UNDERNEWS
December 17, 1999
Free-range journalism
from Washington's most unofficial source,
THE PROGRESSIVE REVIEW
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WORD
We are here to awaken from the illusion of our separateness -- Thich Nhat Hanh
SEATTLE WRAP
In a just world, Jeff St. Clair would win a Pulitzer Prize for his article
on Seattle in Counterpunch. But then the fact that it's not a just world is
what the article both painfully and beautifully describes, a model of what
journalism could be but too seldom is anymore. A few excepts:
*** In the first showing of a new solidarity, labor union members from the
Steelworkers and the Longshoremen showed up to join the march. In fact,
Steelworker Don Kegley, led the march, alongside environmentalist Ben White.
(White was later clubbed in the back of the head by a young man who was
apparently angry that he couldn't complete his Christmas shopping. The
police pulled the youth away from White, but the man wasn't arrested. And
White played later down the incident.) The throng of sea turtles and
blue-jacked union folk took off to the rhythm of a chant that would echo
down the streets of Seattle for days: "The people united will never be
divided!" I walked next to Brad Spann, a burly Longshoreman from Tacoma, who
held up one of my favorite signs of the entire week: "Teamsters and
Turtles�Together At Last!" Brad winked at me and said, "What the hell do you
think old Hoffa thinks of that?"
*** A British delegate was prevented from entering the convention center
after he left the Roosevelt Hotel. He tried to bust through the human chain
and was repulsed. Angered, he slugged one of the protesters in the chest and
ran down the block toward where we were standing. When he reached the corner
a tiny black woman confronted him, shouting in his: "You hit somebody! I saw
you." Whack. The delegate punched the black woman in the face, sending her
sprawling back into Thomas and me. The scene could have turned ugly, as
protesters rushed to protect the woman. But the lead organizer at the corner
took control, ushering the delegate outside the protest area.
*** By now another five or six cans of tear gas had been throw into the
crowd and the intersection was clotted with fumes. At first I was stunned,
staring at the scene with the glazed look of the freshly lobotomized. Then
my eyes began to boil in my head, my lips burned and it seemed impossible to
draw a breath. When it's raining, the chemical agents hug close to the
ground, taking longer to dissolve into the air. This compounds the tear gas'
stinging power, it's immobilizing effect. I staggered back up 6th Avenue
toward University, where I stumbled into a cop decked out in his Star Wars
storm trooper gear. He turned and gave me a swift whack to my side with his
riot club. I feel to my knees and covered my head, fearing a tumult of
blows. But the blows never came and soon I felt a gentle hand on my shoulder
and woman's voice say, "Come here."
*** I retreated into a narrow alley and saw the blurry outline of a young
woman
wearing a Stetson cowboy hat and a gas mask. "Lean your head back, so that I
can wash the chemicals out of your eyes," she said. The water was cool and
within seconds I could see again. "Who are you?" I asked. "Osprey," she
said, and disappeared into the chemical mist. Osprey�.the familiar, totemic
name of an Earth First!er. Thank god for Edward Abbey, I said to myself.
*** As the day ticked away the street protesters kept asking, "Where are the
labor marchers", expecting that at any moment thousands of longshoremen and
teamsters would reinforce them in the fray. The absent masses never came.
The marshals' for the union march steered the big crowds away from the
action and the isolation of the street protesters allowed the cops to get
far more violent. Eventually, several phalanxes of union marchers skirted
their herders and headed up 4th Avenue to the battlegrounds at Pine and
Pike. Most of them seemed to be from the more militant unions, the
Steelworkers, IBEW and the Longshoremen. And they seemed to be pissed at the
political penury of their leaders. Randal McCarthy, a Longshoreman from
Kelso, Washington, told me: "That fucker, Sweeney. No wonder we keep getting
rolled. If he were any dumber, he'd be in management."
