****************************************************************** People's Tribune (Online Edition) Vol. 25 No. 6/ June, 1998 P.O. Box 3524, Chicago, IL 60654 http://www.mcs.com/~league ****************************************************************** +----------------------------------------------------------------+ The PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE is available on the World Wide Web at http://www.mcs.com/~league +----------------------------------------------------------------+ PAGE ONE: GROWING CLASH OF WEALTH AND POVERTY BREEDS MORAL CRISIS "Show me the money!" Here it is: $17.4 trillion in 1997 and $23.1 trillion by the end of 2000. In a rare glimpse at the wealth held by the world's nine million richest people -- just 0.15 percent of all humanity -- Merrill Lynch and Gemini Consulting reported in a recent survey that these rich are getting richer -- and getting richer faster. The combined $17.4 trillion they held in 1997 was a 5 percent raise over their $16.5 trillion as of 1996. Did you get a 5 percent raise in 1997? What's more, this combined wealth is expected to grow by about 10 percent a year to around $23.1 trillion by the end of 2000. Are you expecting a 10 percent annual raise over the next three years? Such an amount of money-- multitrillions of dollars -- staggers the imagination. That $17.4 trillion divided among the world's 6 billion people is about $2,900 for every man, woman and child on the planet. The $23.1 trillion by the year 2000 will come to $3,850 per person. In a world where more than one billion people earn only $1 a day, it would take such a person eight years just to make $2,900. It would take that same person earning a dollar a day 10.5 years to make $3,850. But who produced all these trillions? We did! We among the 99.85 percent of the world's people who sweat and toil day in and day out. So why is a mere 0.15 percent of the human race so rich? Because of the economic system called capitalism, in which a tiny group of people who privately own the wealth we produce use that wealth politically to protect themselves and ruin the rest of us. Why do the world's people have to suffer and die in such unspeakable poverty while the megarich and their political representatives keep telling us there is no money available to end homelessness, hunger and disease? The emerging technology already exists to solve these problems permanently and globally. We know now that the money also exists. There is no reason anyone has to be forced to live and die in the misery of a dollar a day. Now that they have shown us the money, it is up to the rest of us to show them our unity and the will to replace capitalism with a new economic system that uses the wealth we produce for the well- being of all mankind. +----------------------------------------------------------------+ INDEX to the PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE (Online Edition) Vol. 25 No. 6/ June, 1998 Editorial 1. UNDERSTANDING GLOBALIZATION Spirit of the Revolution 2. LOVE AND REVOLUTION News and Features 3. A RIGHT TO A JOB -- BY CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT 4. UNSCHOOLED EDUCATION 5. FROM LOS ANGELES TO INDONESIA: TWO REBELLIONS, ONE WORLD 6. THE FUTURE WITHOUT FEAR: PUBLICIZE IT ALL! INFORMATION WILL BE FREE! 7. MUMIA ABU-JAMAL'S MESSAGE TO SUPPORTERS IN BLOOMINGTON, INDIANA 8. OKLAHOMA TEACH-IN: CORPORATIONS PUT HUMANITY AT RISK Focus on Economic Human Rights 9. ECONOMIC HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES AND THE INTERNATIONAL MORAL CRISIS: THE STRUGGLE FOR THE HEARTS AND MINDS OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 10. FREEDOM BUS CARRIES ECONOMIC RIGHTS CAMPAIGN ACROSS THE U.S. 11. WELFARE REFORM: IT TAKES A GLOBAL VILLAGE TO ABANDON A CHILD 12. A 'MAMA JAM' FOR POOR MOMS IN UTAH 13. CHICAGO RESIDENTS AND HOMELESS ACTIVISTS FIGHT BACK 14. WELFARE OFFICE CHEWS YOU UP AND SPITS YOU OUT 15. SOUTHERN WOMEN FACE ABUSE AT THE HANDS OF THE SYSTEM 16. AMERICA HAS MADE SURVIVING POVERTY A CRIME 17. CHAM CHARGES SAN JOSE WITH VIOLATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS 18. MINNESOTANS URGE LAWMAKERS TO 'FIGHT POVERTY, NOT THE POOR' 19. LEAGUE STATEMENT: A NEW WORLD IS POSSIBLE! Announcements, Events, etc. 20. SPEAKERS FOR A NEW AMERICA [To subscribe to the online edition, send a message to pt- dist@noc.org with "Subscribe" in the subject line.] ****************************************************************** 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. EDITORIAL: UNDERSTANDING GLOBALIZATION Globalization! The very word makes a worker tremble, and with good reason. On the one hand, the term "globalization" has become a bogeyman reactionaries use to frighten and politically disorient people. On the other, it is looked upon as part of the painful birth process of a new world. Let's look at what we're struggling with, because globalization is a result of history, it is real and here to stay. Everything that happens is the result of a chain of causes and effects that tie the world together into an understandable whole. By examining cause and effect, we can understand what globalization is at this time. At the beginnings of capitalism, merchants had to cast their commercial nets far and wide since they had to expand their businesses or perish in the competition. A primitive form of "globalization" called "mercantile imperialism" began to tie the economies of sectors of the world together. As capitalism matured, it produced more than it could consume and accumulated a mass of finance capital it could not profitably invest in its various national markets. A new stage of "globalization" set in as the major financial-industrial nations carved out spheres of influence to guarantee a place for investment and a protected market to dump their industrial surplus. By 1939, all the contradictions within the financial-capitalist imperialist system burst out as World War II. By the end of that war, the world was in economic and social ruins. The United States, unscathed by war, financially enriched and militarily dominant, initiated the so-called Cold War in order to consolidate its political and financial grip on those regions of the world not within the military or political influence of the Soviet Union. This control was consolidated and insured by a complex set of military alliances that were watchdogs for an expanding global capital termed first multinational, then transnational and finally supranational capitalist enterprises. Each stage of development has brought more powerful groups of financiers together to invest on a global scale. There were limits to this stage of globalization because it was not possible to minutely control the flow of money. The development of the computer meant instant control and solved one aspect of this problem. The subversion of the Soviet Union, eliminating the last political barriers, solved the other. >From its secure base in the domination of Europe and Latin America, world financiers, dominated by U.S. finance capital, have set out to reorganize the world. Their battle cry is "free trade." Their artillery is the alphabet-soup committees such as the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the Group of Eight and other shadowy international bodies that no one has elected, but that, by clandestine international treaties, all nations have become subservient to. At this point, globalization means that capital is free to roam the world in search of cheap labor since every worker is competing against all the rest as never before. The inevitable result is the lowering of living standards for all the workers and absolute poverty for most. Does this mean there are no longer national interests? No, actually the national interests are exacerbated. No nation, if it wants to remain part of international commerce, has the economic power to defy these world bodies. Since the United States dominates these bodies by virtue of its military and economic might, it has imposed an economic Pax Americana over the rest of the world. The other part of the picture is that there is a growing grouping of financiers who are without national identification or interests. While globalization today means a global economy dominated by the United States, the tendency is toward a future dominated by these truly global capitalists with the entire world as their colony. Can they accomplish this? Probably not. What they are achieving historically is preparing the peoples and economies of the world for a truly world revolution; investing in economic infrastructure that ties all the workers together. This means bringing the most advanced means of production to economically backward areas, thus economically evening up the world. Globalization of the economy ultimately means globalization of class politics -- which is the basis of world revolution. ****************************************************************** 2. SPIRIT OF THE REVOLUTION: LOVE AND REVOLUTION By Sandy Perry The great Mexican Revolution of 1910 is the focal point of Victor Villasenor's two-volume saga of family history, Rain of Gold and Wild Steps of Heaven. The massive uprising eventually drove his family -- like tens of thousands of