From jdav@noc.orgMon Mar 6 17:06:20 1995 Date: Mon, 6 Mar 95 13:56 GMT From: Jim Davis To: pt.dist@noc.org Subject: People's Tribune 3-11-95 (Online Edition) ****************************************************************** People's Tribune (Online Edition) Vol. 22 No. 11 / March 13, 1995 P.O. Box 3524, Chicago, IL 60654 Email: pt@noc.org ****************************************************************** INDEX to the PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE (Online Edition) Vol. 22 No. 11 / March 13, 1995 Page One 1. NO FREE LUNCHES FOR KIDS, JUST FOR THE MILLIONAIRES! Editorial 2. 'CONTRACT' FOR MURDER: THE SYSTEM IS KILLING OUR CHILDREN News 3. THE CRIME OF POVERTY: AN ORPHAN'S STORY 4. HOUSE COMMITTEE'S PLAN IS 'OUT TO LUNCH'! 5. EACH OF US MUST EXCLAIM: 'I AM OF VALUE' 6. CLINTON'S ID BID MUST BE STOPPED, SAYS ACTIVIST 7. BOSTON WELFARE RIGHTS LEADERS CALL FOR UNITY IN CONTINUING STRUGGLE AGAINST CUTBACKS 8. THERE IS A FOUL WIND BLOWING OVER THE FIELD OF DREAMS 9. 'POOR' NEWT Ñ FAT CAT ATTACKS THE POOR, BUT CLAIMS HE'S ONE OF THEM American Lockdown 10. 'SLAVERY IS ALIVE AND WELL IN AMERICA': THE IMPACT OF PRISON LABOR Culture Under Fire 11. FREEDOM OF SPEECH, PEOPLE'S RADIO WIN A VICTORY 12. WRITERS ROCK IN 'MID-LIFE CONFIDENTIAL' Announcements, Events, etc. 13. CHECK OUT CROSSROAD! 14. ABOUT THE PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE ****************************************************************** 1. PAGE 1: NO FREE LUNCHES FOR KIDS, JUST FOR THE MILLIONAIRES! WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The governor of Vermont called it "the most despicable, mean-spirited legislative proposal I have seen in all my years of public service." On February 23, a committee of the U.S. House of Representatives voted to abolish several federal school lunch programs. This measure could end free school lunches for as many as 25 million children. These cuts are being proposed at a time when the gap between wealth and poverty in America is widening, not narrowing. Today, there are more children in poverty in the United States than at any time since 1964. At least 15 million children in America are growing up in poverty, according to a recent report of the Children's Defense Fund called Wasting America's Future. Nearly one in every two of these poor children lives in extreme poverty, according to that same report. And it is not just children who are poor in this land with plenty: America now grapples with the disparity between 141 billionaires and 80 million people in poverty. We cannot allow legislators who receive gigantic salaries and pensions -- to say nothing of free meals from lobbyists -- to act like schoolyard bullies who steal lunch money. We have to transform society so that all of society's resources and technology can be used to meet the needs of its members. To do that, the millions of us who live in poverty need to come together. We make up a new economic class of people, a class created by the electronic revolution which has thrown millions of us out of employment. If we want our children to have full bellies, we will have to take political power away from the tiny class of wealthy people which currently has it. ****************************************************************** 2. EDITORIAL: 'CONTRACT' FOR MURDER: THE SYSTEM IS KILLING OUR CHILDREN There are a lot of ways to kill a child. On Tuesday, February 22, a rookie cop on a drug bust in Paterson, New Jersey, showed us one way with a fatal shot into the head of Lawrence Meyers, an unarmed teen. In response, the state was rocked by the largest civil disturbance since police in nearby Teaneck put a bullet in the back of 16- year-old Philip Pannell four years ago. One day after Lawrence Meyers was killed, a Congressional committee in Washington D.C. displayed another, slower, quieter, but no less deadly way to dispose of children: a show of hands, a pen and paper. That's all it took for the House Committee on Educational and Economic Opportunities to recommend the destruction of the federal school lunch and WIC (Women, Infants, Children) programs -- nutritional assistance serving over 30 million people in this country. Doctors immediately predicted widespread starvation, hunger, miscarriages and the hidden, slow death of malnutrition should this component of the "Contract With America" be passed in the U.S. Senate. Yet, the same "public servants" who would take food from the mouths of children pressed a $3.2 billion "emergency" defense appropriation into the sweaty palms of Pentagon generals. Two hundred million dollars of that was stolen from a federal training program for poor kids, people like Lawrence Meyers, who might have gotten a job instead of a police slug in the head. Meyers' schoolmate Tyrone Moon knows it. Choking with emotion, the East Side High student addressed a packed memorial service for the slain youth. "If justice is not served," he declared, "then there will be repercussions. If it happens again, we are not tearing up Paterson, we are coming to a town near you." In fact, the jobless, impoverished streets of Paterson were torn up long before the outrage over Lawrence Meyers' death. No wonder the ruling class can brazenly propose the destruction of student nutrition programs. Patterson is like thousands of places where a whole generation of youths is under attack by a system that no longer requires their labor and fears their very existence. What happened there, what is happening across America is a revolution getting underway. Nobody declared it nobody can stop it. It bubbles to the surface one day against police terror, another day against the barbaric plot to take food from women and children. Tomorrow, it will take yet another form. This revolution can be and must be organized, directed and pointed in the direction of a new social order, a system where hunger is unknown, where children are cherished, not slaughtered. That is the mission of the National Organizing Committee. We urge you to join. ****************************************************************** 3. THE CRIME OF POVERTY: AN ORPHAN'S STORY WHEN ASKED, 'WHAT'S NEW, JOE?' 