[CTRL] [radtimes] # 143

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[radtimes] # 143

An informally produced compendium of vital irregularities.

"We're living in rad times!"
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How to assist RadTimes--> (See ** at end.)
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Contents:

--Protesters close oil plants
--Students Storm Indonesia Parliament
--Letter From Porto Alegre To Znet
--The Border's Growing Labor War
--Anti-Globalization Activist Jose Bove Is At It Again
--World Social Forum in Brazil news release
--This Is What Democracy Looks Like
--National Progressive Media: Who's Left?

===================================================================

Monday, 29 January, 2001

Protesters close oil plants

<http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/africa/newsid_1142000/1142801.stm>

Poverty in the Niger Delta has driven many to protest Southern Nigerian
community activists have forced the closure of three of Shell Oil's pumping
stations.
Youths from the Ijaw communities of Delta state entered the stations on
Sunday and ordered the workers on duty to shut them down. The closure is
costing the company 40,000 barrels per day.
In a statement issued on Monday, the protesters called for the provision of
amenities such as schools and roads, as well as jobs for local people.
There is widespread anger in the region over the absence of benefits to the
indigenous population from oil revenues. Shell Oil has been a frequent
target of attack.
                Talks underway
Shell Oil says it is currently holding talks with community representatives
to try and find a solution. The protesters say the stations will not
re-open until their demands are met.
Lucky Izoukumor, speaking for the Ijaw communities, said that the protest
related to Ijaw protection of a key Shell project last year.
"We protected the project with our lives," he said. "now we have nothing to
show for it.
Until our demands are met, we will not give room for Shell to work."
The oil coming from the Niger Delta provides most of Nigeria's export
earnings and government income.
                Community anger
But the people living there feel they get nothing back. This is the major
source of tension in the region.
A village living next to a well producing oil worth many thousands of
dollars a year may have no clean water supply, no passable road, no
electricity, no clinic or school.
In theory, a percentage of the government's oil revenues are ploughed back
into the producing areas, and that percentage has risen in response to
growing discontent.
But residents complain that, while the money may get as far as the state
capital - even the local government headquarters - it stops there, and they
never see the benefit.
Local anger was most famously mobilised in the Ogoni area by the late Ken
Saro-Wiwa, but in all parts of the Delta protesters have blocked access
roads, occupied production platforms and, on occasion, sabotaged pipelines.

===================================================================

January 29, 2001

Students Storm Indonesia Parliament

<http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/w-asia/2001/jan/29/012900109.html>

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) -- Police fired tear gas and warning shots as
thousands of rock-throwing demonstrators stormed the gates of Indonesia's
parliament on Monday in the largest protest yet against the country's
president.
Three students were badly beaten by police as running battles broke out on
the lawns of the heavily guarded legislature.
The estimated 10,000 protesters had marched through the streets of the
capital, demanding that President Abdurrahman Wahid quit over two
corruption scandals.
As the mob broke down the gates, lawmakers met in a closed session inside
the legislature to hear the results of a long-running investigation into
the two affairs that have bogged down Wahid's 15-month administration.
"Wahid must resign immediately," said Ijan, one of the students. Like many
Indonesians, he only uses one name.
Speaking to reporters at the presidential palace, Wahid dismissed the
anti-government demonstration and laughed off demands that he step down.
Even so, the size and violence of Monday's rally was reminiscent of
protests that led to the ouster of former dictator Suharto in 1998, and his
successor, B.J. Habibie, in 1999.
Police said about 1,000 supporters of Wahid had also gathered inside the
parliamentary compound. However, their calls were drowned out by the much
larger anti-Wahid demonstration outside.
Wahid has come under increasing pressure as his opponents take heart from
events in the neighboring Philippines where President Joseph Estrada was
forced to quit this month after protests and impeachment proceedings.
Analysts warned that Monday's protest in Jakarta might mark the start of a
new wave of violence in Indonesia.
"The demonstrations will continue. The students are looking at the fall of
Estrada. This is just the start," said Taufik Abdullah, chairman of the
Indonesian Institute of Sciences.
Last week, officials from Wahid's Muslim-based party warned that bloodshed
and chaos could erupt if the legislature tried to impeach him.
The two scandals represents the biggest political challenge to Wahid since
he was elected to office in late 1999 after years of authoritarian rule.
Lawmakers have not yet publicly released their findings.  However, many say
there is sufficient evidence to implicate Wahid in both scandals, despite
the president's repeated denials of any wrongdoing.
It is far from certain, though, whether the parliament will pursue the case
and initiate lengthy impeachment proceedings.
The investigation into Wahid comes as his popularity remains low due to his
inability to fix the problems besetting the world's fourth most populous
nation.
Separatist and sectarian violence has killed thousands in several restive
provinces, and the economy remains in crisis. Authorities also have failed
to catch the masterminds of a series of deadly terrorist bombings.
The first scandal centers on Wahid's masseur and one-time business partner,
who allegedly used the president's name to dupe the government's main food
agency, Bulog, into handing more than $4 million from its employees'
pension fund.
Bulog officials say that months earlier Wahid had asked if the fund's money
could be channeled into aid projects in Aceh, a province wracked by bloody
separatist fighting.
Wahid has admitted he initially considered doing this, but later decided
against it. Instead, he accepted $2 million from the sultan of neighboring
oil-rich Brunei.
His revelation led to allegations of a second scandal, dubbed "Bruneigate,"
despite Wahid's insistence that the sultan's money was a personal donation.

===================================================================

ZNet Commentary / Jan 29

LETTER FROM PORTO ALEGRE TO ZNET

By Norman Solomon

The World Social Forum here in southern Brazil is being
reported around the planet as an oppositional counterpoint
to the annual bash in Davos, where corporate leaders have
been gathering for three decades at their World Economic
Forum retreat. In contrast, the gathering in Porto Alegre is
dedicated to another set of goals, under a banner profound
in its simplicity: "A different world is possible." Five
subversive words.

The unofficial slogan of the Davos elites -- and of
present-day corporate domination -- could be "A different
world is impossible, and we intend to keep it that way."

Some say 8,000 or 10,000 people are here at the World Social
Forum (including 1,700 journalists from around the globe).
But the numbers are much less important than the energy and
spirit: People have been engaged for several days in a
gathering that gives much reason for hope, inspired by the
reality that we're a global movement, acutely aware of some
responsibilities and possibilities.

"Across the world, a thousand and one new forces are
emerging," Eduardo Galeano said at one of the many sessions
that have filled to overflowing (with simultaneous
translations in several languages). Beyond the shorthand
term "neo-liberalism" is a vast need for astute analysis and
an even vaster imperative for ongoing action. The events in
Porto Alegre promise to transform: how much, we don't know,
but after participants in the World Social Forum return to
almost every country on Earth, one catalyst is likely to
lead to multitudes more.

"Let's save pessimism for better times," Galeano suggested
the other night. He attributed the saying to graffiti on a
wall in some Latin American city. But I instantly thought of
the political situation in the United States (where my
pessimism of the mind has been suppressing my optimism of
the will, lately).

The World Social Forum will probably happen again a year
from now, in Porto Alegre or some other place. One of the
big challenges will be to find rooms large enough to hold a
sizeable fraction of all the people who will want to be
there. This huge meeting of the last few days is likely to
help set off a new global wave of resistance to the
corporatization of the planet. Any realistic hope for the
World Social Forum has already been exceeded. Maybe we need
less "realism"; then we might be able to become realistic
about the potential of a cooperative and determined movement
to insist that a truly different and better world is
possible.

It's literally impossible at this point for any one person
to fully describe what has been happening in Porto Alegre,
with so many plenary sessions and workshops going on (four
plenaries at a time, for instance, and hundreds of workshops
over the course of the week). But it's safe to say that
something extraordinary has been taking place here, at once
as unpredictable and predictable as what occurred in Seattle
a little more than a year ago. Feel it in the air, wonder if
you're getting carried away, ask colleagues and friends for
their impressions -- and the responses keep coming back:
agreement that the levels of discussion, organization, and
possibilities for follow-up are exceedingly high.