others -- to migrate to the Southwestern United States. But, as these books prove, they brought with them a rich storehouse of experience, faith, ideals, and fighting spirit. It is an invaluable gift which we, the American people of today, dare not ignore as we enter our own period of social upheaval. The story begins in 1869, on a mountaintop in the highlands of Jalisco. Don Pio Castro, a revolutionary who had fought the French alongside Benito Juarez, had a vision from God: "Wake up! We've found it! This is the place! ... It will be hard to get anything to grow here! That's why nobody wants this land! That's why we can build our homes here and raise our children in peace for generations to come! ... And they'll be strong, hard- working children because every man will have to do his own labor! And at no time will our children or our children's children get so rich that they'll be able to enslave their neighbor! ... This is the place where we can reach up to the heavens every morning of our lives and touch the hand of God with an honest heart!" The settlement which Don Pio helped build there prospered, just as he had planned, for forty years. But ultimately it could not escape the political wars of the lowlands. Foreign (especially North American) capitalists were mounting a shameless campaign to exploit the vast mineral and agricultural resources of Mexico. As popular opposition developed, the Porfirio Diaz government moved to crush it. In the highlands of Jalisco, the Rurales launched a war of extermination against the entire Indian population, including the family of Don Pio Castro. Don Pio's 20-year-old grandson, Jose Villasenor, found himself the leader of the settlement's resistance. "Jose had found his voice at last, and this voice was the voice of the people, the voice of the angels, the language of an open, naked heart; the tongue of God himself, which he'd been struggling to find all these years ... a voice, once found, never forgotten, and never questioned, for Jose's soul was now one with God, and hence all his earthly deeds were now in alignment with the goodwill of the great beyond." Schooled by bitter experience, reassured by the words of his grandfather, Jose learned the lessons of the spirit he needed to fight calmly and effectively: "He was being asked to stretch, to truly reach as high as he possibly could and learn the language of the angels. ... And he could now see that once people knew this language of the stars, then they were never alone again. For God's breath was then all around them, igniting each tree, each blade of grass with golden- white flame. ... His grandfather had told him the absolute truth: love was, indeed, a gift from God, and nothing could destroy a gift from God, especially not death. And all it took for us humans to enter into this blessed conversation of the heavens was just to 'get still' inside our heads and start listening with our hearts." Don Pio's family held onto its faith in his vision of a just world, even as their community was torn apart. For Jose Villasenor, this meant being guided by love, even in war: "When a man like Don Pio comes along, his genius is that he's so sure of his manly love that he's able to bring honor and responsibility out of his men, even in the middle of battle, and they become the holy instruments of life, supporting la familia, and not the wild beasts of hate and death, like has happened to this colonel and his gang of murderers! ... I would have loved to rush out and do battle head-to-head with the colonel in vengeance after he killed Mariposa, but our grandfather talked me out of it, explaining to me that this was exactly what the colonel wanted me to do, so he could destroy me. ... You and me, we need to be smarter, like the jaguar -- and measure our battles of life, la vida, very carefully. That's why I was able to come up with the idea of attacking the colonel's outpost and arming our people. Only when we're free of hate and vengeance are we able to really think. Do we kill the coyote because we hate him? No, we don't, hermanito. We know that he was put here on earth by God, just as we were put on earth, too. So, yes, we might destroy a coyote or the colonel, but we must do it with respect and understanding -- never hatred." As we know now, the Mexican Revolution was only partially successful. Ultimately it was taken over by many of the same international capitalists whose abuses brought it about in the first place. Jose Villasenor was captured, tortured, and later murdered. Don Pio died of natural causes in 1910. His family in the highlands of Jalisco was reduced to his daughter Dona Margarita, two granddaughters, and a small grandson, Juan Salvador. They were finally forced to flee the settlement and migrated to Southern California. But they brought their vision with them. The love that fought Porfirio Diaz in Mexico moves us today to unite ourselves in the battle for an America without exploitation. Like any other gift of the spirit, nothing on earth can destroy it, especially not death. Dona Margarita expressed it when she railed against the hatred of Mexicans she found in her own son, Juan Salvador, on the eve of his marriage in California in 1929: "It must stop, mi hijito; it must stop right now! For this is God's great plan: that people rise up beyond their personal hatreds, here, right now, in this new land where so many different people with so many different bloods have come to join together and that we recognize we are all the children of God! Everyone of us! ... "This is your chance of greatness, just like it was for your grandfather, Don Pio, back in Mexico. An opportunity for you to be a man of vision! A man of great spiritual cunning and strength so you can get above your personal disappointments and see the good in your own people and make peace here within yourself and cast out the devil! This was the power of Don Pio. He didn't give up on Mexico or his men who'd turned bad or weak. No, he kept his heart open to them with love and compassion and he took them north with him to build a city high in the mountains where their children could grow strong and free. "And they, too, were mejicanos, people of mixed blood, and their dream was to create a whole new way of life where no man would enslave another for all eternity! This was his dream! His quest! And he was dark! Short! Puro mejicano de las Americas! And wonderful! Do you hear me? Wonderful!" ****************************************************************** 3. A RIGHT TO A JOB -- BY CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT By Adolph Reed Every person shall have the right to a job and to receive a livable wage for their work (defined as a minimum of $10 per hour in 1997, indexed to inflation). This is what the Labor Party proposes as the 28th Amendment to the United States Constitution. We have seen more than two decades of steady erosion of working people's real incomes and public services and attacks on the already inadequate system of social protection that we've won since the 1930s. During that same period, we have seen the level of official unemployment that pundits and "experts" consider acceptable increase steadily to an official rate of more than 6 percent -- equal to a minimum of 8 million people. At the same time, we have seen corporate profits go through the roof and the rich amass concentrations of the nation's wealth that are greater than ever and growing. And we have seen the politicians who claim to represent our interests rationalize all this and tell workers that the greater good of a healthy economy means that we have to learn how to do more with less, that we have to accept unemployment, underemployment, inadequate wages, job insecurity and declining living standards as permanent conditions of our lives, that we have to subordinate our well-being, hopes and aspirations to swelling the coffers of already bloated corporations. The Labor Party thinks that it is time to shift the national political discussion back to a focus on working people's concerns. We need to reassert the basic principle that an economy is only healthy if it works for people, if it provides the basis for us to expect a decent, secure livelihood. And we think that this expectation is a fundamental human right and, therefore, that it should be the cornerstone of all economic policy and established once and for all as a basic commitment of the government. Our proposed 28th Amendment will inscribe that commitment in the Constitution as a guarantee for every U.S. resident and make it a starting point for all public policy. Why do we need this Constitutional amendment? It is clear that, on its own, the private economy does not create enough decent jobs for all who need them. We face a chronic job shortfall. This situation persists even in boom times. For instance, unemployment continued to rise for the first 15 months of the so-called economic recovery in the early 1990s, and, when unemployment finally began to decline, the jobs that were created were mainly low-paying or part-time. All the talk from the media and politicians about the 11 million new jobs that have been created since 1992 overlooks that fact, as well as the fact that while those jobs