WW News Service Digest #347
5) Voters Defeat Anti-Gay Initiatives
by wwnews
6) Firefighters, Cops and Class
by wwnews
From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> (wwnews)
Date: torstai 15. marraskuu 2001 07:53
Subject: [WW] Voters Defeat Anti-Gay Initiatives
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Nov. 22, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
MICHIGAN: VOTERS DEFEAT ANTI-GAY INITIATIVES
By Leslie Feinberg
Anti-gay zealots waged a multi-pronged battle against
lesbian and gay civil rights in the Michigan elections. But
voters dealt these right-wing efforts a triple defeat.
The American Family Association--a mild misnomer for a
reactionary organization--inspired and initiated the anti-
gay measures.
These anti-same-sex measures are specifically aimed at
lesbians and gay men. But they also imperil bisexuals.
Transsexual and transgender people are oppressed because of
how they define their sex or express their gender. The right
wing has historically linked its attacks on sexual, gender
and sex diversity, so a win or loss for one oppressed group
in the lesbian, gay, bi and trans coalition has an impact on
the others.
A victory that pushes back the right wing creates a more
favorable political climate for all who are struggling for
social and economic justice.
Many people on both sides of the barricade--left and right--
closely followed the votes in Michigan because the state had
four anti-gay ballot measures in this election, more than
any other state in the country.
In Traverse City and Kalamazoo, the gay-bashing city charter
amendments would have barred those cities from protecting
lesbian and gay residents from discrimination. The measures
would have made any existing or future protections based on
sexual orientation null and void.
But voters stepped into the booths and pulled the levers in
the direction of social progress, not reaction. Both cities
recorded votes that overwhelmingly trounced the bigoted
initiatives.
The third city in the crosshairs of the AFA was Huntington
Woods. But residents there voted up the city's human rights
ordinance, making it the 11th city in that state to protect
individuals from discrimination based on sexual orientation
and gender identity.
The term gender identity protects individuals who are living
in a sex other than the one legally assigned to them at
birth. But feminine males, masculine females, people who are
androgynous, cross-dres sers and other transgender people
can use this win to argue for a broader legal interpretation
to defend against widespread gender discrimination.
And the vote reflected no skittishness: The ordinance passed
by a 2-to-1 margin.
"The American Family Association has made a tragic
miscalculation about Michigan," said Sean Kosofsky, director
of policy for the Triangle Foundation. The organization has
actively fought these and other anti-gay ballot measures in
Michigan since 1994.
"Michigan voters have soundly defeated these anti-gay ballot
measures and took a stand for diversity and acceptance. This
is a clean sweep," Kosofsky concluded. "The AFA's message of
discrimination will not fly in Michigan and we strongly
encourage them to heed the message from voters and stop
their anti-gay crusade."
There's just one more anti-gay ballot initiative in the
state left to decide. Do the right thing, Ypsilanti.
- END -
(Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to
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From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> (wwnews)
Date: torstai 15. marraskuu 2001 07:53
Subject: [WW] Firefighters, Cops and Class
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Nov. 22, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
FIREFIGHTERS, COPS AND CLASS: GROUND ZERO SCUFFLE
REVEALS FAULT LINE
By Greg Butterfield
New York
"Firefighters clash with police at ground zero." The news
was broadcast around the world Nov. 2, complete with
videotaped footage of cops and firefighters slugging it out.
The images startled many workers in New York, who had seen
those two groups held up together as objects of hero worship
by the corporate media and government since Sept. 11.
Between 1,000 and 1,500 off-duty firefighters rallied in
lower Manhattan on Nov. 2. They protested Mayor Rudolph
Giuliani's plan to reduce the number of firefighters
assigned to round-the-clock recovery efforts at the World
Trade Center site from 50 to 24.
Firefighters broke through a police line and marched to the
site, where they were joined by building-trades workers.
When the marchers tried to enter the disaster site to say a
prayer, 12 were arrested.
They were charged with felonies like "inciting to riot."
Those charges were later reduced to misdemeanors and the
firefighters were released.
Then, on the weekend of Nov. 3-4, the presidents of two
firefighter union locals-Peter Gorman of the Uniformed Fire
Officers Association and Kevin Gallagher of the Uniformed
Firefighters Association-were also arrested and charged with
criminal trespass.
GIULIANI SCALES BACK RECOVERY
The number of Fire Department personnel assigned to identify
and recover human remains has fallen from a high of 180 in
late September. On Nov. 8, in the aftermath of the
firefighter-cop battle, Giuliani reversed the previous
week's cuts, raising the number of firefighters at the site
back to 50.
Some 343 fire department personnel were killed on Sept. 11.
The many casualties reflected their extreme courage in
climbing up into the burning buildings before the towers
collapsed. Fewer than 90 firefighters' bodies have been
recovered.
By contrast, 23 members of the New York Police Department
died in the attack, most of them while directing traffic at
the base of the buildings. (Officer Down Memorial Page,
www.odmp.org)
City officials, including Fire Commissioner Tommy Von Essen,
claimed the recovery effort was being scaled back for safety
concerns. Yet the city had shown little concern for safety
before. At first firefighters working at the site were given
only dust masks; many still complain of a lack of safety
equipment.
It took until late October for firefighters to receive
respirators to protect them from airborne contaminants,
after repeated warnings by environmental health groups,
Newsday reported Nov. 3. "Some of the nearly 11,000
firefighters who have been at 'ground zero' began undergoing
medical screenings at FDNY headquarters last week. The tests
include lung function exams, chest X-rays, hearing tests and
blood work."
