1A. Headlines from Democracy Now I. documentary "Chavez, Venezuela and the New Latin America" 2. Sign the Peoples Petition 3. Republicans on the run 4. "Crash" is a white-supremacist movie.
========================= 1A. Democracy Now with Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez <http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/03/28/1431253>Headlines for March 28, 2006 - Senate Committee Approves New Immigration Bill - 40,000 Students Stage Walk-Out in LA to Protest - Iraqi Accuses U.S. of Massacre At Shiite Mosque - U.S. Push For New Iraqi Prime Minister - Moussaoui Claims He Was Meant to Fly Fifth Plane on 9/11 - New York Times Finally Reports On Secret UK Iraq Memo - Ex-Liberian President Charles Taylor Reported Missing In Nigeria - Judge Refuses to Delay April 22 Election in New Orleans - Amnesty: Police Have Killed 150 With Taser Stun Guns - Ex-Generals Call for Scalia To Be Recused From Gitmo Case - Hundreds of Thousands on General Strike In France =============================== 1. Tuesday, March 28, 7 pm 1800 Argyle Ave, #410, LA [] Join us for a special screening of the groundbreaking documentary "Chavez, Venezuela and the New Latin America" by Aleida Guevara (Che Guevaras daughter). It features interviews with Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and many others who are involved in building the countrys revolutionary social programs. The film affords a rare opportunity to glimpse through the blockade of information imposed by the United States into a country rich with hope, dreams and oil. An A.N.S.W.E.R. activist will introduce the film and lead discussion. Snacks and drinks available. In Spanish with English subtitles. Plus: Reportback from Saturday's massive immigrant rights protest in LA. <http://www.answerla.org/pic/2006/06-03-25-immig/m25report.htm>Read A.N.S.W.E.R.'s initial report on the protest. For more info call 323-464-1636 or e-mail <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>[EMAIL PROTECTED] ================================== 2. DEMAND FULL RIGHTS FOR ALL IMMIGRANTS! ¡Exijo Derechos Plenos para los Inmigrantes! Sign the Peoples Petition / Firme la Petición Popular: http://www.answerla.org Read A.N.S.W.E.R.'s Statement on Immigrant Rights: http://answerla.org/pic/2006/06-03-25- immig/ANSWERstatementImmRights.pdf ========================================== 3. Since everyday I speak to at least 60 people from media across the country, I can tell you, with no hesitation, that the below is absolutely true. Conservative media is now calling Bush a fascist, Ilene PRoctor -------------------------------- From: Carolyn Kay [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, March 27, 2006 2:27 AM <http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1176997,00.html>Republicans On The Run As midterm campaigns gear up, Bush's party fears a backlash that could end its 12-year hold on the House By KAREN TUMULTY, MIKE ALLEN Posted Sunday, Mar. 26, 2006 As the campaign season kicks into gear, Republican incumbents are having a hard time figuring out how close they want to be to the White House. Voters have plenty to take out on Republican candidates this year--ethics scandals, the G.O.P.'S failure to curb spending, the government's inept response to Hurricane Katrina, a confusing new prescription-drug program for seniors and, more than anything else, an unpopular President who is fighting an unpopular war. Iraq could make a vulnerability of the Republicans' greatest asset, the security issue. The midterm contests in a President's second term are almost always treacherous, but this time around, Republicans thought it would be different. The 2006 elections, coming on top of their gains in 2002 and 2004, would make history and perhaps even cement a G.O.P. majority in Congress for a generation. George W. Bush's credibility on national security and the states' aggressive gerrymandering, they believed, had turned the vast majority of districts into fortresses for incumbents. But that's not turning out to be the case. In recent weeks, a startling realization has begun to take hold: if the elections were held today, top strategists of both parties say privately, the Republicans would probably lose the 15 seats they need to keep control of the House of Representatives and could come within a seat or two of losing the Senate as well The most obvious line of defense for Republican candidates is to point out their differences with the President, as the party-wide revolt over the ports deal amply demonstrated. In the face of the Democrats' "rubber stamp" charges, G.O.P. lawmakers are distancing themselves on other issues as well But party leaders are warning privately against taking that strategy too far. "If Diet Coke criticizes Coke, people buy Pepsi, not Diet Coke," said Ken Mehlman, chairman of the Republican National Committee. In an internal Republican Party memo provided to TIME, Jan van Lohuizen, a longtime Bush pollster, warns candidates tempted to distance themselves