Facing South

5 great songs for July 4

2009-07-04T16:58:46Z

Happy Independence Day! Here at Facing South, we have a July 4th tradition of posting two thought-provoking pieces -- Patriotism's Secret History, which originally appeared in The Nation, and What to the Slave is the 4th of July?, Frederick Douglass' classic indictment of the gap between our country's ideals and reality.

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This year we're going to mix it up and go multi-media. For your viewing and listening pleasure, here are five "must watch" musical performances that contemplate our nation's dreams of freedom, independence and democracy:

1 - AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL

Written by ardent feminist (and likely lesbian) Katherine Lee Bates, efforts have been underway for decades to replace the nationalistic, violent and musically confusing "Star Spangled Banner" with this song, which instead calls on God to "crown they good with brotherhood." Here's Ray Charles' classic version:

2 - THIS LAND IS YOUR LAND

Considered our country's "unofficial national anthem," the tune was penned in 1940 by legendary folk musician and political radical Woody Guthrie. At President Obama's inauguration this year, Pete Seeger -- one of the song's greatest champions -- sang it with Bruce Springsteen and grandson Tao Rodriguez-Seeger, including the oft-omitted verse that questions our country's obsession with private property at the expense of common values:

3 - LIFT EVERY VOICE

The song known as the "Black National Anthem" made national headlines last year when, at Denver's annual State of the City address, Rene Marie -- who was asked to sing "the national anthem" -- sang words from this song to the tune of the Star Spangled Banner, provoking debate and causing Marie to receive death threats. Below is Kim Weston's famous rendition of the song at the 1972 "Wattstax" concert in Los Angeles -- recognize the guy introducing her?

4 - THE HOUSE I LIVE IN

Wildly popular when it came out in the 1940s, the words were written by Abel Meerpol (under the pseudonym Lewis Allan), a leftist who also wrote the anti-lynching song "Strange Fruit" immortalized by Billie Holiday. The music was by Earl Robinson, who composed the labor anthem "Joe Hill" and was blacklisted in the McCarthy Era. Below, Frank Sinatra sings The House I Live In at the 100th anniversary celebration of the Statue of Liberty in 1986, with President Ronald Reagan -- apparently oblivious to the song's radical history and celebration of working-class culture -- nodding happily in the front row.

Frank Sinatra The house I live in 1986
Vezi mai multe video din Muzica

5 - BORN IN THE USA

Bruce Springsteen's 1984 smash hit was a stinging indictment of war and class divisions, tracing the story of a working-class man whose hard luck causes him to get shipped to Vietnam to "kill the yellow man," only to face neglect and hardship when he comes home. But the message was lost on many, including Ronald Reagan who tried to use the song in his re-election campaign. (Springsteen responded by dedicating another song to Reagan: "Johnny 99," about an unemployed auto worker who turns to murder.) Here's a clip of Springsteen singing "Born in the USA" in Paris, 1985:

What are your favorite July 4 songs?

Celebrate Independence -- and Independent Media!

2009-07-03T19:03:17Z

This July 4th weekend, light up the grill, watch a few fireworks -- and celebrate free media by supporting Facing South!

For you and thousands of readers, Facing South is your trusted weapon in the war against spin, corruption and deceit.

But freedom isn't free -- and neither is delivering award-winning investigations and a powerful voice with impact.

We depend on readers like you to keep going and growing -- and we especially need your help now in these tight times.

You can make a difference right now:

We need to raise $3,500 by Monday, July 6 to reach $15,000 towards our Voices for Change summer fundraiser. And with your help, we can make it happen.

Can you make a tax-deductible gift of $35, $50 or more today?

Defend free voices and media with a revolutionary spirit -- support Facing South!

-- Chris, Desiree and Sue

PS: We're so close -- I need to update the graph on the right, but we're moving in -- please, take a minute right now and pitch in whatever you can so we can make our Monday deadline!

Coal ash contamination imperils July 4 festival goers in Tennessee

2009-07-03T17:48:06Z

The city of Kingston, Tenn. plans to hold its annual July 4 "Smokin' the Water" celebration tomorrow at a public park near Watts Bar Reservoir. The event is expected to draw as many as 25,000 people with festivities including raft races, boating and swimming.

But the park is only a short distance downstream from the site of the massive coal ash spill from the Tennessee Valley Authority's Kingston power plant -- and test results released this week show dangerous levels of heavy metal contamination that could endanger the health of people who come in contact with the water.

For a sense of the festival's proximity to the ash spill, see the Google Earth image above, which shows the location of the collapsed ash pond on Swan Pond Road and the park on Cumberland Street (click on image for larger version).

Among the toxic contaminants found at levels exceeding basic water safety standards were antimony, arsenic, barium, beryllium, cadmium, chromium, lead, mercury, nickel, selenium and thallium -- metals that have been linked to cancer and other health problems. For details on the chemicals' health effects, visit the U.S. Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry's ToxFAQs page.

The tests were conducted by consultants hired by an environmental law firm that's suing TVA over last December's disaster, which released a billion gallons of toxic coal ash into a nearby community and waterways. The attorneys released the results to regulatory authorities this week. A June 30 letter sent by the firm to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation stated:

Although these samples have been taken for litigation purposes, we believe that the agencies with the responsibility to protect public health and the environment should have the results in order to make informed decisions about protecting downstream water users, particularly given the upcoming July 4th weekend, which will surely include significant public contact with the waterways as part of the holiday festivities and recreation.

The samples were taken recently by qualified consultants using methods approved by EPA and TDEC and analyzed by a certified in-state laboratory. To view the law firm's water testing data, click here. For the United Mountain Defense press release about the findings, which includes an excerpt of the law firm's letter to environmental regulators, click here.

