WW News Service Digest #210
1) Listeners mobilize to save WBAI from corporate takeover
by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
2) 12 reasons to protest Bush's inauguration
by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
3) John Ashcroft: Racist, anti-woman nominee for attorney general
by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
4) Tommy Thompson: Anti-poor guv slashed social programs
by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Jan. 11, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
PROTEST SET FOPR JAN 6:
LISTENERS MOBILIZE TO SAVE WBAI FROM CORPORATE TAKEOVER
By John Catalinotto
New York
It was a nasty but not too surprising wakeup for WBAI
listeners on Dec. 23 when, instead of happily playing
Broadway tunes and selling theater tickets to raise funds,
David Rothenberg had to spread the news that popular morning
show host Bernard White had been summarily fired overnight.
That show's producer, Sharann Harper, and WBAI's general
manager, Valerie Van Isler, were also fired. Other popular
WBAI producers were barred from the station by armed guards
or by the locks that had been changed overnight.
The news was so nasty that 200 listeners rushed down to
defend WBAI outside its offices on Wall Street from what
many considered an attempted corporate takeover. This FM
radio station attracts an audience that stretches from
Brooklyn's Caribbean community to Chelsea, the Upper West
Side and East Harlem, from Jersey City to Long Island.
And when more of these listeners found out what happened,
over 1,100 of them, young and old, came Dec. 27 to a meeting
at the Service Employees union's assembly hall. Many spilled
out into the vestibules as the meeting discussed what
actions to take to save the station. Many applauded
International Action Center Co-director Sara Flounder's
suggestion for a mass demonstration outside the WBAI offices-
-later called for Jan. 6.
WHY THEY DEFEND WBAI
Why the strong reaction to the attack on WBAI? Because you
don't hear this kind of news and discussion anywhere else in
the mass media.
For example, a "debate" on foreign policy in the corporate
media on U.S. policy toward a nation that Washington doesn't
like usually consists of people representing the following
three positions:
The ultra-right position is that the Pentagon should nuke
nation X. The centrist position is that the Navy should
blockade X and starve its population into submission. And
the "liberal" position is that U.S. or maybe UN
"peacekeeper" troops should occupy X and enforce "human
rights" there.
On National Public Radio or PBS, which are supposed to be
free of undue influence from the corporations, you hear the
same three positions, but maybe with more facts to back them
up.
On WBAI you hear someone from country X, someone from the
movement in solidarity with X, and someone who is critical
of X but doesn't think the U.S. should bomb it. The invited
administration spokesperson often doesn't show up.
For many on the left it may be the only discussion they can
listen to without having to repress the urge to smash the
radio with a sledgehammer.
WBAI also broadcasts both political discussion and cultural
shows representing a broad spectrum of New York ethnic and
other communities, especially from among those most
oppressed.
In addition, WBAI provides a tribune to mobilize for
movement events that reaches almost all progressive
activists in the New York metropolitan area.
WHY THEY WEREN'T SURPRISED
The listeners were stunned and upset by how the crisis took
form, but not really surprised that WBAI was under attack.
The Pacifica Foundation National Board, which runs the five
Pacifica radio stations, has a conservative majority that
has moved three of the stations to the right. In 1999 it
tried to move against WBAI's sister station KPFA in
Berkeley, Calif. Only a mobilization of 15,000 listeners has
slowed this assault.
The recently expanded board's members now include a lawyer
from a firm that specializes in keeping companies "union-
free," a board member of Citicorp and an entrepreneur who
specializes in selling radio stations.
During the fall WBAI was feeling pressure from the board in
Washington. The board had threatened "Democracy Now!"
producer Amy Goodman for her bold coverage of the Democratic
National Convention. Goodman also drew attention when she
debated President Bill Clinton on Election Day after he
called her show to urge a big voter turnout.
The board complained about too much coverage of Black
political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal and too much time on
Fidel Castro's Sept. 8 speech in New York.
