and education are our social rights. Now is the time to demand them.

No to the UC Tuition Hikes!
Quality, free and open higher education for all!
Education is our right!

***
Stewart Alexander is a member of the Socialist Party USA in California; Billy Wharton is the co-chair of the Socialist Party USA.

by Center for Constitutional Rights
from Upside Down World

The U.S. District Court in the Southern District of Florida ruled earlier this month that the claims for crimes against humanity and extrajudicial killings could move forward in two related U.S. cases against former Bolivian President Gonzalo Daniel Sánchez de Lozada Sánchez Bustamante (Sánchez de Lozada) and former Bolivian Defense Minister Jose Carlos Sánchez Berzaín (Sánchez Berzaín). The cases, Mamani, et al. v. Sánchez Berzaín, and Mamani, et al. v. Sánchez de Lozada, seek compensatory and punitive damages under the Alien Tort Statute (ATS).

Judge Adalberto Jordan ruled that Bolivian plaintiffs have viable claims against Sánchez de Lozada and Sánchez Berzaín. Each of these plaintiffs has brought claims on behalf of a deceased relative who was targeted by forces under the defendants’ command. Among these plaintiffs are Eloy Rojas Mamani and Etelvina Ramos Mamani, whose eight-year-old daughter was killed in her mother’s bedroom when a single shot was fired through the window; Felicidad Rosa Huanca Quispe, whose 69-year-old father was shot and killed along a roadside; and Gonzalo Mamani Aguilar, whose father was shot and killed steps away from where he was farming potatoes.

“The decision is a great victory for the plaintiffs, whose family members were shot—targeted by Bolivian security forces commanded by the defendants,” said Judith Brown Chomsky, a cooperating attorney for the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR). “This judgment reaffirms that U.S. courts can hear actions brought against those who abuse human rights.”

The complaints allege that in September and October 2003, Sánchez de Lozada and Sánchez Berzaín ordered Bolivian security forces to use deadly force, including high-powered rifles and machine guns, to suppress popular protests against government policies by targeting unarmed civilians in the indigenous Aymara community.

“Six years after directing security forces to target Bolivian civilians, Sánchez de Lozada and Sánchez Berzaín move one step closer to having to answer for their actions in a court of law,” said Jeremy Bollinger, an attorney with Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld.

“This decision is a reminder that foreign heads of state cannot act with impunity,” said James Cavallaro, the Executive Director of the Human Rights Program at Harvard Law School and a Clinical Professor of Law. “It’s a powerful example of how international law is making it harder for those who violate human rights to escape accountability simply by fleeing to another country.”

On October 17, 2003, both Sánchez de Lozada and Sánchez Berzaín fled to the United States. The complaints were filed in September 2007. Yesterday’s decision grants in part and denies in part the defendants motion to dismiss.

The legal team includes CCR cooperating attorneys Judith Chomsky, Beth Stephens and David Rudovsky; Steven Schulman, Jeremy Bollinger, Mike Small, and Chris Petersen from the law firm of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP; James Cavallaro, Tyler Giannini, and Susan Farbstein from the International Human Rights Clinic at Harvard Law School; Jennie Green of the International Human Rights Clinic at the University of Minnesota Law School; Paul Hoffman of Schonbrun, DeSimone, Seplow, Harris and Hoffman; and Miami attorney Ira Kurzban of the law firm Kurzban Kurzban Weinger and Tetzeli.

by Jim Sanders
A Socialist WebZine exclusive!

November 27th is the 31st Anniversary of the assassination of Harvey Milk. Harvey ran for the San Francisco Board of Supervisors three times as an openly gay man. In 1977, he was elected. He became the most prominent openly gay politician in the United States.

On November 27th, 1978, he was shot and killed, along with gay-friendly Mayor George Moscone. The killer was Milk's former right-wing rival on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, Dan White. White entered City Hall through a window to avoid the metal detectors that would have been set off by the gun he was carrying. White shot Mayor Moscone several times, including additional rounds as the Mayor lay dead on the floor. He then reloaded his gun, crossed the hall to Harvey Milk's office, shot him several times, again firing additional rounds as he lay dead on the floor.