In the air at the World Social Forum is very intense belief
in what goes by the label "civil society" -- not in some
stuffy way, but in an on-the-ground sense of praxis and
possibilities now just coming into reach because of all that
has come before. It's moving to think about how fervent this
belief is, at a conference based in Latin America, where so
much repression and suffering has been inflicted with
military and economic mechanisms, where so much hope for
liberation was placed in armed struggle -- largely replaced
by different forms of struggle, with neo-liberalism as the
named enemy and advocates for civil society as the declared
combatants.

"There is no greater truth than search for truth," Galeano
said. The World Social Forum seems to be all about searching
for that possible different world. "The system presents
itself as eternal� The power system tells us that tomorrow
is another word for today."

At the moment, the World Social Forum is still going on.
Before I go (to another workshop), I feel it's important to
add a few words about this country's Partido de los
Trabajadores -- the Workers' Party of Brazil.

The first World Social Forum is happening in Porto Alegre
because the Workers' Party (PT) is in power in this city's
government now, as it has been for the past 12 years, with
one election victory after another. The Forum has been
nurtured in the logistical, political, ethical, and
spiritual contexts of the PT. As one Brazilian speaker said
yesterday, the emphasis is on genuine participatory
democracy, which includes the ongoing systematic process of
drawing up the city budget of Porte Alegre. "We're moving
towards an egalitarian left, and this is the reflection we
want here."

===================================================================

THE BORDER'S GROWING LABOR WAR

By David Bacon

        RIO BRAVO, TAMAULIPAS (1/22/01) - In the dusty border town of Rio
Bravo, just across the Rio Grande from Pharr, Texas, the Duro Bag factory
churns out the chichi paper bags sold for a buck at suburban shopping malls
almost everywhere.
        Eliud Almaguer, an intense, stocky labor activist in his thirties,
got a job at the plant in 1998.  There he says he saw people lose fingers
in machines cutting the cardboard used to stiffen the bottoms of the bags.
Safety guards, he claims, were removed from the rollers which imprint
designs on the paper lining -- the extra time they caused in cleaning was
treated as needless lost production.  Almaguer recalls that solvent
containers didn't carry proper danger warnings, and while workers got dust
masks, they were useless for filtering out toxic chemical fumes.
        "In terms of safety, well there just wasn't any," he remembers
bitterly.
        The union at Duro, a seccion, or local, of the Paper, Cardboard and
Wood Industry Union, did nothing to change matters.  The union is part of
the Confederation of Mexican Workers (CTM), a pillar of support for the
country's ruling bureaucracy since the 1940s.  The local has a contract
with the company - a protection agreement in which government-affiliated
union leaders are paid to guarantee labor peace.
        Mexico's new independent union federation, the National Union of
Workers (UNT), estimates that only 50,000 of the country's 650,000 union
contracts are actually negotiated with worker participation.  "The rest are
simply protection agreements," explains UNT vice-president Jose Luis
Hernandez.  "The people who benefit from these contracts are a kind of
Mafia.  To get rid of them is going to require a virtual war."
        Duro has become a battleground in this war, one which will have a
profound impact on workers in all three NAFTA countries - the U.S., Canada,
and Mexico itself.
        The battle to change conditions in this plant is one of a long
series of labor conflicts which have erupted over the last decade in
factory after factory, from one end of the border to the other.   In cities
like Rio Bravo, Juarez and Tijuana, hundreds of thousands of workers stream
through plant gates each shift change - a human wave pouring into
communities of cardboard houses and dirt streets, where the expectation of
a better life is on a collision course with harsh economic reality.
        And as maquiladora-style production has transformed the Mexican
economy, it has provided a proving ground as well for a new model of
international relationships between workers and unions.  This cross-border
solidarity movement provides immediate material support for embattled
workers like those at Duro.  Internationally-coordinated campaigns target
their employers, and have created a growing rank-and-file union base in all
three countries.  But it is still very difficult for border workers and
their allies to  muster sufficient economic pressure in the U.S. to force
major corporations to respect workers' rights, much less change U.S. and
Mexican government policies which lend the companies political cover.
        At Duro, workers began the struggle to change conditions by trying
to actually enforce provisions of the protection agreement (and Mexican
law) that, at least on paper, guarantee overtime pay, profit-sharing and
other rights.  To get leaders committed to enforcement, they expelled the
seccion's general secretary, Jose Angel Garcia Garces, whom they viewed as
too close to company managers.  In his place, workers elected Almaguer.
        They then brought repeated grievances before the plant's human
relations manager, Alejandro de la Rosa.  "We'd take [our complaints] to
his office, and he'd throw us out," Almaguer says.  "The company was in
violation of at least fifty percent of the contract."
        Wages at Duro average 320 pesos a week (about $35), according to
Consuelo Moreno, a Duro worker.  Duro's vice-president of manufacturing,
Bill Forstrom, says wages start at 60 pesos a day.  A gallon of milk in the
supermarket costs 20 pesos - a third of a day's work.  "My daughter had to
drop out of school this year, because we didn't have the money for her to
continue."  Nevertheless, says Almaguer, "people were willing to work at
bad-paying jobs.  But not under those conditions."
        In October, 1999, the company fired him.  The union's leaders in
Mexico City cooperated, excluding him from union membership.  Police and
guards were called into the plant.  But after three days of turmoil,
workers forced Almaguer's reinstatement as general secretary.
        De la Rosa didn't return phone calls for this story, but alleged in
Rio Bravo's local newspaper, El Bravo, that "the workers are protesting
things that aren't our responsibility.  Almaguer says he's a dissident
leader, but he was actually removed some time ago."
        This spring the contract at Duro expired, and workers drew up a
list of demands for a new agreement.  They asked for two pairs of safety
shoes each year, work clothes, contributions to a savings plan, and a
doctor at the plant to take care of injuries.  "The company said it owned
the factory - they would decide what would be done here," Almaguer recalls.
When workers wouldn't budge, their national leaders signed a new agreement
on April 11, ignoring their demands.
        On April 14, 400 workers from the afternoon shift refused to go in
to work, and were later joined by 800 coworkers from day shift.  In June
they struck again. By then, they had decided that enforcing the protection
agreement was no longer possible. In front of the factory gates, workers
began organizing a new, independent and democratic union.
        "In the past, the company was always able to buy off our union
leaders. Always," Moreno emphasizes.  "And we paid the price.  We can only
change things if we have a union the company can't control."
        Forstrom says only a minority of the plant's workers are involved
in the protests.  Although he admits that some workers have been injured,
he claims they've taken the guards off the machines themselves.  Conditions
are better in Rio Bravo, he says, than at some of the company's seven U.S.
plants, and while relations with the CTM are good, they're not pushovers.
On the other hand, "Almaguer has had an agenda different from the company
and the majority of employees," Forstrom says.  "I think he has something
to gain personally.  It's fairly obvious - a job, money, status."