Another issue was WBAI's coverage of the Palestinian Right
of Return March held Sept. 16 in Washington. According to
Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting, a source at the station
said that the Pacifica management admonished General Manager
Van Isler after receiving a complaint from the Corporation
for Public Broadcasting, a presidentially appointed agency
that provides funding to the Pacifica Foundation.
In early December Pacifica Director Bessie Wash gave notice
to Van Isler.
So the surprise was not that the other shoe dropped just
before midnight Dec. 23, but that Wash was able to enlist
afternoon call-in show host Utrice Leid to become the new
interim general manager. Apparently Leid and other WBAI
staff have opposed Van Isler in the past over many
administrative questions at the station that have no direct
bearing on the political direction of WBAI and of which
outsiders would have no direct knowledge.
The takeover and firings have led to a conflict among WBAI
staffers. In this conflict, there are people who produce
progressive programs on both sides, and people from many
communities on both sides.
Many of WBAI's supporters, including those on the staff, see
the takeover as a maneuver by the Pacifica board to take
advantage of internal differences to weaken the station. One
speaker at the Dec. 23 rally outside WBAI compared the
events to the 1983 U.S. takeover of Grenada after a split in
the New Jewel Movement.
Bernard White, Elombe Brath, Amy Goodman, "Grandpa" Al Lewis
and barred "Wake-Up Call" volunteer producer Janet K. Bryant
were all at the Dec. 27 meeting to defend the station.
"Since when have we cared about management's opinion about a
guest?" asked Bryant. "People that work there are afraid of
being fired. Free speech took a big hit Friday night ... we
must [work to make sure] it is not fatal."
Still co-hosting "Wake-Up Call" from 7-8 a.m. along with
"Democracy Now!," Goodman has been repeating that Leid
should hire back White and Harper and unbar Bryant and
others so that the station can begin to resolve its internal
differences. Wash had said on the air that Leid had the
authority to do just that.
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Jan. 11, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
12 REASONS TO PROTEST BUSH'S INAUGURATION
[From a statement issued by the International Action Center:]
On Jan. 20, thousands of people will march and rally to
protest at George W. Bush's inauguration in Washington and
San Francisco. We will be demonstrating against the incoming
Bush administration and its racist, sexist, anti-gay,
militaristic, anti-labor and pro-big business policies. Bush
claims to be a "compassionate conservative," but his real
"compassion" is reserved for the giant pharmaceutical, oil,
banking and other corporations.
We call for a profound social transformation, to a society
where people's needs come before profits, where every person
has the right to a good-paying job, decent housing, health
care, education, childcare and a clean environment.
We call for freedom for death-row activist, author and
prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal, Native leader Leonard Peltier and
all political prisoners.
We cannot rely on the Democratic Party--Clinton led the
charge in demolishing social welfare programs, bombing
Yugoslavia and keeping the deadly sanctions against Iraq--or
on the corrupt corporate elections.
Only a mass people's movement can bring real change, as has
always been true. Jan. 20 can be an important step in
building this movement, one which links together workers,
students, people of all nationalities, women, lesbian, gay,
bi and trans people, immigrants, the disabled, seniors and
youths.
There are many reasons to join the Jan. 20 counter-inaugural
protests.
Here are a few:
1 BUSH WILL BECOME PRESIDENT ONLY DUE TO MASSIVE RACIST
DISENFRANCHISEMENT AND VOTING FRAUD. Not only in Florida, but
across the country, African American votes were
disproportionately thrown out. Hundreds of thousands of
potential voters, especially in Black, Latino, Native
American and poor white communities, have been permanently
disenfranchised (forbidden to vote) for having been
convicted of a felony. In predominantly African American
neighborhoods from Atlanta to Chicago to Miami, outmoded
technology and intimidation led to votes being disqualified
20-25 times as often as in adjoining white suburbs. Afraid
to be accused of rocking the boat, the pro-system Democratic
Party leadership refused to raise the issue of racism during
the re-count process.
