Personal political thought and organizing

I randomly stumbled on this blog entry "How to Think About Politics" by Ryan McCarl which I found interesting and worth posting, especially this excerpt:

Question yourself, your ideology, your vocabulary, and the beliefs behind your beliefs. And also question every overt and covert political statement, every candidate’s speech, every newspaper opinion column, every dinner-table rant, every historical narrative, and even every piece of art or literature. Politics touches everything and everything touches politics. Cultivate your awareness of the political dimension of the world, a dimension that is often hidden beneath the surface of things.

I agree with the author to a certain extent that critical thinking and self-education are important to developing one's political thought. What I believe he's missing is when political thought translate into action. It's great that you continually self-educate yourself on political issues ( I do regularly) but politics aren't simply an individual intellectual exercise. Local, state and federal politics effect our lives in numerous ways. We as citizens must be involved in shaping them towards our common good through organizing and activism or else only the big money interests will dominate our government and its policies. Thus one's political views are irrelevant if you don't do anything about them. It won't matter what you'd like to see happen, if you aren't willing to not only do something about it but reaching out to and motivating others as well to get involved. This is the essence of organizing, bringing people together around shared issues and mobilizing them, and the key to putting political thought into action.

Social movements and "reclaiming public values"

I found this article Reclaiming Public Values in the Age of Casino Capitalism by Henry Giroux really interesting. It speaks to the cultural challenges in the US facing progressive climate justice/green jobs, health care, economic justice/ financial reform activism that have sprouted in recent years in their efforts to create larger social movements. This part was especially poignant:

At this time of national crisis, we need to recognize that the current economic recession cannot be understood apart from the crisis of democracy itself. It is all the more crucial, therefore, to recognize in a post Gilded Age moment that those public spaces that traditionally have offered forums for debating norms, critically engaging ideas, making private issues public and evaluating judgments are disappearing under the juggernaut of free-market values, corporate power and intense lobbying pressure on the part of the country's most powerful financial institutions. Schools, universities, the media, and other aspects of the cultural education apparatus are being increasingly privatized or corporatized and removed from the discourse of the public good. Consequently, it becomes all the more crucial for educators, parents, social movements, and others to raise fundamental questions about what it means to revitalize a politics and ethics that takes seriously "such values as citizen participation, the public good, political obligation, social governance, and community."[2] The call for a revitalized politics grounded in an effective democracy substantively challenges the dystopian practices of the new culture of fear and neoliberalism - with their all-consuming emphasis on insecurity, market relations, commercialization, privatization and the creation of a worldwide economy of part-time workers - against their utopian promises. Such an intervention confronts Americans with the problem as well as challenge of developing those public spheres - such as the media, higher education, and other cultural institutions - that provide the conditions for creating citizens who are capable of exercising their freedoms, competent to question the basic assumptions that govern political life and skilled enough to participate in developing social movements that will enable them to shape the basic social, political and economic orders that govern their lives.

Soldier resistance of escalation in Afghanistan

Dahr Jamail, an independent reporter whose been following resistance and dissent within the US military, reports that an organization called MarchForward! composed of veterans and active duty members of the US military has responded to Obama's planned escalation by calling on US soldiers to refuse deployment:

"March Forward! calls on all service members to refuse orders to deploy to Afghanistan and Iraq," reads a press release from the group from December 3. "We offer our unconditional support and solidarity. Join us in the fight to ensure that no more soldiers or civilians lose their lives in these criminal wars."

It seems the unpopular nature of escalation in Afghanistan is not enough to sway the Obama administration from its present course. Others within the US military have expressed similar dissatisfaction with the plan as called for by General McCrystal who believe that it would only strengthen the Afghan insurgency. The only way things might change is if soldiers themselves refuse to fight. A soldier driven anti-war movement would be critical to stopping US imperial foreign policy as it was during the Vietnam War.

Student Labor Week of Action

Labor Notes profiles the March 27th- April 4th week of actions (250 events in all) led by Student Labor Action Project and Jobs with Justice entitled Resistance and Recovery involving students from campuses across the country :

s the corporate attack on workers intensifies with the economic crisis, JwJ activists and college students took the anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination as occasion to push back.

Putting some weight behind the 1.5 million signatures they’ve collected in support of the Employee Free Choice Act, JwJ chapters and students rallied all over the country. Students and community groups at University of Central Florida confronted corporate heads outside an anti-EFCA seminar hosted by the university and an anti-union law firm.

Rallies at Rite Aid pharmacy locations around the country supported employees in California fighting for a first contract. In Massachusetts, hundreds picketed outside Home Depot, a major anti-EFCA player.

For the tenth straight year, student-labor activists joined forces on different campuses. Student groups lobbied in Washington, D.C., for a higher education funding bill called the DREAM Act, while others pressured school administrators to support EFCA. They also intensified a years-long fight for the Designated Suppliers Program, which would ensure that schools uphold “sweat free" policies when buying university apparel.

Coming together in an economic crisis: Common Security Clubs and the Solidarity Economy

Though the title sounds more like a right wing militia, common security clubs are emerging now doing whats necessary to build a truly grassroots movement for economic and climate justice in this country: bring people together to discuss their shared economic hardships and how they can collectively address these problems (a key idea of community organizing). According to a recent article published in Alternet, these entities were "born out of work done in the last few years by people struggling with overwhelming indebtedness." and those involved "focus on what they can do together to increase their economic security and press for policy changes."

