Grassroots Journalism and the International Network of Street Papers

I'm a big fan of alternative, independent media especially because such outlets allow for more perspectives, insights and opinions to come forth as opposed to the narrow range of discourse broadcasted on corporate media. This is why I found this article "Reporting From the Ground" in In These Times so interesting.

Its about an organization called International Network of Street Papers, whose affiliate publications are focused on "self-sustaining, skill-building, advocacy journalism for the poor, disenfranchised, and homeless." Founded in 1994, affiliate publications of INSP and their street papers, reach about 32 million in 38 countries around the world.

These street papers cover issues such as "Class structure, poverty, housing, homelessness, the drug war, incarceration, infectious diseases, gang life, racial/ethnic/religious discrimination, police brutality, sex trafficking and prostitution" from the perspective of marginalized portions of the population with the support of street news service as well as big name media outlets like Reuters, InterPress Service and Al-Jazeera English.

Spent several months through a college doing community organizing work at a soup kitchen in Detroit and just from talking to the people there and getting to know them, gained a new understanding of the people there struggling in difficult situations to get back on their feet. I would've liked to publicize their voices and issues in a street paper through INSP. I think its important for us as a society to actually understand the daily experiences of those facing poverty and homelessness by listening to what they have to say rather than judging them with our biases against the poor inflated by the right wing and corporate media.

The Power of the Pharmaceutical Lobby in the Federal Government

The Center for Public Integrity, which sponsors investigative journalism for the public interest, just released a report entitled "Pushing Prescriptions" which found that :

Washington's largest lobby, the pharmaceutical industry, racked up another banner year on Capitol Hill in 2007, backed by a record $168 million lobbying effort, according to a Center for Public Integrity analysis of federal lobbying data. ...

The spending represents a 32 percent jump over 2006. Driven in part by a busy legislative calendar dominated by issues critical to the industry, the effort raised the amount spent by drug interests on federal lobbying in the past decade to more than $1 billion. Pharmaceutical, medical device, and other health product manufacturers, together, spent more than $189 million on lobbying last year, another record and nearly three times the $67 million they spent in 1998, the first full year for which complete records and totals are available.

More than 90 percent of the total was spent by 40 companies and three trade groups: the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), the Biotechnology Industry Organization, and the Advanced Medical Technology Association.

This sudden increase in lobby spending from pharmaceutical followed the 2006 Democratic takeover of Congress:

The spending binge last year may have also been fueled by the previous November's Democratic takeover of Congress. After the Democratic sweep of the House of Representatives, several long-standing critics of the industry, such as Representative Henry Waxman of California, assumed leadership roles of powerful committees. Intent on closer oversight of the industry, they conducted a series of hearings on issues such as drug safety, pharmaceutical pricing, and availability of generic medicines. Waxman and some fellow Democrats also tried to give more regulatory power to the Food and Drug Administration and revisit the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act, a law that came into being in 2003 after heavy industry lobbying. The legislation, which resulted in the largest overhaul of Medicare in its history, provides prescription drug coverage through the program.

From then on, they had to hire more Democratic lobbyists to deal with this " difficult political environment."

But the best quote was from an official from PhRMA who said "We don't look at [lobbying] through the prism of Democrats and Republicans. We look at it in terms of those who support free market policies and those who don't." It seems ironic that these lobbyists claim to be supporting "free market policies" when they get the federal government to protect them with favorable legislation that support their bottom line.

Among their most notable legislative accomplishments with all the money pharmaceutical companies spent in the past year include :

• blocking the importation of inexpensive drugs from other countries;
• protecting pharmaceutical patents both within the United States and abroad
  
• ensuring greater market access for pharmaceutical companies in international free trade agreements.
• keeping Congress from limiting advertising aimed directly at the public

To be fair, they did also lobby for the reauthorization and expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program, or SCHIP, for five years and expand it to cover an additional 4 million children because, in the words of a pharmaceutical analyst, "More children insured means using more drugs." But overall pharmaceutical companies lobbying efforts managed to keep up the already high costs of medicine.

the reality of our economy

The Washington Post, recently published an article called "Why We're Gloomier Than The Economy." In the article, the author points out how Americans are overwhelmingly pessimistic about the state of our economy: " Consumer confidence is at its lowest level in almost 30 years [and]Only 12 percent of Americans think the economy is in good shape."

But at the same the article asserts that " according to most broad measures of how the economy is doing, it's not all that grim." The article claims that "employers haven't shed as many jobs, the unemployment rate is still relatively low, and gross domestic product has kept rising" and inflation hasn't been as bad as compared to previous recessions. Thus setting up the crux of the article why their is this supposed divide between the reality of the economy and people's perception of it. The article concludes that "coming off two decades of prosperity and low inflation, Americans have come to treat low unemployment and inflation as givens. We have gotten so used to things being good, in other words, that even when conditions become somewhat bad, it feels terrible."