Despite all of this, the lenient sentence that White ultimately received resulted in little more than five years of jail time for the cold-blooded killing of two men. Gays and Lesbians were blocked from serving on the jury. White's lawyers used the notorious “Twinkie defense,” maintaining that White was incapacitated because he had eaten too much junk food. HE GOT AWAY WITH MURDER! The night the verdict was announced, the White Night Riots erupted in streets. This was the largest public demonstration in response to injustice against Gays and Lesbians to that date. Gays and Lesbians would no longer remain passive as our lives were disregarded.

Harvey was about more than gay rights. He fought for the working people of San Francisco against the greedy developers exploiting the city. He impressed union stalwarts by getting Coors beer out of the gay bars in San Francisco as the national Coors boycott efforts struggled for support. His efforts secured jobs for openly gay drivers with the Teamsters. He fought against the election of politically powerful Diane Feinstein to the Presidency of the Board of Supervisors. Feinstein was the darling of both Gay-liberals and downtown developers. Milk shocked many with his politically risky, pricipled support of Chinese businessman Gordan Lau. Feinstein won the election. When a move was made to declare her election unanimous, Harvey refused, and stood with Lau.

It's worth noting that Harvey went through a great political transformation in his life. In the early 60s, he was a Goldwater Republican. By the 70s he was championing the rights of, and building coalitions between, Gays and Lesbians, People of Color, Women, Unionists, and Seniors.

In 1977, the meager rights that Gays and Lesbians had managed to win in various locales throughout the country were under attack. It started with a high-profile campaign led by Anita Bryant in Dade County, Florida, and moved on to Witchita, Kansas, Eugene, Oregon, and Saint Paul, Minnesota. Harvey was a co-chair of an organization fighting Proposition 6 (aka the Brigg's initiative). Proposition 6 was a state-wide referendum in California that would have outlawed Gays and Lesbians teaching in California schools. It also would have outlawed any teacher making any positive representation of Gays and Lesbians. This Proposition was so right-wing that even Ronald Reagan opposed it! Gays and Lesbians lost rights in referendums across the country. Yet, against all odds, because of a grass roots campaign that Harvey Milk lead, supporters of gay and lesbian rights defeated Prop 6 with more than 58% of the vote total.

The passage of Proposition 8 in California, and Amendment 2 in Florida, the loss of Marriage Rights in Maine, and the narrow margin of victory in Washington State remind us that discrimination against Gays and Lesbians is sadly still with us.

Harvey made a tape recording on November 18th, 1978, only nine days before his assassination. He stipulated that the recording was to be played only in the event of his assassination. In this recording Harvey said: “If a bullet should enter my brain, let it destroy every closet door.”

Learn More About Harvey Milk:

The Mayor of Castro Street is a wonderfully detailed and highly readable biography of Harvey Milk by Randy Shilts.

The Times of Harvey Milk is a beautifully made, tremendously moving film. It won the Academy Award for Best Documentary in 1984. I highly recommend it to anyone wanting to know more about this (sadly little-known) part of social justice history that is so important Gays Lesbians and human rights supporters.

Milk a movie about the life of Harvey Milk starting with his moving to San Francisco, swept into theaters last November. It was nominated for eight Academy Awards, including Best Motion Picture, Best Director for openly gay director Gus van Sant, and best Supporting Actor for Josh Brolin's harrowing performance as the disturbed and menacing Dan White. Sean Penn won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his highly acclaimed portrayal. Out gay screen writer Dustin Lance Black won for Best Screen Play. Follow this link to find out more about the film.

***
Jim Sanders is the Vice-chair of the Socialist Party USA and the convener of the Queer Commission.

by Rick Wolff
from The Socialist July/August 2009

This much is clear: not in a long time has capitalism been so critically questioned in the US and “socialism” so widely debated as a social alternative. The left can and should seize this moment. One part of doing that is to formulate a new program -- including a new definition of socialism -- that could grasp a mass consciousness, become central to public political debate, and inspire a new left mobilization in the US.