Their functions are the following:

1) Learn and reflect
Through popular education tools, videos, Bible study, and shared readings, participants increase their understanding of the larger economic forces on our lives. Why is the economy in distress? How did these changes happen? What are the historical factors? How does this connect to the global economy? What are the ecological factors contributing to the changes? What is our vision for a healthy, sustainable economy? What are the sources of real security in my life?

2) Mutual aid and local action
Through stories, examples, Web-based resources, a workbook, and mutual support, participants reflect on what makes them secure. What can we do together to increase our economic security at the local level? What would it mean to respond to my economic challenges in community? How can I reduce my economic vulnerability in conjunction with others? How can I get out of debt? How can I help my neighbor facing foreclosure or economic insecurity? Can I downscale and reduce my consumption and ecological footprint and save money?

3) Social action
The economic crisis is in part the result of an unengaged citizenry and government. What can we do together to build an economy based on building healthy communities rather than shoring up the casino economy? What public policies would make our communities more secure? Through discussion and education, participants might find ways to engage in a larger program of change around the financial system, economic development, tax policy, and other elements of our shared economic life.

These are the kind of conscious raising sessions that have been crucial building blocks for previous social movements such as the women's liberation movement of the late 60s and 70s and the civil rights movement. But more importantly Common Security Clubs give people a chance to engage in these large scale and quite complex economic issues on a more personal and local basis.

Also these groups serves a larger purpose for creating an alternative economic model (a solidarity economy) as the article points out:

These clubs are also one of many building blocks that can move us toward a “solidarity economy” that affirms our true interconnection with one another. Coming together is a way to remind ourselves of the abundance we have, the wealth of our relationships and networks, and the mutuality of our economic security

The Solidarity Economy is defined generally by the Center for Popular Economics as an

alternative development framework that is grounded in practice and the in the principles of: solidarity, mutualism, and cooperation; equity in all dimensions (race/ethnicity/ nationality, class, gender, LGBTQ); social well-being over profit and the unfettered rule of the market; sustainability; social and economic democracy; and pluralism, allowing for different forms in different contexts, open to continual change and driven from the bottom-up.

This economic model emerged in Latin America during the mid 1980s and has gained roots in countries such as Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, and Spain which "embraces a plural and cultural view of the economy as a complex space of social relationship in which individuals, communities, and organizations generate livelihoods through many different means and with many different motivations and aspirations—not just the maximization of individual gain" under capitalism. This has manifested organically and from the grassroots in a variety of forms such as community land trusts, worker cooperatives, participatory budgeting utilized in Brazil and Venezuela, social enterprises, ecological villages, community development corporations and urban community agriculture. social currency and ESOPs (employee stock ownership plan). All of which exist in the US as well as around the world.

Major organizational proponents of this alternative economic model in the US include the The US Solidarity Economy Network, and the Grassroots Economic Organizing collective.

They Say Gentrify , We Say Occupy! -The Homeless fight back in NYC

Picture the Homeless , an organization which aims to empower the homeless through grassroots organizing and leadership development to create systemic change in New York City, recently took over several vacant buildings with the slogan "they say gentrify, we say occupy." Its part of their housing organizing campaign to address the shortage of housing and skyrocketing rents in New York City.
According to their website:

HOUSING: It's not a homeless crisis - it's a housing crisis! The city's best hope for reducing and preventing homelessness is a commitment to addressing the skyrocketing rents and general housing shortage that plagues New York and drives New Yorkers by the thousands into homelessness. Yet at the same time as the homeless population continues to escalate, landlords and the city continue to keep buildings empty! In fact, the total volume of potential apartments in vacant buildings and lots IN MANHATTAN ALONE exceeds the number of homeless households in shelter and on the street CITYWIDE! 24,000 potential apartments can be developed out of all those properties going to waste. On top of those vacancies, NYCHA developments have significant numbers of vacant units, and many luxury condos constructed in low-income neighborhoods during the housing boom stand at 30% occupancy!

Homeless people are fighting back. We have identified the policy and program changes that would need to be enacted to really create housing, on a large scale, for the poorest New Yorkers—while at the same time challenging underlying causes of the housing crisis, developing communities, and building jobs. We are ready to employ direct action to make these changes happen BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY.

Check out the video and the blog, their actions are quite inspirational.

Community organizing, direct action and climate justice

Interesting Campus Progress interview with Elisa Young, a founder of Meigs Citizens Action Now in southeast Ohio on the edge of the Appalachia, discussing her organizing efforts to combat the detrimental environmental effects that the coal industry has had on their community:

Appalachia doesn’t exist in the same America as the one recognizable from the streets of New York, the cattle ranches of Texas, or the cornfields of Iowa. It is, to paraphrase Michael Harrington’s The Other America, where King Coal reigns supreme. Coal companies wield immense power over these mountains, and their right to rule is largely unchallenged. Neither political party has escaped coal’s influence, which makes it virtually impossible to legislate against the industry

But Elisa Young is trying anyway. She lives in Meigs County, Ohio, on the edge of what we call Appalachia. There she is the founder of Meigs Citizens Action Now*, a community group that tries to combat the social and environmental damage business interests have inflicted in the community. The area hosts four power plants, and there are plans to build another five as well as an underground coal mine. Such construction would make for the highest concentration of power plants in the country. It would also dramatically affect the health of the surrounding communities, which are already subject to one of the highest lung cancer rates in the state.

Working with students from Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio, Young has fought against these new plants and the proposed coal mine. She has organized her community and raised awareness about their troubles throughout the country. Young has even received legal threats from American Municipal Power as a result of her actions.

Young attended Powershift ’09 late last month to speak on several panels, and Campus Progress caught up with her to ask her a few questions about the health effects of power plants, her local victories, and the fact that coal simply doesn’t lead to prosperity for the people of Appalachia.