'ANOTHER DAY ON THE CALENDAR,' HE REPLIES EACH TIME. By the Northwest Indiana Chapter of the NOC Joe was born on January 6, 1943 and his life, as most of us know it, ended at the age of nine when his mother died from the effects of acute alcoholism at the age of 29. Joe was declared a ward of the state of Nebraska because of his father's "neglect." Joe's father died three years later from liver disease. Joe was placed in a "Newt Gingrich Home," an orphanage called Riverview. Three months later he was sent to the state reformatory because he ran away from the "home" trying to find his father. Joe was one of the youngest inmates in the reformatory. Joe experienced sexual and psychological abuse for three years before he was transferred to Boys Town in Omaha. He was sent to a state mental hospital in Lincoln, Nebraska because officials at Boys Town said that Joe "lied, wet his bed and was hard to handle," during his three-month stay at Father Flanagan's "refuge." By the time Joe was placed in the state mental hospital at age 13, he had been labelled "delinquent, mentally retarded with an inadequate personality type, a liar, and a troublemaker." Other so-called professional diagnoses resulted from psychiatric evaluations in the years that followed. What had Joe done to deserve such treatment? He was a neglected child running away from an orphanage to be with his father and sister. The state placed him in institutional settings where he received sexual abuse, such as forced fellatio, beginning at age 10. This was the "safety and protection" the state promised to this orphan to avoid the "horrors" of living in poverty with his family. Joe remained in the state mental hospital for 16 years until he turned 26. This was five years past the legal limit for court commitment to a state mental institution without an additional hearing and decision from the State Board of Mental Health to prove that the person is unfit to return to the community. No such hearing ever took place for Joe! During his 13 years in the Lincoln State Hospital, Joe received about 150 shock treatments. He was an involuntary participant in LSD experiments directed by a psychiatrist who had been treated at a Veterans Administration hospital for mental illness. Joe got to celebrate his transfer from the children's ward with forced sterilization without his consent. In a conversation with Joe 15 years after his liberation, he described the surgery but did not even know what it was called. Joe recalls that the characteristic responses to his running away (called "elopements" by hospital personnel) was to give him a "little juice" for breakfast on the morning of his return. Patients stood in long lines on Monday, Wednesday and Fridays for their "juice" (electro-convulsive shock treatment). As Joe continued to be subjected to these abuses, the list of psychiatric labels for him grew to include psychotic, borderline mentally retarded, chronic institutional reaction type, inadequate personality type, epileptic and multiple personality disorder. All of these psychological problems were "cured" miraculously one day when Joe was told that he must leave the institution by 5 p.m. that day or face arrest for trespassing. Seventeen years of confinement resulted in sexual and psychological abuse, the loss of his teeth from an inadequate diet, neglect and near-lethal doses of medications. Joe also lost mobility because of deformed feet caused by improperly fitting shoes as a growing boy. Joe returned to a world he had not known for 17 years -- with a third-grade education, $25 and a bus ticket to Omaha. Joe was not detoxified before his discharge and was in a fog for quite a while as he worked as a dishwasher in a run-down hotel. Whatever became of Joe? His life is typical of poor people in our society facing homelessness and hunger. To this day, his family and friends consist of a few former mental patients he met "on the inside" and a sister he had seen once during his years of incarceration. Joe visits his sister, who lives in another city, once or twice a year without the closeness of siblings lucky enough to have been born into families with the resources enabling them to remain together with their parents. After many years, the state of Nebraska created a modest trust fund of "guilt money" for Joe. Joe's attorney told the press, "We have created an institutionalized person." Joe's first check was $788. In November 1994, Joe wrote, "My case was a sham!" Never once did the individuals responsible for ruining Joe's life apologize or express any warmth or concern for a life destroyed. Members of the state legislature were primarily concerned with establishing a "bad precedent" by authorizing the $50,000 trust fund for Joe. In the end, the state did not lose a dime, since Joe only receives interest from the trust fund. Joe sits alone in his half-lit basement apartment watching television and smoking cigarettes. Days may go by before he ventures out into the world with caution and a general lack of trust. He used to shovel snow and carry newspapers to earn additional income, but his feet continue to deteriorate, leaving him painfully disabled. The emotional loss equals his physical torture, so he uses a protective shield of cynical remarks and sarcastic barbs in an attempt to reach out to others. "So, Joe, what's new?" "Just another day on the calendar!" +----------------------------------------------------------------+ BACK TO THE FUTURE? Joe is one example of millions of people in our society who have committed the "crime of poverty." The "Contract With America" proposed by Newt Gingrich and others is proposing age-old "solutions" to poverty that created Joe and other unfortunate people like him. These leaders, elected by a minority of people, are presenting their proposals as if orphanages are a new concept. They propagandize with their plan, attempting to brainwash us into believing that poor families are inferior and that young mothers and poor women do not have the right to raise their children even though they gave them life on this earth. CNN called Gingrich the "number one hit man for the Republican Party" prior to the November elections. The news