were being created, 9.4 million people were laid off. The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that between 1990 and 2005 the value of goods manufactured in the United States will increase by 41 percent but the number of people employed to make those goods will decline by 3 percent. At the same time that unemployment and underemployment soar, job insecurity forces those who do have jobs to work more and more hours and for less and less money. Real average weekly earnings declined almost 19 percent between January 1972 and January 1997. Speedup and compulsory overtime come along with "downsizing." By 1994, the average factory work week was over 42 hours -- the highest level since World War II. In auto and supplier plants, for example, the average was nearly 8 hours of overtime a week. The shift to lower-wage, part-time and contingent labor that accompanies "downsizing" also forces people to work more just to try to keep their heads above water. An increasing percentage of workers are working part-time jobs, from 13 percent of all jobs in 1957 to more than 19 percent -- nearly 20 million people -- in 1993. Of course the effect of this shift is to lower wages for full-time workers as bosses use the threat to "downsize" or "outsource" to demand wage and benefit concessions. This leads more and more people to seek part-time jobs in order to bolster the inadequate income from their full-time employment, while still others try to make ends meet with two or more part-time jobs. So, in 1994, 6 percent of all workers -- more than 7.3 million people -- worked more than one job. What this adds up to is that the economy is not delivering for working people. The "trickle down" that we have been hearing is supposed to take care of our needs clearly is not happening. +----------------------------------------------------------------+ LABOR PARTY PRESS A VOICE FOR FREEDOM Labor Party Press fights the attacks The Labor Party Press, the official publication of the Labor Party, publishes an outstanding paper and great pamphlets like this one. The party's 28th Amendment campaign for a job as a right is at the heart of its building agenda. To join the Labor Party and subscribe to its press, write: The Labor Party, P.O. Box 53177, Washington, D.C. 20009. Phone: 202- 234-5190. FAX: 202-234-5266. E-mail: lpa@labornet.org ****************************************************************** 4. UNSCHOOLED EDUCATION By Steve Plake Education is the key to everything. Consider the impact compulsory education has on society. These institutions have a legal right to our youth during the most formative and impressionable years of their lives. At the time when children are most interested in learning and being active, society confines them to classrooms, forcing them to endure sitting still in a desk, "learning" trivial facts and figures to be forgotten in a week. The most overwhelming reality of compulsory education is control. Schools thrive on control. Students are forced to act in such a way that, if an adult was treated in this manner, there would be a lot to be said. Most teachers and other school personnel truly believe they are doing a good thing. In their minds, they are providing children with an important service. When they intentionally inhibit freedom, they honestly believe it is in the best interest of the students. Children are treated as less than people. During these years of compulsory education, children are subject to a free-for-all on their minds and belief structures. Every teacher has the power to influence children to embrace their beliefs and values. Consider all the principles children are taught: segregation, elitism, bureaucracy, hierarchy, etc. This method of educating breeds apathy. Grades serve three main purposes. First, they make children feel inadequate and/or incapable of successfully planning their own education (if you can't even pass a basic spelling test, what authority are you on education?). The second purpose of standardized grading is to make young people feel as though they can succeed and have an obligation to continue to do well, similar to a feeling of addiction. Finally, a traditional grading system allows institutions to evaluate quickly a child's intellectual progress. Students in compulsory education are often times bored, humiliated and terrified. Traditional schooling does a good job of robbing children of the natural desire to learn. It teaches children that learning takes place in a classroom, as if life and learning are separate entities. It teaches us that once our term of service in school is complete, we go through a transition and enter "real life." Unschooling is self-directed or self-guided education. People confuse home schooling with unschooling. Some use the terms interchangeably. I and many others recognize a distinction. Home schooling creates a mental image of school at home, where there is a chalkboard set up in the basement, Mom is a professional teacher and the student goes through the motions of a routine schedule. Unschooling allows the unschooler to determine the direction and form his or her education takes, utilizing adults as resources for networking and getting around age barriers and constraints. Unschooling encourages children to focus on specific interests, allowing children to intimately investigate areas of interest as opposed to merely being exposed to six or seven different subjects at once. This allows children to develop and learn by experience or by experiential education, learning basic skills along the way. Unschooling requires children and parents to rise above feelings of guilt and inadequacy of not being enrolled in a traditional schooling system. Leaving the compulsory education system encourages children to grow as open-minded individuals seeking relevance within the most basic interactions. This encourages an understanding and acquisition of life learning. Every interaction is a learning experience, the lessons learned are subjective. Education is everything, the means we are educated by has the power to shape us for the rest of our days. Every moment starts with educating those who do not understand. We need to start from within to educate our youth to be responsive, to teach them to be open to all ideas and cultures, recognize the harm compulsory schooling does to the minds of our children and how stifling this is to future progress. As Grace Llewlyn put it, "Quit school and get a real life and education." Some good resources for beginning unschoolers: "The Teenage Liberation Handbook" by Grace Llewllyn "The Underachieving School" by John Holt "Growing Without Schooling" Holt Publishing "Deschooling Society" by Ivan Illich Steve Plake can be reached on the internet at animal_lib@rocketmail.com, or by mail at Box 1553 Mishawaka, Indiana 46546. +----------------------------------------------------------------+ OUR CHILDREN NEED PREPARATION FOR A NEW SOCIETY By William H. Watkins, Ph.D. The school system, as we now know it, is far from a neutral institution. Schools are agencies of the state. Their job is to promote social control, conformity, and political passivity. The school curriculum attempts to "objectify" knowledge. It makes us believe that the knowledge it imparts is the true knowledge for all people and for all times. School knowledge legitimizes capitalism, slavery and oppression as part of the "natural order" of things. While schools reproduce existing social inequalities, they can also be places of oppositional thinking. Most of us who are progressive were at some point influenced by an inspirational teacher. We all want our children to learn, but we need them to learn more than "good citizenship." We need them to learn about injustice, gender oppression, economic inequality, and racial questions. We need for our children to understand the complexities of history and the modern world. We need them to understand labor economics and modern technology. We need our children to be prepared to understand and participate in the advent of a new, post-capitalist social order. We need schools to excite rather than bore our children. +----------------------------------------------------------------+ ****************************************************************** 5. FROM LOS ANGELES TO INDONESIA: TWO REBELLIONS, ONE WORLD >From the editors Watching and reading the news reports of the recent (and perhaps ongoing) rebellion in Indonesia, one cannot help but recall the Los Angeles Rebellion of 1992. There are many parallels between the two uprisings. In each case, a spark touched off a blaze fueled by the smoldering resentment of a mass of people who have been impoverished by downsizing and globalization, and brutally repressed by their government. A conjunction of the people's moral outrage and deteriorating economic conditions made both uprisings inevitable. And, as in L.A., Indonesia's poor did what they had every moral right to do: they went into the stores and took what they needed, took what had been denied them by the system that impoverished them. It's more and more clear that the new class of destitute people being created by downsizing and globalization is a worldwide phenomenon, and that battle lines are being drawn