****************************************************************** People's Tribune (Online Edition) Vol. 24 No. 1/ January, 1997 P.O. Box 3524, Chicago, IL 60654 Email: pt@noc.org ****************************************************************** +----------------------------------------------------------------+ The PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE is now available on the World Wide Web at http://www.mcs.com/~jdav/league.html +----------------------------------------------------------------+ INDEX to the PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE (Online Edition) Vol. 24 No. 1/ January, 1997 Page One 1. SOCIAL SECURITY UNDER ATTACK: AN INJURY TO ONE IS AN INJURY TO ALL Editorial 2. A NEW CONGRESS AND CABINET SPELL TROUBLE Spirit of the Revolution 3. THE CREATIVE SPIRIT News and Features 4. THE 1996 ELECTION RESULTS: TIME TO BUILD THE LABOR PARTY 5. CAMPAIGN FOR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT TO A JOB A STEP TOWARD THE FUTURE 6. AFGHAN HORROR: U.S. TAX DOLLARS AT WORK 7. FLIGHT 800 AND THE ANTI-TERRORISM BILL 8. NATIVE NATIONS TO PUT IRS ON TRIAL 9. 'LEAVE IT TO BEAVER' -- NOT! 10. A SCHOOL FOR REVOLUTIONARIES 11. LET'S HONOR MARTIN LUTHER KING BY CARRYING ON THE FIGHT FOR POLITICAL INDEPENDENCE Focus on confronting the use of capital punishment 12. SOUTH AFRICAN TEEN FACES EXECUTION IN MISSISSIPPI 13. GUESS WHO IS LOSING THE NUMBERS GAME? CAPITAL PUNISHMENT IN THE UNITED STATES 14. ANOTHER TRIPLE EXECUTION IN ARKANSAS? Women and Revolution: Visions for a New America 15. CHICAGO ART SHOW FEATURES A CROSS SECTION OF CULTURES: 'THE GODDESS ON DIVISION STREET' 16. POEM: ORACLE Culture Under Fire 17. BORDERS BOOKS OUTLET UNIONIZES; BATTLE WITH COMPANY GETS ROUGH 18. POEM: ARISE, NEW CLASS >From the League 19. 1997: A TIME FOR UNITY Announcements, Events, etc. 20. AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY MONTH 1997 ****************************************************************** We encourage reproduction and use of all articles except those copyrighted. Please credit the PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE. The PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE depends on donations from its readers -- your generosity is appreciated. For free electronic subscription, send a message to pt-dist@noc.org with "Subscribe" in the subject line. For electronic subscription problems, e-mail pt-admin@noc.org. ****************************************************************** ****************************************************************** 1. SOCIAL SECURITY UNDER ATTACK: AN INJURY TO ONE IS AN INJURY TO ALL First they came for the welfare recipients. Then they came for 260,000 disabled children. Now they're after the millions of seniors on Social Security. It's time to speak out. The millionaires and billionaires who control this society are widening their attack on the people they rule. Welfare recipients were their first target. Pensioners may be their next. Millions of ordinary people are about to be set up for outright robbery to the tune of nearly $200 billion over the next five years. The capitalist system needs more capital to throw onto Wall Street. Your money is about to be stolen. This is something to fight about. In early December, an advisory panel to the Senate Finance Committee concluded that the Consumer Price Index has been overstating inflation by 1.1 percentage points a year. The advisory panel says the error should be corrected. The Consumer Price Index is the government's inflation barometer. It is used to calculate such things as cost-of-living allowances (COLAs) under Social Security. It is also used in many other ways. The bourgeoisie understands the political risk in undertaking this attack. That's why they are using the puppet of an advisory panel -- who are not elected officials -- to float the idea. That's why the GOP-controlled Congress won't take the first step in cutting COLAs without President Clinton with them. That's why the Clinton administration is stalling for time before making the cuts. What this also shows is that bourgeois rule has left all of society more vulnerable and insecure than ever. For example, in the wake of Clinton's signing of the welfare "reform" bill, parents of 260,000 disabled children have been notified that their children may lose benefits. What's that about it taking a village to raise a child? The sharpest point of the bourgeoisie's attack is now pointing at those in American society who in past years either actively or passively supported their rule. The money and good faith that millions of people invested in bourgeois rule is about to be stolen from children and the elderly alike. It doesn't have to be this way. The wealth that has been created and the power of the emerging technologies in society can end poverty. What's standing in the way is the small group of millionaires and billionaires who now hold the power. ****************************************************************** 2. EDITORIAL: A NEW CONGRESS AND CABINET SPELL TROUBLE The revolutionary process is moving into a new stage: organized political activity. Under these new conditions, it becomes even more important for revolutionaries to have a firm grasp on the economic and political environment within which the class struggle is unfolding. While we can clearly see the increasing polarization of wealth and poverty, we should be prepared for cyclical changes which will further disrupt the social order. Only a fool would believe that the current 67-month "expansion" will continue indefinitely. A look at the growth of corporate profits is instructive. Analysts expect 1996 corporate profit growth to be 8.3 percent over 1995, less than half of the 18 percent growth rate for 1995 over 1994. We have pointed out how the ruling class is tightening its control over every aspect of society to protect itself from the people's anger at the deteriorating economic and social conditions. Although we expected a shift to the right by the ruling class after the elections, we could see the contours of this shift even as the election returns were still coming in. The most important result of the 1996 elections was the strengthening of the ruling class' base of political reaction anchored in the South. The Republicans were able to keep control of the U.S. Senate and the House because of their victories in the South. Republicans won Senate seats in nine of the 11 Southern states, including a seat each in Alabama and Arkansas previously held by Democrats. Both these seats are now in the hands of extreme reactionaries. In the House, Republicans won half of the 18 open Democratic seats in the South. While some feared Dole would be elected president, a more frightening development is Trent Lott of Mississippi replacing Dole as Senate majority leader. As if Clinton hadn't moved far enough to the right, immediately after winning, he proposed to broaden his government "ideologically" by inviting the Republicans to participate in his administration. While resignations from Clinton's current gang are announced daily, we should keep an eye on who's coming on board. Clinton's new chief of staff, Erskine Bowles, is a right-wing investment banker from North Carolina. The ruling class understands the economic situation and is preparing for future battles. We must do the same. ****************************************************************** 3. SPIRIT OF THE REVOLUTION: THE CREATIVE SPIRIT [Editor's note: Below we print the latest contribution to our regular column about spirituality and revolution. We encourage readers to submit articles to this column and to comment on what appears here. The article below contains excerpts from a statement written by a member of the Bruderhof religious communities. It is in support of an article by imprisoned journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal in our October 1996 edition about the moral responsibilities of the artist in the fight for change.] By Ruben Ayala Because our moral sense commands what is right, we become indignant when its values are violated. The tensions caused by such indignation often work themselves out in creative energies that produce literature, music, art, and dance. At times, however, instead of