Here's a portion of the interview:

Campus Progress: What are some ways have you tried to raise awareness about coal’s effect on your community? Have you had any victories?

Elisa Young: Back in 2006, I won an international women’s award from the Women of Peacepower Foundation that was for taking people on what we call “True Cost of Coal Tours,” and also for community organizing efforts. The tours were done for the specific reason of helping people witness what was going on in Appalachia at the hands of the coal industry. To show people that it is the entire cycle of coal that is causing problems. These companies have a parasitic relationship, sending power to places where they will never see the effects, where they will never get sick and die. It isn’t about doing one thing a little differently. If you don’t live there then you really don’t hear about those things, and if people don’t even realize there is a problem, then we’re never going to have any change.

I’ve opened up my farm, which has been in my family for seven generations, to touring groups. We will have groups stay overnight to do community service projects. It is absolutely critical that we raise awareness because one of the power plants that wants to come in to get their construction costs for the facility by socializing the costs and tying cities and municipalities into 50-year contracts. We took it upon ourselves to try to educate people about what a poor financial choice it was by visiting their city councils. Oberlin was one of those towns and ultimately they voted it down. The students got committed. They got involved in the election process and they got actively involved in getting people elected to their town council who would reflect the values of the city and vote against it. After we won, one of the city council members told me that before we came he had no idea that our community was suffering these impacts.

CP: Why don’t people hear more about it? Why do you think that all these things are happening to your community, and to communities like yours all over Appalachia?

EY: In general in Appalachia there is a lot of poverty, and there is a lot of money to be made from poor people. I think 70 to 80 percent of the coal fields of West Virginia are owned by absentee coal barons and they have no compunction and no commitment to the condition of the land after extraction. But I want you to understand that it’s all people have ever known. So there is desensitization or a general acceptance that your job may be dangerous, that your job may kill you, because that is all people have ever known. Things become so engrained its almost genetic, you don’t question it. You don’t even think about the reality that you live in.

Another piece of it is this: If you had someone who wanted to build a power plant in the Carson National Forest, you’d have people outraged. Once one power plant is there then you have people who are desensitized to it, so it’s easier to build a second one. We weren’t told about the health impacts, and we still aren’t. There is a huge disconnect between the illness we are suffering and the contaminants we are exposed to.

More along that same vein of direct action and organizing for climate and environmental justice, a prominent climate scientist in Britain recently said that protest and direct action are the only avenues to get comprehensive global warming legislation across the world :

James Hansen, a climate modeller with Nasa, told the Guardian today that corporate lobbying has undermined democratic attempts to curb carbon pollution. "The democratic process doesn't quite seem to be working," he said.

Speaking on the eve of joining a protest against the headquarters of power firm E.ON in Coventry, Hansen said: "The first action that people should take is to use the democratic process. What is frustrating people, me included, is that democratic action affects elections but what we get then from political leaders is greenwash.

"The democratic process is supposed to be one person one vote, but it turns out that money is talking louder than the votes. So, I'm not surprised that people are getting frustrated. I think that peaceful demonstration is not out of order, because we're running out of time."

Single Payer Protest at the America Health Insurance Plans national conference

I don't know much about this congressman from New York but, though I agree with him, he seemed to co-opt the protest. The Huffington Post provided coverage for the action. Its good to see more direct pressure on those that run our for-profit health insurance industry:

Congressman Eric Massa (D-N.Y.) led a protest Monday outside the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Washington, site of the 2009 national conference of America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), a trade group for the health insurance industry.

"We are not radicals! We are not a fringe element!" shouted Massa, who opted not to use the bullhorn provided by protest organizers. "We are the 48 million Americans who cannot access health care today!"

Sign-waving protesters cheered as Massa delivered his full-throated support of single-payer health insurance. The protest, which attracted roughly 60 people, was organized chiefly by reform advocates Health Care for America Now, along with partners from the AFL-CIO, MoveOn.org and several other groups. Organizers decried AHIP as a special interest group that makes obscene profits to defend the status quo.

"The single-payer proposal needs a seat at the table," Massa told the Huffington Post after delivering his remarks to the crowd. He said he was "delighted" that single-payer proponent Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) had been "given a seat at the table" when the White House invited him to attend last week's health care summit.

Peter Orszag, President Obama's budget director, didn't bring up the single-payer seating assignment when he spoke at the conference.

"All the proposals getting serious consideration on Capitol Hill have a public-private approach," said AHIP communications director Robert Zirkelbach when asked to respond to Massa's call for single-payer coverage. Zirkelbach said AHIP prefers increased regulation and market reform to anything that would totally upend the current system.

The protest ended when the group tried to enter the Ritz to deliver an oversized award certificate to Karen Ignagni, AHIP's president and CEO. The "Best Protector of Profits at the Expense of Our Health" award didn't make it past security guards or a strategically-parked car near the entrance.

"I believe in First Amendment rights," Ignagni said when asked about the protest during a subsequent press conference. "We're motivated by going through a process of taking issues off the table that are troubling the American people."

Direct Action for Single Payer Health Care

Democracy Now reported today about the formation of a group called "Single Payer Action." One of its founders Russell Mokhiber was on the show to talk about it as well as their act of direct action today burning health care bills outside the national meeting of the American Health Insurance Plans:

Well, our model, by the way, is “no compromise with the health insurance industry." And here’s the situation in Washington. According to recent polling, 60 percent of Americans support Single Payer/Medicare for All. The majority of the doctors support it. The majority of the nurses support it. The majority of health economists support it.