report was tongue in cheek, yet depicted Gingrich as a revolutionary with a new vision. In any other context, the imagery of hit men and contracts has commonly referred to the Mafia. Now they are seen as positive ways to depict our government and present its solutions that have already failed. They will continue to create more poverty through job loss and the destruction of communities already struggling to survive. Our government creates poverty and blames poor people for their plight. Any proposals recommending institutionalization are to control poor people lacking the financial resources to avoid incarceration. As the number of unemployed people continues to grow, the surplus labor in our society poses a threat to the rich of this country of impending social change. Since our new class of unemployed people outside of the economic system cannot be controlled by employers, the government will subsidize capitalism once more by using our tax dollars to fund a system of incarceration for the preservation of an economic system in the final stages of decay. Unless we organize to fight the "Contract on America," we will be paying more taxes to fund expensive institutions/concentration camps. More innocent people, like Joe, will experience the horrors of a government which thinks that people can be punished out of poverty and that poor people are biologically inferior. Without organized action, you will be forced to submit by working three part-time jobs and living in poverty, or they will destroy your family and community. We must not go "back to the future" with systems of fascist social control. Economic history has proven the benefits and inevitability of moving forward. Our new class must continue to organize and demand a real future. We must tell our government that we did not sign their contract. A conference will be held at the University of Illinois at Chicago on "Technology, Employment and Community" March 2-4. Panelists and workshops will examine our systems of social control that create people like Joe through forced incarceration and biological solutions to social problems created by capitalism. Please join us as we design a real future, free from the past oppressions of an economic age gone by. -- The Northwest Indiana Chapter of the National Organizing Committee +----------------------------------------------------------------+ ****************************************************************** 4. HOUSE COMMITTEE'S PLAN IS 'OUT TO LUNCH'! By John Slaughter ATLANTA -- Years ago, Congress passed a bill stating that taxpayers would no longer be paying for the two martini luncheons so enjoyed by our elected representatives. Taxpayers were happy! But when House bill H.R. 4 was sponsored by the Republicans, a hue and cry was forthcoming from the taxpayers. This bill affects the National School Lunch Program and reduces funding to the public schools. This would greatly diminish not only the lunch program but the breakfast program as well. A campaign is underway in Georgia to help save the child nutrition programs. Parents, teachers and community leaders are sending cards and letters to their Congressional representatives. The message was being sent that the lunch program was not a part of welfare and should be taken out of the Personal Responsibility Act. Unfortunately, this view is narrow and welfare recipients should have been called into this campaign too. The National School Lunch Program was created after World War II and is presently guaranteeing free and subsidized lunches and breakfasts to 25 million children across the United States. If the Republican initiative is enacted, the federal government would no longer run the school-based meal programs or other nutrition programs for poor children and pregnant and breast-feeding women. Instead, states would receive block grants that would give them more flexibility in how the allocated money for feeding and child care programs. Over five years, states would receive $2 billion less for school meals and more than $5 billion less for other nutrition programs for poor women and children than they would under current law. This plan would allow states to use 20 percent of the block grants for another purpose altogether. Annette Bomar, Georgia's director of school nutrition, stated that if the block grants are awarded to the states, school lunch funding would be cut by one-third and that would mean that the price of school lunches in Georgia would go up considerably, the quality and size of the meals would go down and thousands of students now receiving lunches at a reduced price would have to pay full price or go hungry. The campaign must go on! Write your Congressional officials. Children need advocates. Hungry children can't learn! ****************************************************************** 5. EACH OF US MUST EXCLAIM: 'I AM OF VALUE' By Jan Lightfoot HINCKLEY, Maine-- Recently when the Massachusetts governor was given the oath of office, an anti-inauguration was held. One woman spoke passionately, basically saying, "The advocates of the poor have sold out, and they are killing us." There are two types of advocates for the poor. One type treats those they serve as less than human. These people took a wrong path. To raise their own self-image, they begrudgingly serve the low-income. They are part of the abusive, oppressive system. Then there are those of all economic backgrounds who genuinely wish to help. Often, they know the poverty barriers firsthand. Others have seen and been moved by injustice, have dedicated their lives to fighting economic injustice. We, the people denied access to God-given resources, need to recognize the difference between a caring advocate and someone who has sold out. In a Waterville, Maine, Christian soup kitchen, a grey-haired lady mistakenly thought an 11-year-old girl was helping herself to a forbidden second helping of food. The girl was berated and reduced to tears. This was abuse, clear and simple. This abuse has nothing to do with the value of the person abused! It's a defect of the abuser! We must not allow others to color the way we view ourselves. Individually, we are the only people