First, we need to settle our accounts with the (definitions and practices of) socialisms of the past. As Engels did in his Socialism:Utopian and Scientific, we need to state both what past socialisms accomplished and why they could not overcome and replace capitalism. Despite ruthless and implacable opposition, powerful labor, left, and socialist organizations were built and progressive social changes achieved. A rich left tradition of socialist criticism and analysis was created and spread glob¬ally. Across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the first wave of modern, anti-capitalist socialism became a global social force. However, where and when socialists made revolutionary breakthroughs against capitalism -- whether or not they took state power -- socialism’s advances proved limited, vulnerable and therefore often temporary. The histories of the USSR and China, like those of socialist and communist programs and parties across the rest of the world, attest to distortions and reversals that enabled renewals of capitalism.

There were, of course, many contributors to socialism’s history: those that impinged from outside and those that worked their effects from within. I am concerned here with the latter. Following Engel’s model, I explore what has to change inside social¬ism to improve its chances to achieve new, further, and more secure breakthroughs in moving the human community beyond the injustice, limits, and costs of capitalism. Let’s begin by subtitling the remainder of this short essay:

Socialism: Macro and Micro.
Socialisms of the past focused on two broad social conditions: (1) the ownership of productive property, and (2) the mechanism of distributing productive resources and productive outputs. Capitalism was thus defined in terms of its reliance upon private ownership of productive property and markets. By contrast, socialism embraced socialized productive property and national economic planning (usually to be operated by a state apparatus controlled by socialists). Capitalism and socialism were thus differentiated in macro terms. What then did socialism mean at the micro level of society inside its individual enterprises?

The blunt answer is: not much. No clear differentiation of capitalism from socialism has so far emerged for the internal structures of enterprises. While socialists supported and often led workers’ struggles for better wages and working conditions inside capitalist enterprises, their chief concerns were more macro-oriented. They sought to coordinate workers’ struggles inside enterprises with developing political movements aimed to transform private into socialized property and markets into planning. Thus, when and where socialists became politically dominant, the basic internal structures of enterprises were not fundamentally altered. Laborers still finished their work days and departed, leaving behind their labors’ fruits and leaving to others -- boards of directors -- the decisions about what to produce, how, and where, and what to do with the surpluses/profits. True, socialists emphasized state regulation of those boards’ decisions or sometimes replaced private corporate boards of directors with state officials. However, the basic structures connecting workers to enterprise decision-makers remained, where socialists shaped them, markedly like their counterparts under capitalism.

In Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, Engels’ key point was that many early socialists believed that powerful utopian visions of a better, post-capitalist society could not only capture people’s imaginations but also thereby realize socialism. But utopian socialism, Engels argued, had not succeeded. Socialists therefore had to supplement it with a materialistically grounded (i.e. “scientific”) strategy for practically transforming capitalism into socialism. Scientific socialism would identify key potential revolutionary agents and mobilize them politically for that transformation.

However, the macro focus of scientific social¬ism also proved inadequate to secure a transition from capitalism to socialism. It lacked the supplement of a micro focus, namely a definition of socialism at the level of each enterprise: specifically, that enterprises be reorganized such that the laborers become collectively their own board of directors. This micro dimension of socialism ends the classic divided organization of capitalist enterprises pitting those (the board of directors) who make the enterprise’s key decisions against those who labor but do not make those decisions.

The full range of new strengths and potentials available to 21st century socialism if it adds this micro dimension cannot be listed here, let alone elaborated. Consider just two examples. First, a macro-cum-micro socialism institutionalizes real worker participation in all aspects of production. Socialism will thereby mean that the workers themselves will be charged to trans¬form the inherited capitalist enterprises by ending their divisions between manual and mental labor, directors and directed. Building a new socialist society will mean the workers’ continuous role in reorganizing enterprises based on equality, sharing, or rotating all specific functions, and continuous collective decision-making. Socialism would then engage all workers in a life-long process of self-transformation alongside and intertwined with macro-level socialist transformation. The end result would equip and motivate workers to participate fully in politics and culture as well as in the economy.

Second, such a macro-cum-micro socialism can bring a concrete, practical meaning to otherwise often vague references to socialist “democracy.” That kind of democracy would refer to how the collective of workers inside each enterprise reach all its key decisions. These enterprise collectives would necessarily enter into continuous deliberations and negotiations with one another and with similarly democratic collectives based on residency to reach genuinely democratic social decisions.
Utopian socialism contributed to the socialist tradition’s growth and maturity, but its limits provoked a self-critique formulated around the concept of scientific socialism advocated by Marx and Engels. Scientific socialism then enhanced the tradition’s further globalization and deepened both its theorizations and its practices. Nonetheless, scientific socialism has now outgrown its overly macro bias and thereby provoked another self-criticism. The result is the resolve to add the micro level so that the macro and micro levels will together provide at once the indispensable supports for but also the democratic constraints on one another. Can such a reconstituted socialist conception and program also fail? Of course, but that is no argument against taking socialism another important step further just as the earlier socialists did. Today’s global crisis exposes all of capitalism’s fault lines, but it also offers socialists the chance to renew their project if they can learn and apply the lessons of socialism’s history.