So why isn’t it happening? It’s not happening because the legislation, single-payer legislation, would put the health insurance industry out of business. So, to be a player in Washington now, you have to kowtow to the powerful health insurance industry, and you have to say the following six words: “Single payer is off the table.”

Now, who’s saying single payer is off the table? The health insurance industry, the Obama White House, the Democratic-controlled Congress, and most disgracefully, even some so-called public-interest groups like Health Care for America Now!, which was at this demonstration yesterday and hijacked the demonstration. And it should have been a single-payer demonstration, and it wasn’t.

So that’s why we’re creating singlepayeraction.org. We want to get a million people to sign up, and we want to have a direct confrontation with the health insurance industry and their lackeys in Congress. Take my district, the Second District of West Virginia. Shelley Moore Capito, moderate Republican, she comes from a coal state. She kowtows to the coal industry, no question. She takes—over ten years in Congress, she’s taken $290,000 from the mining industry. But she’s taken $300,000 from the insurance industry. So we’re going to get people in front of her office in Martinsburg and in front of her office in Charleston, and we are going to protest the fact that she has buckled to the insurance industry against the interests of her own constituents throughout the Second District.

Now, 18,000 Americans—thanks to the good work of the California Nurses, Physicians for a National Health Program, we know what the answer is, and the American people know what the answer is. We know that 18,000 Americans—I’m sorry, 18,000 Americans die every year due to lack of health insurance. We know that half of the personal bankruptcies are triggered by medical bills. We know that Single Payer/Medicare for All would create three million jobs. We’d lose some jobs, because you’re putting the health insurance industry out of business, so you get a net 2.6 million. We know what the answer is.

And I’m sick and tired of hearing, “Well, Obama is just a politician, and he’ll blow with the wind, so we have to create the wind.” We need some leadership here. We need to—the reason they don’t want single payer on the table is they know that if it’s on the table, it’s going to pass, because the American people want it. Doctors—used to be doctors were against it, but now doctors are in favor of it. Nurses have been in favor of it. And it’s the usual situation where the will of the American people is being stopped by the powerful players in Washington.

I’m going to burn this bill. I’m going from here to the Ritz-Carlton, where the insurance industry is meeting, and I’m going to burn this bill. This is my health insurance bill. I pay $8,000 a year for a $5,400 deductible bill for a family of four. And when I need the health insurance, which I did a couple years ago, I ended up in the hospital, where the hospital was in network and the doctor was out of network, where they wouldn’t cover the ambulance ride to the hospital. And that’s just mild compared to the stories that we hear all across America.

Now, there is an answer. The answer is not email campaigns. Congress is becoming immune to email campaigns. The answer is not letter writing. The answer is direct, face-to-face confrontation with the insurance industry and with Congress, with your members of Congress in your district. So we’re calling on Americans to sign up at singlepayeraction.org and to organize protests in front—get to know your district—your member of Congress district office. Probably less than five percent of Americans know where the district office of their member of Congress. Get to know it. Camp out there. Call the local media. The local media is going to love it. And let’s get this thing done. Let’s push through single payer for the American people, like the rest of the civilized world has. Thank you.

Coffeehouse Haven for US War resisters

With all the recent discussions and coverage in the mainstream media of US "withdrawal" from Iraq and escalation in Afghanistan, there's remarkably, though not surprisingly, little focus on the views of those who have and currently are serving military duty in Iraq as well as Afghanistan especially those who have decided to resist deployment. Previous efforts to publicize the perspectives and experiences of Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans such as the 2008 Winter Soldier event, a forum for veteran testimonies, have been routinely blacked out by mainstream media.

But veteran organizers through the Iraqi Veterans Against the War organization are building their own space for resistance to American militarism in Iraq and Afghanistan by opening coffeehouses near American military bases to reach out to those currently enlisted. A recent article written by "Courage to Resist" profiles a coffeehouse in Washington state and interviews those who opened and run it:

The milk frother screams as a couple of young soldiers in camouflaged combat uniforms peruse the lit table. All around them are the familiar surroundings of a coffeehouse: posters on the wall, tables and chairs, and shelves stuffed with used books. Yet this café, just across the street from the sprawling Ft. Lewis Army Base in Washington, is not your ordinary coffeehouse.

"Support War Resisters: Iraq Veterans Against the War," reads a huge banner on the wall. GI Rights handcards sit next to the cash register and manuals about "getting out" cover the lit table. Social movement history books fill the bookshelves, and a picture on the wall shows a soldier throwing a grenade with a caption that reads, "What am I doing here?" The sign on the front window declares "COFFEE STRONG. Veteran Owned and Operated."

Opened four months ago, COFFEE STRONG provides a free Americano, as well as wireless internet and computer use, to all military enlisted persons. More importantly, it provides a space off-base for soldiers to question their service, talk about the war, and explore the possibilities of GI resistance. When GIs walk in, they are met with information about topics ranging from GI resistance to counseling and advocacy services for veterans. And they are greeted by a barista who is himself a young veteran against the war.

COFFEE STRONG follows in the tradition of the GI coffeehouse movement of the 60s and 70s, when anti-war activists and resisting GIs set up coffeehouses at several military bases throughout the U.S. -- from Colorado Springs, CO to Tacoma, WA, to Maldraugh, KY -- to provide a physical space for anti-war GIs to congregate, speak freely, and strategize their role in the anti-war movement. GI resistance during the Vietnam War was a key factor in forcing the United States to end the war.