The FDNY's chief medical officer said nearly 4,000
firefighters suffer from chronic cough and lung problems,
dubbed the World Trade Center Syndrome.
'THEY GOT THEIR GOLD'
Firefighter unions said the cutbacks were the result of
pressure from businesses and real-estate developers--the
business class wants to speed up the rubble removal at the
expense of identifying people's remains--and because
Giuliani wants to reduce overtime pay.
"Basically this is just going to be machines turning up
rubble and taking it out to the landfill," firefighter Danny
Schug told the Chief, the weekly civil-service employees'
newspaper. "When it's in their financial interests, they say
this is unsafe. The rest of the time they take advantage of
us, knowing that we'll do anything, no matter how ill-
equipped we are.
"The mayor loves us when we're dead," Schug said, "but as
for those of us left behind, he couldn't care less."
A popular chant at the demonstration was, "They got their
gold." Earlier that week firefighters had been assigned to
help recover tons of gold bricks, worth hundreds of millions
of dollars, buried in a bank vault under the rubble. Many
felt it was no coincidence that cutbacks were announced
immediately after the gold's recovery.
Others said they feared the incoming administration would
make major cuts in Fire Department personnel, using the
Sept. 11 attack and the recession as excuses.
The role of the police at the Nov. 2 demonstration was an
eye-opener for rank-and-file firefighters-many of whom live
in the same suburban areas and even come from the same
families.
In their efforts to bolster the police, city officials have
for a long time promoted the notion of unity between these
two "uniformed services." But there is a big difference in
their social roles.
The police exist to "protect and serve" private property and
capitalist profits--the status quo. The firefighters got a
taste of what other union members have known for years: the
police are on the side of the bosses, not the workers.
RACISM INHIBITS SOLIDARITY
The firefighters, on the other hand, fulfill a social
purpose of protecting people and buildings that will be
needed in any kind of society.
In fighting for justice against the Giuliani administration,
the firefighters would seem to have many natural allies in
the city-first and foremost, the communities of color that
have suffered so much police brutality and so many cutbacks
under his regime.
But many Black, Latino, immigrant and other workers have a
well-founded distrust of the firefighters. The Fire
Department has a long history of segregation in hiring and
racism in its interactions with the communities it serves-
or, in some cases, under-serves.
Unfortunately, firefighter unions and the rank and file have
often gone along with, or even been active proponents, of
racist policies.
Only 2.8 percent of the city's fire fighters are African
American--a few hundred out of the department's 11,300
members, according to the Vulcan Society, a Black
firefighters' group (www.vulcansocietyfdny.org). There are
only 30 women firefighters; most of the very few women who
manage to get hired find themselves driven out of the Fire
Department by relentless hostility, threats, and demeaning
sexist treatment.
According to Vulcan Society President Paul Washington, the
number of Black firefighters has dropped since Giuliani took
office in 1994, after inching up slowly in the previous
decade. The group had been planning a lawsuit to force the
department to hire more workers of color. That legal action
is on hold for now.
Twelve Black firefighters died on Sept. 11. Only one of
their bodies has been recovered. Former Mayor David Dinkins--
the city's first Black mayor, who was driven from office
thanks to a racist campaign by Giuliani and the police--was
the keynote speaker at a Nov. 11 Vulcan Society memorial.
VULCANS VS. KILLER COP
Black New Yorkers and all progressive people were outraged
earlier this year when the Fire Department agreed to train
and hire Edward McMellon. McMellon was one of the four cops
who shot and killed Amadou Diallo, a young, unarmed West
African immigrant, in a hail of 41 bullets in February 1999.
All four cops were acquitted.
The Vulcan Society campaigned against McMellon's hiring, but
received no support from the unions. McMellon graduated from
training and officially became a firefighter on Nov. 2--the
same day that protesters and cops clashed in lower
Manhattan.
In a Daily News opinion piece May 3, Washington wrote: "As a
firefighter with a police background, McMellon would qualify
to become, within a few short years, a fire marshal. A fire
marshal carries a gun and enforces the law with the same
authority as police officers. We have already seen how
McMellon enforces the law. We don't need to see it again."
Washington continued: "A Black man arrested and tried for
murder, no matter what the circumstances, would never be
hired as a firefighter.
"Now we face the prospect of being forced to train, work and
live with a man involved in one of the worst police killings
of a Black man in memory. ... Apparently, a white man who
has been arrested and tried for murder, who is reviled by
millions and who is on restricted duty in his present job is
qualified to be a firefighter, while very few Blacks and
members of other minority groups are.
"With the mayor and fire commissioner holding such
attitudes, should we believe it's just a coincidence that
the only thing whiter than Mayor Giuliani's City Hall is the
Fire Department?" he concluded.
The clash between firefighters and cops at ground zero was a
significant crack in the facade of "national unity" under
the bosses' leadership.
But if firefighters really want to honor their lost members
and preserve their jobs, they should extend a hand of
solidarity to other unions, and to the working-class
communities they serve. They should join the Vulcan Society
in its fight for the inclusion of more workers of color and
women in their ranks.
And the firefighters should question whether the Afghan war--
promoted by the same bosses who treated them callously--is
really in their interest.
- END -
(Copyright 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)