        Duro is just one of 3,450 foreign-owned factories, employing over
1.2 million Mexican workers, according to the National Association of
Maquiladoras.  Decades ago, the ability of workers to cooperate across the
border here was primarily an ideological question.  But the huge expansion
of the border workforce is only one indication that today cooperation has
become an issue of survival -- the survival of unions, jobs, and living
standards affording a decent life to working families, in both the U.S. and
Mexico.
        The old cold war policy of former AFL-CIO presidents George Meany
and Lane Kirkland was unable to cope with this globalization of corporate
activity.  Furthermore, they were compromised by their unremitting defense
of free trade, corporate interests, and U.S. foreign policy.  But over the
last decade, their old policy has been challenged by a new alternative -
solidarity from below.  The newest vision of what an international labor
movement could become is being born, not in an office in Washington, but in
shantytowns here along the border.
        For Duro workers, this support network is partly based in the
Coalition for Justice in the Maquiladoras, which brings together unions,
churches and community organizations in Mexico, Canada and the U.S.  For
over a decade, the Coalition has functioned as a resource for Mexican
workers trying to fight an economic policy which uses their low wages to
encourage further maquiladora investment.  Two years ago, the organization
became even more threatening to investors and the political apparatus which
protects them, when it elected Martha Ojeda as its new director.
        Ojeda was a maquiladora worker herself, having grown up just south
of Texas in Nuevo Laredo, where she went to work for Sony Corp.  As her
factory grew into a complex employing thousands over the next two decades,
Ojeda became a leader of the CTM-affiliated plant union.  And like Eliud
Almaguer, she committed the cardinal sin for a border worker - she sought
to make her union real.
        On April 12, 1994, Sony fired 18 plant leaders who ran for union
office on a reform slate.  After the firings, thousands of workers sat down
in the road leading to the plant gate.  Sony brought in riot police, who
beat them and forced them to return to their jobs.  Ojeda fled into
political exile in Texas.  Until charges were dropped years later, she
faced arrest and prison if she returned to Mexico.
        The independent union effort at Sony, coming on the heels of the
passage of NAFTA, was one of the first to receive the support of a broad
movement of U.S. workers, union activists, church and shareholder
campaigners, and political and community leaders.
        Today, the CJM organizes health and safety groups in maquiladoras,
trains workers to exercise their rights, and helps them democratize their
unions and organize independent ones.  The coalition maintains a
tri-national network of activists, who bring pressure to bear on employers
when plant struggles break out.
        At Duro, the coalition assisted the strikers as they chased
Tamaulipas' governor, Tomas Yarrington, around the state for two months.
Whenever he appeared in public, workers unfurled banners demanding
"libertad sindical" [the right to belong to a union of their own choosing].
Meanwhile, determined women, often with their children beside them,
confronted police outside the plant, and camped out in Rio Bravo's main
plaza.  CJM activists were arrested with the strikers, and mobilized a
flood of letters and faxxes to Yarrington and company officials.
        Cooperating with the CJM,  UNT General Secretary Francisco
Hernandez Juarez organized a public protest in August, bringing to Reynosa
hundreds of advocates of independent unionism from Mexico and the U.S.
Under the combined pressure, the Tamaulipas labor board finally granted the
Duro union legal status.  Workers have yet to negotiate a new contract to
replace the old protection agreement, and 150 remain fired.  Almaguer's
house, made of shipping pallets and cardboard, was burned down in an arson
attack October 31, a crime local police refuse to investigate.  "This fire
was intentional," he says.  "They were trying to wipe us off the map, and
now my home is just ashes."
        Hernandez Juarez believes that if Duro workers win higher wages,
other workers also will organize independent unions.  Today the UNT is a
growing presence on the border, and employers clearly feel the threat, as
do those union leaders who stand to lose their protected status.  They
accuse Almaguer and his associates of being pawns manipulated by U.S.
unions and the CJM.
        El Bravo refers to Marta Ojeda as a professional agitator, and
accused Almaguer of being paid to organize the work stoppage.  Tamaulipas
CTM leader Leocadio Mendoza Reyes accused Ojeda of mounting a "dirty war"
against the CTM, to "destabilize" the maquiladoras and scare companies into
relocating jobs to the U.S.
        Rick de la Cruz, a vice-president of Local 6-314 of the U.S. Paper,
Atomic, Chemical and Energy Workers, who went to the Duro protest with a
group of fellow workers from his Texas plant, thinks those charges are
ridiculous.  "If that work leaves Mexico, it's not coming back to the U.S.
- it's going somewhere workers have even fewer rights," he says.  "'We just
think everyone should have human rights, and not just in Mexico - in the
U.S. too."
        Even Forstrom points out that Duro's automated operations remain in
the U.S., while the Rio Bravo plant's labor intensive production competes
with China and Indonesia.  "We're in Mexico to take advantage of
inexpensive labor," he says.

        Accusations of foreign interference are a common weapon against
independent unions on the border.  In Tijuana, these allegations reached
the level of hysteria after another group of workers, at the Han Young
factory, not only won legal status for their union with international
support two years ago, but then mounted the first legal strike by an
independent union in the history of the maquiladoras.
        Workers at the plant, which welds truck frames for Tijuana's huge
Hyundai industrial complex, began a campaign to eliminate low wages and
serious safety hazards in June, 1997.  They quickly discovered, however,
that the company had a protection contract.
        Supported by the San Diego-based Committee to Support Maquiladora
Workers, the independent October 6 Union for Industry and Commerce won
legal status after work stoppages and a hunger strike, during which workers
chained themselves to the doors of Tijuana's city hall.  U.S. Congressman
David Bonior pressured both the Mexican and U.S. governments by using the
conflict to defeat the Clinton administration's proposal for fast-track
authority to negotiate an extension of NAFTA in 1997.
        When workers struck over company stonewalling in 1998, however, the
Baja California labor board ruled their strike illegal.
        The Mexican 15th District Federal Court then overruled that
decision on three separate occasions.  Yet for two years, Tijuana and Baja
California authorities have called in the police to remove the strikers'
picketlines, burn their strike flags, and escort strikebreakers into the
plant.  In Mexico, it is illegal for a company to hire and operate with
strikebreakers during a legal strike.  But in Tijuana, policies designed to
promote foreign investment outweigh the rule of law.
        Lawlessness reached a high point on June 24, when the Mexican labor
ministry organized a "Seminar on union freedom in Mexico," to explain two
new agreements it signed with the U.S. Labor Department in May.  Han Young
strikers tried to attend the meeting, held in Tijuana's swanky Camino Real
Hotel, and found the hotel ballroom already packed with supporters of
government-affiliated unions.  As strikers and their supporters quietly
walked down the aisle carrying their banners, looking for space to sit,
dozens of men in the crowd sprang from their seats.  Led by Raniel Falcon,
a gang of young toughs affiliated to a government-controlled union, beat
the vastly-outnumbered strikers with fists and feet, and drove them out of
the hotel.
        Ironically, the meeting was held to discuss the Han Young case, but
no mention of it was made, and the independent unionists were given no
guarantees of safety to permit their return after they were expelled.
        Four U.S. Labor Department representatives attended the Tijuana
seminar, led by Louis Karesh, deputy secretary and head of the National
Administrative Office.   "I'm disappointed to see what happened," he said,
but added that "I was glad to see [Mexican Labor Sub-Secretary] Moctezuma
come out to talk to the workers."
        Steve Beckman, a staff member at the international department of
the United Auto Workers and a member of the NAO's advisory committee, says
"the U.S. should have walked out of the Tijuana meeting and called it a
disgrace, met with the workers involved, and demanded punishment of those
responsible for the beatings."
        Labor Secretary Alexis Herman, however, instead wrote a letter to
the United Electrical Workers and United Steel Workers, essentially blaming
the strikers for bringing the violence down on their own heads.
        "Members of the audience asked representatives to move, but they
continued the demonstration," her letter says, adding that "the Mexican
officials responded to all questions from the audience," - after, of
course, the strikers themselves had been expelled.  Moctezuma himself
"reiterated his government's commitment to improving workers' freedom of
association rights," Herman declares, concluding that the meeting "was
organized in conformity with those commitments."