2 GOV. DEATH IS MOVING TO WASHINGTON. As governor of Texas,
Bush presided over more executions--152--than took place in
the other 49 states combined during that time. The death
penalty is racist and anti-poor. It must be abolished. Bush
and his chief law enforcement official, Attorney General-
designate John Ashcroft, are rabidly pro-execution.
3 WE MUST MOBILIZE NOW TO DEFEND WOMEN'S RIGHT TO CHOOSE.
The new Bush administration is anti-women and anti-choice.
Women's right to abortion and birth control was won in the
streets and it must be defended in the streets. Bush and
Ashcroft are both on record as favoring a constitutional
amendment banning women's right to choose. Ashcroft is
opposed to abortion even in cases of rape, incest or where a
woman's life is in danger.
4 WE NEED FUNDING FOR UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE, FREE EDUCATION,
AFFORD ABLE HOUSING, HEAT AND LIGHT, CHILDCARE AND UNION
JOBS, NOT FOR THE PENTAGON. In the richest economy that has
ever existed, the basic needs of the entire population could
easily be met. Instead of going to meet human needs, how
ever, hundreds of billions of dollars annually are spent on
destructive and wasteful militarism. The U.S. already has a
bigger military budget than the rest of the United Nations
Security Council combined.
Now Bush wants to vastly increase military spending,
including building the so-called "National Missile Defense
System." The NMDS is really an offensive rather than
defensive system, and is an essential element in a first-
strike nuclear war strategy. The Pentagon, which has spent a
mind-boggling $4 trillion on nuclear weapons to date, has
always refused to renounce the first-strike use of nuclear
weapons. Both Bush and his new Secretary of Defense (War)
Donald Rumsfeld are ardent supporters of NMDS.
5 THE GENOCIDAL SANCTIONS ON IRAQ MUST END. In his first
speech as Secretary of State-design ate, Colin Powell talked
of "re-energizing the sanctions on Iraq." The sanctions-
blockade has already taken more than 1.5 million Iraqi
lives, half of them children under the age of 5. Powell,
Vice President-elect Dick Cheney, James Baker and other
George W. advisors launched the Gulf War 10 years ago during
the regime of George Bush I. Clinton carried on the
sanctions and bombing throughout his eight-year term, and
now the new Bush team wants to further step up the war
against Iraq.
6 STOP U.S. INTERVENTION IN COLOMBIA AND ALL OF LATIN AMERICA.
The incoming Bush national security team wants to escalate U.S. intervention
in Colombia beyond even Clinton's Plan Colombia. And it's
not just Colombia--there is also the threat of wider inter
vention in Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Peru, Mexico and
Argentina, where people are rising up against the dom
ination of the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and
U.S. corporate domination. We must act now to stop a new
Vietnam War in Latin America.
7 THE INCOMING BUSH ADMINISTRATION IS FILLED WITH VICIOUS
BIGOTS WHO WANT TO TURN BACK THE CLOCK ON GAINS WON BY
LESBIAN, GAY, BI AND TRANS PEOPLE. Bush is allied with the
bigoted religious and non-religious extreme right who want
to deny equal rights to lesbian,gay, bi and transpeople and
force them back into the closet.
8 THE 40-YEAR WAR AGAINST CUBA MUST END. Bush, like the nine
presidents before him, wants to turn Cuba back into a colony
of the U.S. as it was before the 1959 revolution. It is time
to end the blockade and aggression against a small
neighboring country and let Cuba live in peace.
9 THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION WANTS TO SPEED UP ENVIRONMENTAL
DESTRUCTION FOR THE SAKE OF CORPORATE PROFITS. Under Gov.