Last month, EPA, TDEC and TVA jointly issued a recreational advisory for upper sections of the Watts Bar Reservoir. But the law firm warns that its data show unsafe concentrations of metals much further downstream than stated in the advisory. In fact, it found high levels of arsenic, lead and mercury 27 miles into the reservoir.

To date, TVA has spent more than $100 million on the cleanup of the Dec. 22, 2008 ash spill. The final cost of the project -- excluding fines and litigation -- is estimated at as much as $975 million.

An open letter to Al Gore on mountaintop removal

2009-07-03T13:58:31Z

A Vietnam veteran and former businessman who lives in West Virginia's Coal River Valley, Bo Webb is one of the lead organizers of the national movement to stop mountaintop removal, a particularly destructive form of strip-mining. Webb was notified last week that mountaintop removal operations directly above his home will resume -- despite regulatory violations noted by federal officials.

Dear Al Gore:

Your long-time work on climate destabilization has triggered a sea change in how our nation tackles the impending crisis of global warming. I deeply admire and appreciate your commitment to an urgent issue that transcends borders, and affects the fate of our children's future.

As a father and grandfather raising a family in the great forests of the Appalachian coalfields, where my family has been rooted since the 1830s, I am writing you in a time of similar urgency.

This spring, I waited anxiously during the entire debate over the historic American Clean Energy and Security Act -- or Waxman-Markey bill -- to hear one critical truth: That we cannot discuss the end result of burning coal -- the greatest contributor of carbon dioxide emissions -- without discussing the beginning process of extraction, cleaning and transportation of coal.

That, in effect, the coalfields are ground zero in the climate change battle. If we are to be serious about addressing the "inconvenient truth," then banning mountaintop removal is a logical and required first step in capturing carbon and saving our forests.

You, more than any other person in our country, understand this. As a former Senator of Tennessee, a coal-producing state, and Vice President, you have always been aware of the true price of coal for our communities, our environment, our skies, and our children's future.

As you know, mountaintop removal operations have wiped out millions of acres of deciduous hardwood forests in our nation's great carbon sink of Appalachia. In addition, in West Virginia alone, 50 million tons of coal are exported annually to the dirty coal-fired plants in China and other countries.

Here in the thriving green forests of the Appalachian mountains, coalfield residents understand the reality of climate change better than anyone.

My family and I live in southern West Virginia, beneath a mountaintop removal site. I am forced to breathe silica dust every day because of the blasting that is taking place right above me. Fly rock has landed in my garden. A boulder the size of a car hood came off there and stopped just short of my garden. The sediment catch ditches are full, again. The middle of the hollow is sliding in. The beautiful creek where I used to catch fish bait and along its sides dig ramps, mushrooms, and ginseng is buried with rock, dirt and knocked down trees. The spring that we used to love to get water from is buried. The well water is sunken and muddy.

My house and my nerves rattle each day around 4 o'clock when the out-of-state Massey Energy company sets off yet another series of blasts. And every evening I am reminded that my family has been on this mountain since around 1830 -- long before Massey Energy invaded from Richmond, Virginia; it's as simple as that.

As a former veteran of the Vietnam War, I tell my children and grandchildren that we are American citizens, just like you. That we have a God-given and inalienable right to live in peace and breathe air that is not contaminated with silica dust, diesel fuel and ammonium nitrate, and to have potable water. That these are basic human rights.

My father, like others in my family, first started working in the coal mines at age 11. But it is the grave of my Uncle Clyde Williams, who died in the mine at Leevale here on Coal River Mountain at age 17, that also hovers in my mind as I walk these hills, gather herbs and berries, and hunt and fish with my grandchildren. When my father went into the mines, 130,000 union coal miners in West Virginia proudly toted their lunch pails and went to their jobs in the underground mines in our state. Today, only 20,000 West Virginia coal miners make up those ranks.

I want my children and grandchildren to have the right to dream and flourish as great contributors to our state in West Virginia. I don't want them to feel compelled to leave our state to look for employment or to realize their dreams. I want them to know that the rule of law protects them, their families and our mountains.

In 2007, at the Reel Film Festival in Nashville, Tennessee, you reminded the nation that mountaintop removal "is a crime, and ought to be treated as one."

As you know, the Obama administration recently announced a series of regulatory initiatives to "strengthen oversight and regulation, minimize adverse environmental consequences of mountaintop coal mining." While I have great admiration for President Barack Obama, energy advisor Carol Browner, and his new EPA administrator Lisa Jackson and [Council for Environmental Quality] chief Nancy Sutley, the reality is that their regulations can easily be avoided through loopholes.

While federal regulators were able to temporarily halt blasting above my home, I recently learned from the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection that the green light has been given to renew the blasting closer to the coal seam, in an area that is even closer to our Clay's Branch homes.

Nearly four decades of mountaintop removal regulatory history has taught me one thing: the devastation from mountaintop removal can never be regulated, but must be abolished.

For this, we need your help now. We need your help today, as 3.5 million pounds of explosives are detonated in our coalfields every day.

As our nation celebrates the 4th of July this weekend, we must not forget the words of George Washington in the dark moments of the American Revolution. He declared: "Give me but a banner to plant upon the mountains of West Augusta, and I will rally about it the brave men who will lift our bleeding country from the dust, and set her free."

Last week, NASA climatologist James Hansen and actress Daryl Hannah, among many other national leaders, came to witness to the climate crisis on Coal River Valley, and visit Marsh Fork Elementary School, Shumate Dam, and do a flyover over mountaintop removal sites, as a way of bringing this issue to the attention of the nation, and our national leaders.