This GI coffeehouse, 40 miles south of Seattle, joins a handful of cafes that have sprung up at U.S. military bases since the beginning of the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Different Drummer Cafe, at Ft. Drum in upstate New York, aims to promote "the free and uncensored exchange of ideas and information among active duty and reserve military personnel and civilians." Under the Hood Coffeehouse in Ft. Hood, Texas, and the Off Base café in Norfolk, Virginia, also provide places for active duty troops to question their own participation in war.

Resistance within the American military to the occupations in Iraq and the Afghanistan is the key to ending them. Already AWOL rates in the US military have gone up 80% since the Iraq invasion. At the same time though, with the recent economic downturn, military enlistment numbers have spiked , as the Boston Globe recently reported, the Army "is experiencing the highest rate of new enlistments in six years." But the spread of anti-war sentiment through the expanding number of these coffeehouses, especially as we escalate in Afghanistan, will hopefully encourage more US soldiers to resist deployment.

Blue-Green Insurgency and the "Good Jobs, Green Jobs" national conference

I recently came across this article about the "Good Jobs, Green Jobs"national conference in DC in early February called Blue-Green Insurgency I felt was worth posting and just as promising for the climate justice movement as the recent youth led Capitol Climate Action and Power Shift '09. Here's a portion of it:

When you walk into a large Washington, DC hotel lobby and find it teeming with thousands of smiling, buzzing people—half in labor union jackets and ball caps, the other half dressed in 30-something hip-hop causal—you know some special is happening.

This was the lively, energized scene for three cold wintry days this Feb 4-6 at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel, as nearly 3000 activists and organizers gathers for the "Good Jobs, Green Jobs" National Conference. The gathering was convened by more than 100 organizations, representing every major trade union and every major environmental group in the country, among others.

It's called the "blue-green alliance," the core of which is the United Steel Workers and the Sierra Club, which jointly launched the "Green Jobs" movement nationally at a conference in Pittsburgh, PA a year ago. The turnout this year is triple in size and highly energized by both the victory of President Barack Obama and the looming onset of an economic crisis unmatched in scope since the Great Depression of the 1930s. In addition to the steelworkers, the building trades were well represented, and the green groups spanned a wide range of concerns, for toxics to energy to climate change. Also notable was the participation of a contingent of "high road" corporations rooted in the growing "green economy." Gamesa, a major Spanish firm specializing in wind turbines, and Piper Jaffray, a large paper company focused on recycled paper products, are two examples.

But a critical new dimension was added by Green For All, an organization rooted among inner city youth, and headed up by Van Jones. Jones is the author of "The Green Collar Economy" and an inspirational voice for a rising generation of multinational, multicultural insurgent youth.

Obama health care summit and the fight for the single payer plan

Obama, in his recent weekly address regarding his budget plan, spoke tough when it came to his domestic priorities such as health care reform and renewable energy:

"The system we have now might work for the powerful and well-connected interests that have run Washington for far too long," Obama said in his weekly radio and video address. "But I don't. I work for the American people."

" 'I know these steps won't sit well with the special interests and lobbyists who are invested in the old way of doing business, and I know they're gearing up for a fight," Obama said, using tough-guy language reminiscent of his predecessor, George W. Bush. 'My message to them is this: So am I.'

Though its great to hear a president talk tough about issues that haven't been done so in a long time, it seems a bit like faux populism, especially when it comes to health care reform. He said that when it comes to health care reform insurance companies won't like "to bid competitively to continue offering Medicare coverage, but that's how we'll help preserve and protect Medicare and lower health care costs." But the fact is the only true way to lower health care costs and ensure universal is the single payer plan which is exactly what health insurance companies don't want because it would end their for-profit industry.

Dr. Daniel P. Wirt, a member of Physicians for a National Health Care Plan (PNHP), lays out that argument in a recent article asserting that:

the data and evidence are clear: to a scientific certainty, only a single-payer “Medicare-for-All” system of health care financing will solve the serious cost and access problems and achieve good, affordable health care for all in the United States. As a scientist and physician, this is my conclusion after studying the data for years. The data are voluminous, stretching back to World War II, and come not only from the United States, but from all other industrialized countries. Except for the United States, all industrialized countries have some form of universal health care...

All of the incremental reform programs proposed --- tax subsidies, health savings accounts, individual or employer mandates, increased regulation of for-profit insurance companies --- keep these proverbial foxes in the henhouse and are doomed to fail to control costs and provide universal access. Competition among the foxes does not benefit the chickens, the patients, the doctors or the hospitals. The for-profit insurance companies fundamentally reduce choice --- your preferred doctor or hospital is “out-of-network”? Too bad, we won’t pay, says your insurance company.

The data are in. Incremental reforms, mostly mandate schemes which retain the for-profit insurance companies have been tried in seven states over the past two decades: Massachusetts, Tennessee, Washington, Oregon, Minnesota, Vermont, Maine. In all of these states the reforms have failed to contain costs. In all but Massachusetts, they have failed to reduce the number of uninsured. In Massachusetts, there has been a modest decrease in the number of uninsured, falling from 13% of adults in 2006 to 7.1% of adults in 2007, but at the cost of a substantial increase in public spending (spending for “Commonwealth Care” was $629.8 million in fiscal year 2007, $1089.2 million in fiscal year 2008 and $1317.7 million in fiscal year 2009). Most of the gain in Massachusetts has come from expanding Medicaid and subsidizing the purchase of private insurance; very few people have signed up for the unsubsidized but mandated private insurance. Not to mention that 7.1% uninsured is unacceptably high. Far from controlling costs, these mandate plans will add hundreds of billions of dollars to the nation’s health care costs...