***

Rick Wolff is a Professor Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. Check out Rick Wolff’s new film Capitalism Hits the Fan

by Billy Wharton

If a bill is passed on Capitol Hill, money is sure to have changed hands. There is not much “School House Rock” idealism left in Washington these days. Bills do not become laws through a democratic process of debate, compromise and ratification. Money greases the skids, shapes the end product and determines what is or isn’t debated from the floor. No surprise then that a large money trail has been left in the wake of the House of Representatives approval of HR 3962, The Affordable Healthcare Act for America.

Health Insurance and Pharmaceutical lobby money is everywhere. In May 2009, the lobby racked up a bill of $2.3 million dollars a day. Every member of the House and every House committee with even a tangential relationship to the legislation have received money from this powerful lobby. Three of these representatives are of interest to this article. They are Blue Dogs – conservative Democrats who often cross party lines and vote with Republicans. All told, we can identify 48 House members as Blue Dogs. 26 of them voted in favor of HR 3962, including our three subjects. The question is why these Blue Dogs decided to go with the Democratic majority on an issue that seemed to sharply divide the two parties. In any normal scenario they might be joining their Republican brethren in the “no” camp. Following the money will offer some interesting motives.

Where Abu Ghraib Meets Merck
Patrick Murphy is a military man. He parlayed his status as a Gulf War veteran into a seat in the House of Representatives from Pennsylvania’s 8th District. He then naturally gravitated to the Armed Services Committee of the House which secured for him, according to the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP), large-scale campaign contributions from weapons manufacturers such as Lockheed Martin. More controversial is Murphy acceptance of $17,950 in contributions from L-3 Communications during his 2008 re-election bid. L-3 gained negative attention for carrying out interrogations in US military’s notorious Abu Ghraib prison.

Murphy employed a similar tactic with the issue of healthcare. Campaign contributions led policy. In 2008, he accepted a large $23,599 in contributions from the pharmaceutical maker Merck & Co. That same year, Merck paid a $671 million settlement after admitting to systematically overcharging Medicaid programs and providing perks to doctors in exchange for pushing Merck products to their patients. (Philadelphia Enquirer, 2/08/08) More directly related to healthcare reform is the deal cut between big Pharma, including Merck, and the Obama administration prior to the drafting of the healthcare reform bills. In exchange for White House assistance in blocking any attempts by Congress to use bulk buying to lower costs or to allow cheap drug importation, pharmaceutical makers agreed to some $80 billion in givebacks to government healthcare programs. (Huffington Post, 8/13/09)

Murphy subsequently quickly shed the typical Blue Dog skepticism about inflated entitlement programs, in favor of becoming an outspoken supporter of HR 3962. In an impassioned article published in the liberal Huffington Post, he urged-on fellow Blue Dogs by describing his, “…strong support of this crucial, fiscally responsible and long-overdue legislation.” (Huffington Post, 11/07/09) Creeping suspicions exist about Murphy’s about-face. Sincere desire for reform or dutiful support of a campaign contributor?

We Will Crush You
Jim Cooper is a far more seasoned consumer of healthcare campaign contributions. He has been at it since the 1980s. Operating from a “very safe seat” in Tennessee, Cooper bankrolled his Blue Dog influence into $159,000 from private health insurers and $104,000 from pharmaceutical makers. Unlike Murphy however, he is a bit more skeptical about HR 3962, viewing the creation of legislation as something akin to “writing a term paper for school,” constant revisions. Cooper hopes that debates in the Senate will squeeze out whatever progressive elements remain in the bill thereby moving it ever closer to the weak proposal he authored in 1992.