Al Gore, now is the time for you to journey to Coal River and stand with us in this urgent time of need. We have simply run out of options.

Thank you for your time and consideration, and your crucial work for our nation.

Bo Webb
Naoma, West Virginia

VOICES: Time for immigration reform is now

2009-07-03T13:52:14Z

By New America Media

The White House and members of Congress must move quickly on enacting a just and humane immigration reform package that will reunite families, reinvigorate the economy, and remove the term "illegal or undocumented immigrants" from the dialogue in this country. Ethnic media, which reaches over 60 million adults in the United States, calls on Congress to move decisively on immigration reform because there are few issues as important to the nation's well-being as an overhaul of the inefficient, inhumane and economically debilitating immigration system. More importantly, we are also urging our readers and viewers to contact their Senators and Congressmen and let them know that immigration reform must be a national priority.

The immigration system is broken not just for 12 million undocumented immigrants, but also for specialized workers blocked from joining the American economy because of narrow quotas, and mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters of U.S. citizens who must wait for years before being reunited with their families.

Our nation needs comprehensive immigration policies that will replace a broken system of raids and roundups with one that protects all workers from exploitation, improves America's security and builds strong communities. It's time to end the division between workers, which has allowed big business to exploit both sides. Clearly, working-class citizens and immigrant workers have much in common - dreams of better homes, education for their families and quality healthcare. There is more that brings us together, than separates us. United we can be a strong force for change, changes that that bring more workforce safety and humane conditions.

Immigration is often portrayed as an explosive, divisive issue. In reality it's not. Since the repeal of the national origins quota system in 1965, which discriminated against certain immigrants, a consensus has been building towards an immigration system that respects the country's core values. These include economic opportunity, equality under the law regardless of ethnic background, and an embrace of the world's most innovative, energetic and ambitious workers. Now, with the country facing serious competition from workers abroad, it's more important than ever to create a world-class immigration system. It's good for families, good for communities and good for America.

This editorial was produced in association with New America Media, a national association of ethnic media, and was published by ethnic media across the country to bring attention to the urgency of immigration reform.

Meet Gov. Sanford's other Family

2009-07-02T15:13:52Z

There was a cryptic moment in the emotional press conference South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford held last week to apologize for committing adultery.

"C Street," Sanford said, is where men face "hard questions."

Later, in response to a question from a reporter, the Republican governor and former congressman said that he had been to "what we called 'C Street' when I was in Washington."

Sanford was referring to the address of the Washington headquarters for The Family -- perhaps the most politically powerful religious group in Washington. Sponsor of the annual National Prayer Breakfast that draws leading U.S. politicians, the secretive Christian organization also known as The Fellowship was founded in Seattle in 1935 by Abraham Vereide, a Norwegian immigrant and itinerant preacher who worked with the city's poor and feared the pull of socialism. He claimed that God appeared to him to warn that Christianity's preoccupation with the poor and weak was misguided, so Vereide began to minister to the powerful. He organized prayer breakfasts for political and business leaders to promote anti-Communism and anti-unionism, and the group later went on to work with dictators in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

The family is headed by a man named Douglas Coe, who has controversially encouraged the men under his tutelage to follow Jesus with the same sort of blind devotion shown by Hitler's followers. The members also refer to themselves as the "new chosen people," believing that the Jews broke their covenant with God.

Incorporated today as a tax-free 501(c)(3) nonprofit operating under the name The Fellowship Foundation, the Family maintains a three-story, $1.1 million brick townhouse at 133 C St. in Washington -- a former convent that's now home to members of Congress while being treated like a church under tax law. Among the lawmakers who have rented rooms there are Zach Wamp (R-Tenn.) and Jim DeMint (R-S.C.). Other lawmakers linked to the group include Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.), Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.), who also recently admitted to an extramarital affair.

In a meeting with his cabinet after his public confession, the New York Times reported, Gov. Sanford apologized for letting people down but said he has no plans to resign. He referred to the biblical story of King David: "the way in which he fell mightily ... but then picked up the pieces and built from there."

In a radio interview yesterday with Terry Gross of NPR's Fresh Air, Jeff Sharlet -- author of "The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power" -- shed more light on the shadowy group and Sanford's connection to it. Sharlet, who is also the co-creator of Killing the Buddha, an online literary journal about religion, spent almost a month several years ago living at Ivanwald, The Family's two-story colonial house on a cul-de-sac in Arlington, Va. that serves as a training ground for the group's next generation. Recommended for membership by a banker acquaintance, Sharlet was in fact there on a reporting mission that besides his book led to a 2003 Harper's magazine story titled "Jesus plus nothing: Undercover among America's secret theocrats."

During the interview with Gross, Sharlet noted The Family's emphasis on the biblical King David story that Sanford referenced. In that tale, David sees the beautiful Bathsheba, decides he must have her, gets her pregnant, arranges to have her husband killed in battle, and then marries her. Asked by Gross whether he had a better understanding of the Sanford affair because he studied The Family, Sharlet pointed to the governor's King David reference:

That's actually one of the sort of core parables of The Family that I encountered, and describe this experience with David Coe, the son of Doug Coe, the leader, came around and gave us this long lesson. He says, 'What made King David great?' And the men I was with are all trying to say, 'Well, he loved God,' all this. He [says], 'No, No, that's not it. King David was a terrible man. You know, he was an adulterer and a murderer. So why is he a hero of the Bible?' And the answer is because God chose him. King David is beyond morality, in their limited understanding of scripture. ... I could almost hear Doug Coe's voice when Gov. Sanford was saying, 'I need to keep governing, because I'm like King David.'