letting things merely disturb us, it seems that we are called to do more, to ask ourselves whether the social ills that afflict our society are things we should just feel angry about. Can't we change them? Or can we look for others to blame? We cannot remain satisfied with looking at the homeless, the poor, those behind bars, those who suffer from hunger and wondering why God allows their misery. We cannot merely complain. We must attempt to redeem the evils we see. God has, after all, made us responsible beings. Yet we cannot lose ourselves in the kind of righteous indignation that is uncharitable to those who do not share our concern. Naturally, we may think our cause should be everybody's; naturally, when the fervor of others does not match ours, we are tempted to dismiss them. But if others do not seek our goals, we must be wise enough to recognize that they may be seeking the same ends by different means. Sometimes the selectivity of our moral indignation reveals our own prejudices and our own interest. Ask any writer, dancer, musician or artist. Sometimes in their work, there is a trembling in their bones. They cannot remain silent, but must express their feelings in their writing, music, dance, or art. When writers, dancers, musicians, and artists prepare themselves for their work, they prepare the whole person. How is it with you? All writers, dancers, musicians, artists know what it means to be used by the Spirit, which can elevate them to heights of creativity they could never achieve by themselves. Their achievement then, is not only their own, even though the perception was theirs. Everyone has their moments of vision and insight; we all know what it means to be inspired. Artists who work with stone do not take it and decide by when to carve it. Instead they take the piece of stone and live with it. They fondle it. They become familiar with its grain and texture. And this is what they want us to do with their work when they have finished their carvings. The carvings increase in beauty by our handling of them. Before they begin their carvings, they allow the stone to suggest what it might become. Their design is not imposed on the material, but is the best use of its form and quality. God gathers into Himself all our individual richness. He does not impose upon us as an intrusion, but allows the best that is in us to come to fulfillment. So, you writers, musicians, dancers and artists -- if you choose to be so defined and to embrace the cause of human dignity, let your moral indignation be heard and seen in your work. But remember, it must be led by the Spirit and nothing else. All of us who claim to care for others must do so, even if it means being ready to give up part of our individuality. [For more information, contact: Ruben Ayala Woodcrest Bruderhof Box 903/Route 213 Rifton, New York 12471 Phone: 1-914-658-8351 URL: http://www.bruderhof.org/] ****************************************************************** 4. THE 1996 ELECTION RESULTS: TIME TO BUILD THE LABOR PARTY By Tom Hirschl ITHACA, New York -- The 1996 elections reflect a level of political antagonism unseen in the United States since the Civil War period. While the elections further consolidated the tyranny of wealth, the historic low voter turnout of 49 percent reflects a deep level of political alienation. Among the non-voting majority is fertile ground for a political force that addresses the millions of the poor who have no voice within the present two- party system. Paul Wellstone (D-Minnesota) was returned to the U.S. Senate by campaigning that all families have a right to food, clothing and shelter, and on having voted against President Clinton's welfare reform. At the other extreme are freshmen Republican Senators Jeff Sessions of Alabama and Tim Hutchinson of Arkansas, who are determined to continue slashing social programs, increase military spending and further cripple environmental regulation and labor rights. It is hard to imagine more polar extremes. Many voted for Clinton because they were afraid of what might happen if Dole was elected. It is therefore ironic that Clinton is rushing to accommodate the strengthened ascendancy of reaction in Congress. Joining House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Georgia) is Mississippi Republican Trent Lott as Senate majority leader. Lott's colleagues include the most reactionary wing of the Republican Party that gained political ground in the South. Republicans won victories in nine of 11 Southern Senate races, and won half of the 18 open Democratic Southern House seats. The consolidation of Southern reaction comes at a time of increasing pressure on poor and working people. The 1996 welfare bill blasts gaping holes in the safety net by reducing benefit levels and by setting time limits on food stamp and welfare receipt. This will effectively tighten the pressure on the millions of Americans living from paycheck to paycheck, not to mention those who are already destitute. While Clinton has talked of "softening the blow," his political course would suggest otherwise. The most reactionary elements within the U.S. power elite have historically maintained a political base in the Southern region, specifically in the so-called Deep South. This political base was anchored in slave labor prior to the Civil War and in sharecropping after Reconstruction. Because post-Civil War Southern agriculture was financially beholden to Northern banks, W.E.B. Du Bois coined the phrase: "Wall Street controls the South, and the South controls the country." Southern Congressional representatives have historically tipped the political balance within the federal government against civil rights and labor interests, for example passing the Taft-Hartley "right-to-work" (open shop) bill that legalized the bulwark against union growth across the country. Because the Southern industrialization of 1949 to 1960 erased the region's distinctive class structure, poor Southerners now have the same interests as the poor elsewhere in the country. And because Southern poverty rates are higher, a party speaking to the interests of labor and the poor has great potential there. Indeed, the power elite's reliance upon the South as a bastion of reaction can be decisively broken by organized political activity. THE LABOR PARTY Although there are many formations attempting to become a viable third party, the Labor Party represents the best chance to bring together the requisite political forces. At its founding convention in June 1996 were representatives of 1 million unionized workers. Also present were key organizations of the unemployed including the National Union of the Homeless and the National Welfare Rights Union. Tony Mazzocchi of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union (OCAW) spent five years building the Labor Party and recruiting other unions. Mazzocchi's experience during the 1970s taught him that the current round of technological innovation threatens the very existence of labor. Many of the oil refineries that employed OCAW members were fully automated during that period. Hence the Labor Party is proposing a constitutional amendment to guarantee a job for every American, and its program calls for universal access to free higher education. THE ROAD AHEAD The most powerful sections of both the Republican and Democratic parties are closing ranks around attacks on the employed and unemployed sections of labor. This bipartisan political support mirrors the growing class divisions in American society, and suggests that the powerful are prepared to use political means to protect their wealth and privilege. Over the next four years, we can expect more prisons, more police shootings, and dwindling public funds for education, health, nutrition and housing. This environment provides an irresistible pull for a people's party to represent the unemployed and employed. Third parties have always emerged in the United States during periods of socioeconomic crisis. Building the Labor Party is crucial to avoid the likelihood of a police state, and to extend democracy to the economic realm. You can find out about the Labor Party at www.igc.apc.org/lpa/, or write me at tah4@cornell.edu. [Thomas A. Hirschl is an associate professor in the Department