The 1992 bill brought him into conflict with then First Lady, and fellow healthcare reform author, Hillary Clinton. The two clashed over Cooper’s opposition to the inclusion of employer mandates to provide insurance to any reform proposal. “We will crush you,” replied an enraged First Lady, “You’ll wish you never mentioned this to me.” (NY Times, 02/05/08) Undeterred, Cooper has tried to inject this pro-employer spirit into the most recent round of health care debates. He has remained a reliable spokesman for the industry whose yes vote moved a watered down proposal toward further revision in the Senate.

The Big Kahuna
If there is a king of the jungle among Blue Dog healthcare contribution seekers, his name is Earl Pomeroy of North Dakota. Pomeroy gained fame for the You Tube video in which he referred to then President George W. Bush as a “clown,” yet it his participation on the powerful Ways and Means Committee which has unleashed the campaign contributions. The list of wrecked business patrons is long – AIG, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. These funds produced Pomeroy’s yes vote for the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act in 2008 that aimed at bailing out these same companies. (Associated Press, 09/29/08)

Healthcare has proved to be a far more lucrative venture for the representative. As HR 3962 wound its way toward the Ways and Means Committee, the CRP reports Pomeroy had already accepted $620,000 from private insurers and $130,000 from the pharmaceutical industry in contributions for his 2008 campaign. Pomeroy provided a sense of who his constituency was while commenting on the bill after delivering his yes vote. “I was able,” he boasted, “to win important improvements in the bill for North Dakota hospitals and doctors.” This is likely a reference to the final bill’s de-linking of physician reimbursement rates from the fixed schedule employed by Medicare, a concession that threatens to increase the public subsidy of private companies and inflate the overall cost of the reform package. Pomeroy shared Cooper’s hope that the Senate would contribute to the further watering down of the House bill. More “improvements” will be made, he related,
once the two bills are blended into one.

Blue Dogging Healthcare
Three Blue Dogs on the take from the healthcare lobby. Each displays strong conservative credentials that feature consistent opposition to a variety of government funded welfare programs. Jim Cooper even holds the dishonorable reputation of having voted against the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990. The fact that these three counted themselves among the supporters of HR 3962 should raise immediate suspicions about the nature of bill.

Far from a solution to the massive healthcare crisis, this bill is certain to be diluted further in the Senate. The result will be a bad reform that threatens to disgrace the notion of a public-sector solution to healthcare. HR 676, the National Health Insurance Act, offers a far more progressive solution. Yet, its supporters can muster few of the financial resources wielded by the powerful healthcare lobby. Support can only be built the old fashioned democratic way, through the creation of mass movement determined enough to refuse the compromises and corruption that rule the day in Washington.

***
Billy Wharton is the co-chair of the Socialist Party USA and the editor of the Socialist and the Socialist Webzine

by Doug Henwood
From Left Business Observer News

Now, the usual words on the economic news. In general, we continue to see signs of stabilization, but no serious signs of a turnaround. I suppose that coming after such a deep recession, a period of feet-finding can be expected, but it’s still a long way from even an overture to anything resembling prosperity. And since there have been essentially no structural reforms of the U.S. economy, or even a serious discussion of same, I’m wondering if anything resembling prosperity is in our near future.
A few words on the stimulus. I’ll have more to say about all this in a few weeks, since I’m reserving the details for an article for my newsletter, Left Business Observer, and subscribers will get first dibs on it, but I’ll just say a couple of quick things for now. (All the stats are here.) One is that spending so far is quite small—about 1% of GDP has been actually disbursed and received. By contrast, the WPA during the 1930s spent about twice that much—and built thousands of schools, rebuilt thousands of hospitals, repaved 280,000 miles of road, etc. No one is even talking about anything like that now. And two, the spending by state is kind of amazing. Toward the top of the list, measured against total income in the state, are small places like Alaska, North Dakota, Montana, and South Dakota. Toward the bottom, a lot of big ones: New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut among them. California just missed making the bottom 10. Fascinating how
Washington redistributes money away from states that are more liberal towards those that are most conservative—and most likely to rail against Washington. Can we just cut them off?

Sojourner Truth (Nov. 19, 1797 – November 26, 1883) was the self-given name, from 1843, of Isabella Baumfree, an African-American abolitionist and women's rights activist. Truth was born into slavery in Swartekill, New York. Her best-known speech, Ain't I a Woman?, was delivered in 1851 at the Ohio Women's Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio.

