Happy Birthday, Cesar Chavez!
No, he's NOT the president of Venezuela.
Yes, he was the man who popularized the slogan "Yes, we can!" Only he said "Si' se puede!"
Cesar Chavez, American young people should know, was an American who 40 years ago was inspiring young people to work long, hard hours for social justice. And not only did they do so in great numbers, but they actually achieved social justice, they won victories that kept them going. And many of them are going still, having made long, enjoyable, and effective careers of it.
Chavez organized the United Farm Workers, vastly improving the working conditions of farm workers in California and around the country. The UFW pioneered numerous tactics that have been used with great success ever since, including most famously the boycott. Half the country stopped eating grapes until the people who picked the grapes were allowed to form a union.
Yes, he was the man who popularized the slogan "Yes, we can!" Only he said "Si' se puede!"
Cesar Chavez, American young people should know, was an American who 40 years ago was inspiring young people to work long, hard hours for social justice. And not only did they do so in great numbers, but they actually achieved social justice, they won victories that kept them going. And many of them are going still, having made long, enjoyable, and effective careers of it.
Chavez organized the United Farm Workers, vastly improving the working conditions of farm workers in California and around the country. The UFW pioneered numerous tactics that have been used with great success ever since, including most famously the boycott. Half the country stopped eating grapes until the people who picked the grapes were allowed to form a union.
A modest proposal
“But administration officials also worry that taking too hard a line with AIG and other companies could discourage top financial experts and institutions from joining the government efforts to fix the financial system.” — Weisman, Reddy and Pleven, Wall Street Journal
“AIG built this bomb, and it may be the only outfit that really knows how to defuse it.” — Andrew Ross Sorkin, New York Times
So, OK, we’re being held hostage and we have to pay up — give the AIG “brainiacs,” as Sorkin calls them, their unearned, taxpayer-underwritten $165 million in bonuses — or they’ll walk away from the disaster they created and let the whole global financial structure collapse in ruin.
Wow. I whistle in awe at the fiendishness of what can only be called financial terrorism, and as I do so a modest idea pops into my head, in the spirit of Jonathan Swift, of course.
“AIG built this bomb, and it may be the only outfit that really knows how to defuse it.” — Andrew Ross Sorkin, New York Times
So, OK, we’re being held hostage and we have to pay up — give the AIG “brainiacs,” as Sorkin calls them, their unearned, taxpayer-underwritten $165 million in bonuses — or they’ll walk away from the disaster they created and let the whole global financial structure collapse in ruin.
Wow. I whistle in awe at the fiendishness of what can only be called financial terrorism, and as I do so a modest idea pops into my head, in the spirit of Jonathan Swift, of course.
Breaking: Peace activists arrested at Pentagon
ARLINGTON, VA - Seven peace activists were arrested this morning as they
attempted to meet with Secretary of Defense Robert Gates at the Pentagon.
The peace activists are associated with the National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance (NCNR), and their visit followed a letter to Gates demanding all military forces be withdrawn from Iraq and Afghanistan, and that bombings of Pakistan immediately cease. The committed activists from New Jersey, Ohio, Virginia, and the District of Columbia were arrested by Pentagon Police after they strenuously requested to meet with Gates.
"We wish to petition our government for a redress of grievances," said Michelle Grise, coordinator of NCNR. "Our grievance is that our government continues to engage in clear violations of international law by aggressively and immorally waging wars on countries which pose no immediate threat to our nation."
Grise was arrested along with six other activists, including 78 year-old Eve Tetaz. A retired D.C. public schoolteacher, Tetaz is a veteran peace activist and faces potential jail time for her protests.
The peace activists are associated with the National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance (NCNR), and their visit followed a letter to Gates demanding all military forces be withdrawn from Iraq and Afghanistan, and that bombings of Pakistan immediately cease. The committed activists from New Jersey, Ohio, Virginia, and the District of Columbia were arrested by Pentagon Police after they strenuously requested to meet with Gates.
"We wish to petition our government for a redress of grievances," said Michelle Grise, coordinator of NCNR. "Our grievance is that our government continues to engage in clear violations of international law by aggressively and immorally waging wars on countries which pose no immediate threat to our nation."