between the wealthy few and the increasingly impoverished many in every country. Just as the L.A. Rebellion marked the crossing of a certain line in our country's history, so too the people of Indonesia have taken a step on a road that, eventually, will lead to overturning the old order. Whether in Indonesia or the United States, you cannot keep people in poverty when every day they can see that there is plenty of everything to go around. In a world of abundance, no one should be poor or hungry. When the growing worldwide movement against poverty is coupled with a vision of the peaceful, prosperous, cooperative society that is possible, no force on earth will prevent the realization of that vision. ****************************************************************** 6. THE FUTURE WITHOUT FEAR PUBLICIZE IT ALL! INFORMATION WILL BE FREE! by Steven Miller Everyone who uses computers likes the spell-check function. But why doesn't the computer check spelling automatically, say every time you hit the space bar? It turns out that this was thought of back in the early days, but this function was patented. The engineer then demanded a royalty from every IBM or Apple sold, so the companies chose to use a more backward method. Information -- the product of the human mind and its embodiment as knowledge -- is the greatest source of new wealth on the planet. It is not so strange that its control is an issue. The spelling program that was patented is simply a number -- a succession of 1s and 0s. That's all any computer program is. The programs that make the dinosaurs for "Jurassic Park" or food allocations to the supermarket are simply numbers. So now people can privatize numbers and restrict their usage unless they receive money! Three hundred years ago, capitalists in Britain realized that there was all this free common land that was used by (gasp!) everyone. They started the process on enclosing the common lands and driving the people off of it in the name of private property. What was then widely reguarded as theft of the lowest order is now accepted as "natural." Technology was still in its infancy when privatizing took this giant step. What about laws of nature -- like gravity, outer space, the oceans or the expansive power of steam? The laws specifically forbad making laws of nature private property, mostly because no capitalist would let another have such control. They only allowed the privatization of inventions that used natural forces, such as the steam engine. Yet this expansion of private property lead to the Industrial Age and the miseries and horrors of the 19th Century as depicted by Charles Dickens and Victor Hugo. Now the Information Age is at hand and the reign of private property is being extended again. This time around, the laws of nature are fair game. Corporations are not simply privatizing numbers. They are also privatizing forms of information like DNA, seed stocks, entire life forms and the molecular vibrations we call radio waves. Their agenda is to privatize all forms of information for private profit. The Phillipina woman whose face was copied to make Pocahontas received something like $400 for her trouble. Now she -- like Colonel Saunders -- doesn't even own her own face! Not so strange -- Prince had to change his name because he doesn't own the music he himself made. These info-victims are harbingers of worse capital crimes. The devastating use of privatized information in computers and robots to replace human labor means that as many as 75% of all jobs will be auto- mated in the next 20 years. Since your income is completely tied to your job under capitalism, most of us will face utter ruin that will make Dickens' horrors look like a footnote. Information and knowledge add something new and positive to change the equations of capitalism. A computer program, a song, or a plant protein to reduce stress is almost infinitely copyable at virtually no cost. A computer program to set type or find consumer trends can be used, but unlike a machine, it cannot be consumed. Information is easy to collectivize and distribute. It's easy -- you just give it away! The result will be that income will be separated from, and no longer dependent on, work. At last, both will flourish. Electronic technology and its products beg to be publicized, not privatized. It requires a lot of unnecessary difficulty to privatize information. It somehow has to be monopolized to yield profits. Hence we have the idiotic laws that make it illegal to copy a song off the radio or copy a computer program for a friend. Herbs cannot even be sold as medicines! Ninety percent of Americans routinely break these laws on a daily basis. The Roman Empire was the first society to make use of the mule, a product of the crossbreeding of a donkey and a horse. The mule was more powerful and had greater stamina and endurance. When the slaves were first sent to the fields with the mule, the first thing they did was beat it to death so they could take the day off! "It just wouldn't work," they told the Master. "You know how they are." While the slaves were resting there under the tree, they began to think, "You know, if I had this mule, I could take off over that mountain range and produce what forty field hands can do in half the time." All the laws of the mighty Roman Empire -- its entire social system -- couldn't contain the productive power of the mule. The slaves began to envision a new world, then brought it into existence. Information will be free! ****************************************************************** 7. MUMIA ABU-JAMAL'S MESSAGE TO SUPPORTERS IN BLOOMINGTON, INDIANA Last April, police in Bloomington, Indiana last April illegally broke up a benefit concert in a park to support Mumia Abu-Jamal, the American political prisoner who is on Death Row in Pennsylvania after being falsely convicted of killing a Philadelphia policeman. Mumia and the entire world are demanding a new and fair trial. Mumia has been on a hunger strike with about 14 other inmates to protest the confiscation of their legal material. The following is a statement from Mumia Abu-Jamal to the Bloomington rally. Ona Move! Dear friends of Bloomington: "I thank you deeply for your efforts this night on my behalf and on the behalf of those of us in active resistance to the stifling chokehold of the system. Although my belly is hungry, my spirit is constantly refreshed by the warm, gentle and living expressions reflected in your actions tonight. You are part of a growing movement for Life in the midst of a nation drunk with Death. Never despair, for your efforts are destined to win. I thank you and the other brothers on the row thank you as well. Ona Move ... Long Live John Africa ... Mumia Abu-Jamal ****************************************************************** 8. OKLAHOMA TEACH-IN: CORPORATIONS PUT HUMANITY AT RISK NORMAN, Oklahoma -- The first student teach-in took place at the University of Oklahoma campus here on the last weekend of April. The teach-in conference on "Corporations, Democracy and the Environment," was organized by the students and included a broad representation from the labor, scientific, international and the environmental communities. There was one source of agreement; that the assaults and attacks on all sectors of our society resulted from the corporate class and their disregard for humanity. All the presenters at the conference painted the picture that all of humanity was at risk if this corporate class continues on its present course. The presentation from representatives of the Free Nigeria Movement painted a stark picture of the absolute control and oppression of Nigeria by the likes of Shell Oil, Coca-Cola and Chevron. Doreen Stabinsky, a biophysicist and member of the People's Tribune Speakers Bureau, spoke of the rush of corporations to own intelligence and the struggle of the international farming community to stave off this onslaught on their freedom to choose not only who to buy their seeds from but when to buy. The end of work was discussed in the presentation on globalization and labor, presented by Sheilah Garland-Olaniran, labor activist and member of the League of Revolutionaries for a New America. The wages of U.S. workers have been placed within the world labor market and are being driven downward to meet the absolute poverty wages faced by most of the world's workers rather than these lower wages moving upward to meet U.S. wages. The building of a new Labor Party represents the expression of some elements of labor to break with traditional trade unions and to throw their lot in with the growing class of dispossessed and impoverished in the fight for a new America. ****************************************************************** 9. ECONOMIC HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES AND THE INTERNATIONAL MORAL CRISIS: THE STRUGGLE FOR THE HEARTS AND MINDS OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE By Chris Caruso In 1997, Bill Gates, who lives in Washington state, had his wealth more than double from $18 billion to $39 billion. According to Douglas Mattern, president of the Association of World Citizens, "It would take a $100,000-a-year engineer in Silicon Valley 200,000 years to make