From "Ain't I a Woman?"

That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain't I a woman?

by Billy Wharton
from NYC Local of the Socialist Party USA

A simple question for the tea baggers. Where is the socialism now? Frenetic right-wingers spent a good part of the summer shouting about the “government takeover of health care,” or the “stealth socialist health care plan.” Now that the “Affordable Healthcare for America Act” has been passed by a slim margin in the House of Representatives, there are few traces of anything even resembling socialism. Instead, Americans will find the good, the bad and the ugly of healthcare reform all contained within the 1,990 page bill.

The Good
The longer a rotten system lasts, the more any change to it is perceived to be a giant leap forward. In this light, the House health bill contains some positive changes. Insurers will now be prevented from refusing enrollment based on a pre-existing condition or dropping subscribers who become ill. Such policies have allowed private insurers to maintain profit margins and, consequently, are contributing factors to the swelling ranks of the uninsured. Their elimination is certainly a positive reform.

Another provision in the bill removes the anti-trust exemption for private health insurers. Since 1945, insurers have been exempt from Federal anti-trust law but subject to whatever state-by-state provisions existed. Insurers argued that this allowed them to share essential information about pools of subscribers in order to determine risk. In practice, much more than information was shared. The American Medical Association reports that large insurers now control 94% of health care business in most regional markets. A few large-scale private insurers lord over each segment of the country. House Democrats view anti-trust law enforcement as a means to combat this concentration, but it presents a more ominous prospect when viewed inside of the rest of the reform proposal.

Transforming the mass number of uninsured, at last count around 48 million, into potential customers will favor those companies capable of operating economies of scale. In other words, the larger the corporation, the easier it will be to price your way into the new market. For a time, prices may drop, but only at the cost of further monopolization, this time on the national instead of regional scale. Anti-trust law is a notoriously weak weapon to break up monopolies, since enforcement is contingent on the political appetite of whatever administration directs politics in Washington. Removing the exemption is positive, yet creating the conditions to expand the problem of monopolization seems to neutralize the benefits.

The Bad
Many emotional pleas and an equally large number of words have been delivered for and against the public option. Right-wingers point to it as the crux of the secret socialist plan, while honest liberals made it a litmus test for the utility of the bill. What emerged from the debate is a watered-down version of a public plan sabotaged by concessions made to a vocal right-wing and paid for by campaign contributions to Democrats from the private insurance lobby.

Key to the watering-down was de-linking reimbursement rates from the Medicare schedule. Medicare operates as a price-fixed program where rates are negotiated into annual budgets through the legislature. These are, generally, significantly below rates in the private sector. The House bill version of the public plan will operate with rates determined by the marketplace. This means that the private sector will play a primary role in determining the cost structure in which the public plan will operate. This will end the deflationary effect a Medicare-compensation structure would have and may also mean, as the Congressional Budget Office has argued, that a public plan will be forced to offer more expensive plans than private insurers.

The weak public plan will have negative ripple effects inside the overall reform. The uninsured who can prove financial need, can now apply for “insurance credits” to purchase coverage. However, since the public plan may prove to be more expensive than private plans, it is likely that a significant amount of public subsidies will be funneled into the coffers of private health insurers. This fits with a larger pattern being developed by the Obama administration of funneling good public money into bad private sector businesses that have failed to meet the needs of the American people. The double problems of price inflation inside the plan and the issuance of insurance credits to private companies threaten to drive the already inflated price tag for the reform well past the estimated $1.2 trillion.

The Ugly
In another act of right-wing slight-of-hand, House Democrats shifted the mandate burden from the business community onto individuals. Republican pressure forced the ceiling on businesses mandated to provide insurance to their employees up to $500,000 in payroll. This will allow a significant swath of the businesses to be relieved of the burden of purchasing insurance.

Conversely, individuals will be forced by the government to carry some sort of health insurance. The penalty for not doing so will be a fine of 2.5% of your income. Continued non-payment and remaining uninsured will result in further fines and a possible jail term. This is a bonanza for private insurers, as millions will be forced into a new market for low-cost health insurance. Such plans are sure to skimp on coverage and run high on costs.