Yet the fact is, though the indicators the Washington Post article, make the economy seem not so bad using those numbers compared to previous recession, in other ways its much worse. The article doesn't mention the fact that people are losing their homes in record number because of subprime crisis. Moreover, the formula of the Consumer Price Index which is supposed to measure inflation in the US actually understates it. So, as Kevin Phillips describes it, "the federal government's CPI measurement doesn't capture the pain many Americans are feeling today." Furthermore, as economist Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research states, "most of the last two decades have not been especially prosperous. Wages did not keep pace with inflation over most of this period, with the notable exception being the years from 1996 to 2001." Even before the subprime collapse, many Americans were hampered with debt due to such stagnation of wages that forced them to rely more heavily on credit to get by. Thus the economic downturn reinforces and exacerbates the financial squeeze many Americans had been already feeling for a while.

So if there is a disconnect between reality and the perceptions of the economy, it lies with the Washington Post and this article that downplays the economic crisis we're facing now. As the Mcclatchy News reported recently, "the soaring cost of core essentials like gasoline, food and housing now account for 57 cents of each consumer dollar spent" which "leaves Americans with a record-low 43 cents out of each dollar for discretionary spending." Such a trend "helps explains why new vehicle sales in the U.S. are at a 10-year low and why consumers are buying less clothing, shoes and big-ticket items like furniture and computers." According to the Boston Globe, food prices have risen at the fastest rate since 1990. Prices for staples such as bread, milk, eggs, and flour are rising sharply, surging in the past year at double-digit rates. But these increases in the cost of food as well as oil aren't as much about a lack of supply but that of speculation in the global markets of commodities. According to a report called "making a killing from hunger" about the current global food crisis by an international NGO called GRAIN:

"hedge funds and other sources of hot money are pouring billions of dollars into commodities to escape sliding stock markets and the credit crunch, putting food stocks further out of poor people’s reach. According to some estimates, investment funds now control 50–60% of the wheat traded on the world’s biggest commodity markets. One firm calculates that the amount of speculative money in commodities futures – markets where investors do not buy or sell a physical commodity, like rice or wheat, but merely bet on price movements – has ballooned from US$5 billion in 2000 to US$175 billion to 2007."

Thus this shift from stocks to commodities by investment firms in speculation have driven up the cost of food along with oil. That change is a result of the financial crisis stemming from the subprime mortgage collapse which has, according to a report by Bank of America, caused a loss $7.7 trillion worldwide in stock market value. Worse than the financial crisis of 1929 and the crises since then. The economic downturn both in the US and globally are quite deep and interrelated, more than even the the Washington Post is willing to admit.

Clinton/Obama and the Democratic Presidential Nomination

I want to prefix this entry with the fact that I have strong objections with the current structure of the American political system. I think we're stuck in a two party-straight jacket because of a winner take all electoral system which, besides the obvious overwhelming influence of corporate and wealthy interests, limits the range of solutions and voices in the political process. With a country so large and diverse as the United States, its impossible for two political parties to adequately represent the various interests that exist within it. The fact that third political party challenges are viewed as threats that "take away" votes from mainstream candidates demonstrates the narrow options that exist within our political system. Its inherently undemocratic that our electoral system doesn't allow for more than two political parties and especially alienating to voters when in recent years the difference in policies between the Democratic and Republican Party has become increasingly negligent on key issues like the War in Iraq, the economy, trade, and military spending. As a result, its not surprising that America has on average one of the lowest voter turnout rates among Western industrialized democracies. If we really want to break out of a corporate dominated federal government, along with measures like more campaign finance reform ,it has to start with restructuring our electoral system that allow for independent political parties to have a legitimate chance to compete.

That being said and with few viable alternatives in this present Presidential campaign, I lean towards the Democratic Party just because there is no way in hell I'd ever vote for a conservative politician. But watching the progression of this marathon Democratic nomination that just came to an end as the candidates I actually liked were forced to drop out (Kucinich and Edwards), I began to favor Obama over Clinton for the nomination.

Clinton ran a despicably vicious negative campaign that utilized a variety of smear tactics against Obama similar to those George Bush regularly used in 2000 and 2004. This, as Robert Parry calls it, "War on Obama" was planned by the Clinton political strategist far in advance of the Democratic primary and sought to promote guilt-by-association, red-baiting, McCarthyism and racial messaging against Obama through, among other things, his relationship with controversial figures such as Vietnam-era radical Bill Ayers and Reverend Jeremiah Wright. In doing this, she allied with right-wing media figures and outlets such as media mogul Richard Scaife, Fox News and even Rush Limbaugh.