who can effectively fight abuse of the poor. Advocates are not magicians. They cannot raise our self-images without us. For ourselves, each of us must exclaim: "I am of value!" ****************************************************************** 6. CLINTON'S ID BID MUST BE STOPPED, SAYS ACTIVIST By Rich Capalbo DECATUR, Illinois -- President Clinton in his State of the Union message came out in support for a centralized computer data base, supposedly in order to sort out the undocumented immigrants in the United States. The proposal implies the creation of a national identity card. A few days after the speech, the People's Tribune sounded out the opinions of some people about this plan during a rally by striking workers of the A.E. Staley Co. in Decatur and their supporters. Asked what he thought of Clinton's proposal, Emile Schepers said: "The State of the Union message was totally reactionary and totally anti-people. He could have used the opportunity to clear up some of the lies about the impact of immigrants on life. He joined in the attacks on immigrants. "Illinois is one of the states that he targeted for this and it's going to give employers access to data about people, not only immigrants. I think we absolutely have to stop it." ****************************************************************** 7. BOSTON WELFARE RIGHTS LEADERS CALL FOR UNITY IN CONTINUING STRUGGLE AGAINST CUTBACKS By Jackie Dee King BOSTON -- On Friday, February 10, the Massachusetts Legislature passed a "welfare reform" bill that is being touted as one of the toughest in the nation. The bill requires 20 percent of the welfare recipients in the state to get a job within 60 days, or perform 20 hours a week of unpaid community service. No one will get welfare benefits for more than 24 months in any five-year period. Teen-age mothers must live with their families or in state-run homes. Under the "family cap" provision, recipients with children cannot get additional benefits if they have more children. All able-bodied recipients will have their benefits cut by almost three percent. Fingerprinting of welfare recipients will begin in two cities, and investigations of "welfare fraud" will be stepped up. The Department of Public Welfare has been renamed the Department of Transitional Assistance. This bill was signed by Gov. William Weld and has been sent on to Washington for a federal waiver, so that the new program can begin July 1. The response to this vicious legislation has been massive and angry. Three hundred people descended on the State House on January 19 to protest the cuts. Three people were brutalized and arrested. More than 500 people demonstrated on February 9, hours before the bill was passed. Eight people were arrested -- a grandmother was pulled out from the crowd and dragged by the hair to the elevator. The film in her camera was never returned. The People's Tribune recently interviewed two leaders of the welfare rights struggle in Massachusetts. Dottie Stevens is the acting president of the Massachusetts Welfare Rights Union, vice- president of the National Welfare Rights Union, an elder in the Church of the United Community, vice-chair of the National Organizing Committee, and a former candidate for governor of Massachusetts. Diane Dujon is a member of the Massachusetts Welfare Rights Union and the director of assessment at the College of Public and Community Service at the University of Massachusetts in Boston. She is currently on leave to co-edit a book with Professor Ann Withorn called For Crying Out Loud: Women's Poverty in the United States, to be published by South End Press. PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE: As International Women's Day approaches, poor women in Massachusetts are faced with one of the most repressive welfare "reform" bills in the country. Would you discuss some of the effects this legislation will have? DIANE DUJON: They had an article in the newspaper a few weeks ago about a mother dog who worked frantically to dig up her babies after the owner had buried them alive. The dog got so much praise and approval for her maternal instincts. But when human mothers, mothers on welfare, try to stand up for their children, they are shamed and vilified. When the government cuts off the meager check a woman gets, so that she will not be able to feed her children anymore, they expect her to just take it quietly, and say "OK." Really, what they are saying to us is that poor women should not have a voice. More than that, poor women should not have children. It's a form of genocide. PT: With these cutbacks coming down in Massachusetts and across the country, what are the tasks faced by the welfare rights movement? DIANE: We need to realize that we're all part of the working class. There was a time when workers understood who we were. Whether we were in or out of a job at the moment, we were all part of the working class. They always try to divide the employed from the unemployed. That's how they conquer us, by dividing us. And those of us who have jobs right now are working twice as hard, for less money and less benefits. We have to understand who we are and who we should align ourselves with. PT: Dottie, can you talk about your arrest at the State House in January? DOTTIE STEVENS: On January 19, more than 300 people came together for a press conference at the State House to protest the notice to AFDC recipients that this could be their last check, since there was no money in the state budget for welfare after February 15. People came with their children in tow. The women spoke out about their terror, fear and income deficits. Many women and children were there from homeless and battered women's shelters -- women who need real support in many different areas. Lots of these folks had never been to a press conference or spoken out before, but they knew if they weren't heard, they would end up losing their children to the orphanages Newt Gingrich loves to promote, even though it would cost $36,000 per year per child. After the conference, everyone marched upstairs to the lobby outside Gov. Weld's office. The people demanded to talk to him because, although many calls