F A C I N G S O U T H A progressive Southern news report
November 26, 2003 - Issue 67 Published by the Institute for Southern Studies and Southern Exposure magazine. To join the Institute and get a year's worth of Southern Exposure and Facing South, visit www.southernstudies.org _____ ENERGY BILL SPECIAL > INSTITUTE INDEX - Holidays in Hock > DATELINE: THE SOUTH - News Around the Region > PERSPECTIVE: NAOMI KLEIN - The War on Dissent > INSTITUTE NEWS: SE Nominated for Independent Press Award _____ INSTITUTE INDEX - Holidays in Hock Percent of U.S. residents who say they will "restrain" holiday spending this year: 34 Percent that consumer spending increased over last three months: 6.4 Percent by which personal bankruptcies increased over the last year: 7.8 Number of personal bankruptcies in the last year: 1,625,813 Total amount of consumer debt, in trillions: $1.7 Percent of U.S. residents making minimum or no payments on their credit cards: 46 Percent of disposable income U.S. households spend servicing debts: 13 Projected 2004 federal budget deficit by one estimate, in billions: $500 Sources on file at the Institute for Southern Studies. _____ DATELINE: THE SOUTH - News Around the Region THOUSANDS DEMAND CLOSING OF CONTROVERSIAL FORT BENNING SCHOOL Just days after 10,000 protesters descended on the Free Trade Area of the Americas meeting Miami, 10,000 protesters gathered at the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (formerly School of the Americas) in Fort Benning, Georgia. Protesters pointed to the school's record of training dozens of leaders that ended up as dictators in Latin America and elsewhere. (Associated Press, 11/24) http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2003/11/24/national0314EST0442.DTL DEPT. OF EDUCATION UNDER BUSH FUNDING SCHOOL PRIVATIZATION MOVEMENT A new study by People For the American Way finds that the Department of Education under President Bush has directed more than $75 million in grants -- at times unsolicited - to a small cadre of advocacy groups pushing for vouchers and school privatization. These funds were made over the last three years, despite chronic underfunding of the Bush administration's own landmark 'No Child Left Behind' education legislation. (PFAW, 11/21) http://www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/default.aspx?oid=12856 COAL BECOMING BUSH'S "FUEL OF CHOICE" While President Bush is viewed as an oil man, a new report finds that the President, who received $250,000 in campaign funds from coal interests, has done more to further coal than any other sector of the energy industry. Favors include loosening pollution rules and allowing utilites in the Midwest and Southeast to ignore new standards in refurbishing power plants. (Center for Public Integrity, 11/21) http://www.publici.org/dtaweb/report.asp?ReportID=544&L1=10&L2=10&L3=0&L4=0&L5=0 RIGHTS GROUP QUESTION FBI SCRUTINY OF PEACE ACTIVISTS Civil liberties groups and politicians raised the prospect Sunday that FBI monitoring of anti-war protesters could stifle legitimate dissent and jeopardize people's First Amendment right to speak their mind. (Associated Press, 11/24) http://www.officer.com/article/article.jsp?id=7384&siteSection=1 ARMY FACES CRIPPLING SHORTFALL IN RE-ENLISTMENT The U.S. Army Reserve fell short of its re-enlistment goals this fiscal year, underscoring Pentagon fears that the protracted conflict in Iraq could cause a crippling exodus from the armed services. The Army Reserve, which historically recruits successfully in the South, missed its retention goal by 6.7 percent. (Boston Globe, 11/24) http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/112603F.shtml LEHMAN BROTHERS ADMIT TO SLAVERY TIES New York-based Lehman Brothers has become the first contractor with the city of Chicago to acknowledge past ties to slavery under a law requiring the disclosure. In response to a Chicago City Council ordinance requiring companies to disclose if they ever profited from slavery, a Lehman affidavit says the company, founded by three brothers in Alabama in 1850, bought at least one slave, and "may have personally owned other slaves." (Associated Press, 11/24) http://news.findlaw.com/ap_stories/f/1310/11-24-2003/20031124154503_22.html *** RELATED STORY: Activists Challenge Lehman Connection to For-Profit Prisons Not With our Money, a network of student and community activists, has targeted Lehman Brothers as the number one investor in for-profit prisons, including immigrant detention facilities in the wake of 9/11. http://www.notwithourmoney.org/04_lehman/lehman.html GA'S "HOPE" SCHOLARSHIPS GOING TO MIDDLE- AND UPPER-CLASS STUDENTS Georgia's HOPE college scholarship program has been hailed nationally as proof that a lottery can fund programs for the social good. But a recent analysis by the Atlanta Journal Constitution found the program is going to middle-class and wealthy students instead of the intended poor. HOPE also has led many students to take easier classes, drop tough courses and take longer to graduate. 