The calls for Sanford to step down are growing louder, with a half-dozen newspapers, a majority of Republicans in the South Carolina state senate and U.S. Rep. Gresham Barrett (R-S.C.) all urging his resignation. But the South Carolina newspaper The State reports that Sanford says he plans to stay "until they throw me out."

After all, that's what King David would do.

Smithfield's Tar Heel workers ratify first-ever union contract

2009-07-02T14:24:35Z

Workers at the Smithfield Packing Co. pork plant in Tar Heel, N.C., accepted a four-year labor contract after two days of voting, the United Food and Commercial Workers said in a statement Wednesday.

Virginia-based Smithfield Foods and the UFCW reached an agreement on the contract last week after five months of negotiation. This is the first union contract for the approximately 4,600 workers at the plant.

Over the years Facing South has reported on the 17-year battle to unionize the Smithfield Foods packing in Tar Heel. In December 2008, by a vote of 2,041 to 1,879, workers at the massive hog plant voted to unionize in what had become one of the most closely-watched labor battles in the country. But it was a long journey to get there.

Smithfield worked hard to keep the union out of the Tar Heel facility, the largest pork plant in the world, using fear and intimidation to keep workers in line. In this hostile climate, Tar Heel plant workers tried twice in the 1990s to organize, and Smithfield responded with illegal union-busting tactics to interfere with the vote -- including firings, worker surveillance, deportation threats, sexual harassment, intimidation and violence. Workers labored under poor conditions and at unsafe production line speeds, leading to scores of injuries. Workers, the majority of whom are Black and Latino, were routinely denied worker's comp for job-related injuries. Labor advocates argued that better labor laws, such as would be provided by the Employee Free Choice Act, could make a difference in cases like Smithfield.

The hard-fought for contract, which will take effect immediately, includes:

Wage increases of $1.50 an hour over the next four years.
Continued company-provided affordable family health care coverage.
Improved paid vacation benefits.
Retirement security through an existing pension plan.
Continuation of a joint worker/management safety committee, including safety training for workers.
Guaranteed weekly hours.
A system to resolve workplace issues.
Three working days of paid funeral leave following the death of immediate family members.

Study finds workplace immigration raids unlawful

2009-07-02T12:56:35Z

In the early morning hours of December 12, 2006, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents swept into Swift & Co. meatpacking plants in six states, rounding up detaining thousands of workers in one of the largest immigration raids in U.S. history.

A new report by a national commission of labor leaders, former elected officials, academic researchers and legal experts found ICE abused workers and violated their constitutional and civil rights in the Swift raids.

The report, Raids on Workers: Destroying Our Rights, details how thousands of workers at the six Swift plants were herded together at gun-point -- at one plant shots were even fired -- and were denied access to bathrooms, food, water, families and legal counsel for hours.

The commission found that during the Swift raids:

Some workers were interrogated, accused of lying and badgered during contentious questioning...Union officials were denied access to the worksites. Citizens and legal residents were denied the opportunity to retrieve documents to establish their legal status. Some were handcuffed and held for hours. Others were shipped out on buses. Families, schools and day care centers could not be contacted to make arrangements for the children of detained workers. Families were left divided--not knowing where or when they might see a missing family member again.

According to the report the execution of the Swift raids was part of a wider pattern of ICE misconduct occurring across the country. These Bush-era enforcement tactics routinely led to systemic abuse of workers' rights and a willful disregard for the rule of law, according to the report. Moreover, the report found that military-style ICE raids were used "less as an effective law enforcement tool and more as a way to grab headlines and stir hysteria around immigration and immigrants."

Other findings from the report:

U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents were detained for hours unable to leave even after establishing their status;
A lack of coordination by ICE with state and local labor and child welfare agencies;
Violations of the Fourth an Fifth Amendments, which grant protections against unreasonable search and seizure and guarantee due process, respectively;
Repeated incidents of racial profiling and harassment;
A large human toll in immigration enforcement, including family separation and children left without proper care;
Lasting economic and psychological devastation on communities and families in the aftermath of workplace and community raids.

The past few years have seen one of the largest immigration enforcement crackdowns take place in the United States, with raids that have swept across the country and arrested thousands. The South was the site of several major ICE raids during that period.

The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, the main group behind the new report, spent the last two years studying violations that occurred under the Bush administration's immigration enforcement policy. It founded the national commission to investigate the problems, holding five hearings across the country to take testimony and gather evidence of ICE violations. The UFCW has also filed class-action lawsuit in federal court, alleging mistreatment of workers and violation of constitutional rights by federal agents.

Breast cancer survivors target key senators in push for public health insurance option

2009-07-01T20:04:22Z

Breast cancer survivors are playing a growing role in the push toward a public option for health insurance.

A coalition of progressive groups including MoveOn, Democracy for America and Change Congress released a minute-long TV ad in Louisiana today to increase the pressure on Democratic U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu to support a public option for health insurance. Landrieu recently told the Huffington Post that she thinks a public option "undermines the essence of our efforts to create a real market-based private sector model."

The TV ad features Karen Gadbois, a breast cancer survivor who was named 2008 New Orleanian of the Year for exposing corruption after Hurricane Katrina. Even though she works full-time, Gadbois is uninsured because she can't afford to pay the premiums. The ad takes Landrieu to task for accepting $1.6 million in campaign contributions from health care and insurance companies:

A separate effort is targeting Sen. Kay Hagan of North Carolina, another Democrat who opposes the public option. Three-time breast cancer survivor Jane Hamsher of the blog Firedoglake along with folks behind the progressive North Carolina political blog BlueNC and Pam's House Blend (published by Pam Spaulding, a board member of the nonprofit Institute for Southern Studies that publishes Facing South) are gathering the signatures of breast cancer survivors on a petition that they plan to deliver to Hagan's office on Friday.