        The incident marked a fitting conclusion to a sorry record of total
failure by NAFTA to enforce workers' rights.  When the North American Free
Trade Agreement went into effect in January, 1994, all three NAFTA
countries agreed to another treaty, the North American Agreement on Labor
Cooperation, which pledged each to enforce its own labor laws, and set up a
process for hearing complaints of violations.
        In the ensuing years, almost 20 complaints have been filed.  The
highest-profile cases have been those at Han Young, and at another plant in
Mexico City, ITAPSA.  At both factories, U.S. and Mexican unions alleged
that workers were prevented from exercising their legal right to organize
independent unions.     Additional complaints also alleged that Mexico
failed to enforce its health and safety laws at the plants.  The ITAPSA
complaint charged especially dangerous conditions, with workers routinely
exposed to asbestos, a known source of lung cancer.
        Under the NAFTA process, the NAO held a series of hearings, and
concluded that serious violations of Mexican law had occurred.  In May,
U.S. Labor Secretary Herman and her Mexican counterpart, Mariano Palacios
Alcocer, settled the cases.  Mexico agreed to hold two seminars to discuss
better protection for workers organizing independent unions, and better
enforcement of health and safety laws.  The Tijuana meeting was the first
of the two.  Another is scheduled this fall in Mexico City, where ITAPSA is
located.
        The agreements, however, do not require the Mexican government to
do anything concrete to change the situation of workers in either plant.
"We're extremely disappointed," says Robin Alexander, director of
international affairs for the United Electrical Workers, which supported
the independent Mexican Authentic Labor Front (FAT) in its fight at ITAPSA.
"We expected there would be a more significant outcome."
        The UE, FAT and the union at Han Young had particularly high hopes
for the complaints about lack of enforcement of health and safety laws.
While NAFTA has no penalties for denying workers their right to form
independent unions, Mexico could have been fined a percentage of its export
earnings, a potentially huge amount of money, for health and safety
violations.  With the settlement agreements, that possibility was removed.
        "Nothing will actually change at ITAPSA," says FAT general
secretary Benedicto Martinez.  "The Mexican government has a long history
of finding reasons not to enforce its own laws protecting workers."
        The Clinton administration's position linking trade policy and
labor rights places the NAO and Herman under a spotlight.  During the WTO
meeting in Seattle, the administration argued that free trade agreements
could protect workers rights while boosting profits for large corporations.
It pointed to NAFTA's labor side agreement as proof of its claim.
Vice-President Al Gore went even further, claiming he would guarantee the
enforcement of labor rights in future trade negotiations.
        Yet the actual record of the side agreement doesn't inspire
confidence.  As a result of all the complaints filed since 1994, only one
of the many workers fired in Mexico for independent union activity has been
rehired, and not a single contract signed.  A small number of cases has
been filed over the failure of U.S. labor law to protect workers here as
well, with a similar lack of concrete results.  Karesh says that because
the treaty is government-to-government, "we can't get a particular worker's
job back, or try to resolve cases in favor of particular groups of workers."
        He points out that the Mexican government did promise two important
reforms in the settlement agreements.  It said that workers would be able
to choose the union to represent them by secret ballot in future elections,
a change from the current procedure which requires that workers announce
their vote in public.  And it agreed to publish a list of all union
contracts, which would make protection contracts public knowledge for the
first time, especially to those workers who labor under them.  "I believe
we will begin to see an impact," Karesh says, "but will there be immediate
change?  I don't think so."
        Beckman sees a "very limited" value in the NAO process.  "Our
government's policy is not uniform, and there are contradictions in its
stated goals.  Our job is to push them, just like the companies do."
        And despite the beatings (which received almost no coverage in the
U.S. press), further NAO complaints continue to be filed.  A recent one
alleging violations of health and safety, as well as labor, rights in Breed
Technology's Custom Trim/Auto Trim plants, was filed by the CJM and the
Comite Fronterizo Obrera (the Border Women Workers Committee) in September.
        While Mexican organizations also believe NAO complaints have
limited value, they nevertheless feel they keep their government under
pressure, and provide a forum for continuing to denounce violations.

        One way out of the NAO box is to build a much longer-range
relationship between U.S., Canadian and Mexican unions, going beyond
individual campaigns.  The UE and the FAT have a "strategic organizing
alliance," in which the two unions have supported each other since their
first joint campaign challenged General Electric in Ciudad Juarez in 1994.
Both unions root their cross-border relationship among rank-and-file
members, who visit each other's plants, and get a good understanding of
life on each side of the border.  The relationship respects the autonomy of
each union and its decision-making process, undermining accusations that
the Mexican union is simply a tool of U.S. labor.
        At ITAPSA, the UE and the FAT extended their two-part alliance to
attempt to involve all the unions which represented plants owned by its
parent corporation, Echlin Industries, [now part of the Dana auto parts
giant].   That alliance points in an important direction.  If workers had
strong, independent unions at all the Mexican, Canadian and U.S. plant of a
given company, they could share information about contract terms and wages,
and eventually assist each other in bargaining.  In the event of a conflict
with the parent company, simultaneous job action in all three countries
could prevent it from shifting production across borders to defeat unions.
        But actually achieving a level economic playing field, with wages
relatively equal from country to country, lies a giant step beyond.  And
without such economic equality, corporations will continue to shift
production where wages and costs are lowest.
        This is the root problem with NAFTA and its labor side-agreement.
Protecting workers' rights requires the U.S. government to promote
conditions which undermine the profit-making NAFTA was designed to further
- a basic conflict of interest.
        In the years since NAFTA was signed, Public Citizen's Global Trade
Watch says the U.S. Department of Labor has certified that over 500,000
U.S. workers have lost their jobs due to the agreement -- a vast undercount
in most expert opinion.  Cornell professor Kate Bronfenbrenner has
documented the doubling of instances since NAFTA passed, in which employers
have stifled organizing efforts of U.S. workers by threatening to relocate
production.
        The record in Mexico is even worse.  The Mexican government admits
the loss of over a million jobs in 1995 alone.  That year's peso
devaluation cut the standard of living in half for most workers, while
increasing profits for transnational corporations.
        The new rules of economic globalization say that Mexican workers,
if they want jobs, must accept low wages and conditions far worse than
those north of the border, and firings and repression if they try to change
them.
        Well before the treaty's passage, the disparity between U.S. and
Mexican wages was growing.  According to economist and former Mexican
senator Rosalbina Garabito, Mexican salaries were a third of those in the
U.S. up to the 1970s.  They are now less than an eighth - even a 12th or
15th, depending on the industry.
        According to a recent Mexican government survey, the average
5-member family, with three members working full time, has an income of
about 5-6000 pesos a month ($550-650).  Forty million people live in
poverty, 25 million in extreme poverty.
        In Tijuana, the average maquiladora daily wage is about 50 pesos.
Under pressure from foreign lenders, the Mexican government has ended
subsidies on the prices of basic necessities.  Yet during the last two
decades of economic reforms, the income of Mexican workers has lost 76% of
its purchasing power.
        Gema Lopez Limon, professor at the University of Baja California in
Mexicali, argues that the worsening conditions of Mexican workers are a
direct result of the impact of reforms, especially the privatization of the
state sector of the Mexican economy.  "Our government and corporations are
using privatization to do away with unions entirely," she says.
        While three-quarters of the workforce in Mexico belonged to unions
three decades ago, less than 30% do so today.  In the state-owned oil
company, PEMEX, for instance, union membership still hovers at 72%.  But
when the collateral petrochemical industry was privatized over the last
decade-and-a-half, the unionization rate fell to 7%.
        If U.S. unions can't find a way to support Mexican unions battling
this wave, there won't be much of a labor movement left to reform.  The
right to organize independent unions on the border is part of a larger
picture, and depends on the ability of Mexican unions to fight for
political rights and  economic policies which protect workers.
        The cross border solidarity movement has only begun to tackle this
problem.  In the early 1990s, when 10,000 Mexico City bus drivers lost
their jobs in the privatization of the Route 100 transit system, leaders of
the west coast International Longshore and Warehouse Union visited their
leaders in prison, delivering a check for $5000.  The union also sent
delegations to visit Mexican ports, looking for unions and workers
interested in mounting a fight to stop port privatization.
        Then, in 1999, the AFL-CIO itself supported the copper miners'
strike at Cananea, just 60 miles south of Arizona.  The workers sought to
stop massive layoffs, after the mine had been sold to Grupo Mexico, in
partnership with the American Smelting and Refining Co.
        Led by state AFL-CIO representative Jerry Acosta, caravans of
pickup trucks laden with food and supplies snaked their way from the U.S.
to the tiny mountain town in the Sonora desert, where strikers had occupied
the mine.  Meanwhile, the AFL-CIO's office In Mexico City tried to
encourage the union's national leaders to support the fight.  In the end,
however, the Mexican government sent in troops, and facing the threat of
bloodshed, the miners retreated.  Hundreds lost their jobs.
        Last year the Mexican Electrical Workers, one of the country's
oldest and most democratic unions, successfully fought the privatization of
the Power and Light Company of central Mexico, collecting over 2.7 million
signatures in opposition within three weeks.  The new Mexican
administration of Vicente Fox, however, whose National Action Party
defeated the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party for the first time in
71 years, supports even greater neoliberal reforms.  Fox has already
announced that on taking office, electrical privatization will be back on
the agenda.