of Rural Sociology at Cornell University; 333 Warren Hall, Ithaca, New York 14853. Fax: 607-255-9984, phone: 607-255-1688.] ****************************************************************** 5. CAMPAIGN FOR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT TO A JOB A STEP TOWARD THE FUTURE By Bob Lee Historically the American people have looked upon the Constitution of the United States as the place where their fundamental rights are enshrined. In the popular mind, if it's in the Constitution, it's guaranteed. This is why the Labor Party's planned campaign to push for a constitutional amendment guaranteeing everyone the right to a job at a living wage of at least $10 an hour is so significant. In a time when millions are unemployed and millions more are daily facing the threat of joblessness and wage cuts, the drive to make the right to a job a fundamental right -- a constitutional right -- can draw millions of people into struggle against the system that is making us unemployed. Support for such a constitutional amendment is part of the Labor Party's program, approved at the party's founding convention last June in Cleveland. The party's Interim National Council voted in August to adopt a national campaign for the amendment. Committees appointed by the council are developing a national strategic plan to carry out the campaign. In a recent article on the amendment campaign, the Labor Party Press said: "The right to a job at a living wage is fundamental, and it should be recognized as such. ... There's no way around the slow, bottom-up job of winning millions of Americans to our point of view. Constitutional amendments must be ratified by three- quarters of state legislatures. The process lends itself to the kind of grassroots, door-to-door campaign the Labor Party is committed to." All the contradictions of the current system are becoming more and more stark. We live in an era where electronic technology is, on the one hand, making us jobless, and on the other hand giving us the means for undreamed-of abundance. There is plenty of work to be done, yet millions of us are left idle, our talents wasted while the needs of the people are unmet. There is plenty of food, yet our children go hungry. There are millions of vacant housing units, yet the homeless are left to the streets. Under these conditions, when we say that the right to a job is a fundamental right, we are really saying we have the right to live, the right to share in the fruits of society's collective labor, whether we have a "job" in the traditional sense or not. And this is a direct challenge to the existing system. A historical parallel to the Labor Party campaign is the abolitionists' drive in the 1830s for a constitutional amendment to ban slavery. Their amendment campaign became the focus of the agitation that drew millions of Northerners into the war that overthrew the slave power and ended slavery. Since we are clearly headed toward a society based on electronic technology -- a "workless" society -- we will almost certainly have to redefine "work." Work may include rearing our children, or creating art. But one thing is certain. The fight for the right to a job cannot help but draw millions of people into a struggle that is essentially a fight for a new society where no one is homeless or hungry, and where no one's talents are wasted. +----------------------------------------------------------------+ LABOR PARTY PRESS PUBLISHES THIRD ISSUE The Labor Party, which held its founding convention June 6-9 in Cleveland, has issued the third edition of its paper, the Labor Party Press. The issue includes articles about the attack on Social Security and information on how to join and build the Labor Party. Among other things, the Labor Party program calls for a constitutional amendment to guarantee everyone a job at a living wage, universal access to quality health care, access for everyone to quality public education, an end to corporate welfare and making the wealthy pay their fair share of taxes. To join the party and subscribe to its press, write: The Labor Party, P.O. Box 53177, Washington, D.C. 20009. Categories of membership dues are: $20, regular membership/renewal; $10, unemployed/low-income; $50, sustaining member; $100, Five Score Club. Phone: 202-234-5190. FAX: 202-234-5266. E-mail: lpa@labornet.org. +----------------------------------------------------------------+ "We are the people who build and maintain the nation but rarely enjoy the fruits of our labor. We are the employed and the unemployed. We are the people who make the country run but have little say in running the country. We come together to create this Labor Party to defend our interests and aspirations from the greed of multinational corporate interests. ... We offer an alternative vision of a just society that values working people, their families and communities." >From the preamble to the Labor Party's program +----------------------------------------------------------------+ ****************************************************************** 6. AFGHAN HORROR: U.S. TAX DOLLARS AT WORK "It is so sad, and so demoralizing. In Russia and the United States, women are being launched into space, but here in Afghanistan, women are being told that they have no place but in the home. It is a primitive thing." -- A woman doctor in Kabul, quoted in the New York Times, October 4, 1996. By Allen Harris The taxi driver in Kabul watched in shock as a group of armed "Islamic students" from the Taliban movement grabbed a woman on the street and beat her with a broken car antenna because she wasn't clothed to their liking. Her veils weren't covering enough of her body. Her ankles showed. Elsewhere in the Afghan capital, male pedestrians were being forced at the point of bayonets into the city's mosques. As the rest of the shocked world by now has learned, all women have been ordered to remain indoors. When they do venture out, they must cover their bodies from head to toe. What's more, all girls will no longer attend school with boys, but will simply receive a basic religious education to the age of eight. All men under Taliban rule must grow beards. In Kabul, the 20th century came to an end on September 27, 1996. While humanity looks toward the 21st century, the Talibans -- literally overnight -- have thrown Kabul all the way back to the 7th. Women work with humanitarian organizations that feed and shelter the people of that city, ravaged by war since 1979. If the women cannot work outside, how will the people subsist? The Talibans apparently aren't worried about this. They are locking up Kabul's females and seriously searching for a way women can work completely segregated from men. This idiocy, however, is the result of nearly two decades of American tax dollars being poured into a U.S. government-backed counterrevolutionary war against all progressive people in that country. From presidents Carter to Clinton, our tax dollars, making their way through certain foreign interests, have helped bring the Talibans to power. If this barbarism is allowed to continue, ALL the world's women -- and men -- will be as degraded as the women, girls and educated citizens of Afghanistan are today under the Talibans. That is why everyone, hopefully with women leading the way, must unite and speak out -- scream out -- against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and their backers. ****************************************************************** 7. FLIGHT 800 AND THE ANTI-TERRORISM BILL By Lisa Datum The crash of TWA Flight 800, and the swift act by Congress to rush through the anti-terrorism bill, should make us all question this attack on civil liberties. This anti-terrorist bill will further the authority for wiretapping, eavesdropping, e-mail monitoring and the monitoring of phone and travel records of any individual. It has been recently suggested by former presidential press secretary Pierre Salinger and French intelligence sources that a U.S. Navy Aegis missile shot the plane down in friendly fire. This new allegation seems to coincide with various reports of people seeing a flash of light before the explosion. The coverage of this story, though extensive on the French news program "Le Journal," has been close to