“A Hungry Man is an Angry Man”
I received a frantic call from Sarajevo yesterday. My mother informed me that my sister’s already dismal pay was cut by almost half. Prior to this, she was told to work seven days a week for 11 hour shifts. This, mind you, in a job without health care or even paid lunch breaks. She tried, or rather begged for at least one day off each week, so that she could spend it with her daughter. Instead, she found the official reduction in pay attached to her file.
This would not be an insurmountable issue if she lived in a country with a strong economy, where jobs were not scarce and labor laws against gender and age discrimination were in place. But in a place where the unemployment rate is around 40% and food prices are on a precipitous rise, that severe pay cut is equivalent to a death sentence to a family of four with one income earner.
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Three Men Indicted for Racially Motivated Church Burning
The Northeast U.S. has suddenly experienced a wave of racially motivated crimes. We reported on a murder spree just last week. Boston is no stranger to racism towards African Americans but it seems like other cities in Massachusetts are also not immune. Less than 2 hours away in Springfield, a town is coming to grips with a racially motivated arson attack against a predominantly African American Church. Macedonia Church of God in Christ’s newly completed building was burned to the ground by 3 racist arsonists, Benjamin Haskell, 22, Michael Jacques, 24, and Thomas Gleason, 21, all residents of the town. Read more
Green Burials: Wave of the Past and Future?
In the last 130 years, death rituals in North America have changed dramatically. It wasn’t until the civil war, when soldiers died far from their homes, that our modern-day preservation methods began to take hold. Prior to the war, people used to die at home, leaving their families to prepare the bodies. The deceased were then observed in a parlor and buried in a cemetery and sometimes in their family’s backyard. With the need for preservation, undertakers went from box makers, to box makers plus hole diggers, to a ritual directors, and now they dictate the entire burial procedure. Read more
Law for the Rich, Law for the Poor
“Civil law is for the rich. Criminal Law is for the poor.”
The trenchant words of the Bishop in the middle of a deadly Sao Paulo neighborhood years ago are forever etched in mind. The stark reality of his assessment has seldom been clearer as the political-economic crisis deepens. An unemployed worker robs a bank of a few thousand dollars and goes to federal prison for untold years. A Wall Street mogul robs banks of untold millions and never sees the inside of a courtroom. The stories are legion; the outcomes well-known. Read more
Now is the Time to Broaden Children’s Health Coverage
The State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) is an investment in the future health of America.
Increased funding to SCHIP has twice been vetoed by former President Bush (boy do I love saying former). And now that he is gone, it is being pushed with some urgency for approval from the Senate. SCHIP is a federal program that provides funding to States to give health care coverage to children who are not eligible for Medicaid, but whose families cannot afford private insurance. Read more
British Anti-fascists Prepare Mass Campaign
By Nick Lowles
The next five months will see the largest ever anti-fascist campaign in British history. Dozens of local anti-fascists groups are being set up, thousands of people mobilised and five million pieces of literature delivered. This is all being organised under the banner of HOPE not hate and our target is to prevent the fascist British National Party (BNP) from winning seats in the forthcoming European Elections. Read more
How Strong Are the Walls of Jericho?
By Walidah Imarisha
Last month I was stuck in the house for a week straight, thanks to the worst snowstorm Portland, Oregon has seen in the past 30 years. Over a foot of snow and the city just had no idea how to deal with it.
It is ironic, then, that I picked up the first disc of the CBS series Jericho at the Blockbuster I slogged to through snow and freezing ice. Jericho (2006-2008) explores the aftermath of nuclear bombs detonated in 23 major cities in the U.S. through the lens of Jericho, a small town in Kansas. Read more
Reclaiming the Discourse on Single Motherhood
In these uncertain economic times, issues of crime and its social origin and impact are beginning to shape public discourse. Fear of social collapse often leads to scapegoating, and a reemerging focus on the negativity of single parenthood is just one example of this. Read more
White Nationalist Targets a United America
As citizens in the millions celebrated the inauguration of President Barack Obama—others not so vested in the concept of a united America are busy sowing the seeds of hate. The Boston Herald is reporting that barely a day after the 44th President of the United States was sworn in a young man in Brockton, Massachusetts went on a shooting spree that included the rape and murder of a young woman, the shooting of her sister, and the killing of a homeless man. Another individual who came to the aid of the sisters was also shot at. Read more
Salmonella Outbreak Spotlights Unhealthy Plant Conditions
Two weeks ago I had the stomach flu. Without disclosing the details, I’ll just say it was awful, and the fever and aches kept me incapacitated for two days after the worst was over. Read more
Anti-Immigrant Network Sheds Mainstream Charade
After three decades of being handled with kids gloves by national media, the national network of anti-immigrant organizations is now confident enough that they are jettisoning any veneer of respectability. One such organization, Social Contract Press, showed just how extreme its views are on a recently released video produced by Imagine 2050.
Founded in 1968, the role of Social Contract Press (SCP) is to produce written materials for the larger anti-immigrant movement created by John Tanton in the 70s. Tanton, a retired ophthalmologist, is the founder of the modern anti-immigrant movement in the United States. A report recently released by the Southern Poverty Law Center further documents Tanton’s relationship with white nationalists in the United States and Europe. Read more
Touchstones
“He entered upon the canvass with a reputation confined to his own state. He closes it with his name a household word wherever the principles he holds are honored and with the respect of his opponents in all sections of the country.” Joseph Medill, writing of Abraham Lincoln, 1858.