        Up to now, U.S. labor has been relatively silent on privatization,
despite the fact that to Mexican unions it constitutes a much greater
threat than the growth of U.S.-owned maquiladoras on the border.
Solidarity is a two-way street.  If the AFL-CIO only fights about the
activities of U.S. corporations, it appears motivated mainly by a desire to
punish job flight.  Just as U.S. unions expect their Mexican counterparts
to do a better job defending the interests of maquiladora workers, Mexican
labor might appreciate more help from the AFL-CIO in opposing U.S.-mandated
reforms.
        Mexican unions, especially progressive and independent ones, see
U.S. pressure behind the IMF loan conditions and their government's
neoliberal policies.  They wonder if AFL-CIO support for the Clinton
administration and Al Gore in November's election means it is acquiescing
to those policies.  If the U.S. labor federation were to call for our
government to stop pushing privatization during the upcoming battles, it
would go a long ways towards demonstrating its commitment to solidarity,
even at the risk of antagonizing the U.S. administration.  AFL-CIO
President John Sweeney could go to Mexico City, and make that solidarity
visible by linking arms with Mexican union leaders at the head of their
next anti-privatization march.
        Even better, U.S. union members and local officers could be
organized to send delegations of their own, on a continuing basis, at the
invitation of their Mexican counterparts.  Even without an AFL-CIO call,
every time a struggle like Duro begins, U.S. labor activists start heading
south, while those from Mexico come north.  Solidarity has captured the
imagination of labor's activist core.
        In 1995, after being elected AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer, Rich
Trumka called for a different direction for AFL-CIO international
relationships.  "The cold war has gone," he declared.  "It's over.  We want
to be able to confront multinationals as multinationals ourselves now.  If
a corporation does business in 15 countries, we'd like to be able to
confront them as labor in 15 countries.  It's not that we need less
international involvement, but it should be focussed towards building
solidarity, helping workers achieve their needs and their goals here at
home."
        Trumka's statement is not just a reflection of good sentiments by
an enlightened labor leader, but an expression of profound movement below,
in labor's rank-and-file.  In the years since the change in the AFL-CIO's
direction, U.S. workers have won a deeper understanding of the need for
solidarity - that they cannot confront transnational corporations
successfully within the borders of the U.S. alone.  NAFTA's aftermath
taught millions of U.S. workers that government policies lead to job flight
by enforcing privatization and pro-corporate economic reforms.  Those
policies can't be challenged successfully either, without cross-border
cooperation.
        Security is not national, but international.
        Today a movement of workers and activists is creating a laboratory
for a new kind of internationalism, and its growth is having a profound
effect on labor's political direction, in both the U.S. and Mexico.  If
unions are to survive and challenge the new world economic order, these
changes are the hope for the future.

---------------------------------------------------------------
david bacon - labornet email            david bacon
internet:       [EMAIL PROTECTED]      1631 channing way
phone:          510.549.0291            berkeley, ca  94703
---------------------------------------------------------------

===================================================================

Anti-Globalization Activist Jose Bove Is At It Again

<http://www.commondreams.org/headlines01/0130-01.htm>

Published on Tuesday, January 30, 2001 by Agence France-Presse

PORTO ALEGRE, Brazil - Jose Bove, the anti-globalisation activist who has
been given an ultimatium to leave Brazil, revels in controversy.

Already under threat of a prison sentence for his part in ransacking a
McDonald's fast food outlet in his native France, Bove is a determined
campaigner who refuses to compromise his firmly-held principles.

This time he is in hot water for leading an invasion by 1,300 Brazilian
farmers of plantations run by US biotechnology firm Monsanto. They uprooted
genetically-modified corn and soya bean plants, burned seeds and destroyed
documents in the company's offices.

His initiative at an anti-globalisation forum here -- an alternative to the
annual gathering of the world's political and business elite taking place
in Davos, Switzerland -- was another publicity-seeking success.
Bove, 47, has become an instantly recognisable figure, with his extravagant
moustache and pipe-smoking habit, popping up wherever there is an
ecological axe to be ground.

He has travelled the world lecturing anyone who will listen on the evils of
globalisation and genetically-modifed crops and has earned the nickname
'Asterix' -- after a French comic strip character -- for his determination
to repel alien invaders in the form of foreign capitalist concerns.

A sheep-farmer and producer of the celebrated Roquefort cheese, he has
become the standard-bearer of the fight against new economic and
gastronomic imperialism.

His appearances at anti-globalisation gatherings in Seattle and Davos shot
him to fame and his conviction for the trashing of a McDonald's fast-food
restaurant in his home town of Millau served only to reinforce his
reputation as a swashbuckling resistance hero.

A crowd of 30,000 turned out in Millau to support Bove when he and nine
colleagues from his radical farmers' union, the Peasant Confederation, went
on trial over the McDonald's escapade.

Popular French singer Francis Cabrel has described Bove as "one of the last
courageous, natural, honest voices left in a world where the rest are
tarnished by compromise."

Ironically, for a man who epitomises the virtues of the traditional French
son-of-the-soil, Bove speaks faultless English, learned when his bourgeois
parents spent four years in the United States.

His story is typical of many of the 1968 generation of French students who
rose up against middle class conservatism, turning his back on the city in
search of a simpler life on the land.

In the 1970s he and his wife Alice were among the leaders of a successful
campaign to defend the starkly beautiful Larzac plateau outside Millau
against plans to extend a military camp there.

In 1987, he helped set up the Peasant Confederation, whose aim has been to
champion the cause of small producers against the interests of big business
and agricultural barons.

With his honed sense of publicity Bove once organised the ploughing of the
park under the Eiffel Tower in the centre of Paris to protest EU farm policies.

In 1995 he was aboard the ship Rainbow Warrior in the south Pacific to
protest France's resumption of nuclear tests. Three years later he was
convicted for destroying a consignment of genetically-modified maize.

But it took the shock-tactics of an act of criminal damage against
McDonald's to propel him into the public eye.

Bove enjoys broad public support. Criticism of America comes easy in France
and most French people believe the cause of small farmers is just.

Both Prime Minister Lionel Jospin and President Jacques Chirac have felt it
worth their while to hear Bove's views at first hand.

===================================================================

World Social Forum in Brazil news release

From: Soren <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: news release from World Social Forum in Brazil
Date: Tue, 30 Jan 2001

Please note that the following press release highlights the contributions of
U.S.-based participants in the television debate between participants in the
World Economic Forum in Davos Switzerland and the World Social Forum in
Porto Alegre Brazil.  It does so because it was released to U.S. media; it
shouldn't be construed to mean that the contributions of the other
participants were any less valuable.
----

For Immediate Release: January 29, 2001

Contact: (in Washington, DC) Simon Greer, Jobs with Justice
(in Porto Alegre) Njoki Njeh or Soren Ambrose, 50 Years Is
Enough Network

Social Justice Advocates Rip Soros, U.N. Officials in Bi-Continental Debate

Sharply opposed visions of the future of the world clashed Sunday in a
satellite broadcast of a debate pitting four participants in the annual
World Economic Forum at the ski resort town of Davos, Switzerland against a
panel of 12 activists selected from among those attending the World Social
Forum, an unprecedented  meeting of over ten thousand activists for
economic, social, and environmental justice in Porto Alegre, Brazil.