that "President Bush drives our image and will do so until we have real national front-runners for the '08 nomination. If he drops, we all drop." Another Republican strategist describes the problem for G.O.P. candidates this way: "Adding weight to the anchor doesn't help them." Meanwhile, although there is no doubt that Americans are unhappy with the Republicans who run the country, Democratic strategists acknowledge that they have yet to sell voters on their party [T]he party's House leaders and committee chairs have begun making plans for their first moves if they take power, Democratic sources told TIME. Those sources said one of the first steps that a newly installed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi would take would be to introduce legislation making college tuition more affordable for middle-class families, perhaps through tax credits and lower interest rates on student loans. Democrats would move immediately to tighten port security, seeking to have 100% of incoming container cargo inspected. A Democratic official briefed on the plans said the party would quickly push a bill designed to inhibit future lobbying scandals. The sources said Democrats would push for changes to the troubled Medicare prescription-drug plan, giving more control to Medicare and less to private providers and striking the provision that prevents the government from negotiating prices with pharmaceutical companies. Administration officials say they fear that losing even one house of Congress would mean subpoenas and investigations--a taste of the medicine House Republicans gave Bill Clinton. "Everything will grind to a halt," one said. That prediction could be a scare tactic designed to get out the G.O.P. vote. But Democrats say that if they are victorious in November, they plan to force Bush to be more accountable, and they intend to dig through records of contracts in Iraq, for homeland security and for the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Democratic Representative Henry Waxman of California, one of the most dogged critics of the Administration, would be in line to chair the House Government Reform Committee and could write witness lists instead of open letters to the West Wing. "Some of these ranking members have had 10 years to think about what they would do," a Democratic official said. If Republicans can't change the course of things soon, the Democrats may have their chance [Please, God. PLEASE give Henry Waxman subpoena power.Caro] Lots more really good stuff at <http://makethemaccountable.com/>MakeThemAccountable.com. Carolyn Kay MakeThemAccountable.com ================================ 4. ZNet Commentary Crash March 24, 2006 By Robert Jensen and Robert Wosnitzer "Crash" is a white-supremacist movie. The Oscar-winning best picture -- widely heralded, especially by white liberals, for advancing an honest discussion of race in the United States -- is, in fact, a setback in the crucial project of forcing white America to come to terms the reality of race and racism, white supremacy and white privilege. The central theme of the film is simple: Everyone is prejudiced -- black, white, Asian, Iranian and, we assume, anyone from any other racial or ethnic group. We all carry around racial/ethnic baggage that's packed with unfair stereotypes, long-stewing grievances, raw anger, and crazy fears. Even when we think we have made progress, we find ourselves caught in frustratingly complex racial webs from which we can't seem to get untangled. For most people -- including the two of us -- that's painfully true; such untangling is a life's work in which we can make progress but never feel finished. But that can obscure a more fundamental and important point: This state of affairs is the product of the actions of us white people. In the modern world, white elites invented race and racism to protect their power, and white people in general have accepted the privileges they get from the system and helped maintain it. The problem doesn't spring from the individual prejudices that exist in various ways in all groups but from white supremacy, which is expressed not only by individuals but in systemic and institutional ways. There's little hint of such understanding in the film, which makes it especially dangerous in a white-dominant society in which white people are eager to avoid confronting our privilege. So, "Crash" is white supremacist because it minimizes the reality of white supremacy. Its faux humanism and simplistic message of tolerance directs attention away from a white-supremacist system and undermines white accountability for the maintenance of that system. We have no way of knowing whether this is the conscious intention of writer/director Paul Haggis, but it's emerges as the film's dominant message. While viewing "Crash" may make some people, especially white people, uncomfortable during and immediately after viewing, the film seems designed, at a deeper level, to make white people feel better. As the film asks us to