non-existent here in the United States. This should be an awakening to all that there are hidden political agendas by certain government officials behind a tragedy. This is an imposition to all -- left-wing or right-wing, rich or poor -- and an attack on freedom of privacy, and an infringement on civil liberties. ****************************************************************** 8. NATIVE NATIONS TO PUT IRS ON TRIAL INDIGENOUS LEADERS WILL HEAR TESTIMONY AGAINST THE U.S. GOVERNMENT AT THE INTERNATIONAL TRIBUNAL OF ORIGINAL NATIONS IN JANUARY. By Chris Mahin Several Native American nations will convene an international tribunal in Seattle, Washington in January to hear testimony against the U.S. government. "It may scratch the surface, but it will be a real gouge," promised Rudy James, the lead judge at the upcoming International Tribunal of Original Nations, in a phone interview with the People's Tribune in mid-December. James is the spokesman of the Kuye'di Thling-git' Nation of Alaska, which called the Tribunal after a member of its Tribal Council was harassed by the Internal Revenue Service. Tribal Council member What Saw -- whose European name is George Suckinaw James Jr. -- is a commercial fisherman. He was charged with failing to pay taxes and harassed into bankruptcy by the IRS, Rudy James said. Saw's vessel is a tribal vessel operated by a tribal crew, and his catch was shared with many of the nation's elderly and ill members. Given this, the nation views the IRS action as an attack on its sovereignty. It has called the Tribunal to hear expert testimony about who has jurisdiction over southeastern Alaska. The Kuye'di Thling-git' Nation has invited elders and leaders from Native American nations throughout North America and Hawaii to serve as judges on the Tribunal. Close to 40 Native American nations are expected to send representatives. Representatives of the Eskimo, Aleut and Lakota peoples have already confirmed that they will attend, James said. The Tribunal will operate according to traditional tribal law. Observers from the United Nations will be present. The tribunal will examine the history of the U.S. control over Alaska. An attorney specializing in land titles is scheduled to testify. In the interview, James said that Russian documents clearly show that Imperial Russia never claimed ownership of Alaska. All that Russia sold to the United States in 1867, when the United States assumed ownership of Alaska, was Russia's trading rights in Alaska. Therefore, the U.S. government does not own Alaska now, James said. James described how federal and state laws, rules and regulations work against tribal law and spirituality. He mentioned regulations which force native fishermen to throw king salmon back into the water -- even though the native religion forbids waste. James compared the situation confronting Alaska's native peoples today to that which faced African Americans in the Deep South in the 1960s. "We break the white man's law simply because we have to eat," said James. He condemned the "tremendous destruction of the eco-system by the petroleum, mining and logging interests" in Alaska. "We have seen the evilness of the corporate interest," James said. [The Tribunal will be held on January 8 and 9 at the Phinney Neighborhood Center Community Hall in Seattle, Washington. For more information, call Rudy James at 206-483-9251 or send e-mail to wolfhouse@earthlink.net.] ****************************************************************** 9. 'LEAVE IT TO BEAVER' -- NOT! By Stephanie Shanks-Meile Media stereotypes perpetuate the myth of affluence and encourage Americans to feel that they, as individuals, have failed, rather than that this society has failed them. With the recent passage of the telecommunications bill, media conglomerates were supported in the continued consolidation and monopolization of wealth and their political influence as the primary capitalist propaganda mill. The "media bosses" create images and package information in ways to convince us that personal economic loss through layoffs, mass firings, and downsizing are necessary for the growth of our economy. How can "economic growth" be beneficial to our society if it is created at the expense of the average person? How can it be beneficial if our citizens do not have the means to acquire a secure quality of life or, for an increasing number of people, mere survival? What is a society but its people? We are bombarded by images that, if believed, prohibit our ability to really answer these questions. The entertainment industry encourages myths with programming such as "Beverly Hills 90210" and "Melrose Place." They tell our youth that average Americans can live in opulence if they try. The marketing firms convince young people that physical beauty and fashion are the keys to the palace. As they face an uncertain economic future and watch their parents struggle to make ends meet, the media tells our young people to blame themselves and their families. In an attempt to ease the psychic pain, our youth are encouraged to build self-esteem by purchasing the ultimate Nikes rather than gaining a political understanding that could lead to a secure future through social change. The media have always perpetuated the myth of middle-class affluence. Whites were told that life was "Leave It to Beaver" and "The Donna Reed Show," while African Americans are teased by Bill Cosby and "The Fresh Prince of Bel Air." The vast majority of Americans have never lived in these portrayals, nor are they achievable for most people in this system of inequality, no matter how hard a person works. It is time for us to reject these myths and develop an understanding of our economy, the maldistribution of resources, and its consequences for us. If we are to secure a future for our families, we must see the ways capitalism controls our lives, perpetuates economic insecurity, and keeps us working in poverty. As citizens, we have a right to say that we are being shortchanged by a society that our ancestors built which was not controlled by those working people. We have a right to demand social change to benefit us all as we have contributed so much. ****************************************************************** 10. A SCHOOL FOR REVOLUTIONARIES By Alberto 'Beto' Sandoval CLAREMONT, California -- On the weekend of September 6, 1996, this city hosted the first statewide school for the League of Revolutionaries for a New America. Chapters from Pomona, Los Angeles, the San Joaquin Valley, and even as far north as Oakland were present during the three-day event. The League school welcomed two special individuals to Claremont, Mike Chavez and Jo Ann Capalbo from the League central office in Chicago. They both helped direct the flow of the meetings; on the first day (Friday), they filled our heads with valuable information -- the issue of power, who has it and what it does to society. With 1.5 billion people in the world living in absolute poverty, we see what can happen to people without power. The school was a success. The information was invaluable. The following day (Saturday), the history of technology and its future impact were described in detail. Mike and his timeline showed everyone at what interval technology has damaged society (as well as the jobs within it) and how machines like "Robomop" are going to take the so-called "meager" jobs. From downsizing to the almost 42,000 mergers between 1976 and 1993, issues were well discussed. Finally, what better way to end the school but to talk about those damned capitalists? What they have done and what they are getting away with is incredible. Through advertisements and just plain meanness, they have managed to brainwash society. With joblessness on the rise, they still will not reveal the truth. The truth of technology taking jobs; today, the Ford Motor Company only needs two people making cars: one person to push the button and the other to ... . The LRNA schools are invaluable. Do not hesitate to attend the next session and if you cannot wait, then join your local LRNA chapter. There is not another school that I know of that will give you this type of information. As an 18-year-old just beginning to live, I had never been so enlightened in my life. I was so