As Hamsher writes:

We survived because we had the medical treatment that many of our sisters who died did not. As survivors we want to speak out and demand access to health care for the women whose battle is before them.

Breast cancer survivors are invited to sign the petition here. The photos of some of those who've already signed are featured in the image at the top of this story.

Public TRICARE military health plan most popular in South

2009-07-01T12:53:56Z

In this year's health reform debate, Congressional Democrats quickly took proposals for a single-payer system off the table, claiming it was "unrealistic."

But more than 9 million people in the U.S. have already signed on to a single-payer system that's proved both workable and popular: TRICARE, the Department of Defense's program for active-duty military and retirees.

Even more interesting: According to a Facing South analysis, nearly half of TRICARE beneficiaries live in the South -- states where Congressional leadership has been most vocal in opposing public involvement in health care.

Last week, a top-rated diary at DailyKos by a person claiming to be "an active duty obstetrician/gynecologist in a major medical facility on the East Coast" noted that:

9.2 Million active duty and retired uniformed service member and their families receive their healthcare from the federal government. My family and I receive free healthcare from the federal government ... I am struck however that nobody has brought up the simple fact that the government already provides free healthcare in a single payer model to over 9 million of its population.

I decided to look into where TRICARE beneficiaries were located. According to my analysis of TRICARE data, 47% -- nearly half -- of the 9.2 million using TRICARE are based in 13 Southern states:
Overall, six of the 10 states with highest number of TRICARE beneficiaries are in the South. This makes sense given the high number of military bases in Southern states, as well as the concentration of active-duty and retired military in states like Virginia.

The high Southern enrollment in government-run TRICARE, where the military pays private doctors in a single-payer system, seems at odds with the vocal opposition of Southern lawmakers to anything smacking of public involvement in health care.

Take South Carolina: The Palmetto State has the 8th-highest TRICARE enrollment in the nation, nearly a quarter-million people. But South Carolina's overall population ranks only 24th nationally -- meaning that the share of South Carolinians using TRICARE's single-payer, government option is one of the largest in the country.

Contrast TRICARE's popularity in South Carolina with these words from Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) last week, who has led the Republican party's attempts to torpedo health proposals that involve the government:

"[Democrats] think we're stupid," said DeMint. "They think that you don't know that government does not work well, that the same people who cleaned up after Hurricane Katrina are the ones who can really run our health care system with that personal touch that we all want ... They're talking about a government plan that can do things that no government plan has ever done."

The 233,725 people who chose to use TRICARE in DeMint's home state likely disagree.

VOICES: Free Minds Free People promotes youth education for liberation

2009-07-01T12:45:54Z

By Melissa M. Forbis, Guest Contributor

"There is no more apt theme for this conference at this fear-driven moment in political history."

With those words, journalist and scholar Charles E. Cobb Jr. kicked off his keynote address Friday to the national Free Minds Free People Conference in Houston, which took place at the city's convention center from June 25 to 28. The gathering drew a diverse crowd of about 400 U.S. teachers, high school and college students, researchers, parents, and community-based activists/educators build a movement developing and promoting education for liberation by engaging youth of color and low-income youth in the fight for social justice.

The second Free Minds conference, with the first taking place in Chicago in 2007, this year's event was organized by Houston's S.H.A.P.E. Community Center, The Brotherhood/Sister Sol of New York, Chicago Freedom School and the Education for Liberation Network.

Cobb, a visiting professor of Africana Studies at Brown University, began by making a connection to another moment in U.S. history 50 years earlier -- the Civil Rights Movement. The first step needed then, he said, was to shed the mental obstacle of fear. He set the tone for the rest of the conference by focusing on developing education as a tool for building social justice. He also made a case for grounding current work in history: Since educating slaves was illegal in the South, education went underground, he said; as a result, when slavery ended black Southerners already had hundreds of schools in place, helping pave the way for the modern public education system.

Cobb also shared his experience from Mississippi in the 1960s, when as a field secretary for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee he helped organize the Freedom Schools, which fostered political participation among young people and supported them in articulating their views on liberation. Drawing on that work, Cobb urged conference attendees to continue organizing against the current educational system since, as he said, it "educates [us] to accept our enslavement."

The conference featured 57 workshops and panels, many of them run by youth organizations, and covered a range of topics, from media literacy to creating a social justice curriculum for teachers. A panel discussion titled "Neoliberalism and Education for Liberation" examined how an ideology advocating the transfer of public goods to the private sector had undermined public education, and how the private education foundations filling the gap sometimes have ulterior motives. One case study looked at the damaging effects of the policies implemented in Chicago by its former public schools CEO Arne Duncan, now President Obama's education secretary, with disinvestment from the public schools occurring at the same time as the opening of public military academies. In fact, military-based public schools are on the rise in communities nationwide, including suburban Atlanta and New Orleans.

The keynote address on the conference's second day was delivered by Rosa Clemente, a Puerto Rican hip hop activist from the South Bronx and the 2008 running mate of Green Party presidential candidate and former Georgia Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney. Discussing her work reporting from New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Clemente noted the importance of independent media to the education liberation movement. She also talked about how the current crisis in education can't be separated from other social problems like gentrification, environmental destruction, a lack of affordable housing, racism, etc. Her call for a future where schools are owned and run as community and collective spaces -- where all people are welcome, but standardized testing is not -- was cheered by many in attendance.