The site of the herding will be the new health insurance exchanges. This idea, championed by the conservative Heritage Foundation, will insure that market-based ideology frames the new health care system. Rates will be determined here, insurance offerings will be made and terms of care will be formulated here. All this with the continued logic of the marketplace where profits are a central concern and people’s health an afterthought.

Still Single-Payer
None of the changes outlined above amount to socialism. Nor do they even signal the opening of a road which could lead to a socialist health care plan. The hope for genuine reform rests in the same place as it did before the bill was passed – in the certainty that the private sector will make such a mess of health care that the American people will be outraged enough to move towards socializing health care. A single-payer plan would cut across the good, the bad and ugly of this round of health care reform. Our health would cease to be a commodity and be guaranteed as a human right. Plenty of organizing is needed to win single-payer and, in the immediate term, we have plenty of myths to dispel about the wonders of small reforms.

***
Billy Wharton is the co-chair of the Socialist Party USA. Comments and questions can be directed to author at: billyspnyc(at)yahoo.com

by Jim Sanders, Chair SPUSA Queer Commission
from SP-USA

Referendums effecting the lives of LGBTQ people were on ballots all over the country this week. A few of the higher profiled ballot questions included:

Voters in Maine overturned by approximately 53 to 47 percent, a law passed by the Maine legislature that established same-sex marriages in order to end marriage inequality in Maine. The failure to attain marriage equality in Maine is particularly disheartening, but the fact that 47 percent of the voters in Maine supported marriage equality is significant.

Voters in Washington approved by a scant margin of approximately 51 to 49 percent, a law that would give domestic partners some of the legal rights previously only available to married couples (only heterosexuals can marry in Washington state). The fact that 49 percent of the voters in Washington would oppose recognition of domestic partnerships is troubling.

Voters in Kalamazoo, Michigan approved by approximately 65 to 35 percent, an ordinance that grants anti-discrimination protections to gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender individuals. The rare inclusion of transgender individuals is cause for celebration.

Jim Crow style localized oppression is no more acceptable for queers than for any other group. It's a shame that human rights can still be held hostage to human prejudices.

Socialists will always fight beside those struggling to improve conditions in their daily lives. But, under the oppression of a capitalist system, reforms will always be necessary, and they will never be sufficient. Socialists need to constantly make clear that we fight for the power to create and maintain justice in our own lives, and not for fleeting opportunities to occasionally wrest concessions from the state.

Lasting freedom for LGBTQ people will only come about in a society concerned with, and conscientiously working for, the liberation of all people.

The hall at the Church of the Nativity was packed last Saturday night as activists from throughout NYC gathered to celebrate the birthday of noted American socialist David McReynolds. Multiple generations of activists gave speeches and shared remembrances, poems and music in celebration of the day. Though David's parents jokingly blamed his birth for the onset of the Great Depression, his 80th birthday was a joyous celebration.

To see the evite for the event click here

Gretchen and Quitty from the NYC Local were proud participants!
Matt Daloisio from Witness Against Torture was the MC
Jeremy Scahill showed up
David gave a rousing speech!

To read David's pamphlet The Philosophy of Non-Violence click here

from The School of the Americas Watch

The military coup by SOA graduates in Honduras has once again exposed the destabilizing and deadly effects that the School of the Americas has on Latin America. The actions of the school’s graduates are unmasking the Pentagon rhetoric and reveal the anti-democratic results of U.S. policies. It is time for a change towards justice.

From November 20-22, 2009, thousands will vigil at the gates of Fort Benning, Georgia, to stand up for justice, to shut down the School of the Americas and to end the oppressive U.S. foreign policy that the school represents.

The campaign to close the SOA is in a crucial phase right now. Despite promising comments from President Obama during his election campaign, the SOA/ WHINSEC is still in operation and the Pentagon is moving forward with plans for new U.S. military bases in Colombia. With a Democratic administration in the White House, it appears that some Democrats in Congress are becoming timid when it comes to opposing the Pentagon.

It is up to us to keep up the pressure and to hold them accountable. People power is going to win over Pentagon lobbying!

It is tremendously important that we have a strong showing at the gates of Fort Benning for the annual vigil and nonviolent direct action, in order to demonstrate that we won’t go away until the SOA is shut down and the U.S. government has stopped turning to “military solutions” (or political-economic interventions) to enforce its oppressive foreign policy in Latin America. Too many people have suffered and died at the hands of SOA graduates.