Grise was arrested along with six other activists, including 78 year-old Eve Tetaz. A retired D.C. public schoolteacher, Tetaz is a veteran peace activist and faces potential jail time for her protests.
Appoint a special prosecutor
142 Organizations Agree With Leading Senators and Congress Members: The
Crimes of Bush, Cheney, and Other Top Officials Must Be Prosecuted
Statement on Prosecution of Former High Officials
We urge Attorney General Eric Holder to appoint a non-partisan independent Special Counsel to immediately commence a prosecutorial investigation into the most serious alleged crimes of former President George W. Bush, former Vice President Richard B. Cheney, the attorneys formerly employed by the Department of Justice whose memos sought to justify torture, and other former top officials of the Bush Administration.
Our laws, and treaties that under Article VI of our Constitution are the supreme law of the land, require the prosecution of crimes that strong evidence suggests these individuals have committed. Both the former president and the former vice president have confessed to authorizing a torture procedure that is illegal under our law and treaty obligations. The former president has confessed to violating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
Statement on Prosecution of Former High Officials
We urge Attorney General Eric Holder to appoint a non-partisan independent Special Counsel to immediately commence a prosecutorial investigation into the most serious alleged crimes of former President George W. Bush, former Vice President Richard B. Cheney, the attorneys formerly employed by the Department of Justice whose memos sought to justify torture, and other former top officials of the Bush Administration.
Our laws, and treaties that under Article VI of our Constitution are the supreme law of the land, require the prosecution of crimes that strong evidence suggests these individuals have committed. Both the former president and the former vice president have confessed to authorizing a torture procedure that is illegal under our law and treaty obligations. The former president has confessed to violating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
Freeing up resources... for more war
Hours after President Obama’s speech to a joint session of Congress, the New York Times printed the news that he plans to gradually withdraw “American combat forces” from Iraq during the next 18 months. The newspaper reported that the advantages of the pullout will include “relieving the strain on the armed forces and freeing up resources for Afghanistan.”
The president’s speech had little to say about the plans for escalation, but the few words will come back to haunt: “With our friends and allies, we will forge a new and comprehensive strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan to defeat Al Qaida and combat extremism, because I will not allow terrorists to plot against the American people from safe havens halfway around the world. We will not allow it.”
Obama didn’t mention the additional number of U.S. troops -- 17,000 -- that he has just ordered to Afghanistan. But his pledge that he “will not allow terrorists to plot against the American people” and his ringing declaration, “We will not allow it,” came just before this statement: “As we meet here tonight, our men and women in uniform stand watch abroad and more are readying to deploy.”
The president’s speech had little to say about the plans for escalation, but the few words will come back to haunt: “With our friends and allies, we will forge a new and comprehensive strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan to defeat Al Qaida and combat extremism, because I will not allow terrorists to plot against the American people from safe havens halfway around the world. We will not allow it.”
Obama didn’t mention the additional number of U.S. troops -- 17,000 -- that he has just ordered to Afghanistan. But his pledge that he “will not allow terrorists to plot against the American people” and his ringing declaration, “We will not allow it,” came just before this statement: “As we meet here tonight, our men and women in uniform stand watch abroad and more are readying to deploy.”
Kids for cash
A number of bad ideas and virulent trends in American life converge, it seems to me, in the unfolding scandal in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., known as “kids for cash.”
The blurring of the line that separates profit from state, especially since the Reagan era, has had a far more devastating effect on American values — indeed, on the very notion that anything besides a good financial buzz even has value — than the blurring of that more famously wobbly line that separates church from state. What’s been going on in the Luzerne County judicial system over the last five or six years illustrates this with a raw jolt.
Two juvenile court judges there, Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan, were recently arrested for setting a new standard in entrepreneurial corruption: taking payoffs — $2.6 million since 2003 — in return for sending youngsters accused of petty offenses (fighting, shoplifting, lampooning an assistant principal on MySpace) to private prison facilities, sometimes for preposterously extended stays.
The blurring of the line that separates profit from state, especially since the Reagan era, has had a far more devastating effect on American values — indeed, on the very notion that anything besides a good financial buzz even has value — than the blurring of that more famously wobbly line that separates church from state. What’s been going on in the Luzerne County judicial system over the last five or six years illustrates this with a raw jolt.