Many workshops highlighted youth engagement in what's known as "participatory action research" -- research that aims to involve all relevant parties in examining together something they experience as problematic in order to change and improve it. One presentation focused on a program launched by a teacher at Denton High School in Denton, Texas with help from University of North Texas students and faculty that brought students together to discuss their life stories and make videos about them to share with the school and wider community. The high school students talked about how the program built their confidence and also community within the school -- and one young woman reported that it had empowered her to consider higher education for the first time.

But Free Minds was not just a sit-and-consume-information conference: It was interactive, encouraging the sharing of skills and developing of analyses. There were also film showings and visits to local Houston projects, including an environmental justice tour with the nonprofit Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Services (TEJAS) and a tour of Houston's historic African-American Third Ward community. On Saturday night, teams from Houston and Austin hosted a youth poetry slam.

The final day of the conference featured a special panel and discussion on education in the Gulf in the aftermath of the hurricanes. Indeed, the location of this year's conference gave a particularly urgent inflection to the discussion. The already-precarious situation of public education in the region -- one of the most underfunded in the U.S. -- was further battered by the recent hurricanes. In post-Katrina New Orleans, privately-run charter schools have become the norm, with more than half of all public school students now attending one. And in the Houston area, still recovering from last year's Hurricane Ike, disinvestment in public schools coupled with the implementation of so-called "zero tolerance" policies mandating severe punishments for disciplinary infractions regardless of the circumstances have to lead the rapid growth of what's been dubbed the "school to prison pipeline."

As Free Minds Free People made clear, if we are to prevent further marginalization of generations of youth of color and low-income youth in the Gulf and elsewhere across the U.S., building a movement promoting education for liberation will prove critical.

Melissa M. Forbis is an anthropologist and postdoctoral fellow at Rice University's Center for the Study of Women, Gender, and Sexuality in Houston. Her work focuses on gender, indigenous rights and the state in Mexico, and she teaches an engaged research course.

(Photo of Asar Imhotep of the Houston Ministry of Culture, one of the Free Minds Free People presenters, from the conference website)

Jena Six case comes to an end; shone light on racism in criminal justice system

2009-06-30T10:59:51Z

In September 2007 more than 40,000 demonstrators descended on the small town of Jena, La. to protest unequal justice for the Jena Six, a case in which charges were brought against six black teens following a series of racially charged incidents sparked by the hanging of nooses in a public schoolyard. Facing South followed the case closely as it thrust a small central Louisiana town into the national spotlight and drew the eyes of the country to the lines of racial inequality still present in the modern-day South.

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The nooses were hung by white students after black students sat under a tree the white students apparently considered their own. The students who hung the nooses faced only a brief suspension from school and no criminal charges for their actions, sparking anger among the town's black residents. The racial tension led to a number of confrontations and fights between whites and blacks, with blacks consistently facing harsher punishment for their actions. In the case of the Jena Six, six black youths, at the time all students at Jena High school, were charged in December 2006 with beating a white schoolmate, Justin Barker. The black youths initially faced felony charges of attempted murder with potential fines of more than $90,000 and potential sentences as high as 20 years.

The severity of the charges drew widespread international criticism and protest. A judge went on to reduce the charges against Carwin Jones, Jesse Ray Beard, Robert Bailey Jr., Bryant Purvis and Theo Shaw to aggravated second-degree battery. Mychal Bell, the only one of the Jena Six to go to trial, pleaded guilty to second-degree battery as a juvenile in December 2007 and has since completed his period of 18-months in jail.

Last Friday the case -- which captured the imagination of a whole generation of black youth -- came to a final resolution. The five remaining Jena Six defendants -- Carwin Jones, Jesse Ray Beard, Robert Bailey Jr., Bryant Purvis and Theodore Shaw -- pleaded no contest to simple battery and agreed to fines and seven days of probation.

Civil rights activists have pointed out that the case of the Jena Six shone a light on the miscarriages of justice that happen to black male youth across the country. As David Utter of the Southern Poverty Law Center said last Friday: "These things don't just happen in Louisiana."

ColorOfChange.org, the online civil rights group that raised more than $275,000 for legal defense for the Jena Six, applauded the plea bargain. In a press statement on Friday the group said:

[T]he plea deal marked an acknowledgement by officials that the Louisiana justice system initially treated the then-teenage boys too harshly, privileging white students' accounts of a schoolyard fight over those of black students in the largely segregated town of Jena.

"Today's plea deal shows that the original charges in the case were unfair and vastly overblown," said James Rucker, ColorOfChange.org's executive director. "The story of the Jena 6 was an extreme example of what can happen when a justice system biased against black boys operates unchecked. But it's also an example of what can happen when hundreds of thousands of people across the country stand up to challenge unequal justice."

All in all, most observers agree it was a quiet end for the young men who, in 2007, were at the center of one of the largest civil rights demonstrations in a generation and the subject of rallying cries such as "Free the Jena Six." All the young men are now moving on with their lives, their attorneys say. Purvis is attending Ranger Junior College in Ranger, Texas; Bailey plans to enroll in Grambling State University in the fall; Shaw is attending Delta State Community College in Monroe; Jones is attending Tyler Junior College in Texas; Beard is enrolled in Canterbury, a private prep school in Connecticut; and Bell is enrolled in a historically black college in Louisiana.

Obama launches immigration reform effort, but lines are already being drawn

2009-06-30T10:33:57Z

Suman Raghunathan, Feet in 2 Worlds

Finally, the much-expected meeting on immigration reform between President Barack Obama and lawmakers from both parties took place Thursday. Participating legislators said the president promised to put his energy into moving forward right away. The response from some reform advocates was "Game On!" But the various sides have already started drawing lines in the sand - spelling out what they will and will not accept.

Reps. Anthony Weiner (D.-N.Y.) and Joseph Crowley (D.-N.Y.) reported that President Obama began the meeting by promising to "use whatever political capital he has left" to enact comprehensive immigration reform this year.

