>The pharmaceutical and medical-equipment companies are
>raking in huge profits by charging exorbitant prices for
>their products. There is no reason research, development,
>and production of drugs must be in the hands of companies
>whose main purpose is to develop drugs based on
>profitability rather than need. Most people have had the
>experience of purchasing generic drugs and noticed the
>enormous difference in price from their name-brand
>equivalents.
>
>Although the companies try to convince you that the money
>is needed for research and development of the drugs, many
>investigations have shown that is not true. These greedy
>vultures are simply increasing their profits.
>
>And finally, every worker in this country must look at
>where his or her hard-earned money is really going. The
>biggest portion of tax money is going to building
>destructive, multi-million-dollar military instruments of
>destruction. This technology either sits around and very
>quickly becomes obsolete or is used in wars against brothers
>and sisters in other parts of the world who are, like people
>here, trying to survive and live a healthy, happy life. Just
>think how much good those dollars could do if they were
>spent to fulfill human needs and wants.
>
>So how to make change? To begin with, there are many
>organized health-care workers in this country. They are in
>unions that have been instrumental in the struggle to
>improve work-place safety. They have forced progressive
>legislation mandating bloodborne pathogen and tuberculosis
>training and employer provision for personal protective
>equipment at no cost to the employee. The unions have fought
>for both new, safe-needle legislation and the proposed
>Occupational Safety and Health Agency ergonomic standard.
>
>Most importantly, the healthcare unions represent the
>whole array of workers from the low wage nurses aides who
>provide skilled compassionate care under very demanding
>circumstances to higher paid nurses and physicians.
>
>In New York state, union members who marched and picketed
>in Albany saved thousands of health-care jobs. Eventually
>they were at the table when the new Health Care Reform Act
>was signed, providing health-care insurance for 1 million
>uninsured New Yorkers. These workers understood that
>people's need for health care is directly related to health-
>care workers' need for jobs.
>
>The struggle for change must come from more than one
>union, one hospital or one area of the country. One of the
>arguments put forth by health-care administrators all the
>time is that workers should not talk about the poor
>conditions at their jobs. They say this will scare patients
>away from a particular facility. It will cause "customers"
>to go elsewhere and thus the workers will lose their jobs.
>This tactic keeps workers silent. It pits one group of
>workers against another and separates health-care workers
>from their community base of support.
>
>It is time for all the unions, both those representing
>health-care workers and those representing the users of
>health care, to join forces with progressive community
>organizations. Everyone has a right to free, quality health
>care and the resources are there to provide it.
>
>Most of the people in this country have said over and over
>again, when asked, that quality health care is one of their
>highest priorities. Let all of us who are health-care
>providers make it ours.
>
>[Hiestand is a Registered Nurse and union activist in
>Buffalo, N.Y., hospitals.]
>
> - END -
>
>(Copyleft Workers World Service. Everyone is permitted to
>copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but
>changing it is not allowed. For more information contact
>Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail:
>[EMAIL PROTECTED] For subscription info send message
>to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.workers.org)
>
>
>From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>Date: Wed, 26 Jan 2000 22:11:01 -0500
>Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
>Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT
>Subject: [WW] Dock Workers Battle Riot Cops
>Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
>-------------------------
>Via Workers World News Service
>Reprinted from the Feb. 3, 2000
>issue of Workers World newspaper
>-------------------------
>
>BLACK-WHITE SOLIDARITY IN SOUTH CAROLINA: DOCK
>WORKERS BATTLE RIOT COPS
>
>By Shelley Ettinger
>
>An electrifying outbreak of class struggle hit the
>Charleston, S.C., waterfront the night of Jan. 19-20, as
>some 600 Longshore union members battled riot police. The
>workers fought--in furious hand-to-hand combat--to stop the
>use of non-union labor on the docks.
>
>It was a worker rebellion against both the bosses and the
>state violence that backs them. It was another indication
>that the drive to organize the South is picking up steam. It
>was a kick in the teeth to the "right-to-work" system, laws
>that prevent unions from representing every worker at a work
>place.
>
>And it was a thrilling demonstration of Black-white worker
>unity--at the very moment the forces of reaction were trying
>to whip up racism with their campaign to keep the
>Confederate flag flying over the South Carolina capitol.
>
>What prompted the battle? An effort by shipping lines to
>hire non-union labor to load and unload their goods.