confront personal prejudices, it allows us white folk to evade our collective responsibility for white supremacy. In "Crash," emotion trumps analysis, and psychology is more important than politics. The result: White people are off the hook. The first step in putting white people back on the hook is pressing the case that the United States in 2006 is a white-supremacist society. Even with the elimination of formal apartheid and the lessening of the worst of the overt racism of the past, the term is still appropriate, in ideological and material terms. The United States was founded, of course, on an ideology of the inherent superiority of white Europeans over non-whites that was used to justify the holocausts against indigenous people and Africans, which created the nation and propelled the U.S. economy into the industrial world. That ideology also has justified legal and extralegal exploitation of every non-white immigrant group. Today, polite white folks renounce such claims of superiority. But scratch below that surface politeness and the multicultural rhetoric of most white people, and one finds that the assumptions about the superiority of the art, music, culture, politics, and philosophy rooted in white Europe are still very much alive. No poll can document these kinds of covert opinions, but one hears it in the angry and defensive reaction of white America when non-white people dare to point out that whites have unearned privilege. Watch the resistance from white America when any serious attempt is made to modify school or college curricula to reflect knowledge from other areas and peoples. The ideology of white supremacy is all around. That ideology also helps white Americans ignore and/or rationalize the racialized disparities in the distribution of resources. Studies continue to demonstrate how, on average, whites are more likely than members of racial/ethnic minorities to be on top on measures of wealth and well-being. Looking specifically at the gap between white and black America, on some measures black Americans have fallen further behind white Americans during the so-called post-civil rights era. For example, the typical black family had 60 percent as much income as a white family in 1968, but only 58 percent as much in 2002. On those measures where there has been progress, closing the gap between black and white is decades, or centuries, away. What does this white supremacy mean in day-to-day life? One recent study found that in the United States, a black applicant with no criminal record is less likely to receive a callback from a potential employer than a white applicant with a felony conviction. In other words, being black is more of a liability in finding a job than being a convicted criminal. Into this new century, such discrimination has remained constant. That's white supremacy. Many people, of all races, feel and express prejudice, but white supremacy is built into the attitudes, practices and institutions of the dominant white society. It's not the product simply of individual failure but is woven into society, and the material consequences of it are dramatic. It seems that the people who made "Crash" either don't understand that, don't care, or both. The character in the film who comes closest to articulating a systemic analysis of white supremacy is Anthony, the carjacker played by the rapper Ludacris. But putting the critique in the mouth of such a morally unattractive character undermines any argument he makes, and his analysis is presented as pseudo-revolutionary blather to be brushed aside as we follow the filmmakers on the real subject of the film -- the psychology of the prejudice that infects us all. That the characters in "Crash" -- white and non-white alike -- are complex and have a variety of flaws is not the problem; we don't want films populated by one-dimensional caricatures, simplistically drawn to make a political point. Those kinds of political films rarely help us understand our personal or political struggles. But this film's characters are drawn in ways that are ultimately reactionary. Although the film follows a number of story lines, its politics are most clearly revealed in the interaction that two black women have with an openly racist white Los Angeles police officer played by Matt Dillon. During a bogus traffic stop, Dillon's Officer Ryan sexually violates Christine, the upper-middle-class black woman played by Thandie Newton. But when fate later puts Ryan at the scene of an accident where Christine's life is in danger, he risks his own life to save her, even when she at first reacts hysterically and rejects his help. The white male is redeemed by his heroism. The black woman, reduced to incoherence by the trauma of the accident, can only be silently grateful for his transcendence. Even more important to the film's message is Ryan's verbal abuse of Shaniqua, a black case manager at an insurance company (played by Loretta Devine). She bears Ryan's racism with dignity as he dumps his