what Gates made last year." Nearby, in Idaho, which has reduced its welfare rolls by 77 percent (the steepest cut in the nation), Krista Ziebart, an epileptic mother of two who has lost her welfare benefits, sometimes goes for days without food so her kids can eat, the New York Times reports. Gates and Ziebart represent the growing moral and political conflict between the private property rights of global capital and the human rights of the global poor that is emerging as a major strategic concern. The ability of global capital to project its political power through the U.S. government is increasingly threatened by the decreasing moral prestige of the U.S. government at home and abroad. The growing worldwide political instability is beginning to express itself in a deepening worldwide moral crisis. This moral polarization reflects the extreme and growing polarity between wealth and poverty in the world today. According to the Economic Policy Institute, in 1997, the world's 477 billionaires had as much wealth as 52 percent of humanity. Additionally, according to the United Nations, more than half of the world's population exists on less than $2 a day. With the United States the most economically stratified country of the major industrial nations, the American people find themselves no strangers to this growing polarity between wealth and poverty. Indeed, it has been documented that 1 percent of the U.S. population owns 42 percent of the country's wealth. The struggle to end poverty today is necessarily and immediately a political struggle. It is, in essence, a struggle for power. Every political struggle begins with the battle for the hearts and minds of the people. The key issue today is that the bulk of the 280 million people in the United States have to make up their minds about poverty. Although there is growing economic insecurity, the American people are pragmatic. To influence them, effective propaganda use must be made of the emerging practical movement and the morality of the new class of dispossessed -- the poor and unemployed of today. This movement must be given shape and consciousness so that it can obtain moral legitimacy, and through that the political leverage necessary to exert influence. Decades of propaganda by ideologists and strategists of the ruling class have served to deny the struggle of the dispossessed moral and political credibility. Additionally, in their struggle to end poverty, the dispossessed can no longer garner this legitimacy from the federal government and the majority party, the Democratic Party, as did past movements of the poor, such as the CIO movement of the 1930s and the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. Indeed, it is the federal government and Democratic Party, acting in the interests of the capitalist class, that are responsible for and complicit in the latest round of attacks on the American people. Therefore, the struggle and program of the dispossessed must seek moral legitimacy and political leverage elsewhere. The struggle of the poor and unemployed of the U.S. is part of an emerging global struggle of the new class of the dispossessed. The struggles of the Zapatistas of Mexico, the urban poor and embattled students of Indonesia, the unpaid workers of Russia, the unemployed workers of France, the landless workers of Brazil, the downsized and downtrodden of Korea, are part of the same newly emerging class content. The social position of this part of humanity compels them to question existing morality and moves them toward accepting a new morality that is based in their interests and points the way to a new future. This struggle is further polarizing the global moral cleavage between the putrid morality of a tiny handful of billionaires and the newly emerging morality of the impoverished half of humanity. It is in this international arena that the struggle of the poor and unemployed of the U.S. can find moral legitimacy and political leverage. In every part of the world, the struggle of the dispossessed comes up against the economic, military and political might of the U.S. government. The U.S. government, with its unequaled power and prestige, stands as a major obstacle to the success of these struggles. Their growing awareness of this compels these world struggles to seek and strike a blow at the Achilles' heel of the U.S. through assisting, by whatever means, the newly emerging movement and morality of the poor, homeless, and unemployed of the U.S. As the struggle of the dispossessed begins to raise the issue of economic human rights violations in the U.S., violations which have been blacked out by the media, it will be able to take advantage of the deepening international moral crisis. The documentation of these violations will stand as a moral indictment of the U.S. government for abdicating its responsibility for ensuring the health and well-being of its residents. Last June's march of poor and homeless families from the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia to the United Nations in New York in protest of the economic human rights abuses caused by federal and state welfare reform policies, received a tremendous outpouring of support from around the country and internationally. Through drawing attention to stories of hunger and suffering in the U.S. -- stories of violations of the common worldwide standards set by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, stories which are reinforced by the life and death struggles of the impoverished world majority -- the struggle of the dispossessed in the U.S. will garner the moral legitimacy and political leverage it requires to win the battle for the hearts and minds of the American people. ****************************************************************** 10. FREEDOM BUS CARRIES ECONOMIC RIGHTS CAMPAIGN ACROSS THE U.S. Sponsored by the National Welfare Rights Union, the Economic Human Rights Campaign '98 is a national effort to highlight the economic human rights abuses caused by welfare reform and poverty in this country. During June, the new Freedom bus -- Freedom from Unemployment, Hunger and Homelessness -- will travel around the country, collecting documentation of these abuses and spotlighting the efforts of poor communities to survive and fight back. There will be rallies, marches and tribunals in conjunction with the bus tour in the cities the bus visits. The bus will take the documentation to the United Nations for an international economic human rights tribunal on July 1, where a formal case against the United States will be initiated. Economic human rights are mainly expressed in articles 23, 25, and 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations in December 1948. Article 23 deals with the right to jobs at a living wage and just conditions of work. Article 25 concerns the right to well-being of a person and their family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services. Article 26 promises the right to education. Below is the latest schedule for the bus tour at press time. For updates on the campaign and tour, check out the Kensington Welfare Rights Union's web site at: http://www.libertynet.org/kwru/index.html You can reach the KWRU by phoning 215-203-1945, faxing 215-203- 1950, or by sending e-mail to kwru@libertynet.org +----------------------------------------------------------------+ Monday, June 1 Philadelphia, PA Boston, MA Tuesday, June 2 Boston, MA Springfield, MA Wednesday, June 3 Albany, NY Rochester, NY Lorrain, OH Thursday, June 4 Lorrain, OH Cleveland, OH Friday, June 5 Lorrain, OH Pittsburgh, PA Welch, WV Saturday, June 6 Welch, WV Durham, NC Sunday, June 7 Durham, NC Highlander Center, New Market, TN Monday, June 8 Highlander Center, New Market, TN Knoxville, TN Tuesday, June 9 Highlander Center, New Market, TN Atlanta, GA Wednesday, June 10 Atlanta, GA Macon, GA Dublin, GA Waycross, GA Thursday, June 11 Columbia, MS Jackson, MS Friday, June 12 Jackson, MS Little Rock, AR Saturday, June 13 Louisville, KY Sunday, June 14 Louisville, KY Detroit, MI Monday, June 15 Detroit, MI Ann Arbor, MI Chicago, IL Tuesday, June 16 Chicago, IL Wednesday, June 17 Chicago, IL Milwaukee, WI Minneapolis, MN Thursday, June 18 Minneapolis, MN Friday, June 19 Denver, CO Saturday, June 20 Denver, CO Sunday, June 21 San Francisco, CA Monday, June 22 Los Angeles, CA Tuesday, June 23 Los Angeles, CA Wednesday, June 24 El Paso, TX Thursday, June 25 El Paso, TX Friday, June 26 Houston, TX Saturday, June 27 Houston, TX Sunday, June 28 Washington, DC Monday, June 29 Washington, DC Philadelphia, PA Tuesday, June 30 Philadelphia, PA Elizabeth, NJ Fort Lee, NJ Wednesday, July 1 New York City 9 a.m. -- March over George Washington Bridge 12 noon -- Rally in New York City Against Workfare 4:30-6:30 p.m. -- International Tribunal at United Nations ****************************************************************** 11. WELFARE REFORM: IT TAKES A GLOBAL VILLAGE TO ABANDON A CHILD By Claire McClinton The signing of the Welfare Reform bill in August 1996 was a defining moment in the quest for a new America. The bill does not cut woefully inadequate safety-net programs -- it destroys them. The measure was called "the most brutal public policy since