Financier and philanthropist George Soros, one of the debaters in Davos,
where capitalist superstars met for the 31st annual forum to discuss the
future was condemned as a cause of poverty and instability because of his
legendary financial speculation.

Two United Nations officials -- Mark Malloch-Brown, head of the United
Nations Development Program (UNDP) and a representative of Secretary-General
Kofi Annan -- came under intense criticism for lending the U.N.'s
credibility to the exclusive gathering of corporate executives and
politicians in Switzerland. Njoki Njeh, a Kenyan who directs the
Washington-based 50 Years Is Enough Network, which advocates the profound
transformation of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank,
accused the U.N. of helping corporations like Shell Oil and Nike "bluewash"
their dubious records of environmental devastation and low wages by pledging
to abide by a set of responsible business practices under the "U.N. Global
Compact."

"Such actions are a repudiation of the U.N.'s credibility," said Njeh.
"How impartial and open can the leading global institution be when its
officials congratulate notorious corporate human rights abusers?"  In
response to the UNDP's Malloch-Brown, who protested that his institution was
dedicated to finding new ideas for more successful and equitable economic
development, Njeh said, "Will Malloch-Brown commit the UNDP to
supporting an immediate end to IMF/World Bank austerity programs, which have
enriched corporations and caused increasing poverty for 20 years?"
Malloch-Brown declined.

Another Porto Alegre debater, Fred Azcarate, Executive Director of
Washington-based Jobs with Justice, a national campaign for workers' rights
joining labor, religious, and community groups, responded to the Davos
debaters' surprise at the wrath expressed in Brazil by saying they should
recognize, and relay to their peers at the World Economic Forum, that the
"righteous anger" glimpsed at demonstrations in Seattle, Washington DC,
Bangkok, Melbourne, and Prague was "alive and well."  "That anger is
undiminished despite some glowing promises from business and political
leaders, because it is obvious the economic elites like those gathered in
Davos have refused to take seriously the many proposals for a just world
like those being created in Porto Alegre."

Others involved in the debate included the chief executive of ABB, the
European engineering and construction company, in Davos, and, in Porto
Alegre, activists representing landless peasants in Latin America, Brazilian
trade unionists, Argentina's Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, South Africa's
anti-privatization campaigns, the World March of Women, and long-time
economic justice campaigners from the Philippines, France, and Mali.

===================================================================

This Is What Democracy Looks Like

<http://www.corpwatch.org/trac/globalization/wef/portoalegre2.html>

      Dispatch
      By Kenny Bruno
      Special to Corporate Watch
      January 28, 2001

      "Um outro mundo é possível."-- Another world is possible.

      Porto Alegre, Brazil -- That's the slogan of the World Social Forum
underway here. Or, as they said in Seattle, "This is
      what democracy looks like."

      While thousands chanted that slogan in Seattle, Washington D.C.,
Chiang Mai, Melbourne and Prague, they were
      being tear gassed, preemptively arrested, harassed and generally
denied their rights by an enormous show of state
      force on behalf of undemocratic international institutions.

      In Porto Alegre, this is what democracy looks like: During a march of
thousands against neo-liberalism I counted 10
      police officers. When 200 Brazilian anarchists broke off from the
march to throw white paint on a McDonald's, about
      six police stood by.

      The next day, an ex-cop explained it this way, "We police were
instructed to form partnerships with the social
      movements." By comparison Davos, Switzerland, where the World Economic
Forum is meeting this week, has
      become a fortress.

      Porto Alegre is an appropriate setting for the World Social Forum,
while authorities have shut down the roads to
      Davos, deported activists, and banned marches. In Porto Alegre, the
Governor of the State of Rio Grande do Sul,
      gave the opening speech. In fact, his government was a major funder of
the Forum.

           In Porto Alegre, this is what democracy looks like: Hundreds of
young people are camping nearby -- apparently
           without ever sleeping -- virtually without police presence.

           This is what democracy looks like: Participatory budgeting. For
12 years, Porto Alegre´s budget has been
           decided made by hundreds of well-organized community and worker
groups.

           This is what democracy looks like: There is no corporate
sponsorship of the World Social Forum. No ads telling
           us how sustainable Shell is, or how clean Dow is, or how
concerned for the poor Philip Morris is. No Nike
           swooshes. Just a few banners for the national bank of Brazil,
saying "It's better because it's ours." The most
           ubiquitous logo around is that of the Workers' Party, on flags
everywhere.

           In Porto Alegre, this is what democracy looks like: Lots of
meetings and lots of talking. The humid rooms,
           over-packed with people, listening for the umpteenth hour to
plans to stop new free trade agreements and
           models for local economic democracy.

           This is what democracy looks like: There are lots of unionized
workers present. The state of Rio Grande do Sul
           has twice as many union members as the national average.

           This is what democracy looks like: The entire state of Rio Grande
do Sul has been declared GMO-free,
           although some Roundup Ready soy has been smuggled in from
Argentina, according to one knowledgeable
           government official from Brasilia. Two days ago activists
traveled with French farmer/activist Jose Bove four
           hours out of Porto Alegre to tear up a few illegal acres of
Monsanto's Roundup Ready Franken-soy.

      The World Social Forum is the first significant post-Seattle gathering
where the goal is not to disrupt the meetings of
      undemocratic institutions, in what has become a series of traveling
protests. Rather it is a space for activists to think,
      talk and imagine another world -- a more just, democratic world.

      The anti-corporate globalization movement has come to "an important
stage in the counter-offensive that began in
      Seattle," says Walden Bello, Executive Director of Thailand-based
Focus on the Global South.

      Naturally, the rhetoric of democracy in Porto Alegre cannot be
transferred everywhere, especially not to the U.S. In
      the opening ceremony, during introductions of the 120 countries
represented by delegates, Cuba received the loudest
      ovation, while the U.S. and Israel got a smattering of boos. There is
occasionally a flavor of old-style leftism that
      sounds irrelevant to most U.S. ears.

      And, as one should expect in a gathering as large and diverse as this
one, there are significant differences of opinion on
      policy and strategy. For example, some participants are working to
incorporate social and environmental clauses into
      the WTO, others insist there must be no new round of the WTO.

      Nevertheless, the overall feeling here is of fresh air coming into the
debate over globalization, especially compared with
      the stale rhetoric in Davos. From Porto Alegre, the concept that a
gathering of the rich and powerful is the answer for
      the poor and dispossessed, that the World Economic Forum has somehow
transformed itself into a global poverty
      program, seems too absurd to bother debunking.

      Yet neither is the Social Forum a poverty program. And that is one of
most refreshing aspects of the gathering. It is not
      about money. It's not about growth, "sustainable" or otherwise. It's
not even really about development -- a concept that
      has perhaps been hopelessly perverted by institutions like the World
Economic Forum and the World Bank. Still,
      economic issues are prominent in the discussions here.

      Rather the Forum is about democracy. Not the democracy that comes from
more money and therefore more choices
      of things to buy, but rather the democracy of participation in local
and society-wide economic decisions. This is the
      democracy that corporate globalization gazes so harshly on.

      Even the most ardent supporters of the current form of globalization
acknowledge that it is a web of powerful and
      unaccountable forces. They say the best we can do as individuals and
as nations, is to prepare ourselves to flourish in
      this lightening-fast, hyper-competitive world, grabbing what we can
for ourselves -- mobility, wealth, markets,
      computers.

      The folks here would not be interested in this individualistic and
competitive vision of society, even if the powerful
      institutions controlling globalization were to reduce the inequities
and provide a safety net for those left out.