Bush, Texas ranked 50th among states in air quality and
first in toxic polluters, toxic releases, carcinogens in the
air and 13 other polluting cate gor ies. Bush put polluting
industry repre sen tatives in charge of the state's Natural
Resources Conservation Council (Texas' version of the EPA).
Bush and his nominee for Interior Secretary Gale Norton want
to open the Arctic National Wildlife Preserve to oil
drilling, just a hint of what is to come unless we mobilize
now.
10 SUPPORT AN INDEPENDENT HOME LAND FOR THE PALESTINIAN
PEOPLE. The U.S. has given Israel hundreds of billions of
dollars in aid over the past 50 years, aid used to repress
the Palestin ians. The U.S. gov ernment and Israel are
acting as a team against the Pales tinians. There will be no
peace in the Middle East until there is justice for the
Palestinian people.
11 END U.S. COLONIALISM IN PUERTO RICO--U.S. NAVY OUT OF
VIEQUES! The Bush administration's plan for military
expansion includes keeping the island of Vieques as a bomb
ing range. Many Puerto Rican people have been killed or
injured, and the environment and economy of Vieques have
suffered much destruction. Now is the time to support the
Puerto Rican people in their struggle to get the Pentagon
out.
12 SHUT DOWN THE PRISON-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX! The U.S. has 5
percent if the world's population and 25 percent of the
world's prison population. This amounts to over 2 million
people, a majority of them African American, Native and
Latino. Prisons are all about brutal repression and super-
exploitation against the poor and people of color, not
rehabilitation.
The economic basis for all of this repression is profits.
Wall Street firms and banks invested an estimated $41
billion into the expansion of private prisons last year.
Prisoners are forced to work for slave wages for high tech,
manufacturing and service companies. Under the Clinton/ Gore
administration, more prisons were built than universities.
The Bush administration plans to continue this trend. A
national movement must be built to shut down these
concentration camps. Our youths need union jobs and good
schools, not incarceration.
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Jan. 11, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
JOHN ASHCROFT: RACIST, ANTI-WOMAN NOMINEE FOR ATTORNEY GENERAL
By Phil Wilayto
It would be hard to find a more reactionary nominee for the
position of U.S. attorney general than John Ashcroft. The 58-
year-old Republican senator from Missouri and former two-
term governor of that state is well known for his extremist
views on abortion and the death penalty. He is also an
outspoken defender of the Confederacy who has used his
political power to block appointments of Black judges and
defeat civil rights legislation.
ASHCROFT AND ABORTION RIGHTS
Ashcroft supports enacting a federal law and amending the
Constitution to ban abortions even when a woman has been
raped or is the victim of incest. He has advocated proposals
in Congress so broad they could have been used to ban common
forms of contraception, including birth-control pills and
IUDs. He supported the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits the
use of federal funds for abortion services and promoted laws
requiring parental notification and consent.
Ashcroft also helped lead the fight for the bill pushed by
anti-choice extremists that would impose criminal and civil
penalties against doctors who perform so-called "partial
birth" abortions.
As attorney general, Ashcroft would be responsible for
enforcing the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act,
passed following the murder of a doctor at a Florida clinic.
Would he find a way to void this law?
Ashcroft would also be responsible for reviewing and helping
to select potential nominees for the federal bench. This
includes lower court judges and Supreme Court justices who
may rule on issues dealing with reproductive freedom. He
would also represent the Bush administration's position on
issues within the courts--including the Supreme Court.
CIVIL RIGHTS AND THE DEATH PENALTY
In an editorial urging the Senate to "investigate Mr.
Ashcroft's opposition to civil rights, women's rights,
abortion rights and to judicial nominees with whom he
disagrees," the St. Louis [Missouri] Post-Dispatch recalled
that "Mr. Ashcroft has built a career out of opposing school
desegregation in St. Louis and opposing African-Americans
for public office."
Bob Jones University gave Ashcroft an honorary degree in
1999, and he was proud to accept it. Bush was criticized for
speaking at this racist, ultra-right university during his
presidential campaign.