>
>The immediate target of worker wrath is a Danish firm,
>Nordana Line. The company had employed union labor for 22
>years. Recently, however, it teamed up with a local outfit,
>Winyah Stevedoring.
>
>Together, Nordana and Winyah seek to cut labor costs by
>shifting hiring from unionized to non-union workers. The
>threat is not restricted to Charleston. Companies that
>provide cheap non-union labor to shipping firms have been
>trying to muscle out union labor in Gulf and Atlantic ports
>from Houston to Baltimore.
>
>The outbreak in Charleston may have been only the first in
>a series of struggles by International Longshore Association
>members to save their jobs and all they have won through
>their union.
>
>There had been an earlier clash. On Jan. 2, nearly a
>hundred longshore workers had blocked work at the Columbus
>Street Terminal Gate to stop the non-union loading and
>unloading of a Nordana ship. Charleston cops came down hard
>on the unionists--and started planning a police-state
>crackdown for the next time a Nordana ship was to arrive.
>
>That next time came Jan. 19. The Nordana Skodsborg was due
>to dock in the early evening. By early afternoon, close to
>1,000 police mobilized from across the state had arrived.
>
>The cops--in riot gear, equipped with nightsticks, guns,
>tear gas and attack dogs--deployed throughout the terminal.
>They established an anti-worker state of siege.
>
>When the ship docked around 7:30 p.m., non-union workers
>quickly started unloading cargo. Cops escorted them while
>police helicopters hovered overhead.
>
>Meanwhile, a meeting was under way at union headquarters
>nearby. When it adjourned, all the workers stayed on hand.
>Then, shortly before midnight, they lined up in formation
>and began to march toward the terminal.
>
>When the union force arrived, about 600 strong, the
>workers surged forward, trying to break through police lines
>and get to the dock.
>
>The cops attacked with everything they had. They unleashed
>the attack dogs against the workers. They drove police
>cruisers into the workers. They fired smoke grenades and
>tear gas at them.
>
>But the workers gave as good as they got--or better. They
>tore down police spotlights and hurled them at the cops.
>They overturned a light pole and heaved that too, along with
>railroad ties, bricks, bottles and punches. Throughout the
>fight, they chanted, ! ILA! ILA!"
>
>It was all captured on television videotape and in
>newspaper photographs. Images of Black and white workers in
>the South joined together fighting against cops shot across
>the country.
>
>Police arrested several ILA members. Several other workers
>ended up in the hospital as a result of the brutal cop
>attack. But it took hours until the worker rebellion ended.
>It was nearly daylight before the last union members left
>the terminal.
>
>In the aftermath there were righteous denunciations of the
>workers and their "mob violence" by police, politicians,
>employers and the media.
>
>South Carolina Attorney General Charlie Condon promised "a
>comprehensive plan for dealing with union dock-worker
>violence" whose centerpiece would be "jail, jail and more
>jail."
>
>Lieut. Gov. Bob Peeler said the state "should move quickly
>to strengthen right-to-work laws."
>
>None of it seemed to scare the workers. Asked whether the
>situation will escalate, ILA member Essau Brown said that
>while he hoped it wouldn't, he couldn't rule it out because
>"something has to be done."
>
> - END -
>
>(Copyleft Workers World Service. Everyone is permitted to
>copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but
>changing it is not allowed. For more information contact
>Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail:
>[EMAIL PROTECTED] For subscription info send message
>to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.workers.org)
>
>
>From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>Date: Wed, 26 Jan 2000 22:12:58 -0500
>Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
>Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT
>Subject: [WW] Denzel Washington & "Hurricane"
>Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
>-------------------------
>Via Workers World News Service
>Reprinted from the Feb. 3, 2000
>issue of Workers World newspaper
>-------------------------
>
>DENZEL WASHINGTON & "HURRICANE": A KNOCKOUT
>PERFORMANCE IN A STORY ABOUT INJUSTICE
>
>By Monica Moorehead
>
>Denzel Washington won the coveted Golden Globe award this
>year for best performance by a lead actor in a dramatic
>motion picture. When Washington took to the stage Jan. 23 to
>accept his well-deserved award from the Hollywood Foreign
>Press Association, he had at his side the man he portrayed
>in the movie "The Hurricane": Rubin Carter.
>
>Carter is a former political prisoner who spent over 20
>years in Trenton State Prison. Carter and his co-defendant,
>John Artis, were falsely accused of the 1966 murders of
>three white men at a bar in Paterson, N.J. They were
>eventually convicted in a New Jersey state court of these
>charges.