and letters were sent asking him to do so, Gov. Weld never acknowledged or responded to any of them. We knew we had a right to redress of our grievances, our First Amendment right to free speech. We knew that civil disobedience was a way of breaking a small law to expose a larger evil. I was in the lobby in front of the governor's office. I am a 53- year-old disabled woman and somehow I thought I would be exempt from being battered by state troopers at the State House. I was wearing a neck brace prescribed by my doctor. I suffer from asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, hypertension, cervical arthritis, and spinal spondilosis. Five state troopers came over to me, pulled me apart like I was a wishbone (and I have spinal disk disease), twisted and gouged at my arms, dragged me all over the floor and then dragged me to the elevator. Three troopers were with me in the elevator. During all this, my neck and wrist were sprained, and I received bruises over my whole body, which I have pictures to prove. I also got punched in the kidney. And I've had muscle spasms in my arms for two weeks since the arrest. Then they put me in a police cruiser and took me to the emergency room. I was examined by a doctor there. I was diagnosed with a cervical sprain, bruises and swelling and the doctor prescribed Naprosin, an anti-inflammatory medication. Then they took me back to court, where I sat in a holding pen for three hours. Then I was released by the judge on my own recognizance. In the police report, I was charged with trespassing and disorderly conduct. DIANE: Before, the State House guards were more like tour guides. Now, they have state troopers, trained for combat. And that's what people who demonstrate for their rights are faced with at the State House: combat-ready state troopers in riot gear. They brutalize mothers and grandmothers and children. PT: What's going to happen next? DIANE: The legislation was passed by the Legislature and signed the next day by the governor. Now it's being sent to Washington for review because, technically, they need a federal waiver before they can go ahead with the program. They will almost certainly get it, because President Clinton is in favor of a two-year limit; in fact, in some ways, his proposals are even worse. Then, on July 1, the clock starts ticking, counting the 60 days. On October 1, the hammer comes down and the checks will be cut off for many people. If this kind of thing is happening in Massachusetts, you know what is going to happen in Mississippi and Alabama. PT: There were more than 500 people at the demonstration at the State House. Do you think the size of the turnout represented people coming together in a new way? DOTTIE: Definitely. I think people are beginning to understand that with GATT and NAFTA and the electronics revolution, the world as we know it, the workplace as we know it, is a totally different organism. We need to redefine what work is. They've made welfare a dirty word in this country. And yet, welfare is only one percent of the national budget, 2.5 percent of the state budget. And welfare recipients pay more in taxes, in proportion to our income, than any other economic stratum. We are striving for a decent life for all people: a guaranteed annual income for every citizen and resident, at least at the poverty level. Although the news looks very bad today, this is a great time for organizing! ****************************************************************** 8. CHICAGO YOUTH FEAR POLICE MORE THAN GANGS By Rich Capalbo and Allen Harris CHICAGO -- Recently, a local daily newspaper cited a poll which revealed that young people in Chicago are more afraid of the police than of gangs. At the Nkrumah/Washington Learning Center on the city's South Side this is probably not a surprise. The center's staff is trying to build a place for educating and organizing the neighborhood's young people. But late in 1994, the center was subjected to repeated police harassment, including an armed raid on a peaceful dance party last November 12. Here is what some young people at the center had to say about the way police treat young people. JO ANN: "I've seen the police mess with people just because they don't like them. I've heard them tell people that they were going to mess with them just because they didn't like them. I've seen them come out of their cars ready to fight young boys just for standing around on the street. They pick up little kids for information. "One time, they came into my house because there had been shooting in the neighborhood. They came in, searched my house and started questioning my kids. They threatened to take my kids from me. They were on a call that had nothing to do with me!" DELPHIA ELLIS, 23: "I'm more afraid of police than gangs. The police are harassing youth in the neighborhood every day. They just drive up to them, harass them verbally and sometimes physically. They cuss them out. They do this for no reason. "They stopped a friend and myself in his car once. They asked us 'Where's the drugs?' and told us we were going to jail. They went through my wallet. I had some money, about $30, and they implied that I got that money from selling drugs. They made me take my shoes off and stand in the snow." ANGEL ROGERS, 16: "I'm more afraid of the police. I know everyone around here and they don't scare me. The police pulled a gun on me. I was outside at a party when they came up to raid it. "They have stopped me many times just on the street. They do it just to be messing with you. Sometimes it's scary." AKBAR AMBROSE, 25: "To me, it's more the tactics that they use. It's like military tactics. "They don't serve and protect the youth in our community. They attack them. And I'm not talking about just white policemen; it's the black ones, too. They run around without their badges or with badges covered. (It seems like) everybody's going to jail, even if they have to plant things on them. "They think anyone black between 10 and 35 is a gang banger. That's just how they treat everyone. "We went down to the station to talk to the commander about some of the kids they have been after. He didn't even talk to