Two juvenile court judges there, Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan, were recently arrested for setting a new standard in entrepreneurial corruption: taking payoffs — $2.6 million since 2003 — in return for sending youngsters accused of petty offenses (fighting, shoplifting, lampooning an assistant principal on MySpace) to private prison facilities, sometimes for preposterously extended stays.
Washington & Lafayette get stoned & talk marriage
I publish this opening passage from PASSIONS OF THE PATRIOTS in honor of George's birthday. Of course, I knew him well. Happy Birthday, George..."Thomas Paine"
George Washington wrapped himself around the young Marquis. Lafayette sighed with pleasure.
It was their fourth such rendez-vous since that delicious denouement in Philadelphia. Each new encounter involved a progressively deepening experience, full of confusion and doubt at first (at least on Washington’s part) but now blooming into a supremely sensitive trans-oceanic detente.
The Frenchman stared deep into the taller man’s eyes, then down. There was an inexpressible connection between them, and the promise of so much more. The Franco-American alliance was making possible the defeat of the British. Now it would achieve a more perfect union.
“Soon, mon cher, we shall get married. No law shall stop us. Our love transcends all churches and all state hypocrisies, and renders all Puritans impotent. Their rage shall be as nothing when our passion washes over them.”
George Washington wrapped himself around the young Marquis. Lafayette sighed with pleasure.
It was their fourth such rendez-vous since that delicious denouement in Philadelphia. Each new encounter involved a progressively deepening experience, full of confusion and doubt at first (at least on Washington’s part) but now blooming into a supremely sensitive trans-oceanic detente.
The Frenchman stared deep into the taller man’s eyes, then down. There was an inexpressible connection between them, and the promise of so much more. The Franco-American alliance was making possible the defeat of the British. Now it would achieve a more perfect union.
“Soon, mon cher, we shall get married. No law shall stop us. Our love transcends all churches and all state hypocrisies, and renders all Puritans impotent. Their rage shall be as nothing when our passion washes over them.”
Cross of irony
“Down the long lane of the history yet to be written, America knows that this world of ours, ever growing smaller, must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect. . . . Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative. Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose.”
So is it time to start doing this now, 48 years down that road?
These words were part of Dwight Eisenhower’s 1961 presidential farewell speech, in which he famously warned that “we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence . . . by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”
So is it time to start doing this now, 48 years down that road?
These words were part of Dwight Eisenhower’s 1961 presidential farewell speech, in which he famously warned that “we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence . . . by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”
Perriello, peace and justice
Peace and justice activists in Virginia's Fifth District were thrilled last November when we and our neighbors replaced Congressman Virgil Goode with Tom Perriello. We got together and held a couple of meetings to discuss what we might begin talking with the new congressman-elect about. On February 17th we finally met with him. This brief report may prove somewhat useful to others meeting with their representatives and senators, and I've included links to useful materials to modify as needed and bring along to your meetings.
Congressman Perriello has thus far introduced and passed one piece of legislation, a section of the stimulus bill creating a tax credit for higher education. While tax credits may not be the ideal stimulus, backing education is a very welcome move.
Perriello has also expressed a willingness to challenge his own party on behalf of his constituents, according to his website:
Of course, former Congressman Goode didn't always march to the Republican drumbeat, but his own music was worse rather than better, and his attitude toward his constituents was one of poorly disguised manipulative contempt.
Congressman Perriello has thus far introduced and passed one piece of legislation, a section of the stimulus bill creating a tax credit for higher education. While tax credits may not be the ideal stimulus, backing education is a very welcome move.
Perriello has also expressed a willingness to challenge his own party on behalf of his constituents, according to his website:
Of course, former Congressman Goode didn't always march to the Republican drumbeat, but his own music was worse rather than better, and his attitude toward his constituents was one of poorly disguised manipulative contempt.
Bob Fitrakis remembers Cornell McCleary
Former Columbus Institute for Contemporary Journalism Board Chair and community activist Cornell McCleary died February 11 at the age of 55. Cornell recruited me to run for the NAACP Board in the early 1990s. He was one of the few black leaders in Columbus that reached out the white community surrounding the Free Press, as well as to the gay community. When I began co-publishing and editing the Free Press in 1992, my co-publisher and now U.S. Congresswoman Mary Jo Kilroy suggested we tap McCleary as Chairperson of our Board.