Ashcroft was "credited" with engineering the defeat of the
nomination to the federal bench of Missouri State Supreme
Court Justice Ronnie White, an African American. White is
somewhat moderate on the issue of the death penalty. As one
writer in the Post-Dispatch put it, "Ash croft's success in
rounding up 54 Republican votes was an unmistakable signal
to state judges like White that if they challenge death
sentences--no matter how infrequently and no matter the
cause--they risk being barred from higher judicial office."
At a news conference after the announcement of Ashcroft's
nomination, Bush said, "This is a person who believes in
civil rights for all citizens."
While Bush and Ashcroft are directly identified with capital
punishment, it was President Clinton who signed the 1996
Effective Death Penalty Act, which effectively eliminated
the right of habeas corpus in death penalty appeals on the
federal level.
In 1998, Ashcroft gave an interview to the Southern
Partisan, a South Carolina quarterly promoting the
Confederacy. Ashcroft said, "Your magazine also helps set
the record straight. You've got a heritage of doing that, of
defending Southern patriots like [Robert E.] Lee,
[Stonewall] Jackson and [Jefferson] Davis. Traditionalists
must do more. I've got to do more. We've all got to stand up
and speak in this respect, or else we'll be taught that
these people were giving their lives, subscribing their
sacred fortunes and their honor to some perverted agenda."
Like slavery. The people Ashcroft named were two leading
generals and the president of the slavocracy.
GOV'T FUNDING OF 'FAITH-BASED' INSTITUTIONS
Ashcroft is author of the landmark Charitable Choice
provision of the 1996 welfare reform law, which made it
legal for charities, churches and other faith-based
organizations to deliver publicly funded services under
contracts and vouchers with the states. The provision allows
government-funded religious groups to refuse to hire people
of different faiths and to promote their own religious
beliefs to the people they are paid to serve.
This development would be strengthened and expanded by the
passage of the Ashcroft-sponsored "Charitable Choice
Expansion Act." In addition to being a violation of the
constitutional separation of church and state, this act
would accelerate the trend towards privatizing government-
funded social services, would weaken public sector unions,
and would deprive the community of the protection of the
present requirements for certification, oversight and
inspections.
This past December, Ashcroft became the first U.S. senator
to lose a re-election bid to a dead opponent, after
Democratic Gov. Mel Carnahan died in a plane crash during
the campaign. Carnahan's widow was then named to the post.
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Jan. 11, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
TOMMY THOMPSON: ANTI-POOR GUV SLASHED SOCIAL PROGRAMS
By Phil Wilayto
While John Ashcroft may be the most outrageously right-wing
of George W. Bush's Cabinet nominations, his choice for
secretary of Health and Human Services may well have a
larger impact on the lives of poor and working people,
especially in the areas of welfare, reproductive rights and
health care in general.
"More than any other state, Thompson's Wisconsin
fundamentally changed the way government aids its poorest
citizens -writing and strictly enforcing rules that make it
tough to qualify for and keep welfare...," according to a
Dec. 20 Associated Press article. "If confirmed, he would
lead one of the biggest government bureaucracies, a
department that oversees Medicare and Medicaid, the Food and
Drug Administration and other agencies that see to the needs
of the old, the sick and the poor."
THOMPSON AND WELFARE
Tommy G. Thompson, 59, was the first governor elected on a
viciously anti-welfare platform in 1986. Since then, the
state's welfare rolls have been slashed 92 percent, the
sharpest reduction in the country.
President Bill Clinton was impressed. "Wisconsin has the
makings of one of the boldest [welfare reform plans] yet
attempted in America," Clinton said in a National Radio
Address in May of 1996, "and I'm encouraged by what I've
seen so far."
That was the year Clinton signed the national welfare reform
act that effectively eliminated the 61-year-old entitlement
program of welfare. Even Ronald Reagan hadn't dared to go
that far.