      There are many challenges for the World Social Forum. Midway through
the gathering, participants had not decided
      where, when and if there will be another one (it seems likely). Nor
had they settled on producing a statement or
      manifesto (it seems unlikely). Activists must stay alert to the
cooptation of our language and ideas by the World
      Economic Forum, by the WTO and World Bank. We must improve the
democratic process within the Social Forum
      -- to include more students, more non-Brazilians, more indigenous
people, and others. We must make sure to keep the
      momentum that started with the explosion in Seattle.

      Seattle was the pivotal moment in the first plank of this complex
movement -- protest and resistance. Porto Alegre will,
      I believe, come to be seen as an important step in moving forward the
second part - innovation and alternatives.

      It is important that many protestors have gone to Davos to continue to
expose the injustice of the World Economic
      Forum. But I'm glad I came to Porto Alegre. As Walden Bello, a veteran
of Davos meetings, says, "Davos is the past.
      Porto Alegre is the future."

      And the present is a collective dream of the thousands gathered here:
Um outro mundo é possível.
----
      Kenny Bruno is a Corporate Watch Research Associate.

===================================================================

National Progressive Media: Who's Left?

by Andrea Buffa

When it comes to the question of why most progressive national media outlets
reach such a small percentage of their potential audience, progressive
activists are conflicted. On the one hand, we're exhilarated when we reach
large numbers -- whether it's the Independent Media Center website getting
1.5 million hits during the protests against the World Trade Organization,
or the Chronicle running a rare cover story on an issue we care about. On
the other hand, we insist that progressive media must hold firm to their
progressive missions regardless of how large an audience they draw.

Nowhere has this conflict been sharper than in free speech activists'
struggle against the right-wing assault on the Pacifica Radio Network. For
the past several years, the Pacifica board of directors and national
management have been forcing structural and programming changes in the
network that they claim will increase audience size and diversity. Since
many of these changes have led to a tempering of Pacifica's programming,
community organizers and activists contend that the issue of audience size
is a red herring -- what Pacifica managers are really trying to do is
eviscerate the politics of the only progressive radio network in the United
States. Free speech activists call for Pacifica to pursue its mission,
rather than pursuing high audience ratings.

At other progressive media institutions, editors and producers offer their
own excuses for their small audiences: when there is no mass social justice
movement, they say, there will not be a socially conscious mass media
outlet. But those who are active in social justice movements often see a
different problem. Among ourselves, we criticize the left press -- from The
Nation to Mother Jones to the Pacifica Network News -- for being boring,
academic, homogenous, and out of touch with social justice activists.

Rarely, though, do activists or independent media producers go beyond the
mainstream measurements of audience size and financial success to evaluate
our own progressive media institutions. As we enter 2001 with apparently
growing progressive political movements -- the anti-corporate globalization
movement, the Green party, youth fighting against the prison industrial
complex -- we owe it to ourselves to grapple with the difficult question of
whether or not our national progressive media are serving the needs of our
movements and helping promote social change.

Measuring Our Effectiveness

Laura Flanders has thought a lot about this question. Flanders did media
criticism with Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting for nearly ten years. She
now hosts the only progressive talk show on AM radio at the Working Assets
radio station in Boulder, Colorado. Flanders and Working Assets are trying
to make in-roads in a medium that is dominated by the radical right. "My
listeners were listening to Rush Limbaugh," Flanders says. "[Working in
commercial AM radio] does bring me smack up against the failures of the
alternative media movement. I put on what I think is a great show, and there
are no calls."

By traditional measures of success, such as audience size and financial
support, Flanders' show isn't doing well. (Nor are most national alternative
media institutions, which not only reach small numbers of people but also
consistently lose money.) But she measures her effectiveness in other ways.
She considers listener response, call-ins, emails, the level of listener
participation in activism, and whether or not her show has raised important
issues. "I think I do a good job raising social justice issues. I just don't
know if I raise them in a way that AM talk radio listeners can hear."

Flanders says that progressives should realize that it takes years to
develop a large audience for a radio show, and that audience size should be
but one factor in measuring effectiveness. "Apple gave itself seven tries at
a successful computer before they got the iMac and G4," she points out.

For Peggy Law, executive director of the International Media Project (IMP),
one of the most important measures of success for the IMP radio show, Making
Contact, is the activists' ability to use it in their outreach and education
efforts. For example, the National Housing Law Project just bought 15 copies
of a recent Making Contact show on housing, which they will use in
presentations to organizations, activists, and students all over the
country.

With a skeleton staff of four paid employees and numerous volunteers, IMP
has succeeded in six short years in convincing more than 160 radio stations
to air Making Contact weekly. They have also produced numerous special
shows, especially around the large protests that were organized this year in
Seattle and elsewhere. "One of the reasons we're pretty exhausted right now
is because we want to be as responsive as we can be to movement changes, so
we were in Seattle, in DC in April, and did unconventional coverage at both
conventions, even though we didn't even have a travel budget," Law says. And
in response to demands from Pacifica Radio listeners, IMP will soon pilot a
new progressive national daily news show to replace the Pacifica Network
News.

"The tension between content and audience has to be addressed constantly.
Pacifica has lost track of the mission," says Law. She acknowledges the
value of getting Making Contact on as many radio stations as possible. "The
number of stations is important, but also the diversity of stations. We like
it when we have a station that has a huge listening audience, but we're
equally excited when we get an Alaskan fishing village or stations that are
not in the group of stations which would normally carry Pacifica
programming. One of our goals is to reach beyond the circle of communities
who are already looking for this." At the same time, she is not willing to
water down the content of the show to appeal to more mainstream stations.

Flanders and Law see their shows as part of the social justice movement and,
therefore, measure their effectiveness very much by whether or not they are
serving social justice activists. By contrast, Katrina vanden Heuvel, who's
worked on and off at The Nation for the last 20 years and now holds its top
editorial position, says that The Nation "doesn't pretend to be a social
change agent; first and foremost, we are an independent publication."

"What The Nation can do," vanden Heuvel says, "is provide progressives with
information and a context within which to consider important ideas." Vanden
Heuvel describes the readers of The Nation (circulation 100,000) as
activists, academics, and journalists, as well as people outside of urban
areas who consider it their lifeline to the progressive community. She
believes The Nation has been most effective when a story it covers pushes
leaders in Congress, the labor movement, and elsewhere to act on issues they
would not have acted on. A good investigative story can provoke a
Congressional investigation of U.S. military complicity with paramilitary
groups in East Timor. Or, consistent coverage of the living wage issue can
put the term into the general discourse and have it accepted by the labor
movement.

Not that vanden Heuvel ignores the role of social justice activists. The
street is not the only place where social change happens, she contends.
There is a national battle of ideas, and progressives need a publication
that can insert itself into that battle.

Self-reflections

On the subject of how national progressive media outlets could improve their
effectiveness, vanden Heuvel looks more to external structural barriers than
to the failings of the left press for an explanation. She believes that
there are millions of progressives in the United States, "but TV -- let's be
honest -- is the media which millions of Americans get their news from." The
left has no television station nor does it have a talk-radio network.

"We need daily outlets for the progressive media," says Amy Goodman, co-host
of Pacifica Radio's popular national show, Democracy Now. The left has
neither a daily national newspaper nor a daily wire service. Goodman does
not give credence to what she calls the "mainstream media point of view"
that the public can be divided along liberal and conservative lines, and
that liberal issues are of no interest to a larger public. Referring to the
pathetic coverage of the annual protest against the School of the Americas,
where thousands have been arrested in the last three years, she points out
that if people had known about the protests and the history of the school,
they would have cared. Military people would have been concerned about it;
journalists would have been interested in covering it. But most people just
never heard about it. "I think there's a big audience out there. The
audience doesn't share the point of view that the media puts out," Goodman
says.

Currently under pressure from Pacifica management to soften her reporting on
issues like police brutality and the death penalty, Goodman is perhaps
reluctant to critique the progressive media establishment. Other progressive
media journalists, however, have no problem articulating their criticisms
and offering opinions about the self-marginalization of progressive media
institutions.