frustration with the insurance company's rules about care of his father onto her, in the form of an angry and ignorant rant against affirmative action. She is empathetic with Ryan's struggle but unwilling to accept his abuse, appearing to be one of the few reasonable characters in the film. But not for long. In a key moment at the end of the film, Shaniqua is rear-ended at a traffic light and emerges from her car angry at the Asian driver who has hit her. "Don't talk to me unless you speak American," she shouts at the driver. As the camera pulls back, we are left to imagine the language she uses in venting her prejudice. In stark contrast to Ryan and his racism is his police partner at the beginning of the film, Hanson (played by Ryan Phillippe). Younger and idealistic, Hanson tries to get Ryan to back off from the encounter with Christine and then reports Ryan's racist behavior to his black lieutenant, Dixon (played by Keith David). Dixon doesn't want the hassles of initiating a disciplinary action and Hanson is left to cope on his own, but he continues to try to do the right thing throughout the movie. Though he's the white character most committed to racial justice, at the end of the film Hanson's fear overcomes judgment in a tense moment, and he shoots and kills a black man. It's certainly true that well-intentioned white people can harbor such fears rooted in racist training. But in the world "Crash" creates, Hanson's deeper awareness of the nature of racism and attempts to combat it are irrelevant, while Ryan somehow magically overcomes his racism. Let us be clear: "Crash" is not a racist movie, in the sense of crudely using overtly racist stereotypes. It certainly doesn't present the white characters as uniformly good; most are clueless or corrupt. Two of the non-white characters (a Latino locksmith and an Iranian doctor) are the most virtuous in the film. The characters and plot lines are complex and often intriguing. But "Crash" remains a white-supremacist movie because of what it refuses to bring into the discussion. At this point in our critique, defenders of the film have suggested to us that we expect too much, that movies tend to deal with issues at this personalized level and we can't expect more. This is evasion. For example, whatever one thinks of its politics, another recent film, "Syriana," presents a complex institutional analysis of U.S. foreign policy in an engaging fashion. It's possible to produce a film that is politically sophisticated and commercially viable. Haggis is clearly talented, and there's no reason to think he couldn't have deepened the analysis in creative ways. "Crash" fans also have offered this defense to us: In a culture that seems terrified of any open discussion of race, isn't some attempt at an honest treatment of the complexity of the issue better than nothing? That's a classic argument from false alternatives. Are we stuck with a choice between silence or bad analysis? Beyond that, in this case the answer may well be no. If "Crash" and similar efforts that personalize and psychologize the issue of race keep white America from an honest engagement with the structure and consequences of white supremacy, the ultimate effect may be reactionary. In that case, "nothing" may be better. The problem of "Crash" can be summed up through one phrase from the studio's promotional material, which asserts that the film "boldly reminds us of the importance of tolerance." That's exactly the problem. On the surface, the film appears to be bold, speaking of race with the kind of raw emotion that is rare in this culture. But that emotion turns out, in the end, to be manipulative and diversionary. The problem is that the film can't move beyond the concept of tolerance, and tolerance is not the solution to America's race problem. White people can -- and often do -- learn to tolerate difference without ever disturbing the systemic, institutional nature of racism. The core problem is not intolerance but white supremacy -- and the way in which, day in and day out, white people accept white supremacy and the unearned privileges it brings. "Crash" paints a multi-colored picture of race, and in a multi-racial society recognizing that diversity is important. Let's just not forget that the color of racism is white. Robert Jensen is a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin and the author of The Heart of Whiteness: Confronting Race, Racism and White Privilege. He can be reached at [EMAIL PROTECTED] Robert Wosnitzer is associate producer of the forthcoming documentary on pornography "The Price of Pleasure." He can be reached at [EMAIL PROTECTED] Religious fundamentalists believe God gave us a brain, but doesnt want us to use it. Political fundamentalists believe the founders endorsed free speech, but didnt want us to practice it. Free market fundamentalists believe there should be no interference with markets, except by CEOs of gigantic corporations. 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