58 percent of HOPE students drop out. (Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 11/9) http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/hope/09hopemain.html THE RESURRECTION OF ROY MOORE When Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore was removed from office after his decision to install-- and refusal to remove -- a 5,000-pound granite monument to the Ten Commandments in the state's Judicial Building, onlookers thought his career was finished. But Moore lives on. (Mother Jones, 11/24) http://www.motherjones.com/news/dailymojo/2003/11/11_501.html _____ PERSPECTIVE: NAOMI KLEIN - The War on Dissent Heavy-handed Police and Propaganda Tactics Brought Baghdad to Miami November 25, 2003 In December, 1990, U.S. President George Bush Sr. traveled through South America to sell the continent on a bold new dream: "a free-trade system that links all of the Americas." Addressing the Argentine congress, he said that the plan, later to be named the Free-Trade Area of the Americas would be "our hemisphere's new declaration of interdependence . . . the brilliant new dawn of a splendid new world." Last week, Mr. Bush's two sons joined forces to try to usher in that new world by holding the FTAA negotiations in friendly Florida. This is the state that Governor Jeb Bush vowed to "deliver" to his brother during the 2000 presidential elections, even if that meant keeping many African-Americans from exercising their right to vote. Now Jeb Bush was vowing to hand his brother the coveted trade deal, even if that meant keeping thousands from exercising their right to protest. And yet, despite the Bush brothers' best efforts, the dream of a hemisphere united into a single free-market economy died last week. It was killed not by demonstrators in Miami, but by the populations of Brazil, Argentina, and Bolivia, which have let their politicians know that if they sign away any more power to foreign multinationals, they may as well not come home. The Brazilians brokered a compromise that makes the agreement a pick-and-choose affair, allowing governments to sign on to the parts they like and refuse the ones they don't. Washington will, of course, continue to try to bully individual countries and groups of nations into sweeping trade contracts on the model of the North American free-trade agreement, but there will be no single, unified deal. Inside the Hotel Inter-Continental, it was being called "FTAA Lite." Outside, we experienced something distinctly heavier: "War Lite." In fact, the more control the U.S. trade representatives lost at the negotiating table, the more raw power the police exerted on the streets. "Our goal was to drown you out," one Miami-Dade police officer explained to me, and that's exactly what they did. Small, peaceful demonstrations were attacked with extreme force; organizations were infiltrated by undercover officers who then used stun guns on activists; busses filled with union members were prevented from joining permitted marches; dozens of young faces were smashed into concrete and beaten bloody with batons; human rights activists had guns pointed at their heads at military-style checkpoints. Police violence outside of trade summits is not new, but what was striking about Miami was how divorced the security response was from anything resembling an actual threat. From an activist perspective, the protests were disappointingly small and almost embarrassingly obedient, an understandable response to weeks of police intimidation. Listening to the incessant roar of helicopters and the march of police boots, I couldn't shake the feeling that something new was going on. It felt less like we were the targets of this operation than the target practice, unwitting extras in an elaborate military drill. The FTAA Summit in Miami represents the official homecoming of the "war on terror." The latest tactical and propaganda techniques honed in Iraq -- from a Hollywoodized military to a militarized media -- have now been used on a grand scale in a major U.S. city. "This should be a model for homeland defense," Miami Mayor Manny Diaz proudly said of the