>
>This incident occurred a year before the historic Newark
>rebellion in 1967 that struck out against racist police
>brutality, poverty and unemployment.
>
>Carter and Artis, victims of a racist police frame-up,
>were sentenced to three consecutive life terms. Their
>conviction grew out of a racist conspiracy between the local
>police authorities and prosecutors. The cops attempted to
>railroad Carter, a middle-heavyweight fighter on the verge
>of winning a boxing title, to prison.
>
>Artis was driving Carter home when a barrage of white cops
>stopped them.
>
>In 1982, the New Jersey Supreme Court upheld the
>convictions by a vote of four to three, with the dissenters
>stating that the conviction was constitutionally flawed.
>
>The conspiracy against Carter began when he was a child. A
>flashback sequence in the film shows an 11-year-old Carter
>being sent to juvenile prison for eight years for the
>"crime" of being African American. Carter eventually escaped
>from prison to join the military. Upon his return home, he
>was picked up by the racist cops and sent back to finish his
>prison sentence.
>
>The movie also explores the injustice in the courts. For
>instance, the jury that found Carter and Artis guilty was
>all white. The sequences in prison indicated in a sweeping
>way how Black men were a majority of those incarcerated.
>
>The heart and soul of the movie is Washington's powerful
>portrayal. Washington proves once again why he is among the
>premier actors of his time.
>
>The movie is sympathetic to Carter's plight in many ways.
>But unless the viewers are familiar with this case and the
>pivotal role the progressive movement played, they would
>think that a handful of white people from Canada played the
>main role gaining Carter his freedom.
>
>The film spends a great deal of time on a group of
>Canadians spearheaded by a young Black man, who was inspired
>by reading Carter's book "The Sixteenth Round." The film
>shows these four people moving from Canada to New Jersey to
>support the efforts of Carter's lawyers to find suppressed
>evidence that would lead to overturning the conviction.
>
>A deep and tender relationship develops between Carter and
>the young Black man named Lesra Martin, played movingly by
>Vicellous Shannon.
>
>FILM UNDERPLAYS ROLE OF MASS PROTEST
>
>During the two-hour movie, there is only a brief glimpse
>of the many demonstrations that were held supporting
>Carter's innocence. Due to Carter's notoriety in the ring,
>his arrest and conviction were cause for much concern and
>anger, especially in the Black community. Demonstrations
>were held throughout New Jersey demanding a new and fair
>trial for Carter.
>
>The movie showed some historic clips of marches of thousands
>of people led by boxing champions Muhammad Ali and Joe
>Frazier, along with actor Ellen Burstyn. Bob Dylan wrote a
>popular song in support of Carter.
>
>On Sept. 7, 1975, "Rubin Hurricane Carter and John Artis
>Day" was proclaimed in the predominantly Black city of
>Newark, N.J. that attracted thousands of people at City
>Hall. Ali told the crowd, "It is not just Hurricane Carter--
>hundreds of innocent people are railroaded daily into the
>jails."
>
>On Oct. 31, 1975, thousands of people marched on the state
>capitol in Trenton, N.J. A delegation met with the governor
>and presented him with 37, 000 signatures on petitions
>demanding their immediate release.
>
>The movie spends little time on how this mass movement
>developed. This omission leaves a big political void in the
>film's overall impact.
>
>Just before the final credits the movie mentions how Artis
>was finally released. In a society such as this one, which
>preaches individualism, for it instead to show the masses in
>motion could have made a lasting impression on moviegoers.
>
>In 1985, Carter's lawyers--Myron Beldock, Lewis Steel and
>Leon Friedman--filed a writ of habeas corpus requesting that
>New Jersey provide credible evidence to the federal courts
>as to why Carter was being imprisoned. A New Jersey federal
>court ruled on the writ that Carter was sent to jail not
>because of the evidence presented but because of racism on
>the part of the cops and the state courts.
>
>NEW LAW PREVENTS SUCCESSFUL APPEALS
>
>>From a legal standpoint, Carter might still be languishing
>in jail were it not for the application of a writ of habeas
>corpus. Many death-row inmates have depended on such a writ
>to prove that they were wrongfully convicted.
>
>A habeas corpus writ means that state judicial rulings may
>be challenged on a federal level. Between 1976 and 1999,
>federal courts ruled that close to 50 percent of these cases
>were unconstitutional.