The Clinton campaign harped regularly on the race issue to brand and marginalize Obama as the "black candidate" to, as Parry puts it, build "animosity toward him by fanning white unease about this little-known black [man] with the exotic name."

Example of this strategy include:
"Clinton supporters have dropped comments about his acknowledged drug use as a young man, sent around photos of him in African garb, and referenced his family ties to Muslims. Most memorably, Bill Clinton likened Obama’s electoral victory in South Carolina to Jesse Jackson’s, and more recently, the former President played the role of white victim to reverse discrimination by accusing Obama’s people of playing the race card on him."

She also drew on the politics of fear toting her experience and willingness to be "tough" on foreign policy issues like threatening to "obliterate" Iran in a highly unlikely scenario that it attacked Israel. Such rhetoric reinforces the strong ties she has to the military-industrial complex that was one her main financial backers and as a member of the armed services committee in the Senate. As the Independent (UK) reported, in October of 2007,: "The US arms industry is backing Hillary Clinton for President and has all but abandoned its traditional allies in the Republican party." Her hawkish foreign policy record has been labeled as "Bush lite." When she spoke before the Council of Foreign Relations she called for a "tough-minded, muscular foreign and defense policy."

Though her campaign was no doubt historic for future potential female presidential candidates and that there was plenty of sexism in the media surrounding her candidacy. But as Barbara Ehrenreich, puts it, Hilary's campaign "revealed that women can be nasty, deceptive politicians too." I personally hope Obama picks a woman to be on his ticket for vice president, just not Hillary Clinton.

Despite his talk of change and hope, Obama's candidacy upon close scrutiny doesn't correlate in some ways with that rhetoric. Despite claims that he relied on Internet "netroots" fundraising instead of "traditional Washington-centric Democratic donors and corporate checkbooks" for his campaign funds, in many areas he's only second to Clinton in corporate donations received. According to opensecrets.org, Obama's one of his biggest donors has been Wall Street securities and investment companies. He's received the most money of any candidate Republican or Democrat with $7.9 million in campaign contributions from these firms as well as from hedge fund managers. Hows that going to reflect on his economic policies if he becomes President to deal with this severe recession, especially the sub prime crisis of which Wall Street had a large part in creating? Whose interests and voices are going to play a predominate role in shaping such solutions? If the money Obama has received from Wall Street is any indicator, I think its quite obvious. Some might make the argument that you can't be a mainstream presidential candidate these days without taking such money which unfortunately may be true. But Obama's self image as a candidate of "change" is extremely disingenuous while he's raising funds from traditional corporate sources.

Besides the obvious financial contributions, Obama has stealthily been building up connections to K Street corporate lobbyists in DC for "campaign support" and "advice" including:
former Sen. Tom Daschle (D-S.D.), a consultant for Alston & Bird; Broderick Johnson, president of Bryan Cave Strategies LLC; Mark Keam, the lead Democratic lobbyist at Verizon; Jimmy Williams, vice president of government affairs for the Wine & Spirits Wholesalers of America; Thomas Walls, vice president of federal public affairs at McGuireWoods Consulting; and Francis Grab, senior manager at Washington Council Ernst & Young. It seems like Obama is trying to balance a public image of a reform candidate while creating an Washington insider presence.

While Clinton tried to play up the issue of race, Obama has done everything to be a race neutral candidate. He's gone out of his way to claim that race is no longer an issue in America and should be a low priority of the next President. When speaking in Selma, Alabama, Obama declared that blacks "have already come 90 percent of the way" to equality in the US. I find such a statement disturbing and quite out of touch with the reality of institutional racism still quite rampant in the US in a variety of areas. This is especially true in wake of not only the Hurricane Katrina relief debacle, the "War on Drugs" but the sub-prime mortgage crisis as well. "United for a Fair Economy" in its yearly State of the Dream report that documents racial wealth gaps in the United States, stated that the sub-prime mortgage crisis and the foreclosure its created has caused "the greatest loss of wealth for communities and individuals of color in modern US History."

Obama's move to court AIPAC , the Israel lobby that promotes a far right Likkud stance in US foreign policy, doesn't seem like a sign of much change, especially when it comes to creating a two-state solution between the Israelis and the Palestinians and, in turn, peace in that region. Moreover, it doesn't suggest a new even handed approach to the situation but rather a similar one-sided Israel stance that blames everything on the Palestinians and other countries in the region which Bush despite his "road map" did quite regularly, especially in terms of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 2006 and attempts to isolate the fairly and democratically elected Hamas government in the Palestinian territories.