enlightened that I joined the League soon after the school. So, go out and educate yourself! +----------------------------------------------------------------+ UPCOMING SCHOOLS CALIFORNIA--There will be a political education seminar conducted in Spanish sponsored by the League of Revolutionaries for a New America and the Tribuno del Pueblo newspaper on March 1-2 in Merced, California (in the Central Valley of California). That same weekend, a similar seminar will be held in the Los Angeles area, but in English. The following weekend, March 8-9, there will be another seminar, also in English in Oakland. [Call the following telephone numbers for more information: Merced 209-723-0862; Los Angeles 213-299-7518; Oakland 510-535-1736.] +----------------------------------------------------------------+ ****************************************************************** 11. LET'S HONOR MARTIN LUTHER KING BY CARRYING ON THE FIGHT FOR POLITICAL INDEPENDENCE +----------------------------------------------------------------+ 'Let us march on poverty ... until no starved man walks the streets of our cities and towns in search of jobs that do not exist.' -- Martin Luther King, in front of the Alabama state Capitol, Montgomery, Alabama, March 25, 1965 +----------------------------------------------------------------+ January 15, 1997 marks 68 years since the birth of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. This year, the national holiday to honor Dr. King will be observed on Monday, January 20. That's also Inauguration Day, when President Bill Clinton will be sworn in for his second term in office. There is a terrible irony in that coincidence. As we go to press before Inauguration Day, it appears likely that Clinton -- always eager to please -- will work some reference to Dr. King into his second inaugural address. But no token gesture can hide the fact that Clinton rode to re-election by attacking everything Dr. King stood for. Martin Luther King urged America to live out the true meaning of its creed. He spoke passionately about a beloved community, about hewing a stone of hope out of the mountain of despair which existed in the country he loved. In his most famous oration, the unforgettable speech at the 1963 March on Washington, King spoke eloquently of his dream that his four little children -- and all children -- might someday be able to join hands and live in a world without the hatred his generation experienced. Given this, there will be something obscene about the president who signed the bill removing 1.1 million needy children from the welfare rolls invoking the name of Martin Luther King on the steps of the U.S. Capitol on January 20. Just weeks before Inauguration Day, the Clinton administration showed what it really thinks of Dr. King's dream. It mailed letters to the parents of 260,000 disabled children notifying them that their children may lose benefits because of the new welfare law. These are children with severe physical or mental disabilities such as cerebral palsy, autism, diabetes, sickle cell anemia, epilepsy and mental retardation. So much for the beloved community! The ending of welfare shows how much things have changed since the earlier years of Dr. King's work. During King's lifetime, the heart of the struggle was the fight against legal segregation. Today, it's a fight for economic justice. At the 1963 March on Washington, King declared that "the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity." Today, that "island" is neither small or lonely; it is filled with millions of people of all ethnic backgrounds who've become the victims of corporate downsizing. In the last weeks of his life, Dr. King was organizing the Poor People's Campaign, an effort to bring thousands of poor people of all ethnic groups to Washington, D.C. to protest. We should heed the words he used to explain that course of action: "There are millions of poor people in this country who have very little, or even nothing, to lose. If they can be helped to take action together, they will do so with a freedom and a power that will be a new and unsettling force in our complacent national life." That was good advice when Dr. King wrote it -- and it's even better advice now. It shows how we should honor Dr. King. We are confident that the man who wrote those words, the man who died in Memphis while helping striking sanitation workers, would welcome the development of the Labor Party -- and every other blow now being struck for the political independence of the working class. We will honor all that Martin Luther King Jr. represents in history by continuing that struggle for political independence. And like Dr. King, we will not be satisfied "until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream." -- The People's Tribune Editorial Board ****************************************************************** CONFRONTING THE USE OF CAPITAL PUNISHMENT ... 12. SOUTH AFRICAN TEEN FACES EXECUTION IN MISSISSIPPI Special to the People's Tribune His name is Azikiwe Kambule, a bright 10th-grade student who never had been in trouble with the law. He was born in South Africa and came to the United States in 1994. He now lives in Mississippi, a state which wants him to die there, too. According to the National Coalition Against the Death Penalty, in a report which reached the People's Tribune via the Internet, Azikiwe has been charged with being an accomplice to a capital murder. That is, he's accused of being part of a carjacking in Jackson in which a woman was killed. The coalition pointed out that Azikiwe wasn't at the crime scene and fully cooperated with the police who were "investigating" the crime. He was the only one who did. As the coalition points out: "The situation in which Azi finds himself speaks volumes about the use of the death penalty against children. During this decade, only five nations in the world are known to have executed persons for crimes they committed when under 18-years-old. Those countries are Iran, Pakistan, Yemen, Saudi Arabia ... and the United States. Of these five, America has executed the most. "A condemned child in the United States also tends to be of darker hue -- 66 percent of those persons sentenced to death as children have been from racial minorities. And nowhere is the international rule of law more clear than the prohibition on the use of the death penalty against children. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which the United States has ratified, clearly states that the 'sentence of death shall not be imposed for crimes committed by persons below the age of 18.' "Indeed, every major human rights treaty in the world has the same express wording," says the coalition. Should anyone harbor any remaining illusions about the rule of the millionaires and billionaires in this country, that those rulers have any respect for the lives of the people, then let them look to Mississippi. There, the rulers intend to kill a teen-ager not because they've decided he's guilty of a crime, but to show the rest of us that they can and they will. It is up to all progressives and revolutionaries to act to try and save Azikiwe's life. Execution in America is not what he fled apartheid in South Africa for. But further, this case, like so many others should prove to the rest of society that the super-rich who must resort to killing children to hold power are not fit to rule the rest of us and should be replaced by those who truly represent us. ****************************************************************** CONFRONTING THE USE OF CAPITAL PUNISHMENT ... 