Don Hazen is one of them. A former editor at Mother Jones, Hazen now directs
the Independent Media Institute, which puts out AlterNet, a wire service for
alternative news weeklies. What does he think about a television station run
by progressives? "To yearn for one is to operate in the world of unreality,"
Hazen says. "Nobody would watch a progressive TV channel, at least not
enough people so that anybody could make any money with it. That's why there
isn't one."

Hazen believes that progressives need to think more strategically about
media, especially the role of corporate media. "In the final analysis,
change doesn't happen because of progressive media. So we progressives need
to go beyond progressive media, using a combination of grassroots
organizing, demonstrations, the Internet, paid ads, effective PR, and on and
on, and be campaign oriented," he says. Progressive media does not identify
and hone in on the audience that is most essential for bringing about
change, he says. It may mean making use of mainstream media, but he fears
that many progressives, including leaders of progressive media institutions,
would rather marginalize themselves than chance being "corrupted" by their
participation in the corporate media.

In Flanders' opinion, progressive media outlets tend to talk down to people
and don't collaborate effectively with each other. When some of Flanders'
colleagues interviewed some regular listeners of RadioForChange -- employees
at a Toyota body shop -- they were shocked to learn that these people would
never consider calling in to the show because they didn't think they were
smart enough. "How do we sustain our listeners and sustain our communities
and at the same time have it not be a closed conversation? Are we having our
conversation in a way that excludes other people?" Flanders asks. Vanden
Heuvel -- whose publication The Nation is often criticized by activists as
being too academic -- is also concerned about opening up the conversation.
"If corporate power is the most important issue of our time, we need to find
a language that describes corporate power that is more accessible to
others," she says. Peggy Law's own observation is that "many of us [in the
media of the Left] are better at critiquing and resisting than we are at
building something helpful. This becomes discouraging."

On the issue of collaboration, vanden Heuvel agrees with Flanders. "I do
think that progressives are too reluctant to act together until they agree
on everything," she says. This is particularly troubling, Flanders believes,
because the result is multiple progressive media institutions with almost
identical mission statements and projects, duplicating each others'
efforts -- something cash-strapped organizations simply cannot afford. Worse
still, independent media outlets often pit themselves against each other
because they are competing for limited funding, says Law. Of course, this
leads to even less collaboration.

Flanders also criticizes what some call the "unbearable Whiteness of the
national progressive media." "Movements of the last 20 years have said that
racism, sexism, and homophobia are not just details or side issues --
they're central issues. And our alternative press hasn't taken these on,"
she says. Hazen agrees that the audience for progressive media is
predominantly White and middle-aged, but he sees it more as a matter of
media matching the culture of a group. "Intellectual magazines don't cut it
for most young people," he says. "Hip hop, the Internet, zines, slams,
Napster, are all more appropriate because they are part of their culture,
just like The Nation, ITT [In These Times], et al, are part of ours."

Where do we go from here?

If Hazen is right, and the popularity of the left press is limited to the
generation that is now in its middle age, the future of traditional
progressive media institutions looks bleak. Fortunately, the popularity of
Internet media outlets, particularly the IMC website, give reason for hope
and a glimpse of the possible next phase of development for progressive
media.

When he hears talk of the decline and failure of the left press, Don Rojas
of The Black World Today website is quick to point out that in the last
year, progressive websites have experienced a boom. "We should not overlook
the fact that usage of progressive websites and progressive new media in
general is on the increase. I expect this will continue," Rojas says. His
website is a case in point. Launched in July 1996, The Black World Today
(www.tbwt.com), has had more than four million visitors and experiences a
five to ten percent increase in traffic every month. Rojas says that web
users -- especially young people -- are very receptive to progressive
messages. Like Working Assets' RadioForChange, The Black World Today is a
commercial venture -- albeit one that has yet to turn a profit.

Most progressives would agree that the IMC phenomenon is the most exciting
development in national progressive media of the last 15 years. The large
audience for the IMC sites is paralleled by the enthusiasm of independent
media makers wanting to work for the IMC for free. "We had no idea that 450
people would come and sign up [as IMC journalists] to participate in
Seattle," says Sheri Herndon, a Seattle-based radio journalist and activist.
"In DC [at the protest against the IMF and World Bank], 800 people signed
up; in LA [at the Democratic convention], 1400 people showed up . . . during
the week of the presidential election, we got over 100,000 hits per day at
the main site."

Herndon believes that the IMCs are effective, because "movement" activists
see them as something they can use. "It's not that we're exporting the IMC.
It's that activists are requesting an IMC. The model fills a void," says
Herndon. It doesn't cost much to create an IMC, and the self-publishing
software already exists and can be replicated for any city. The software
allows activists to create their own media rather than having their ideas
filtered through a journalist, even if that journalist works for the
progressive media.

As alluring as it is to romanticize the IMC as the perfect progressive media
institution for the 21st century, it is an institution that is still going
through the growing pains that many established national left media outlets
went through decades ago. The decision-making structure at the IMC is still
evolving, with each individual IMC developing its own structure, and larger
issues for the IMC network being discussed on IMC email lists. Some people
would call it process hell. Herndon counters that the "constant collective
reflection" shows a dedication of IMC participants to democracy and access
that is revolutionary.

More problematic is the fact that the IMC network is run entirely by
volunteers, some of whom are working 60 hour weeks without pay to keep this
miraculous media phenomenon on track. "Some people feel the IMCs should
remain a volunteer organization. Those people don't tend to be the ones who
are working full time on the IMC," Herndon says. There is also the question
of how the IMC will sustain itself in the months ahead without a major
activist mobilization effort to cover. But Herndon believes that the IMC has
already found a niche outside of major events -- as a wire service for news
about activism.

Aside from the IMC website and several Internet portals for progressive
information (Common Dreams, for example), the only other national daily
source of news with a progressive slant is Democracy Now. It is also the
most often mentioned example of successful progressive media. "I think
Democracy Now is a model of a kind of journalism that inspires and motivates
people," Flanders says. Goodman, her co-host Juan Gonzalez, and the show's
producers seem to have their fingers firmly on the pulse of the progressive
movements.

What is it about Democracy Now that makes it so effective? Although Goodman
is one of the harshest critics of corporate media around, she has picked up
certain lessons from the mainstream press. The main one is that issues have
to be covered regularly and persistently. Otherwise, they don't sink in,
Goodman says. She gives the example of her coverage of Leonard Peltier's
clemency hearing in November 2000. "Now that Peltier's case is being decided
on, we'll talk about it every single day, like mainstream press covers
celebrities," Goodman explains. She believes that if the journalist is
unabashed, unafraid, determined to uncover the truth, and unwilling to
temper the message, and if she covers the issues over and over again, the
audience will come. Democracy Now is proof that her philosophy works.

What's next, then, for the national progressive media? Rojas of The Black
World Today is pushing for progressives to come together on an Internet
radio station that would broadcast programming 24-hours a day. Hazen also
believes that progressives should sink their resources into the Internet.
But whatever the form of the new national left media institutions, it's
clear what their goals need to be.

We must have some progressive media institutions whose charge is to keep our
growing cadre of social justice activists informed and inspired to take to
the streets to demand change. We must also have progressive media
institutions that use mainstream media methods (or spin their stories to the
mainstream press) to reach the masses of people who have yet to decide where
they stand on the important issues of our time -- not to mention the
political and economic elites who hold power in this country.

The audience has a role to play too. Hazen worries that people who read The
Nation and listen to Pacifica Radio stations like KPFA believe that the
action of consuming progressive media in and of itself constitutes political
activism. "As [Ralph] Nader points out, there are powerful stories on the
front page of the New York Times; whole issues of Time Magazine devoted to
corporate corruption. The corporate establishment yawns. Nothing happens. .
. . Articles, ads, stories without campaigns and organizing are futile. They
fall into the hole."

Progressive messages -- whether in print or on the Internet or on radio --
are not going to create social change on their own. This means that audience
members must go beyond just reading and listening; they must also take
action.

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