Under a single-payer, “Medicare-for-All” system, delivery of health care remains private. The providers of health care remain private. Patients choose any doctor and any hospital. Parenthetically, replacing the wasteful for-profit insurance companies with a single-payer national health insurance program for financing health care in the United States would save enough money (more than $350 billion) to not only achieve universal coverage, but allow the coverage to expand and be more comprehensive, while not spending any more than we do now.

Moreover, a recent report published by the National Nurses Organizing Coalition (a prominent union supporter of the single payer plan) "the first known study to provide an econometric analysis of the economic benefits of healthcare[ through a single payer plan] to the overall economy" concluded that:

Expanding Medicare to include the uninsured, and these on Medicaid or employer-sponsored health plans, and expanding coverage for those with limited Medicare, would have the following immediate impacts:

• Create 2,613,495 million new permanent good-paying jobs (slightly exceeding the number of jobs lost in 2008)
• Boost the economy with $317 billion in increased business and public revenues
• Add $100 billion in employee compensation
• Infuse public budgets with $44 billion in new tax revenues

Unfortunately advocates like PNHP for a single payer plan are barely even getting a voice in Obama's grand scheme for health care reform and his summit. In the media, their perspective and voices are equally marginalized. Yet 62% of Americans support a single payer plan as well as 59% of physicians. Initially Obama didn't invite any single payer plan representatives to his health care summit. It was only after various single payer organizations mobilized its members and sent a barrage of calls, faxes and e-mails to the White House did his administration invite Congressman John Conyers, the primary sponsor of the single payer plan bill HR 676, as well as the PNHP president Dr. Oliver Fein. With only 2 representatives out of the 100 or so guests present, their views will, again, most likely be marginalized in this summit.

Obama as well as many other Democrats consider themselves pragmatic when it comes to health care reform and dismiss the single payer plan as not "politically viable." A single payer plan is not "politically viable" according to them not only because of likely Republican opposition but, more importantly, lobbyist opposition, the kind of people Obama has publicly challenged on health care reform.

But for grassroots organizations that want meaningful health care reform, its not an option to settle for what politicians in Washington DC consider "politically viable." It should be their goal to change the terms of the political debate by building up public support and pressure on Congress as well as the Obama administration to force them to adopt the single payer health care as the only possible option to counteract lobbyist opposition. The fight to overcome its marginal status will start from the bottom up and just to get your foot in the door in the Obama administration's health care summit is just the beginning.

Yet, on the left, their are divisions over how to achieve health care reform. The most prominent progressive groups and labor unions close to the Democratic Party have adopted a compromised "multi-payer" health care proposal. This proposal would maintain public and private insurance plans which fail to address the root causes of rising health care costs and ensure universal health care, mainly a private, fragmented health care industry. They formed a non-profit lobbying group called Health Care for America NOW (HCAN) almost a year ago to promote their version of universal health care. HCAN was formed after the organization Health Care Now which consists of groups such as PNHP and the National Nurses Organizing Committee pushing for a single payer health care plan. HCAN.

As a result, the single payer plan faces a serious uphill battle with many institutional barriers and opponents. Yet the benefits and far reaching positive impacts certainly make it a worthwhile fight.

Immigration raid protest in Phoenix, AZ and Sheriff Joe Arpaio

This past Saturday, thousands of protesters demonstrated in Phoenix against recent immigration raids led by local Sheriff Joe Arpaio. According to the Reuters article covering the event:

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio has dispatched deputies into Hispanic communities in the Phoenix area where they stop people and arrest anyone who cannot prove he or she is a legal U.S. resident.

Under a deal allowing them to enforce federal immigration laws, the deputies have arrested more than 1,500 people whom they determined were in Arizona illegally.

Latino activists and lawmakers call his program a clear case of racial profiling because only people who look Hispanic are targeted. Arpaio steadfastly denies the charge.

Earlier this month, he stirred more controversy when he marched 220 illegal immigrants in shackles and striped prison garb through Phoenix under armed guard.

The word "unsentenced" was printed on their prison garb assuming their guilt even before their trials and paraded in front of TV cameras to a tent city encircled by an electric fence. So much for innocent until proven guilty under American law.

The NY Times labeled the stunt a "degrading spectacle," in an editorial in early February, orchestrated by Sheriff Arpaio "the publicity-obsessed star of a Fox reality show and the self-appointed scourge of illegal immigrants." He's facing a federal investigation for possible civil rights violations. But the Times aptly notes that, Sheriff "is not an isolated rogue":

As a participant in the federal policing program called 287(g), he is an official partner of the United States government in its warped crackdown on illegal immigration.

These immigration raids, which began under the Bush administration, have wreaked havoc on immigrant communities across the country. A report called "Over-Raided, Under Siege" released in January 2008 by the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee examining the federal policing program, concluded that the "Department of Homeland Security is leading a new type of assault on the rights, lives and wellbeing of immigrant families, workers and communities in the United States" which subjects them to a "distinct form of 'collective punishment.' " Such treatment of immigrants has gotten international attention and increasingly tarnishes any American claim to human rights leadership globally.

One of the groups organizing the protest in Phoenix was National Day Laborers Organizing Network has built a campaign targeting Arizona for a "coordinated national intervention" to not only help out those immigrants suffering under these raids but to "to help scaffold efforts to achieve broader federal immigration reform goals":

Maricopa County, Arizona: Ground Zero

Immigrants’ rights are under unprecedented assault across the country, but nowhere more so than in Arizona. The infamous Sensenbrenner legislation never needed to pass to achieve its desired effects. The very ideas contained within the bill that brought millions of people onto the streets in protest have become the reality in Arizona, where immigrants have been dehumanized.