Reconstruction" by one senator. Gone are desperately needed subsidies for documented and undocumented citizens, children with disabilities, single adults without dependent children, and single adults (primarily women) with dependent children (AFDC). The latter was done by repealing Title IV-A of the Social Security Act. The Social Security Act had not been touched in 60 years, and only the provision for children was sacrificed. Limited federal dollars are now diverted to the states (in the form of block grants) for governors to spend as they see fit. With mandated time limits of two years (five years lifetime), the right of America's children to survive is gone. The assault on safety net programs is not just the result of mean- spirited Republicans or "wimpy" (read: "new") Democrats in Congress. Governments all over the world are in the process of slashing and burning long-standing social programs -- programs which provided the necessities of life for the unemployed, the disabled, and other at-risk citizens. European countries, for example, are obsessing over the launching of a common currency -- the Euro. The establishment of the Euro will make these countries more competitive, with a view to becoming major players in the high-stakes and volatile global market. Strict economic guidelines are required in order to qualify for the new common currency. For example, countries were mandated to cut their budget deficits to 3 percent of total output if they wanted to be in the common- currency loop. Budget deficits and national debts had to be put in check. Bloated governments do not attract trade and investors. To put their economic house in order, Italy, for instance, went on a mission to snatch the cushion out from under thousands of invalids and pensioners. In Washington, the welfare-reform debate took place in the context of a hue and cry for "balancing the budget." With each and every technical advance and the competition it guarantees, the government is not about to write a blank check to sustain the livelihood of an ever-growing class of permanently unemployed. Abolishing safety net programs now is to unload an open-ended expense account. Also, dollars must be made available to tend to such market issues as bailing out the Mexican government or bankrolling the world's leading emergency lender -- the International Monetary Fund -- which recently bailed out South Korea. Governments need to be fiscally sound and financially fluid in order to remain players in the global village. Budgets must be balanced and deficits cut, and, every once in a while, one country or another may need to be bailed out. What will happen to America's children? As Newt Gingrich might say, "Let them eat laptops." It is the global market which must now be fed. ****************************************************************** 12. A 'MAMA JAM' FOR POOR MOMS IN UTAH By S. Reid "I don't know one person who's done it on their own. Everyone needs support. We have to remember that we're all in this together." -- Vicky Batchelor, JEDI board member SALT LAKE CITY -- Hundreds of people gathered together on Mothers Day for the fifth annual Mama Jam celebration for low-income moms and children in Salt Lake City. The celebration was sponsored by a group called JEDI -- Justice, Economic Dignity and Independence for Women. In light of the wave of welfare cuts, the theme of the celebration was, "While Mothers Work to Provide, Their Children Need to be Provided For." Participants spoke angrily about the difficulty of being a mother, a single parent, trying to work, find child care, and put food on the table in a society that looks down on you. "They told me I couldn't [go to school] because I was employable ... but I didn't want to work ... at a gas station just so I could be employed ... these are quick fixes and they never accomplish anything," said Hillary DeMonja, a 24-year-old mother of a toddler, and a participant at the event. Utah, a state known for its low wages, is among those that tax one-parent families making as little as $12,000 a year. The number of welfare recipients in the state dropped 42 percent, versus the national average of 29 percent, between 1993 and 1997. "With the new welfare laws, the emphasis has been to get low- income and welfare mothers into the workforce. But they forget about the children. It should be the other way around, where home comes first," said Vicky Batchelor. In addition, JEDI finds that over 50 percent of women surveyed feel that Utah's Department of Workforce Services is ineffective and that caseworkers are judgmental and lack compassion. "I wish that if you make $200 they don't cut your food stamps like $50," said one woman respondent. JEDI members are of different racial, ethnic, economic and religious backgrounds. The group fights for low-income people to influence public debate on important issues. It has campaigned against a divisive "English Only" legislation, and other issues. You can reach JEDI at 801-364-8562. [Information for this article came from an article by Jenifer K. Hill of the Deseret News, JEDI and the Children's Defense Fund.] ****************************************************************** 13. CHICAGO RESIDENTS AND HOMELESS ACTIVISTS FIGHT BACK By Mary Nelson Chicago--The housing and homelessness crisis in Chicago engulfs more and more people every day. Not only are low-cost rentals a thing of the past, but the demolition of up to 18,000 units of public-housing apartments in Chicago threatens to displace 42,000 residents, according to the Coalition to Protect Public Housing (CPPH). Only 15 percent replacement housing will be built, and residents displaced will be offered Section 8 vouchers to secure housing. Many residents don't buy that. Thousands of residents have been waiting years for Section 8 housing. The scale of Section 8 housing that the Chicago Housing Authority is proposing now will flood the housing market with a demand for units that do not exist. On top of that, Congress intends to take $2.2 billion away from funds meant for Section 8 vouchers. The money will be used instead to pay for disaster relief, and troops sent to Bosnia and Iraq. This loss of funds will directly affect an additional 9,000 assisted apartments and 20,000 people. With the lack of affordable housing and rampant discrimination against public housing residents, many people face the threat of becoming homeless. Chicago already has more than 40,000 homeless people. These attacks on affordable housing for the poor, when added to the cuts in welfare, lead nowhere but to more homelessness. Wardell Yotaghan, co-founder of CPPH says that Chicago is the testing ground for national public housing policies. "The 18,000 units that they want to demolish in Chicago are almost 20 percent of the 100,000 units scheduled to be demolished across the country," Yotaghan says. The poor are not silent in Chicago. CPPH recently met with Housing and Urban Development (HUD) officials and won a time out from demolishing Chicago public-housing buildings. CPPH is holding a People's March and Rally on June 19. They will march to HUD offices in Chicago to protest the demolition and de-funding of public housing. They will demand a congressional hearing on the public-housing crisis. Another organization, Homeless On the Move for Equality (HOME) held their eighth annual caravan to nine cities in Illinois between May 9 and 13. Current and former homeless people took their model of "Their HOME" with them to raise the importance of funding permanent housing as opposed to short-term piecemeal approaches. They visited legislators in Springfield to lobby for WISH 2000, which would build 2,000 units of permanent, supportive, low-income housing over the next five years across Illinois. Dian Lovett, policy director of HOME said of her family's nearly 12 years of homelessness, "Shelters have never been the answer to ending homelessness, they are temporary fixes which too often prolong the horrible experience." "Many groups have been working at ending homelessness for years, and the numbers of persons still without homes is alarming," states Leatha Smith, a representative of HOME. "Children watch their parents struggle trying to rebuild their lives, but it becomes more difficult when there is no real foundation to work from, a place of their own," she said. Other Chicago advocates plan to speak out about the effects of welfare reform. The real issue, they say, is not "welfare to workfare" but "welfare to homelessness." With this in mind, the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless (CCH) will host a National Welfare Summit in Chicago on May 29 and 30. The forum, sponsored by the National Coalition for the Homeless and hosted by CCH, will ask what has happened to those people who have been cut off welfare. In the words of John Donahue, executive director of the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless: "Welfare Reform is going to increase homelessness. It is bad faith and meanness that blames the victims for the situation that is developing as the gap between rich and poor increases in this 'hot economy.' " [For more information on the Welfare Summit, call 202-737-6444 or the Chicago Coalition at 