13. GUESS WHO IS LOSING THE NUMBERS GAME? CAPITAL PUNISHMENT IN THE UNITED STATES By John G. Rodwan Jr. State-sanctioned executions are on the rise in the United States. As if this disgraceful violation of human rights alone isn't bad enough, the death penalty is also administered in a discriminatory way, with African Americans executed in disproportionate numbers. The United States also kills juveniles and the mentally retarded. The numbers tell the gruesome tale: * Since the Supreme Court ruled in 1976 that states could resume executions, 85 percent of those killed by the state were executed for murdering white victims. African Americans convicted of killing whites are 63 times more likely to be executed than whites convicted of murdering African Americans. Of the roughly 3,000 people on Death Row, more than 1,100 are African American. * As the Human Rights Watch World Report 1996 points out, capital punishment is imposed in a racist manner at both the federal and state levels. At the federal level, all of the defendants that the attorney general approved for capital prosecution under the Federal Anti-Drug Abuse Act were African American. Nearly half of those executed by the states were minorities. * The majority of the nearly 300 executions that took place between 1976 and 1995 occurred in the South. Texas alone had 97 executions. West Virginia is the only Southern state that does not impose the death penalty. In all, 236 people were put to death in the South during this period. * The crime bill which President Clinton pushed and which Congress passed in 1994 expanded to 60 the number of crimes punishable by death. It has been suggested that Clinton owes his election to the execution of Ricky Ray Rector, a mentally retarded man who was executed in 1992. James Carville, Clinton's campaign manager, called Rector's execution the "high noon" of the campaign. * Human Rights Watch also reports that 42 executions took place in the first eight months of 1995. This breaks the previous modern annual record of 38 set in 1993. * The number of executions is rising despite the fact that in 48 cases since 1970, the condemned were later found to have been not guilty. While these 48 were set free in time, a 1985 study by the Stanford Law Review estimates that at least 23 innocent people have been executed in the United States during the 20th century. * In violation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the American Convention of Human Rights, and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, the United States continues to sentence juvenile offenders to death. The death penalty is cruel and unusual punishment, and it is a dangerous power for the state to possess. Furthermore, it is imposed in a racist manner. It violates internationally recognized standards of basic human rights. And perhaps most importantly, it is irreversible. As has happened many times, mistakes are made and they are not always caught in time. For all of these reasons, the death penalty should be abolished. Copyright (c) 1997 John G. Rodwan Jr. ****************************************************************** CONFRONTING THE USE OF CAPITAL PUNISHMENT ... 14. ANOTHER TRIPLE EXECUTION IN ARKANSAS? By Allen Harris For the second time in three years, Arkansas is expected to hold a triple execution, according to press reports. On January 8, the state reportedly was to put to death Paul Ruiz, 49; Earl V. Denton, 47, and Kiri D. Wainwright, 30. All three were convicted of murder. They were to die by lethal injection in the same room where Arkansas carried out a triple execution in 1994. They were to be injected within minutes of each other. Arkansas carried out the first multiple executions in recent times with those of 1994. The only other state to do so has been Illinois, which has carried out a double execution, according to the New York Times. "In the circles in which I travel, Arkansas is acquiring quite a reputation," the Times quoted Stephen Hawkins, executive director of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. "It is, in its own way, tragically comical." The current governor of Arkansas is Mike Huckabee, who replaced Jim Guy Tucker, who succeeded Bill Clinton. Huckabee is reported to be an ordained Southern Baptist minister, but one who seems to be working between two moralities. At least that's what emerged in an interesting quote from an aide to the governor, Jim Harris. "Secular law says if you do the crime, you pay the price," said Harris. When it comes to capital punishment, this is especially true. It matters who does the "paying" and who does the "collecting." The poor and powerless pay and the rich and powerful collect. And executions rose sharply in 1995 in the United States. Under this immoral bourgeois rule, a preacher of the gospel of Jesus can also play Pontius Pilate and disregard that Jesus died in a triple execution, too. ****************************************************************** +----------------------------------------------------------------+ WOMEN AND REVOLUTION: VISIONS FOR A NEW AMERICA The purpose of this column is to open debate on all issues concerning women today. We see it as a place where women can discuss and debate strategies for winning women's equality and improving women's status. This is critical to our playing our historic role of leading in the building of a new America. Send your articles, 300 words or less, to People's Tribune Women's Desk at pt@noc.org +----------------------------------------------------------------+ 15. CHICAGO ART SHOW FEATURES A CROSS SECTION OF CULTURES: 'THE GODDESS ON DIVISION STREET' By Sandra Reid CHICAGO -- Sue Ying is a Chicago artist who has fought injustice for 40 years. A founder of Artists Against Homelessness, and of Chicago's Guild Complex (a nationally known cultural institution), her work has helped educate and provide a vision for thousands of women, youth and artists. She is available to speak through the People's Tribune Speakers Bureau. We interviewed Ying about "The Goddess on Division Street," an art show she organized. The show involved 40 activist-artists. Participants were mainly women, but included men, youth, teachers, rap artists, and a cross section of cultures. The opening night was a festive occasion with over 300 people attending. PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE: What inspired you to do this show? SUE YING: Every year, we do a Day of the Dead art show on All Soul's Day. Many cultures, the Mexican, African American, and Irish, have similar holidays around this time. I wanted to have artists get together and through art become sensitive to other cultures and see what we all have in common as people. I wanted to bring women together as artists because as women we have an identity and culture of our own. I've been reading about the goddesses and recent historical finds which show women as the creatrix, or birth givers. Patriarchal societies overthrew mother right, relegated women to an inferior position, and instituted class society. I wanted to get out the message that there was a time when God was Woman. I wanted to use the show to bring out the struggles that continue today as a result of the overthrow of women and the division of society along gender and class lines. PT: What in the show illustrated the struggle of women today? SY: Women from the Coalition for the Homeless put up a beautiful mural that showed women not treated as equals. It shows minority women as heads of single families who suffer triple burdens -- as women, as minorities, and as poor women. Today, battered women's health care costs a staggering $3 to $5 billion a year. The Villareals did a wooden collage about the community of youth. One of the biggest concerns today of women is the children. Pat Zamora, whose brother died of AIDS, did an altar in memory of young people that are dying because of the emphasis on profit, not people. PT: What did you learn? SY: To me, the art shows are part of the learning process -- of people coming together, of culture and class. In the new society, people have to form a new culture. This cannot happen until there is more equality for women. I think dialogue about people's culture and beliefs is so important. We can't suppress or look down on other cultures or we won't be able to build the new society. I want to bring women together to read books, have discussions, make art, and work toward the equality of women and a new society. People have different ideologies. The important thing is to work together. ****************************************************************** 16. POEM: ORACLE I am dead now and I have shed all the bruises that your once-loving-hands- turned-to-fists gave me in the privacy of night. I shine so brilliantly white that the hairline fractures in my jaw you can hardly see at all. No longer do you have to worry about my cries waking the neighbors, but consider the wind my screams and this ink my