In Phoenix, the fifth largest city in America, the “attrition strategy” has been taken to extreme and dangerous levels. Sheriff Joe Arpaio has become the public face of ICE’s experimental and dangerous 287(g) program which devolves federal immigration enforcement responsibilities to willing local law agencies.

Sheriff’s deputies roam the streets in black ski masks, separating children from their parents during routine traffic stops. People with known relationships to white supremacist organizations direct law enforcement activity. Vigilantes deputized as part of an official “posse program” raid government buildings with assault weapons and attack dogs to chase down suspected janitors. And last week, the nation witnessed the ritual humiliation of migrants in a spectacle evocative of some of the most horrific episodes of human history.

In Phoenix, the idea that immigrants are “Illegal” has metastasized. The proposition is no longer just that immigrants should be deprived of rights, have less ability to form unions, not be allowed to send their kids to school, and be denied basic services. What is now being tested before is the country is whether those deemed to be “Illegal” are worthy of punishment.

They are asking people to do the following things to support their campaign:
1) Hold local teach-ins to raise awareness about the crisis in Arizona, and raise funds to support local efforts.

(2) Join us in Phoenix on February 27 and 28th for a national gathering and peaceful demonstration.

(3) Sign a petition to request the Department of Justice to investigate Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

(4) Call you Congressperson and let her or him know that we can not let our country become like Arizona.

the Youth Climate Justice movement, Power Shift '09 and Capitol Climate Action

The fight for a green economy and address the urgent danger of global warming has become one of the defining fights of our generation. This weekend around 12,000 youth have come to DC for Power Shift '09, a conference organized by the Energy Action Coalition, with an overall goal to push the White House and Congress to adopt comprehensive energy and climate legislation. This Monday, March 2nd around 5,000 participants will be involved in the largest citizen lobby day to storm Capitol Hill with their message.

On that same day Washington DC 2500 youth will be involved in a more direct action approach to put pressure on Congress through the largest act of mass civil disobedience for climate change in US history to shut down the Capitol Coal Plant. According to their website:

"The Capitol Power Plant — a plant that powers Congress with dirty energy and symbolizes a past that cannot be our future. Let’s use this as a rallying cry for a clean energy economy that will protect the health of our families, our climate, and our future. "

Already powerful members of Congress have responded to this looming large scale action. Senate Majority leader Harry Reid and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi recently released a letter asking the Capitol Architect to switch the Capitol Power Plant from 100% coal to 100% natural gas by the end of 2009. The Capitol Climate Action coalition responded in a press release to reassure that the action was still on and that:

“Speaker Pelosi and Leader Reid’s dramatic action shows that Congress can act quickly on global warming when the public demands it,” said Greenpeace Deputy Campaigns Director Carroll Muffett. “This move demonstrates that they recognize the urgency of the climate crisis and the need for a switch to cleaner energy sources.”

Power Shift and Capital Climate Action are coordinated by different groups and seemingly different views about how to get our government to address global warming in a systematic fashion. I feel that both lobbying and direct action are good to do in tandem as a general strategy to put pressure on lawmakers and decisionmakers. Its exciting to see this kind of energy and sheer numbers in DC from people my age taking on this hugely important issue. With a new administration there is alot of potential for expanding this movement and getting more involved to get results. If Congress still moves slowly in the next few months on this issue, I have a feeling there will be more large scale direct action across the country among youth.

I will be at the Capitol Climate Action on Monday and I will post the pictures from the even on this blog.

SOLE and the cut Russell Contract

Props to SOLE (Students Organizing for Labor and Economic equality), my former student activist group at Michigan for being mentioned in the recent New York Times article about the University of Michigan cutting its contract with Russell Apparel over documented anti-union tactics in its Honduras factory in violation of their code of conduct:

The University of Michigan announced on Monday that it was ending its apparel licensing agreement with the Russell Corporation, becoming the 12th university to do so in response to the company’s decision to close a unionized factory in Honduras.

University of Michigan officials said an agreement under which Russell made T-shirts, sweatshirts and fleeces with university logos would end as of March 31 because Russell had violated the university’s code of conduct calling on licensees to guarantee the basic rights of workers.

...

Scott Nova, executive director of the Worker Rights Consortium, said, “Over a period of two years, Russell engaged in the systematic abuse of the associational rights of its workers in Honduras, thereby gravely and repeatedly violating the universities’ codes of conduct.”

....

“This is a toxic company,” said Leigh Wedenoja, a University of Michigan senior who is a member of the president’s advisory committee as well as Students Organizing for Labor and Economic Equality. “We feel that if the university is serious about encouraging human rights, then we could not keep Russell as a licensee.”

Unfortunately, such conditions in garment factories across the world sourced by major apparel and clothing companies are the rule rather than the exception and University code of conducts that most major colleges across the US currently have are inadequate. They fail to address the global supply chain in the garment industry that create these sweatshop conditions. As Scott Nova of the WRC explained it in 2006:

While colleges and clothing companies have agreed on such measures, it has
become apparent that they alone won’t work, said Scott Nova, executive director
of the consortium. He said that the problem is that factories in developing
nations are desperate for the work. So if an American clothing company with a
contract to produce thousands of sweatshirts with a college logo seeks bids, the
factories will bid low. Even when that company includes a code of conduct as a
requirement, the factories will claim that they will comply, get the contract
(at prices that would make it next to impossible to comply with the code) and
assume no one will notice. Because the contracts are short-term, he said, even
if someone did notice, the contract would be over soon enough.