312-435-4548.] ****************************************************************** 14. WELFARE OFFICE CHEWS YOU UP AND SPITS YOU OUT By Katrina Coker [Editor's note: The author wrote this after a recent visit to her local welfare office.] Here I sit in a welfare office in a small college town in the Midwest, listening and waiting my turn to beg. It's 8 a.m. on a Wednesday morning and the office is already full. "I've had to quit school and I start work next week," one young mother tells her caseworker over the office phone. I know how hard this must be for her; it's the last month of the spring semester. So close and yet so far. I can't help but wonder if she's one of the students who was cut from the welfare rolls when the state legislature voted to suspend assistance to students in four-year degree programs. I wonder what kind of job she is going to. In this town there's nothing but minimum-wage work for nonprofessionals. One more family condemned to a life of poverty. Another young mother carrying a small baby runs in out of the pouring rain with a fist full of papers in her other hand. She waits patiently while her caseworker explains that she has been dropped from the rolls for "noncompliance" with the state office in establishing paternity. "I've turned in all my paperwork and done everything else they asked. What can I do? I don't know where he is," she pleads. "There's nothing I can do until I get clearance from them to put you back on. You'll have to go back to the office across the street and take it up with them," she is told. Another casualty of the recent welfare reform laws, silently she gathers her baby and her paperwork in her arms and heads back out in the pouring rain. She doesn't complain. None of us do. We know it wouldn't do us any good anyway. These caseworkers are just glorified paper pushers following the letter of the law. Still, the agitated, armed security guard standing nearby watches the conversation intently with his hand resting on his holster. Draconian welfare reform laws have made mothers with babies in their arms a threat to public safety. My turn now. I follow my caseworker back to the cubicle he directs me to. "Do you have your paperwork with you?" he asks. I hand him the 10 pages of forms it took me an hour to fill out. I'm one of the lucky ones. I'm only applying to extend my son's medical coverage. Still, in order to qualify I have to apply for full assistance, which I know will be denied even though I meet the financial qualifications. The only way we could get assistance is if I follow the "workfare" program guidelines -- 10 job contacts a week and a class on how to fill out job applications and make it to work on time. How could I, a college senior with a 17-hour class load and a small child at home to care for, find time for such nonsense? "You need to sign here showing that you refused workfare," the caseworker tells me. I grudgingly sign, knowing that I will be included, along with the other women in the office that day, in the statistics of people who "volunteered" to go off welfare. Where do we go from here? ****************************************************************** 15. SOUTHERN WOMEN FACE ABUSE AT THE HANDS OF THE SYSTEM [Editor's note: These stories were submitted by a reader in Atlanta. Joanne, Susan, Patty and Ayesha live in Georgia. Khalilah is from Mississippi.] Joanne has eight children. In June 1997, she was sanctioned for not complying with the new welfare law's job-search requirements. But her caseworker gave her only one card for public transit, and was very nasty to her. So she didn't go back to see the caseworker after her job search, and her food stamps were cut. She was told that child care was available for her job search, but was not given any papers to fill out or told how to get the process started. She has worked at low-paying, temporary jobs. She is now hurt and can't walk a block comfortably, yet she attempts to go on at least two job interviews per day. She has been told she cannot be hired until her leg is completely healed. Susan was working two jobs to make ends meet. Because she could not afford child care, she left her children, ages 14, 11 and 10 months, at home while she went to her second job. Police and social workers came and took her children; even though the 14- year-old told police their mother was at work, no one would call her at work to confirm this. When she returned home, she had to wait almost 36 hours to find out where her children were. She became depressed, lost both her jobs, and is now homeless. She is trying to find employment and housing so she can get her children back. Patty was getting $211 a month in food stamps. When she got a temporary summer job, her food stamp allocation was cut to $120. She was accused of fraud. Although she had been at the same address for a year, she received no notice that her allocation would be cut. Ayesha, mother of a five-year-old and eight months pregnant, was beaten repeatedly by her husband. She has had her jaw broken, her lips split open, and has scars on her legs. Since leaving her husband three months ago, she has had to live in a run-down rooming house in a rough area, due to lack of funds. She can only work 10 hours a week due to her pregnancy. She gets only $6 an hour and no benefits. Ayesha qualifies for Medicaid, but has been told she will be cut from the program once she starts working 30 hours or more. She is getting $104 in food stamps, which she will lose if she works 30 hours or more. If she gets public housing, she will have to pay 85 percent of its market value if she works more than 30 hours. Khalilah had to leave her home, job and community because her husband beat her. She did not qualify for unemployment compensation, and was refused public assistance because she owned a car. She sold the car and moved to New York City to live with a relative. Khalilah works full time for $8 an hour in a city where the average decent apartment starts at $800 per month. Yet, since she works, she qualifies for no assistance. ****************************************************************** 16. AMERICA HAS MADE SURVIVING POVERTY A CRIME By the Michigan Welfare Rights Organization John Engler, the genocidal maniac they call Michigan's "governor," is in the forefront of so-called welfare reform. He and many other politicians (including Bill Clinton) have made their political careers off of the destruction of the poor. Michigan, a "rust- belt" state, has fallen prey to global capitalism. Deindustrialization, globalization and downsizing are daily realities for workers and ex-workers. We're as disposable as Pampers. Employers have such power here that they fire us at will. Under welfare reform, if we are fired, we cannot get social services for one month. The politicians and capitalists have thrown us into a highly competitive "free market." We're free to starve, be homeless, go to prison or die. The Michigan Welfare Rights Organization has been documenting hideous human- rights abuses against the poor, in preparation for the National Welfare Rights Union's "New Freedom Bus" tour. This campaign to fight economic human rights abuses will be in Detroit at the Central United Methodist Church June 15 at noon, then in Ypsilanti from 2 to 8 p.m. at our Family Independence Office/social services. These local tribunals are to gather more evidence, and to provide the poor an opportunity to testify about how welfare reform has affected them. Marian Kramer, NWRU co-chair, says that, "America has made surviving poverty into a crime," and that we need to take our case to the United Nations. MWRO board member and housing activist Ruth Williams recognizes housing and welfare cuts as genocidal, "Between welfare reform and low-income housing cutbacks, the only place for poor people to go in America is to prison or the grave." At a low-income housing conference in Detroit on May 18, Kramer emphasized the interconnectedness of these two issues. She also said that people need to get with the movement now, not tomorrow. "When they first cut General Assistance, few people fought back, because it didn't affect them. Then they cut AFDC, and many still did not join the fight. Now that they've shown their true intentions and cut 13,000 disabled children in Michigan from SSI, people better damn well get up before no one is left to fight." Williams, of MWRO and president of United Tenants Speak and vice president of the Detroit Public Housing Board of Tenant Affairs, warned that millions who live in Section 8 subsidized housing will be next. Planned federal cuts will result in about 10,000 Michigan residents losing their Section 8 subsidy. "Your food stamps are almost worthless if you don't have a place to cook, and you sure can't work a job without showering," said Williams. She also exposed Detroit's "redevelopment" as another "urban renewal" scam that displaces low-income people from their communities. The development of casinos is resulting in the proposed demolition of three senior high-rise buildings in the Brewster-Douglass public housing, and legislation for "separation" of local public housing authorities from city councils poses a real threat. They would rather demolish low-income housing than