tears for I am trying to warn the next one to be beaten. -- Abby Strasser Activist-turned-artist written October 1996 [Editor's note: This poem was in "The Goddess on Division Street" art show in Chicago.] ****************************************************************** +----------------------------------------------------------------+ CULTURE UNDER FIRE Culture jumps barriers of geography and color. Millions of Americans create with music, writing, film and video, graffiti, painting, theatre and much more. We need it all, because culture can link together and expand the growing battles for food, housing, and jobs. In turn, these battles provide new audiences and inspiration for artists. Use the "Culture Under Fire" column to plug in, to express yourself. Write: Culture Under Fire, c/o People's Tribune, P.O. Box 3524, Chicago, Illinois 60654 or e-mail cultfire@noc.org. +----------------------------------------------------------------+ 17. BORDERS BOOKS OUTLET UNIONIZES; BATTLE WITH COMPANY GETS ROUGH By Scott Pfeiffer CHICAGO -- Retail workers at the Borders Books in Lincoln Park here have voted in a union, the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 881. They are the first to get that far in an organizing drive that has the potential to shake things up throughout the chain. At the recently opened Borders, worker dissatisfaction with less- than-livable wages was aggravated when the yearly pay raise was announced. The 4.5 percent raise was down from the 5 percent which Borders employees had received the two previous years, which, in turn, was down from 6 percent the year before that. Greg Popek, an employee who was instrumental in bringing in the UFCW, points out that when inflation is factored in, the swindle becomes even more pronounced. Employee unrest was further fueled when it was announced they were to be integrated with the health plan covering employees of Waldenbooks, which is owned by Borders. Workers thought it not unreasonable to expect a reduced-rates deal, since such a large number of people had been brought into the plan. If such a deal was struck, it wasn't passed on to workers. Instead, premiums went up 23 percent for the employee and as much as 73 percent for smokers. As with managed-care health systems, cutting costs is ultimately the No. 1 priority for the folks at Borders' corporate headquarters. Unless you're on the management track, they don't necessarily want you around for the duration. A long-term staff gets raises and accrues benefits: it costs more. In fact, the recently issued Borders employee handbook features an "at-will" policy emphasizing that workers can be fired at management's whim. UFCW representative Sergio Monterrubio characterizes this as a "slap in their [workers'] faces." In today's high-tech global economy, major chains like Borders (and, increasingly, independent stores as well) must subordinate everything to profit. Books-by-mail and home-shopping TV networks are among the emerging new ways to shop that, in the long run, could threaten retail chains' very existence. The nature of publishing is also changing due to the bottom-line dictates of the market. It seems clear that the introduction of new electronic technology into the retail market means that the struggles of retail workers are only beginning. At present, Borders Books is not exactly hurting for resources. They've recently gone public with stock offerings; annual revenues are over $1.7 billion; the only book chain more gigantic is Barnes & Noble. According to the Industrial Workers of the World's Jon Bekken, last year Borders' two top executives each made $790,000 and held Borders stock worth more than $28 million. Yet they still won't give anything up. Management did everything they could to stamp out the drive at the Lincoln Park store. Jackson, Lewis, Schnitzler and Krupman, a prominent union-busting law firm whose lawyers bill themselves as "industrial psychologists," was retained. This firm's notable achievements include destroying organizing drives at nursing homes primarily staffed by minority women. Sparks are flying in other cities. Borders workers are poised to vote on unionizing in Des Moines, Iowa, and in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Miriam Fried, a union-minded Borders employee in Philadelphia, was canned, and after author and filmmaker Michael Moore allowed her to speak at a Borders book-signing appearance, the chain banned the book tour. In response to Fried's firing, a "Boycott Borders" campaign has been endorsed by the likes of the Industrial Workers of the World, Pride At Work, Jobs with Justice, the National Writers Union, the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, and Noam Chomsky. On November 18, the company was presented with the UFCW's contract proposal, which, among other things, called for a disciplinary procedure and for better health benefits. Negotiations probably won't begin until January, if then. The company's position is they don't have to negotiate. Monterrubio indicates that the boycott could put pressure on the company during negotiations, and might have the effect of forcing them to come to the table in the first place. The "hip liberal" mask being ripped from Borders' corporate visage is also being torn off Tower Records. Retail workers at Tower are trying to do the same thing as their book-selling peers and are also facing sophisticated anti-union forces. Books and music are necessities of life. Those who help distribute and disseminate our culture need support in their ongoing fight for security and decent treatment. To tell Borders you won't shop there until they start respecting workers' right to organize, contact Richard Flanagan, President, 311 Maynard Street, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48104. Phone 1-800-644- 7733, or e-mail Borders spokesman Peter Blackshear at pblacksh@borders.com. ****************************************************************** 18. POEM: ARISE, NEW CLASS The class with chains around its legs with others' leftovers at the ends of its eyes The class rousted at dawn stopped for an identity check on the street arrested for resting weary bones on the ledge of a corporate building The class threatened with being fired or by police-state executions of its youth working its butt off for wages that buy less and less or out-of-work and a year later out-of-work and panhandling homeless drifting thrown to the street by robot profits or chopped up into part-time gigs for minimum wage The class censored for rapping out truths labeled like diseases or poisons and whitewashed all over for writing ARISE, NEW CLASS on walls. I'll shout it, then: ARISE, NEW CLASS, and when the whitewash has dried we'll scrawl it together again as well for the women and children whose bread was yanked from their mouths for the thousands disappeared from streets for the young thrown against each other because value real value is where? is when? is how? for the books and zines and journals ground into money-fodder; and most of all for the ones still smart enough to believe without any doubt that on the horizon of every moment there is the New Class arising, we'll point to the alley in your gut, to the desperation in your eyes, to the need for authentic transformation that beats with every beat of your heart, and we'll repeat: ARISE, NEW CLASS, ARISE! -- Jack Hirschman ****************************************************************** 19. 