Obama's claim in his speech to AIPAC that Jerusalem will always be the "undivided" capital of Israel belies any effort to create a two state solution in the region since East Jerusalem, of which Israel has illegally occupied since the 1980s, is crucial to creating a Palestinian state. Moreover, despite the fact that Israel unilaterally withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005, it remains, as the Israel human rights group B'tselem describes it, "the biggest prison on Earth" through tight Israeli military control of its borders but at the same time Israel "renounces its responsibility for the lives and welfare of [Gaza's] residents." As of now, Israel is causing a humanitarian crisis and committing a war crime through collective punishment in Gaza Strip in response to mortar fire from the territory by restricting fuel, medicine, water and UN food aid to the whole population. Such a blockade has been especially devastating to pregnant women and newborn babies who lack access to adequate health care supplies. At the same time, Israel has recently expanded illegal settlements in the West Bank, demonstrating a lack of respect for any attempt at creating a Palestinian state. Thus, if Obama ever becomes president, following the AIPAC line in terms of US foreign policy towards that region will not result in peace.

But what makes me hopeful about Obama is his ability to inspire people with his speeches, especially those of my age. His inclusive rhetoric that emphasizes the ability of ordinary people to make change is great to hear from a politician. I hope such rhetoric reinvigorates political engagement not just for this election, but for people to take action on a local level and organize for change. Many people my age talk about Obama as if was the American messiah. Such talk is delusional. No significant change in American politics or public policy in our nation's history came about because of certain individuals. Change comes from grassroots mobilization and the social movements that ferment them. I hope that Obama's candidacy galvanizes such potential for Americans to rise up and take action because we can never rely on politicians alone to bring about a better, more just, democratic world we want to make.

post Hurrican Katrina/Rita reconstruction, guest workers and exploitation

Indian guest workers have been on a hunger strike since May 14th in Washington DC to protest the injustice that Signal International, a subcontractor of Northrop Gruman, has committed against them.

According to an article in Foreign Policy in Focus:

"The workers were promised [by an Indian recruiter hired by Signal International] the ability to bring over their families, permanent residency and green cards (the magic word) if they agreed to work for Signal International in its shipyards in Mississippi and Texas. In exchange for this bonanza, the workers need only pay the “paltry” sum of $20,000 U.S. up front and in cash.

These workers were not spring chickens and they knew enough to get such guarantees written down and to get receipts for every dollar they paid. Even then, some began to suspect that these dealings may not be above board and demanded their money back. The response of Sachin Dewan and others was that they had entered into a legal process that could not be revoked and so unless the remaining money was paid, their passports (which were with the recruiter to expedite the visa application process) would not be returned. In some cases, Dewan even threatened to burn their passports.

To raise the money needed to participate in this scheme, workers mortgaged their houses, sold family heirlooms, and took out high-interest loans."

The workers were brought in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and Rita to do reconstruction work in shipyards of the Gulf Coast by corporations already lavished with government contracts and incentives in the region.

The conditions at the labor camps that these skilled welders worked at were atrocious:

" Workers were living 24 to a room with only two toilets and one bathroom between them. They were given poor quality food in the morning, and by the time they took their lunch break in the evening, the food had already started to spoil.

For the lodging and food services, Signal charged each worker $1,050 per month.

Furthermore workers were under constant threat of deportation; often deportation was used as an incentive to get the workers to work harder. They were already doing more welding every day than they ever had (a tactic that may have been used to reduce their hours and hence their wages). The threat of deportation often made them pick up that already brisk pace. Phrases like, 'we know what life is like back in India, and this is better than that so you better not complain' were common."

When these Indian guest workers tried to organize for better conditions, Signal "hired a security company to send in armed guards to intimidate the workers and took aside four of the key organizers and threatened them with deportation." One of the intimidated organizers even tried to commit suicide as a result.

Finally the workers walked out of the labor camp and , with the assistance of the New Orleans Worker Center for racial justice, reported that they were a victim a labor trafficking ring and formed. They have continued to publicize their cause, adopting tactics and rhetoric of the civil rights movement. Eventually these workers traveled to Washington DC to pursue their case through a subsequent hunger strike. The New Orleans Worker Center is profiling their struggle through an online blog and In January 2007 organized Alliance of Guest Workers for Dignity for others in the Gulf Region facing similar exploitation through the Hurrican Katrina reconstruction effort.

Its not surprising that one of the Indian guest worker organizers has called the American guest worker program H2B that gave them temporary visas to enter the country a "modern-day form of slavery"Unfortunately this case is just a microcosm of worker exploitation takes place under this system. As the non-profit organization Farm Worker Justice puts it, H2B ( for nonagricultural workers) and H2A (for agricultural workers) are "rife with exploitation and abuse." Under both programs guest workers "suffer from an imbalance of power with their employers because their temporary, non-immigrant status ties them to particular employers and makes their ability to obtain a visa dependent on the willingness of the employer to make a request to the U.S. government." But the H2B program unlike H2A provides minimum protections for workers such as the 3/4 minimum work guarantee, free housing, the special adverse effect wage rate, and eligibility for federally funded legal services.