us. He turned his back on us." Police Superintendent Matt Rodriguez has indicated that his department will not punish abusive police. This is another sign that the ruling class has declared war on the poor in this country, especially its youth. ****************************************************************** 8. THERE IS A FOUL WIND BLOWING OVER THE FIELD OF DREAMS By John Slaughter ATLANTA -- I love baseball. My fondest memories of my youth are playing baseball on the dirt road that ran in front of our house in southern Alabama where I grew up. The smell of well-oiled leather, the crack of the bat, the feel of driving a hard liner through the hole between short and second base, the spittin', scratchin' and cussin'. The strategy (who's on first?). I wanted be a major league first baseman, first because my father played first base in his youth and also because my hero was Stan "The Man" Musial, first baseman for the St. Louis Cardinals. My namesake, Enos Slaughter, the "Old Warhorse," also played for the Cards. It is these kinds of memories of millions of kids just like me who have made the game the national pastime. Now all of that is befouled by the stench of money. Now the playing for the love of the game has degenerated into a dispute between millionaires and billionaires over how to divide up two billion dollars. I guess we knew baseball was big business all along. We just didn't want to see it. Talk about class structure. Every big league ballpark is a microcosm of society. The millionaires get the private suites; the lower level and dugout seats are reserved for other corporate types; and then what is left is for the middle-class folks who still have good enough jobs to afford the high-priced tickets and the $4 beer. The rest of us, who are the vast majority, can only watch the game on TV, along with incessant commercials. There is a solution, though. The owners themselves came up with it. They started all of this by imposing a salary cap for the players. Well, why not a salary cap for the owners? What is good for the goose is good for the gander. There is no question that no one should be paid $5 million or $6 million a year just to play a game. But Ted Turner is worth $5.5 billion! And he and his other billionaire friends want to cap the minimum wage at $4.25 an hour. We don't want anybody to live in poverty, so of course we wouldn't think of asking the billionaire class to get by on the minimum wage. Maybe $10 an hour? Just think how different the ball parks would look with that kind of massive income redistribution. Just think how different society would look. Spring is in the air. Let's play some hardball! ****************************************************************** 9. 'POOR' NEWT Ñ FAT CAT ATTACKS THE POOR, BUT CLAIMS HE'S ONE OF THEM Remember a couple of months back when U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich was about to get $4.5 million from a publisher for a book he's writing? He got so much bad publicity, he turned the money down, settling instead for a percentage of the book sales. And when he turned down the $4.5 million advance, he had the gall to tell a reporter that he and his wife were "poor people," and they could have used the money to do "good things" for their relatives. Well, we wondered, just how poor is old Newt? Not very, according to a report by the Congressional Accountability Project. Gingrich has an annual salary of $171,500, a special $25,000 annual expense account, a lifetime estimated Congressional pension benefit of $2.27 million, free outpatient medical care and many other perks. He and his wife Marianne also have over $200,000 in personal holdings. The fact that Newt thinks it's tough to limp along on $171,500 a year shows how little he and his cronies know about how most Americans live. Half of all households in America in 1993 had incomes under $31,241 -- that was the median income that year, and it was down one percent from the year before. Overall, real wages have fallen to the level of about 1964. For those on public aid, the average cash welfare grant in this country is less than $400 a month. About one-third of Americans -- some 80 million people -- live in poverty. Thirty million of us go hungry some time each month. And even the government admits that more than seven million are homeless. Where does Newt fit in? Only about three percent of American families have incomes of $100,000 or more. In fact, if Newt had taken the $4.5 million, he might have joined the two-tenths of one percent of U.S. households with a net worth of $5 million or more. Come to think of it, the $5 million mark is the line that Fortune magazine uses to define the "rich." Maybe that's what Newt meant when he said he and his wife are "poor people." Meanwhile, of course, Newt and Co. are attacking welfare programs, trying to make the real poor the scapegoats for the crisis in America. It seems clear that until the victims of this system get control of this country, the rich are going to go on making decisions for the rest of us. And we're not going to like the results. ****************************************************************** 10. 'SLAVERY IS ALIVE AND WELL IN AMERICA': THE IMPACT OF PRISON LABOR By Ali K. Abdullah, Prisoner #148130 JACKSON, Michigan -- The 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution was supposed to have abolished slavery. The Civil War was supposed to have shown us that we as a nation cannot disregard the human rights of others without it causing some horrendous effects. In the year 1995, I am seeing slavery taking place right before my eyes. I am seeing the 13th Amendment trampled on, but in a subtle way. I am seeing the Civil Rights Act tossed to the side and laughed at in secret. And I am seeing the same propaganda being spoken, only on broader scales as the propaganda was once spoken which caused the nation to plunge itself into the Civil War. Slavery is alive and well in America today. It is thriving under a new name, a new face, a new approach, and is widely accepted under the untrained eye of the masses. This new slavery is taking place in today's prisons across this nation. Prisoners are