1997: A TIME FOR UNITY The movement for a better life is going to have to get off of the defensive. Gone are the days when we could fight piecemeal for what we need. We greet 1997 with a sense both of danger and of hope. Danger because the 1996 election consolidated the hold of Southern reaction on government at the national level. The South was the home of slavery. Today, it is still the site of the highest concentrations of poverty. The South has always been the place where the ruling class has perfected the use of force and violence to maintain its rule. The times when the propertied class of the South holds political power have always been the darkest days for democracy in this country. Danger because, across America, there is much suffering and too much fear. When people are desperate and scared, they often fall prey to divisive and destructive answers. If the American people don't take their future into their own hands and unite around their actual interests, the ruling class will manipulate them into demanding all the elements of a police state. Before they realize what has happened, their fight for their actual interests will be crippled. In order for the American people to resist this danger, the movement for a better life is going to have to get off of the defensive. Gone are the days when we could fight piecemeal for what we need. There will be no way to stop a police state if only the immigrants fight for the immigrants and only the unemployed fight for the unemployed and only the youth fight for the youth. To take effective steps against a police state, there has to be unity and united political activity -- that is, unity on the basis of common class interests. And so, this moment also promises hope. Hope because there is now a political party putting forward a class program for the struggle for immediate needs. With the formation of the Labor Party in June 1996, the fight to build a political party which unites and educates the practical movement of the employed and the unemployed alike has begun. Hope because the objective conditions for advancing the actual revolutionary movement a decisive step forward are more favorable today than they have ever been. What was once historically inevitable is now politically possible. Now there's a "next step" to fight for. Hope because when the people who the capitalist system abandons and attacks actually do unite, that unity will unleash a movement with the power to overturn this rotten system. That's why we aim everything at completing this stage of the revolutionary movement -- achieving the unity and clarity of interests of our class. Hope because taking this simple step forward is the only way to begin the journey toward the reorganization of society along cooperative lines, so that the abundance which science makes possible today can be distributed according to need. As we greet 1997, we see a time of great change. Our ideology gets us through difficult times of change. Our ideology is revolutionary; it is independent of our enemy class and hostile to it. This ideology is deepened by scientific education and by revolutionary activity carried out along the strategic line of march of the revolution. It is our commitment to the aspirations, ideals and historic mission of our class. In order to meet the dangers and realize the hope before us, revolutionaries must rally around completing the tasks of this moment in history. At every step along the way, we must prepare for the future of the movement. To the members of the League of Revolutionaries for a New America, we say: Let's educate and organize ourselves for these tasks. Our ideological convictions are expressed as a commitment to the League and to carrying out its tasks and decisions. To the friends of the League, we say: Join with us! +----------------------------------------------------------------+ Humanity is being reborn in an age of great revolutionary change. The tools exist to produce all that we need for a peaceful, orderly world. For the first time in history, a true flowering of the human intellect and spirit is possible. Our fight is to reorganize society to accomplish these goals. Our vision is of a new, cooperative society of equality, and of a people awakening. The revolution we need is possible. A great moral optimism is beginning to sweep this country as the poor, the oppressed, the decent-hearted, embrace this revolutionary mission and make it a reality. The League of Revolutionaries for a New America takes as its mission the political awakening of the American people. We invite all who see that there is a problem and are ready to do something about it to join with us. For more information, call 773-486-0028. Send the coupon below to P.O. Box 477113, Chicago, Illinois 60647. +----------------------------------------------------------------+ Now is the time to join the League of Revolutionaries for a New America I want to JOIN! Name Address City State/Zip Phone +----------------------------------------------------------------+ ****************************************************************** 20. AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY MONTH 1997 In January, President Clinton will tell us his version of what the "State of the Union" is. But who can better speak to the American political reality in this 105th African American History Month than those who have been most affected by the Clinton cuts? Who can best speak about the battles to maintain our standard of living than those who have been in the trenches for decades? And today, when the standard of living of all American workers is being driven down toward the level of the world's poor, who can best speak to the possibilities that lie before us -- both the dangers and the opportunities -- than those who have spent a lifetime analyzing the changes, understanding the needs of our people, and proposing a vision of a new society with peace and justice for all? These are the speakers for a new America, represented by the People's Tribune Speakers Bureau. It's not too late to book speakers for February ... if you act now! Our speakers include: GENERAL BAKER, autoworker, labor leader, chair of the League of Revolutionaries for a New America ETHEL LONG-SCOTT, executive director, Women's Economic Agenda Project MICHELE TINGLING-CLEMMONS, author, national authority on hunger RONALD CASANOVA, author, editor of "Union of the Homeless National News" ABDUL ALKALIMAT, author, professor, organizer of Technology and Employment Conferences NELSON PEERY, author of Black Fire: The Making of an American Revolutionary MARIAN KRAMER, co-chair, National Welfare Rights Union WILLIAM WATKINS, professor, writer on the issues of education, politics, race, social justice DAVID SAWYER, musician, writer, dramatist JEROME SCOTT, board chair, Project South: Institute for the Elimination of Poverty and Genocide [For a complete list, write the People's Tribune Speakers Bureau, P.O. Box 3524, Chicago, Illinois 60654, or call 773-486-3551, or send e-mail to speakers@noc.org.] +----------------------------------------------------------------+ WOMEN'S HISTORY MONTH 1997 Looking for controversy? Or debates on how to achieve women's equality in a year when affirmative action, welfare and many other benefits are being eliminated? The People's Tribune Speakers Bureau represents women who are in the forefront of the revolution that is changing the political landscape of America. Our speakers come from a wealth of both academic scholarship and organizing experience in the streets. They inspire audiences with a vision of a new America free from want, race hatred, sexual oppression and strife. They talk about the birth of a new women's movement, bringing fresh ideas on how to improve women's status and attain women's equality. For a free listing of speakers, call 773-486- 3551 or send e-mail to speakers@noc.org. +----------------------------------------------------------------+ ****************************************************************** ABOUT THE PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE The PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE, published every two weeks 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: League of Revolutionaries for a New America, P.O. Box 477113, Chicago, IL 60647 (312) 486-0028 ISSN# 1081-4787 For free electronic subscription, email: pt-dist@noc.org with the word "subscribe" in the subject. 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 ($50 institutions), bulk orders of 10 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. (312) 486-3551. ****************************************************************** We encourage reproduction and use of all articles except those copyrighted. Please credit the PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE. The PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE depends on donations from its readers -- your generosity is appreciated. For free electronic subscription, email: pt-dist@noc.org with a message of "subscribe". ******************************************************************