See a White House video of the meeting:

Thursday's meeting and the White House's creation of a working group on immigration reform -- to be headed by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano- were lauded by immigrant rights groups such as America's Voice, which called Thursday "a turning point" and declared: "Game On".

The renewed commitment from the Oval Office might allay advocates' fears that the current economic crisis, as well as Obama's high-profile efforts to enact health care reform would prevent the President and Congress from dealing with immigration this year.

After the meeting, Rep. Weiner expressed confidence that there are enough votes in the House to enact a large-scale immigration reform bill -- a claim directly contradicted earlier Thursday by White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. House Majority Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi expressed her "absolute commitment" to immigration reform, noting she would defer to the Senate to tackle the legislation first.

Political strategy aside, shaping the components of the legislation will prove tricky and complicated. Here's what will likely be on the table:

First, and perhaps most importantly, a large-scale legalization program to bring the nation's roughly 11 million undocumented immigrants out of the shadows and provide them a way to apply for legal status and eventually citizenship. Obama reaffirmed his campaign promise to enact immigration reform before Latino clergy leaders last week. The last legalization program was in 1986 under the Reagan administration.

Many Latino and immigrant voters will be paying close attention to how the administration broaches this elemental piece of immigration reform, especially after many political analysts underlined how crucial immigrant voters were to Obama's 2008 victory in swing states ranging from Virginia (immigrants are 10 percent of the state's population, and nearly half are eligible to vote) to Colorado and New Mexico (one in three voters is Latino; they overwhelmingly supported Obama last fall.)

Immigrant rights advocates point to a poll released this month that underscores support among independent voters for comprehensive immigration reform.

A legalization program would likely require undocumented immigrants to go through a background check for criminal records. "If they're unworthy, if they're not playing by the rules, then they have to leave," said Weiner. Once cleared, applicants would likely pay a hefty fine, affirm their willingness to learn English, pay back taxes to the federal government (or prove they have already been doing so), and go to the back of the already long line for legal status.

Obama on Thursday reportedly cautioned members of Congress against calling a legalization program "amnesty," despite anti-immigrant efforts to brand it that way. He also is reported to have said that "rounding up" the nation's undocumented immigrants would not help move the nation toward comprehensive immigration reform. Obama's opposition to a punitive approach toward the undocumented is likely to win him favor with immigrant rights advocates, especially those rooted in Latino immigrant communities that have been hit hard by immigration raids and other enforcement efforts.

Obama, Sen. Charles Schumer (D.-N.Y.), chairman of the Senate Immigration subcommittee, and other Congressional leaders, including Senator John McCain (R.-Ariz.), were all careful to point out that securing the nation's borders against continued unlawful immigration was also central to an immigration reform proposal. Federal resources for the increasingly militarized U.S.-Mexico border have soared in recent years, though the Border Patrol recently reported the number of undocumented immigrants apprehended plunged by nearly 40 percent over the last three years to their lowest level in 35 years - likely due to the faltering U.S. economy. Congressional leaders all underscored their commitment to "ending illegal immigration as we know it," as Rep. Crowley put it.

Another key piece of immigration legislation already introduced in Congress is the DREAM Act, a bipartisan proposal to allow undocumented high school graduates with at least two years of college or military service to apply for legal status. First introduced in 2001, and since then kept alive by the organizing and advocacy efforts of young undocumented immigrants nationwide, the DREAM Act has met opposition from members of Congress who protest it gives a 'free ride' to undocumented youth. The bill would allow roughly 65,000 immigrant young people to gain legal status and dramatically lower in-state tuition rates at state and community colleges.

It's also likely some form of workplace enforcement program will be part of the discussion. Such an approach would likely go hand-in-hand with efforts to bring undocumented workers out of the underground economy and level the playing field with respect to wages, workplace safety, and the right to unionize. Obama has expressed support for a workplace enforcement program that would target employers who knowingly hire undocumented workers to circumvent fair wage and hour laws. Unfortunately, this part of the worker enforcement equation is increasingly complicated, and there are few models that have been shown to work.

The existing (and controversial) federal E-Verify program, which would require businesses with federal contracts to screen employees using a Social Security Administration database, has at least a 10 percent error rate. The Obama administration has put implementation of this program on hold until September, pending a review. Nevertheless, it's likely the administration will face some pressure to develop a system to screen potential employees' work authorization.

Employers generally oppose such programs, and have largely avoided prosecution for hiring undocumented immigrants - with the notable exception of the Rubashkin family, owners of the now-infamous Agriprocessors plant in Postville, Iowa.

Questions abound about how to ensure the future flow of legal immigrants -- skilled and unskilled -- into the country. There is currently no way for unskilled low-wage immigrants to legally enter the U.S. with the option to stay here: the existing guest worker program is small, difficult to enforce, and only provides seasonal agricultural workers to a limited number of businesses.

Many believe the last immigration reform proposal in 2007 collapsed over the issue of broadening the guest worker program, an approach popular with business interests (and with Sen. John McCain, who after Thursday's meeting said he would not approve a bill that didn't include such a program), and reviled by powerful unions such as the AFL-CIO and the Change to Win labor coalition. Organized labor and immigrant advocates outline numerous concerns over wage levels and workforce protections for workers recruited through such a program, seen decades ago in the much-vilified Bracero program.

Similarly, the existing H1-B program for highly-skilled workers is often decried as too limited and leaving workers at the hands of their employers in the U.S. -- an arrangement that deprives them of fair pay and other worker protections.

Even as Obama announced his commitment to streamline the immigration process and reduce the wait for citizenship application processing to six months, questions remain about other parts of the nation's immigration architecture, including the immigration detention system.