working at slave labor and for slave wages while, behind the scenes, "someone" is profiting. My African American forefathers were once subjugated to the harshness of slavery. Living under horrendous conditions and hardships, they could not enjoy the freedoms offered by the Constitution and by those who were not slaves. In 1995, we find the same thing happening but in a more modern way. How can a so-called society justify allowing prisons to operate slave labor camps where they have men and women working in the prison factories, laundries, and kitchens, making such wages as 50 cents per day, 80 cents per day, and, if you're lucky, $1 a day? And who ever asks the question, "Where does the money go from the various products prisoners make in the prison factories? Who gets the real money?" It should be painfully obvious that someone of political power is getting their pockets greased off the backs of prisoners, just as slaveholders and politicians of that era were getting fat pockets off the dehumanizing sight of slavery. If you, America, do not see anything inherently wrong with this, then I fear we have only begun to see the worse to come. Open your eyes, America! +----------------------------------------------------------------+ 'Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, EXCEPT AS PUNISHMENT FOR CRIME WHEREOF THE PARTY SHALL HAVE BEEN DULY CONVICTED, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.' (Emphasis added.) ---13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, enacted 1865. 1995 marks the 130th anniversary of the passage of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution. In fact, the 13th Amendment only transferred the operation of forced servitude directly to the government and, in the United States today... Unpaid and low-paid convict labor is currently moving into almost every sector of American economic activity. Convicts manufacture clothing (including workshirts marketed by the late Sears Catalog) shoes, optical lenses, chemicals, computer and machine parts. Convicts also work in mines, agribusiness, construction and allied trades... On August 1, 1989, members of the International Brotherhood of Painters and Allied Trades established picket lines along the Long Island Expressway in New York to protest the giving of their $18 an hour highway painting jobs to Rikers Island prison inmates who received 40 cents an hour... By October 5, 1991, New York Mayor David Dinkins' administration had already laid off 40 percent of the city's unionized painters and replaced them with welfare recipients, jail inmates in work release programs and ex-offenders... Reported cases under this prison-labor system show prisoners have been physically discouraged from exiting prison when there is a heavy production schedule, as key workers in the prison factory who would normally be eligible for parole find themselves mysteriously denied a release date. ... The Thirteenth Amendment did not simply eradicate slavery. It kept slavery intact as punishment for crime, transferring the right to own, hold and work slaves to the federal and various state governments... "Free" labor must help end prison slavery today for the same reasons it supported abolishing chattel slavery during the first American Civil War... This process is not new and may be seen in the penal methodology of feudal Europe and in the infamous "Black Codes" of the South during the post-Civil War Reconstruction period. The historical records of [feudal Europe] include instructions from the monarchies to the courts of this period to speed up the number of arrests, convictions and commutation of death to life at slavery in order to meet such labor needs of the feudal state as the rowing of galley ships... The federal and state governments of the United States currently hold more than 1.2 million prison slaves or involuntary servants in actual confinement and 4.5 million under their jurisdiction. "Free" labor must help end prison slavery today lest they be enslaved tomorrow... (All quotes on this page are excerpted from ÒCaged Labor,Ó a comprehensive article that appeared in Volume 3, No. 8 of The Commemorator, published by the Commemoration Committee for the Black Panther Party in Oakland, California.) ****************************************************************** 11. FREEDOM OF SPEECH, PEOPLE'S RADIO WIN A VICTORY By Richard Edmondson OAKLAND, California -- Freedom of speech and people's radio won a victory here on January 20 when a Federal Communications Commission request for an injunction was denied "at this time" by U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken. The FCC had sought an injunction prohibiting Stephen Dunifer of Free Radio Berkeley from broadcasting. FCC attorney David Silberman accused Dunifer of "lawlessness" in broadcasting without a license, and claimed that the public suffers "irreparable harm" each time a "pirate" broadcaster goes on the air. "I am not persuaded of this egregious harm," Wilkin told Silberman in denying the injunction. The battle, however, is not over yet. The judge instructed the FCC to re-examine the constitutionality of its ban on micro-broadcasting and its refusal to license stations of under 100 watts in power. The FCC may at that time renew its request for an injunction. Ordinarily, a federal agency would not be expected to admit that its own regulations are unconstitutional. However, the FCC is presently reeling from a series of recent judicial setbacks, two of which have involved micro-radio, and a third in which a telecommunications company successfully challenged the embattled agency's fine structure. Dunifer's attorney, Luke Hiken of the National Lawyers Guild's Committee on Democratic Communications, said that "if it gets good advice" the FCC will now voluntarily change its regulations on micro-radio, which presently is legal in a number of countries around the world, including Canada. Indeed, a popular tide of electronic civil disobedience seems poised to sweep the FCC under if it does not voluntarily get out of the way. For years the agency has enjoyed supreme power over the airwaves and has exercised that power with an iron