>
>In 1996, Congress passed and President Bill Clinton signed
>into law the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act,
>which changed the rules regarding habeas corpus.
>
>In a Jan. 10 editorial, Carter's lawyer Friedman wrote:
>"The law says a federal judge can only reverse a state court
>conviction on habeas corpus if it was contrary to federal
>law or applied in an `unreasonable' way. _ The Fourth
>Circuit Court of Appeals ... has ruled this means the state
>courts must have applied the law in a way that `all
>reasonable jurists would agree is unreasonable.' ... That
>standard is almost impossible to meet. ...
>
>"Since a federal judge would be loath to call a state
>judge unreasonable, the Hurricane Carters of tomorrow would
>not be saved through writs of habeas corpus. ... If federal
>courts could no longer review their decisions, state judges
>would have less reason to be careful about
>constitutionality. Future Rubin Carters would languish in
>jail."
>
>This is a battle that Mumia Abu-Jamal, Shaka Sankofa and
>other death-row inmates are facing with the support of the
>movement. The fact that this flawed movie, with a great
>performance by Washington, was made at all will help bring
>to the public the horrors endemic to this racist judicial
>system.
>
> - END -
>
>(Copyleft Workers World Service. Everyone is permitted to
>copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but
>changing it is not allowed. For more information contact
>Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail:
>[EMAIL PROTECTED] For subscription info send message
>to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.workers.org)
>
>
>From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>Date: Wed, 26 Jan 2000 22:29:21 -0500
>Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
>Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT
>Subject: [WW] Iraqis: "We Won't go Back to Colonial Status"
>Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
>-------------------------
>Via Workers World News Service
>Reprinted from the Feb. 3, 2000
>issue of Workers World newspaper
>-------------------------
>
>IRAQIS TELL SANCTIONS CHALLENGE: "WE WON'T GO BACK
>TO COLONIAL STATUS"
>
>By Richard Becker
>Baghdad, Iraq
>
>Visiting Iraq in the Year 2000 is a searing experience.
>The devastation inflicted on a once-thriving society and
>people by nearly 10 years of war and sanctions/blockade is
>apparent everywhere.
>
>Delegates of the third Iraq Sanctions Chal lenge, more than
>50 people from 15 states and five countries, saw first-hand
>the suffering and destruction. They visited hospitals,
>schools, universities, mosques, water treatment and food
>distribution facilities, the Blind Society and the Al-Ameriyah
>bomb shelter. The shelter is where 1,176 Iraqis, nearly all
>women and children, were incinerated by U.S. cruise missiles
>on Feb. 13, 1991.
>
>The Iraq Sanctions Challenge, defying U.S. law and the
>U.S./UN blockade, arrived in Baghdad on the ninth
>anniversary of the Gulf war. A few hours after reaching the
>Iraqi capital, ISC delegates, led by former U.S. Attorney
>General Ramsey Clark, joined a militant march timed to
>coincide exactly with the start of the U.S. bombing of Iraq
>nine years ago at 2 a.m. on Jan. 17.
>
>Thousands of demonstrators, including students from all
>over the Arab world and Africa who are studying in Iraq,
>chanted, "Down, down USA. Down, down British crown." At the
>end of the march they burned a coffin draped with U.S.,
>British and Israeli flags. A Lebanese student marcher told
>us, "The Arab masses in every country--even those that are
>U.S. puppets like Saudi Arabia--oppose the sanctions."
>
>The ISC contingent joined in chanting, "Clinton, Bush, you
>can't hide, we charge you with genocide," and "Sanctions are
>genocide, end the sanctions now." Just behind the ISC group
>came a 100-strong Spanish contingent organized by the
>Campaign to Lift the Embargo on Iraq, who chanted "Clinton,
>asesino," and "El pueblo unido jamas sera vencido."
>("Clinton, assassin," and "The people united will never be
>defeated.")
>
>The third Iraq Sanctions Challenge, organized by the
>International Action Center, brought more than $2 million
>worth of life-saving medicine and other supplies to Iraq.
>The U.S. delegates challenged the reactionary Trading with
>the Enemy Act, which provides for penalties of up to 12
>years in prison and a $1 million fine for taking
>humanitarian aid to Iraq without a special license from the
>U.S. Treasury Department.
>
>`MOST COMPLETE EMBARGO OF MODERN TIMES'
>
>For the past nine-and-one-half years, Iraq has been under
>U.S.-forced United Nations Security Council sanctions. U.S.
>
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