Over the past year, numerous human rights and due process violations in the nation's detention system have come to light -- including U.S. citizens swept up in detention raids and unlawfully imprisoned -- according to Detention Watch Network, which reports the number of people held in detention facilities has tripled compared to 10 years ago. Reports abound of immigrants being deprived of medical attention while in detention facilities. Immigrant and detention rights advocates will likely push hard for increased investigations of the detention system.

Politically speaking, the 800-pound gorilla in the room is the economy. Despite arguments from immigration reform advocates that large-scale reform will actually bring economic benefits, members of Congress have so far proven skittish about taking on such a heated issue in the midst of the recession. But the situation may be changing: Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid recently underlined his commitment to enacting immigration reform this year, and reportedly has gone so far as to hold a place in the Senate calendar for the proposal.

Copyright © New America Media

Georgia leads in bank failures

2009-06-30T10:07:31Z

by Jake Bernstein, ProPublica

Any hope that the pace of bank failures might be slowing was dashed on Friday when the FDIC announced five new names to add to the growing list of the defunct. The total number of failed banks this year now stands at 45. The day's activities cost the FDIC's deposit fund $264.2 million.

Once again Georgia led the way. Since August 2008, 14 banks have failed in Georgia. The first to go on Friday was Community Bank of West Georgia, based in Villa Rica. It was founded in 2003 to take advantage of the red hot real estate market in Atlanta's suburbs. As of the first quarter of 2009, about one-third of the bank's $129 million in total loans were in some stage of delinquency, default or had become bank-owned foreclosures, according to the Atlanta Business Chronicle.

Usually when a bank fails, the FDIC finds a neighboring institution to help defray the cost of the failure in exchange for assets and deposits in what's called a "purchase and assumption agreement." Customers of the failed bank continue with the new bank as if nothing had happened. The FDIC could find no takers for Community Bank of West Georgia. It will instead mail checks to insured depositors for their funds.

Next to fail was Neighborhood Community Bank of Newnan, Ga. In this case, the FDIC struck a purchase and assumption agreement with CharterBank of West Point, Ga.

Since the FDIC likes to close banks after business hours, it announces failures from east to west, usually beginning around 5 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. Almost two hours after the agency revealed the first Georgia failure, it moved west to Minnesota where Horizon Bank of Pine City officially failed. The bank's assets and deposits were picked up by Stearn's Bank of St. Cloud.

As in Georgia, bad real estate lending seems to be the culprit.

The Star Tribune had the quote of the day:

"There's a lot of toxic assets," said Norm Skalicky, CEO and major owner of Stearns Bank, who was in Pine City on Friday. "Everybody was on kind of a spending spree. That has to get flushed out, I guess."

From Minnesota, the financial grim reaper swung over to California, where reckless real estate lending has led to multiple bank failures in the past two years. The FDIC announced the failure of Irvine-based MetroPacific Bank. Sunwest Bank of Tustin, Calif., picked up its non-brokered deposits. To cap the day off, shortly before 10 p.m. EST, the FDIC issued a press release on the closing of Mirae Bank, located in Los Angeles' Koreatown district. The press release offered Korean and Chinese translations. Wilshire State Bank of Los Angeles assumed all the non-brokered deposits.

The Los Angeles Times reports that the FDIC has hired about 400 people to staff an office in Irvine to supervise bank closures in the region. As of late May, the FDIC's list of problem banks nationwide numbered 305. It's shaping up to be a busy summer and fall in the bank closure business.

EPA releases locations of high-hazard coal ash dumps; most are in the South

2009-06-30T05:14:34Z

After initially saying it would not release the information due to "security concerns," the Environmental Protection Agency relented Monday and disclosed the locations of the nation's 44 "high hazard" coal ash dump sites.

These are the surface impoundments holding the waste from coal-fired power plants where a failure of the containment structure -- like the one that occurred last December at the Tennessee Valley Authority's Kingston plant in Roane County, Tenn. -- could kill significant numbers of people.

The South is home to 24 of the 44 high-hazard sites. North Carolina has the most of these sites at 12, followed by Arizona with nine and Kentucky with seven. Meanwhile, North Carolina-based Duke Energy is the utility with the most facilities on the list, with 10. All of those are located in the company's home state.

"The presence of liquid coal ash impoundments near our homes, schools and business could pose a serious risk to life and property in the event of an impoundment rupture," said EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson. "By compiling a list of these facilities, EPA will be better able to identify and reduce potential risks by working with states and local emergency responders."

Coal ash dump sites contain dangerous levels of arsenic, lead, mercury and other toxins that can contaminate drinking water or inundate nearby communities, as happened last year in Tennessee.

The following are the sites on the EPA's list, arranged by state (click on chart for a larger image):
The list was compiled with information submitted to EPA by the electric utilities in response to the agency's March 9, 2009 information request. The EPA says the 44 units will receive priority attention as the agency continues to assess the safety of the nation's coal ash impoundments.

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) pressed the EPA to release the information, arguing that it was essential for people to know the sites' locations so they could press local authorities to act to make them safer. At a press conference held earlier this month, she complained of feeling "muzzled" by the agency.

EPA has promised to issue a proposed regulation for the management of coal combustion wastes by Dec. 31, 2009. At the present time, these facilities are not federally regulated.

In North Carolina, state Rep. Pricey Harrison (D-Greensboro) has proposed a bill that would impose tougher state regulations on these facilities. However, it faces stiff opposition from the state's utilities, which are major political donors and powerful lobbying forces [pdf].

(Image of home inundated by December 2008 TVA ash spill from the company's aerial footage)