*** When the cops are on the streets in force, black people always pay the
price. As Thomas and I were ducking flash bombs and rubber bullets, Seattle
police were busy harassing Richard McIver, a black Seattle City Councilman
who was on his way to a WTO reception at the Westin Hotel. Even though
McIver flashed the police with his embossed gold business card identifying
him as a councilman, the police denied him entry. They roughly pulled him
from his car and threatened to place him in handcuffs. Rep. Dennis Kucinich,
the Democrat, witnessed this scene from Ohio. "I'm 58 years old," McIver
said. "I had on a $400 suit, but last night I was just another nigger."
COUNTERPUNCH http://counterpunch.com
THE REVIEW FORUM
http://www.prorev.com/letters.htm
YESTERDAY WE LISTED THE YEARS REMAINING to the millennium in cultures other
than our own, adding gratuitously that for "Christians who can count" there
was still one year remaining. One reader saw this as hate speech directed
against illiterate Christians and cancelled his subscription, ignoring,
among other things, that such clearly literate Christians as the Pope and
W.J. Clinton believe the millennium begins on New Year's Day.
On the other hand, progressive photographer and master webster Mick
Flugennock got the joke but dubbed us as among the "anal-retentive
'2001'people." He plans to go with the herd and just party from one
millennium to the next. He also points out that Arthur Clarke thought the
next century started in 20001.
In fact, your editor is a millennial mugwump, having decided to observe the
transition with his wife and four other couples in Tuscany over the summer
solstice of 20001, thus neatly splitting the difference in the dispute.
ALSO: A further defense of lawyers
MIKE FLUGENNOCK'S MIKEY'ZINE http://www.sinkers.org
AL GORE ON JUANITA BROADDRICK
GORE: Well, I didn't know what to make of her claim, because I don't know
how to evaluate that story, I really don't.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN AT NH FORUM: Did you see the interview? Did you see the
interview?
GORE: No, I didn't see the interview, no.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: I'm very surprised that you didn't watch the interview.
GORE: Well, which -- what show was it on?
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: ABC, I believe.
GORE: Yes, I didn't see it. There have been so many personal allegations and
such a nonstop series of attacks -- I guess I'm like a lot of people in that
I think that enough is enough. I do not know how to evaluate each one of
these individual stories. I just don't know. I would never violate the
privacy of my communication with one of my children, a member of my family,
as for that part of your question . . .
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: So you didn't believe Juanita Broaddrick's claim?
GORE: No, I didn't say that. I just -- I said I don't know how to evaluate
it. And I didn't see the interview. But I want to say something else to you
about this. Why don't you stand back up, and I'd like to be able to look you
in the eye. You know, I think that -- I think that whatever mistakes he made
in his personal life are, in the minds of most Americans, balanced against
what he has done in his public life as president.
AL GORE ON ANITA HILL
Here's a law professor who convinced the nation and the Senate from her
demeanor and her appearance in public that she is a very credible, well-
spoken, self-possessed person, says what she says," how can we just
cavalierly toss this aside if it doesn't matter?
THREE MAJOR NETWORKS
ON GORE ON BROADDRICK
Nothing.
THE MEDIA ON BROADDRICK
NEWSMAX: The last journalist to confront the White House with a Broaddrick
question was ABC's Sam Donaldson, who raised the issue with Clinton during
his March 19th press conference. The President refused to explicitly deny
the charge and directed all further inquiries about Broaddrick to his
lawyer, who had issued a denial in Clinton's name weeks before. That was the
second and final time a reporter dared challenge Clinton about the rape
allegation. Much to the White House's delight, Juanita Broaddrick thereafter
became a non-person as far as the Washington press corps was concerned.
FROM NORMAN SOLOMON'S
P.U.-litzer Prizes
* PRE-PRE-FEMINIST PRIZE -- CNN's "Larry King Live"
When Larry King hosted a segment about potential senatorial candidate
Hillary Clinton on June 1, the discussion took political analysis to new
depths. One panelist commented: "She has a bad figure. She's bottom heavy
and her legs are short." Another expert added: "I don't know one good thing
about her. She's got fat -- her legs are too short, her arms are too
long.... If your legs are too short, how do you evolve?" The panelists did
not find time to discuss the anatomy of Clinton's likely GOP opponent,
Rudolph Giuliani.