Thompson's main program, Wisconsin Works, or W-2, basically
eliminated Aid to Families with Dependent Children,
replacing it with a draconian system that forces virtually
all recipients to work, regardless of their circumstances.
Thousands of mothers on AFDC, many of them with severe
obstacles to working, never transferred over to the new
system.
For those able to find jobs--many of them at temp agencies--
the average wage is just over $7.00 an hour. For those
unable to "succeed" under the new rules, there is no more
safety net.
The results have been devastating. Homelessness has
skyrocketed, as has the number of children taken into the
state's foster care system. In the first year of W-2, the
Black infant mortality rate in Milwaukee shot up an
incredible 37 percent.
Far from being a program to reduce poverty, W-2 creates a
low-wage, captive work force that means super-profits for
private businesses. It opens wider the door to massive
privatization of government services and it helps to
obliterate the concept that the government has any inherent
obligation to "promote the general welfare." And those
achievements--not the elimination of poverty--were the real
goals of W-2.
SCHOOL VOUCHERS
Under Thompson's leadership, Wisconsin has also taken the
lead in the area of school vouchers, in which public funding
is used to pay the tuition of students attending private and
religious schools. Critics charge this is a thinly disguised
effort to privatize public education, along with its $350-
billion annual budget.
Milwaukee has the country's oldest and largest voucher
program. It's also the only one to resist court challenges
to including religious schools in the program.
Bush has pledged to try and introduce vouchers on a national
level. His choice for secretary of education is pro-voucher
Rod Paige, the superintendent of schools in Houston.
THE BRADLEY FOUNDATION
Thompson's national rise is due primarily to his close
relationship to prominent right-wing foundations and think
tanks. Of the 15 or so largest right-wing foundations in the
U.S., the richest and most politically influential is the
Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, based in Milwaukee.
Bradley plays a leading role in funding the myriad of right-
wing think tanks, publications and organizations that
prepare public opinion for programs like welfare "reform"
and school vouchers. Bradley money also paid for the state
task force that developed W-2 and underwrote the Milwaukee
"community" movement for school vouchers.
As governor, Thompson has allowed Bradley to develop pilot
projects in areas like welfare, vouchers, "faith-based"
initiatives and more that are then promoted nationally. The
result has been to turn Wisconsin, which had been known for
progressive innovations in government policy, into a kind of
laboratory for right-wing social experiments.
As head of HHS, Thompson could work to implement these
programs as federal policy.
ABORTION RIGHTS
As HHS secretary, Thompson would also be in charge of the
commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration and the
U.S. Surgeon General, both of whom have the power to either
protect or restrict reproductive rights. He would oversee
the administration of the Title X family planning program,
which has provided millions of women with a wide range of
reproductive health services, including pap smears and
breast cancer screening.
Thompson has said that abortions should be legal only in
cases where a woman's life is endangered, or after a
pregnancy resulting from rape or incest. As governor, he has
used his power to increasingly restrict a woman's right to
choose.
BIG TOBACCO
HHS is also the federal agency responsible for tobacco
control, prevention and treatment. The world's largest
producer of tobacco products is the Philip Morris Co., which
also happens to be the largest private employer in
Wisconsin.
By 1997, Thompson had received more than $60,000 in campaign
contributions from the tobacco giant. In return, he has
strongly defended tobacco industry interests, regularly
vetoing legislation it opposed.
The goals of Tommy Thompson, the Bradley Foundation and the
Republican Party are basically the same as the present goals
of the entire U.S. ruling class: the complete deregulation
of corporations, privatization of public services and an
entrenched social stratification.
The Democrats work towards the same goals in a slower, more
diffuse way, while the Republicans are more aggressive and
focused. Opposing Thompson's nomination won't of itself stop
the agenda of the ruling class, but it could be a factor in
igniting a mass movement against the ruling class as a
whole.
_________________________________________________
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