You can take a stand for solidarity and justice now! Join hundreds of organizers around the country and start planning for the November vigil. Contact your local unions, universities, workers centers, social justice organizations and faith communities and ask them to re-commit to the struggle to close the School of the Americas.

***
Get involved with the Socialist Party USA contingent headed down to the SOA protest in Fort Benning, Georgia from Nov. 20-22 - contact us as nealgammill(at)yahoo.com

from MRZine

Over 21,000 people in Okinawa protested on Sunday to demand the removal of the US bases from the prefecture, criticizing the plan to only relocate the Futenma US air base from its current location of Ginowan City to the Henoko district of Nago City, also in Okinawa. US President Barack Obama is scheduled to arrive in Japan on Friday, meeting Japan's Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio. The protest is meant to put pressure on the vacillating prime minister not to renege on his election promise to relocate the Futenma base out of Okinawa. Ginowan Mayor Iha Yoichi emphasized: "We want Prime Minister Hatoyama to convey the importance of the Japanese citizens' political choice to President Obama and tell him that the Okinawans, on whom the burden of the US bases has been imposed for 63 years, do not need another US base."


Meanwhile, Henoko activists are continuing their sit-in in opposition to base building. The sit-in is now in its sixth year. Speaking to Ota Hikari and Tanaka Yuji, the hosts of an NTV show (broadcast two days before the protest), the Henoko sit-in participants say:

* "Okinawans said, 'Get rid of Futenma.' We didn't say, 'Bring Futenma to Henoko.' Why do we need to find an alternative location for them? It really pisses me off."

* "From this island, we have witnessed US soldiers go to war. It makes me extremely sad. 3 million dead in Viet Nam, 1 million dead in Iraq -- we have seen munitions headed toward them being loaded up here. There's nothing sadder than that. This island doesn't want to be used for killing people."

* "America is a large country. Why do they have to have their bases in Okinawa? Why don't they take them all back to America?"

* "How does the Japanese government see Okinawa? Does it see it as just a disposable tool? Or does it see it as an island inhabited by human beings? Does it have a soul that lets it see Okinawa as a part of Japan where blood brothers and sisters of other Japanese live? That's what I want to ask. I don't think it does. Every Japanese administration has basically brought the same mindset to its Okinawa policy."

* "My husband died two years ago. He had dedicated himself to this cause for ten years, as one of the leaders of the opposition to the US bases, from sunup to sundown. The memory of his dedication is what motivates me to come here. When the Democratic Party was an opposition party, Mr. Hatoyama came here to see the proposed site for himself. I don't want him to build a military base in such a beautiful sea. Okinawa doesn't need any military base. 'Take the bases back to the US' -- that's what he should say when Mr. Obama comes. Mr. Hatoyama, who has come here and seen the site, knows how beautiful the sea off Henoko is. Does he think that it should be buried in landfills, destroying the environment and endangering dugong? I hope he is opposed to that. Just tell Mr. Obama that Okinawa doesn't need any base."

from Wikipedia

Kenule "Ken" Beeson Saro-Wiwa (October 10, 1941 – November 10, 1995) was a Nigerian author, television producer, environmental activist, and winner of the Goldman Environmental Prize. Saro-Wiwa was a member of the Ogoni people, an ethnic Nigerian minority whose homeland, Ogoniland, in the Niger Delta has been targeted for crude oil extraction since the 1950s and which has suffered extreme and unremediated environmental damage from decades of indiscriminate oil waste dumping. Initially as spokesperson, and then as President, of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP), Saro-Wiwa led a nonviolent campaign against environmental degradation of the land and natural waters of Ogoniland by the operations of multinational oil companies, especially Shell. He was also an outspoken critic of the Nigerian government, which he viewed as reluctant to enforce proper environmental regulations on the foreign oil companies operating in the area.

At the peak of his non-violent campaign, Saro-Wiwa was arrested, hastily tried by a special military tribunal, and hanged in 1995 by the Nigerian military government of General Sani Abacha, all on charges widely viewed as entirely politically motivated and completely unfounded. His execution provoked international outrage and resulted in Nigeria's suspension from the Commonwealth of Nations for 3 1/2 years.