Those of us who grew up among the vast prairies, rolling hills, and city streets of Illinois are steeped in Abraham Lincoln. As school kids we visited his New Salem and Springfield homes, and stood quietly in the solace of his tomb. We joined thousands over the years who rubbed the nose of his likeness outside that last resting place, shining it as though to keep his spirit alive and vibrant. We did not know then of his ambivalence about the rights of slaves, only that he freed them and preserved the union. We still go to the Lincoln Memorial and are deeply moved. We are of him; he was of us. Read more
Obama Must Embrace Immigrants to Reform Economy
The American Economy will never recover if workers are robbed of their wages. When workers suffer from wage theft, the economy feels it too. According to Kim Bobo, founder and executive director of Interfaith Worker Justice, in her new book Wage Theft in America, between two and three million workers are paid less than the minimum wage. More than three million are misclassified by their employers as independent contractors; many are not paid overtime or paid at all. Offenders range from huge corporations like Wal-Mart to small sub-contractors in the residential construction sector. Read more
Sheriff Joe Separates Mothers from Their Children
Sheriff Joe Arpaio finds any excuse to separate families. It’s 2009 and the terrorizing continues in Arizona’s Maricopa County. A community organizer last week documented a heartbreaking scene of a mother, Ciria Lopez, being stopped by Sheriff’s Joe’s self-proclaimed “posse”. She was arrested for an unpaid traffic ticket and driven away while her two young children sat crying in the backseat. The sheriff’s deputies left behind a stuffed animal while apparently explaining that their mother was going back to Mexico.
According to the Huffington Post, a judge cleared Lopez of any charges after she paid the ticket in court on Friday. Sheriff Joe continues to detain her though according to his 287(g) agreement with ICE. Read more
New Citizenship and Identity Politics
Today I filled out my first application for an American passport and mailed it out. As I dropped the envelope in the mail box, I felt the significance of that moment. Symbolically, the envelope represented a tangible break with the country of my ancestry and of my youth. It was not unlike a break-up after a long and tumultuous relationship. A myriad of emotions followed me home.
Naturally, there was sadness, a sense of losing a familiar milieu that helped define my identity. In an instant, the truths that I have known about myself became questionable. For so long, the relationship I had with Bosnia was one filled with pain and sadness, as well as pride and love. All of those emotions created a prism through which I filtered my sense of self and defined it as truth. With this final act of acceptance and welcoming of my new citizenship, I saw that prism clouding up, leaving me to wonder what other understandings of my once unchangeable identity were possible. Read more
Mayor in New Jersey Quits After Receiving Racist Threats
Charles Tyson, mayor of South Harrison, NJ resigned earlier this month citing racism and death threats against him and his family. South Harrison is a small town of 2700 people in south New Jersey that elects mayors to a one year term. By all accounts Mr. Tyson has performed his duties as mayor admirably over the past year but he was forced to step down from his position by what he calls a “hate group” in the town.
Tyson admitted that his family and his wife asked him to quit and not continue for a third straight year. He believes that his position as mayor is igniting racial tensions in town. He stated,
“I know that 95% of the people in South Harrison are the finest people you would ever want to meet,” “But as long as I am the lightning rod for a hate group in town, it is better for me to back off.”
Mr. Tyson received dozens of racist phone calls and emails during his two years as mayor. He has received death threats and some of his property has been damaged. Mr. Tyson’s tires have been slashed and a campaign sign on his lawn was defaced with the letters KKK. Tyson has also been shoved by a police officer in the town. Read more
Obama and the Environment
I looked over the Energy Plan at barackobama.com today, and I can’t help but feel hot and cold about it.
His plan unquestionably aims to give assistance to middle class and low income households, which is certainly imperative at this point in time….and a exhilarating change from the current administration. However, being someone who is legitimately concerned for the environment, I have to put my foot down and say that his plan does not dis-include practices that may be highly detrimental to this planet, and contains propositions calling for relatively unsustainable energy procurement and management. The following is my summary of his Energy Plan, approached and illuminated by the way of an ecological eye… and with commentary, of course. Read more
We are in Serious Trouble, and Patience is Running Thin
There is a deepening sense of frustration, cynicism, and growing anger brewing across the country, tempered only, for now, by the dim expectation that the Obama Administration might turn things around.
Time for a turnaround, however, is short, and the last thing the country needs to hear from the new Administration or the Congress is that “it will take a while” to fix the mess left in Bush’s wake. People are in no mood to hear how the crash of great expectations with entrenched power is going to get taken care of “down the road;” the wreckage must be removed now and the new roadway cleared. Read more
High Tech, High Touch
Yesterday was the birthday of HAL 9000, one of the creepiest film villains ever in the 1968 film “2001: A Space Odyssey.” HAL’s silky tenor voice coddles,and then terrorizes the hero Dave, until Dave defeats the computer with a simple screwdriver, a classic example of High Touch triumphing over High Tech. In the book, HAL became operational on January 12, 1997 in Urbana, Illinois. Let’s finish off the birthday cake with a look at effective High Tech and Touch, and how they each shaped 2008. Read more
Bush Attacks Right to Representation
The Bush Administration must get some kind of perverse pleasure out of kicking people when they’re down. Nothing else could explain their most recent blow to the rights of America’s downtrodden. This time they’ve stripped away the right to legal counsel for immigrants facing deportation. According to the American Immigration Law Foundation “the Attorney General (Michael Mukasey) declared that henceforth, immigrants, asylum seekers, and all others in removal (deportation) proceedings do not have any right under statute or the Constitution to representation by a lawyer before they can be ordered deported.” Read more
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