security operation that brought together over 40 law-enforcement agencies, from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, to the Department of Fish and Wildlife. But in order for the Miami Model to work, the police first had to establish a connection between legitimate activists and dangerous terrorists. Enter Miami Police Chief John Timoney, an avowed enemy of activist "punks" who repeatedly classified FTAA opponents as "outsiders coming in to terrorize and vandalize our city." With the activists recast as dangerous aliens, Miami became eligible for the open tap of public money irrigating the "war on terror." In fact, $8.5-million spent on security during the FTAA meeting came directly out of the $87-billion President Bush extracted from Congress for Iraq last month -- a fact barely reported outside of the Miami press. But more was borrowed from the Iraq invasion than just money. Miami police also invited reporters to "embed" with them in armored vehicles and helicopters. As in Iraq, most reporters embraced their role as pseudo-soldiers with unsettling zeal, suiting up in ridiculous combat helmets and brand-new camouflage flak jackets. The resulting media coverage was the familiar wartime combination of dramatic images and non-information. We know, thanks to an "embed" from the Miami Herald, that Police Chief Timoney was working so hard hunting down troublemakers that by 3:30 on Thursday, "he had eaten only a banana and an oatmeal cookie since 6 a.m." Local television stations didn't cover the protests so much as hover over them. Their helicopters showed images of confrontations but instead of hearing the voices on the streets -- voices of demonstrators pleading with police to stop shooting and clearly following orders to disperse -- we heard only from senior police officials and perky news anchors commiserating with the boys on the front line. Meanwhile, independent journalists who dared to do their jobs and film the police violence up close were actively targeted. "She's not with us," one officer told another as they grabbed Ana Nogueira, a correspondent with Pacifica Radio's Democracy Now! who was covering a peaceful protest outside the Miami-Dade county jail. When the police established that Ms. Nogueira was indeed "not with us" (i.e. neither an embedded reporter nor an undercover cop) she was hauled away and charged. The Miami Model of dealing with dissent reaches far beyond a single meeting. On Sunday, the New York Times reported on a leaked FBI bulletin revealing "a co-ordinated, nationwide effort to collect intelligence" on the U.S. anti-war movement. The memorandum singles out perfectly lawful protest activities including non-violence training, videotaping of police actions and Internet organizing. Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said that the document revealed that, "The FBI is dangerously targeting Americans who are engaged in nothing more than lawful protest and dissent. The line between terrorism and legitimate civil disobedience is blurred." We can expect much more of these tactics on the homeland front. Just as civil liberties violations escalated when Washington lost control over the FTAA process, so will repression increase as the Bush crew faces the ultimate threat: losing control over the White House. Already, Jim Wilkinson, director of strategic communications at U.S. Central Command in Doha, Qatar, (the operation that gave the world the Jessica Lynch rescue), has moved to New York to head up media operations for the Republican National Convention. "We're looking at embedding reporters," he told the New York Observer of his plans to use some of the Iraq tricks during the convention. "We're looking at new and interesting camera angles." The war is coming home. Naomi Klein is the author of "No Logo" and "Fences and Windows." The Institute for Southern Studies/Southern Exposure will be sponsoring a visit by Klein to North Carolina in January 2004. Visit www.southernstudies.org for more details. © 2003 Bell Globemedia Publishing Inc. _____ INSTITUTE NEWS: SE Nominated for Independent Press Award We're happy to announce that Southern Exposure has been nominated for a 2003 Independent Press Award in the category of Local/Regional Coverage. The honors were announced in the November/December issue of Utne Magazine. This is the 8th time Southern Exposure has been nominated. Show some love for your favorite Southern progressive magazine, and vote for Southern Exposure in the Utne Independent Press Award Reader's Choice poll! www.utne.com/pub/2003_120/promo/10914-3.html