"The basic underlying supply chain model of jumping from factory to factory, of pushing prices down, is simply incompatible with a reasonable level of worker rights," said Nova.

As a result, since 2005, students on campuses across the country (including SOLE) have been fighting for the adoption of a systematic, anti-sweatsop measure known as the Designated Supplier Program (DSP) at their universities. The DSP addresses the structural problems of the global apparel market by creating a fair trade model for the factories manufacturing collegiate apparel. Under the program " university licensees are required to source most
university logo apparel from supplier factories that have been determined by universities, through independent verification, to be in compliance with their obligation to respect the rights of their employees." In order to do this, university licensees are required to meet several obligations to their suppliers:

• pay a price to suppliers commensurate with the actual cost of producing under applicable labor standards, including payment of a living wage
• maintain long-term relationships with suppliers;
• ensure that each supplier factory participating in the program receives sufficient orders so that the majority of the factory’s production is for the collegiate
  market

There has been some progress in getting universities to adopt the DSP and get started on implementing it. Atleast 30 colleges including the entire University of California state colleges, the University of Wisconsin. Indiana University, University of Miami and Georgetown University have adopted the DSP. But there has been alot of resistance as well to it at major universities that carry alot of weight in the collegiate apparel market like my alma mater the University of Michigan.

In 2007, after a two year long campaign and the formation of a sweatfree coalition over the DSP, I and 12 other students engaged in a sit-in in the President's office to have our voice heard and get this proposal adopted. Unfortunately instead of talking with us, the President (Mary Sue Coleman) had us arrested. In past achievements towards sweatfree UMich apparel had come through sit-ins such as to get the University adoption of a code of conduct (1999) and its membership in the WRC (2000) . Thus our own effort seemed like a continuation in this struggle. Unfortunately it didn't turn out that way due to a President who readily claimed that she "doesn't take demands from students."

Only when we can address the structural problems of the global apparel industry that create sweatshop conditions, which the DSP is the only measure out there that does, can we end the kind of problems that happened at the Russell factory in Honduras.

the NYU student occupation and its aftermath

I wanted to cross-post the official Take Back NYU statement regarding their recent student occupation in solidarity with their effort to bring about democratic accountability and transparency at their school. I hope there are more of those to come in the US as it has become widespread throughout Europe (from Greece to the UK):

Take Back the Balcony!, Thursday night, Bob Burdalski

From 10 pm on February 18th 2009 to 2 pm on February 20th, students of Take Back NYU! occupied the Kimmel Center for University Life in a historic effort to bring pressure on NYU for its administrative and ethical failings regarding transparency, democracy and protection of human rights.

During the occupation students rallied hundreds of supporters to the streets of New York, drew national and international press coverage, and sparked a long-needed discussion about the NYU community. For these reasons and more, Take Back NYU! believes the occupation represents a historic moment, and by many measures a success.

However, we also recognize that our occupation was not a full success. When we succeeded, we did so because the passion of our movement shone through the smoke and mirrors cast by the NYU administration. When we failed it was only because we underestimated the lengths NYU will go to in order to deter any real criticism of its policies.

The administration demonstrated their steadfast commitment to ignoring its students. Members of Take Back NYU! didn’t even see the face of NYU negotiator Lynne Brown until 26 hours into the occupation. Throughout, the administration only gave disingenuous offers of discussion without negotiation, which the students readily rejected. NYU’s refusal to negotiate contrasts sharply with good-faith negotiations made by other universities during similar occupations.

We believe that our occupation gave NYU the opportunity to become a leader among universities and to build our community around strong commitments to democracy, transparency and respect for human rights. Instead, NYU said ‘pass’ and chose to stick to its narrow interests at the expense of genuine discussion.

In the course of defending its secrets, NYU put students and its security guards at risk by encouraging the use of physical force to end a non-violent protest. NYPD officers used billy-clubs and mace against demonstrators outside the building. These acts of aggression have gone unmentioned and unquestioned in the course of NYU’s handling of the occupation.

This protest is just a beginning to what is to come. The action made national and international news, and showcased the real power of the new student movement sweeping the globe. Here in New York, a City Council member, Charles Barron, has publicly endorsed our campaign and shamed the University for its mishandling of student protest. Actions at universities around the city will continue in the weeks to come.

No doubt NYU will begin attempting disciplinary action, but no suspensions, expulsions or arrests can contain what began in the last two days. This fight will carry on in the hands of the dozens of people who made it inside, and the hundreds more who came out to support the occupation. NYU showed its irrational need to defend secrecy and its exclusive hold on power, and that alone will drive this movement forward.

In the immediate future, we hope to have the opportunity to discuss the core issues of the occupation with the NYU community, including the administration. Take Back NYU! remains willing to open negotiations about these issues, should NYU decided to come forth in good-faith. In the mean time, we encourage supporters to contact administrators to ask that NYU end suspensions, drop threats of expulsion and that students be allowed to remain in their residences on campus. The willingness to express and act on dissent should not result in the disruption of students’ education or housing.

For everyone showing support: the real lesson here is that you can act and you can make a difference. Take the lessons from the occupation on to your own struggle, and begin to act yourself.

Getting back into it

So its been a while since I've updated and I'm contemplating how I'm going to do this. Before I had written some long columns on specific relevant topics that I found interesting. That proved a little too work intense and difficult to keep up regularly so I now I'm gonna scale it back a bit. I'll post bits of articles and news stories that I find interesting and write a little bit about them and my opinion.

Also, I'm gonna start writing about political organizations that I find interesting and highlight what they do as well as new books too.