grip, doling out frequencies to the highest bidder, guaranteeing freedom of speech and the right to be heard only to the largest of corporations. As awareness of how controlled everything is spreads, more people are becoming fed up. Micro-power stations are popping up at a rapid rate, with three in San Francisco alone (and more on the way), plus others in Berkeley, Sausalito, Santa Cruz, San Jose and elsewhere. That's just Northern California. Nationwide, Springfield, Illinois, New York and Los Angeles continue to be areas where micro-broadcasters are heard. Plus we're also hearing of new stations in places like Salt Lake City and Seattle. The FCC should come to terms with the fact that these people exist (to this date, they have still refused to acknowledge even the existence of micro-radio) and want to have a voice in their communities. The FCC cannot continue to trample on people's rights. If it does, it risks being steamrollered and rendered irrelevant by a massive movement with widespread public support. Silberman was right about one thing: Freedom of speech does cause "irreparable harm" to those whose grip on power is unjust and criminal. ****************************************************************** 12. WRITERS ROCK IN 'MID-LIFE CONFIDENTIAL' By Scott Pfeiffer CHICAGO -- What does a book by and about 15 successful middle-aged writers who form a barnstorming rock & soul band have to do with our struggle for the future? Plenty. Created in '92 by a media escort named Kathi Kamen Goldmark, The Rock Bottom Remainders donated proceeds from their first gig to the Homeless Writers Coalition, the Literacy Volunteers of America, and the anti-censorship Right to Rock network. Because it's a Dave Marsh project, Mid-Life Confidential (Viking, $20.95), the book chronicling the Remainders' 1993 tour, is necessarily an expression of a belief in music's power to affirm and enhance life. As each author (Stephen King, Roy Blount Jr., Amy Tan, Dave Barry, Matt Groening and Greil Marcus, among others) has their say, this unpretentious book opens up till it's about rock 'n' roll's relationship to the wider world, from Bosnia to struggles against disease and loneliness. Marsh's own piece stands as one of his most affecting. Hitting the road in the wake of his daughter Kristen's death from cancer, his chapter is a testimonial to rock as a force of life. Blount Jr., author of the book's lovely dedication to Kristen, speaks for me: "I cried over the loss of her and felt grateful for all the things I haven't lost." >From town to town, the scribes find their lives changed by the tour, best illustrated by Tad Bartimus' remarkably personal essay. But Stephen King (a true rocker, even if I've never heard him warble a teen-age death song) sums it up best. The Remainders tour was about taking risks, even (especially) if you're scared and thinkin' that maybe you ain't that young anymore. In a political climate in which we've got one last chance to make it real, Mid- Life Confidential is the story of diverse people bonded by music, co-operating, carrying each other musically and otherwise. ****************************************************************** 13. CHECK OUT CROSSROAD! CROSSROAD is a non-sectarian newsletter produced by and for New Afrikan Prisoners of War and Political Prisoners -- captured combatants who were and are engaged in protracted people's war against the colonial domination of the United States, for national self-determination and independence of the Republic of New Afrika. CROSSROAD also provides a perspective on the repression of the mass movement and genocidal/colonial violence waged against the masses of New Afrikan people. $6/8 issues (domestic), $9 (Institutions), $15 (International) Send check or money order to: Spear & Shield Publications, 1340 West Irving Park Road, Suite 108, Chicago, Illinois 60613. ****************************************************************** 14. ABOUT THE PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE The PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE, published weekly in Chicago, is devoted to the proposition that an economic system which can't or won't feed, clothe and house its people ought to be and will be changed. To that end, this paper is a tribune of the people. It is the voice of the millions struggling for survival. It strives to educate politically those millions on the basis of their own experience. It is a tribune to bring them together, to create a vision of a better world, and a strategy to achieve it. Join us! Editor: Laura Garcia Publisher: National Organizing Committee, P.O. Box 477113, Chicago, IL 60647 (312) 486-0028 For free electronic subscription, email: pt.dist-request@noc.org To help support the production and distribution of the PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE, please send donations, letters, articles, photos, graphics and requests for information, subscriptions and requests for bundles of papers to: PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE P.O. Box 3524 Chicago, IL 60654 pt@noc.org Reach us by phone: Chicago: (312) 486-3551 Atlanta: (404) 242-2380 Baltimore: (410) 467-4769 Detroit: (313) 839-7600 Los Angeles: (310) 428-2618 Washington, D.C.: (202) 529-6250 Oakland, CA: (510) 464-4554 GETTING THE PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE IN PRINT The PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE is available at many locations nationwide. One year subscriptions $25 ($35 institutions), bulk orders of 5 or more 15 cents each, single copies 25 cents. Contact PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE, P. O. Box 3524, Chicago, Illinois 60654, tel. (312) 486- 3551. WRITING FOR THE PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE We want your story in the PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE. Send it in! Articles should be shorter than 300 words, written to be easily understood, and signed. (Use a pen name if you prefer.) Include a phone number for questions. Contact PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE, P. O. Box 3524, Chicago, IL 60654, tel. 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