maintain it. The America of today is brutal to the poor; the America of tomorrow, if the politicians and capitalists have their way, will do away with the poor. We protested genocide in Rwanda, in Bosnia and Nazi Germany. It's time to protest genocide in America, before there is no one left to fight. ****************************************************************** 17. CHAM CHARGES SAN JOSE WITH VIOLATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS By Sandy Perry SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Community Homeless Alliance Ministry (CHAM) has been ministering to the homeless in San Jose for eight years. Last winter, when CHAM opened First Christian Church to house homeless families, the city government threatened it with a fine of $2,500 a day. CHAM defied this threat, and, as a result, the city was forced to help shelter the families through the winter. However, as of press time, they still have not found permanent housing. San Jose has the highest housing costs in the country. Yet despite a $293 million redevelopment budget surplus, it claims it cannot afford to invest more than the legal minimum in low-cost housing. In May, over 100 local religious leaders (including CHAM minister Scott Wagers) signed a pastoral letter calling on the city to change its priority to affordable housing. "We seek to build a community committed to service, justice and respect," states CHAM in its covenant. "We believe that all people are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, including housing, health care and food. We seek to empower the least of our people to create equality, justice, and abundance for all. Our ministry evolves around the Gospel principles of love, understanding, forgiveness, compassion, and repentance." ****************************************************************** 18. MINNESOTANS URGE LAWMAKERS TO 'FIGHT POVERTY, NOT THE POOR' By the Welfare Rights Committee MINNEAPOLIS -- The Welfare Rights Committee Minneapolis-St. Paul is one of eight sister organizations in the Minnesota Welfare Rights Coalition fighting welfare cuts across the state. We organize people at the welfare offices, soup kitchens, and door to door, by leafletting in the community and everywhere that poor people are. We are all low-income people, multiracial, mostly women, and very pro-activist. Here is a brief summary of some of the coalition's activities since January 1. On January 1, Minnesota implemented the replacement program for AFDC -- the Minnesota Family Investment Program Statewide, a.k.a. Minnesota Families in Poverty Statewide. We denounced MFIPS in front of the Minneapolis welfare office. We submitted an anti-poverty bill to the legislature that demanded, among other things, that politicians: work towards the elimination of poverty instead of the elimination of the poor; undo all the harmful changes in Minnesota welfare law; provide up to four years education for everyone; stop forced workfare and forced job searches; stop all discrimination against immigrants; and repeal the five-year lifetime limit. The politicians did not support our bill. On the opening day of the legislature and again less than two months later, we mobilized hundreds of low-income people to vigorously present righteously angry opposition to welfare cuts and MFIPS. We publicly exposed that Minnesota counties were violating welfare law by not informing people they were eligible for education and training and may complete education programs they're involved in. We documented MFIPS abuses and publicly presented them. You can contact the Welfare Rights Committee at 612-822-8020. ****************************************************************** 19. A NEW WORLD IS POSSIBLE! I will plant companionship as thick as trees along the rivers of America, and along the shores of the great lakes, and all over the prairies, I will make inseparable cities with their arms about each others necks ... I will make the most splendid race the sun has every shone upon. -- Walt Whitman's "O Democracy!" For centuries, humankind has aspired to this timeless vision of the world as it could be. It has fought for it, sacrificed for it, yet never realized it. Today, with the full moral force of this history to give us courage, we stand on the threshold of the world of which humanity has so long dreamed. Who will make the goals of this long-fought struggle a reality? Who will complete the tasks of history? We see this force forming right before our eyes -- those who, forced out of society as it now exists, with their defiant cry, "we do not have to live like this," are driving a stake into the very heart of the capitalist system. The Freedom bus, winding its way across America, travelling to every nook and cranny of America, defying all odds and running on a shoestring, is giving voice to those all over the world who are fighting for no less than the right to survive, to live, to share in all that human society has to provide. Some say visions of a new world are simply the fevered dreams of idlers and romantics, those too innocent to know the ways of the world. The world has always been this way, they say. It will never change. Not so. The marvels of electronic technology -- the computers, the robots, and the diverse array of technology they in turn make possible -- offer the capacity to free everyone from hunger, homelessness and backbreaking labor. The abundance this technology can create offers us, for the first time in history, the opportunity to create a society in which the energies and talents of the world's people can be devoted to satisfying the material, intellectual, spiritual and cultural needs of all. Imagine such a world. Drink in its profound possibilities. For the first time in history, we can leave the dog-eat-dog existence of what has passed for human society to cross over and become truly human. But what stands in our way? The ability of a handful of billionaires to dictate how the wealth of society will be used. A system that enshrines the rights of those who own that wealth over those who do not. There is nothing in this system for us. The poverty and despair of our people today shows us this. Society must and can be reorganized so that each person can contribute to society while society gives back to each person what he or she needs for a healthy and fulfilling life. Everything is in place. We need only to fuse the vision of what is truly possible with the struggle already underway. Wherever you go, carry this vision with you. Tell your friends, your family, your organizations. Listen to your heart. Use your mind. This vision -- a world in which all are provided for, regardless of who they are -- is the timeless aspiration of the world. It is possible. It waits only to be grasped and made into a reality. -- League of Revolutionaries for a New America +----------------------------------------------------------------+ Join with others to make the vision of a world of plenty a reality Who is the League of Revolutionaries for a New America? We are people from all walks of life who refuse to accept that there should be great suffering in a world of great abundance. Together we can inspire people with a vision of a cooperative world where the full potential of each person can contribute to the good of all. Together we can get our message of hope out on radio and television, in places of worship, union halls, and in the streets. We don't have all the answers, but we are confident that together we can free the minds of the millions of people who can liberate humanity. Join us! ____ I want to join the League of Revolutionaries for a New America. ____ Send me a bundle of 5__10__25__50___100___ People's Tribunes to get out in my city. ____ Send me a membership kit so I can build a chapter of the League of Revolutionaries for a New America in my city. ____ I want a speaker in my city. Send me a "Speakers for a New America" brochure. ____ I want to make a financial donation to the League of Revolutionaries for a New America. Name Address City/State/Zip Phone E-mail +----------------------------------------------------------------+ ****************************************************************** 20. SPEAKERS FOR A NEW AMERICA Our speakers provide a message of hope and unity to create a society whose wealth benefits all. Our speakers speak from the point of view of the most destitute and what is needed to solve their problems. Our speakers speak from the point of view of what is in the best interest of all of society -- not what is in the interest of a handful of billionaires. Contact us today to book speakers who cover issues such as homelessness, the environment, women, cloning, labor and more. 773-486-3551 P.O. Box 3524, Chicago, IL 60654-3524 http://www.mcs.net/~speakers (New brochure available) ****************************************************************** 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 (773) 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: (773) 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. (773) 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. (773) 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". ******************************************************************