* ALL THINGS ETHNOCENTRIC PRIZE -- NPR's Linda Wertheimer
On Dec. 13, when "All Things Considered" host Wertheimer interviewed a Time
magazine reporter about videos made by the two teens who massacred people at
Columbine High, she expressed amazement: "You say in the article in Time
that Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were steeped in violence and drained of
mercy. How could that be? I mean, they were middle-class children that had
lots of advantages; they had nice parents."
* TAKE-IT-ON-FAITH AWARD -- Michael Kinsley
In a Time magazine essay, Kinsley -- who works for two of the planet's most
powerful communications firms, Microsoft and Time Warner -- sought to
persuade readers that the World Trade Organization is a fine institution,
despite protests. Kinsley's Dec. 13 piece ended with these words: "But
really, the WTO is OK. Do the math. Or take it on faith."
NORMAN SOLOMON mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
CLINTON SCANDALS
-- Percent of Americans who think the Senate should have removed Clinton
from office: 42% Percent who felt this way a year ago: 29%
[USA Today/CNN/Gallup]
LABOR NEWS
32 HOURS: This week's U.S. News & World Report has a front-page feature
entitled "World-class Workaholics" by James Lardner. The article notes that
between 1977-1997, the average work week (among salaried Americans working
20 hours or more) increased from 43 to 47 hours. Over the same period, the
number of workers putting in 50 or more hours a week jumped from 24 percent
to 37 percent. Americans have now surpassed the Japanese to become the long
hours champions of the advanced industrial world . . . Lardner tells of
American workers who routinely sleep underneath their desks, close to their
computers for warmth . . . Some employees say they rarely see sunlight let
alone their partners or children because they spend almost all their time
in their cubicles. Long hours are in some cases chosen rather than imposed .
. .
The article is fairly strong in looking at the costs of long hours in terms
of quality of life, in particular the erosion of family life, but it
nevertheless suggests that these long hours are the "price of prosperity."
As evidence, Lardner points to the average 10% unemployment rate in Europe,
even though Europeans have shorter work hours. But he neglects to point out
that many European countries (e.g. Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Austria,
Sweden, Switzerland) have both significantly shorter work hours and
comparable, or even lower, unemployment than in the US.
The article also fails to mention that a recent International Labor
Organization study found that in Europe labor productivity has been rising
at a faster pace than the United States. This is undoubtedly due in part to
shorter work time, with its benefits in terms of reduced fatigue, improved
morale and higher quality of work. Rather than the "price of prosperity",
long hours in the United States are a bad deal for working people, an
inefficient use of labor, and an extremely destructive force that is eroding
the cohesion of families and communities.
32 HOURShttp://www.web.net/32hours
USN&WR http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/991220/overwork.htm
LOOSE CHANGE
REUTERS: Despite a booming economy, the number of Americans seeking
emergency food or shelter rose significantly this year and the trend will
likely continue for years to come, a report released on Thursday found. In
a survey of 26 U.S. cities from Boston to San Francisco, the U.S. Conference
of Mayors found that demand for emergency food aid grew 18 percent in 1999,
the quickest pace in seven years. Requests for emergency shelter also rose
this year, climbing 12 percent, the largest increase since 1994 . . .
Other findings by the mayors included:
-- In more than three-quarters of the cities surveyed, shelters had to turn
away homeless families due to lack of resources;
-- Half of the homeless population in the United States was estimated to be
black, 31 percent white, 13 percent Hispanic, four percent American-Indian
and two percent Asian; and
-- Nineteen percent of homeless people are mentally ill, 31 percent are
substance abusers and 14 percent are veterans.
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