toronto labour day parade

Today I joined other members of the War Resister Support Campaign and the Toronto Steelworkers Union for the 2008 Labour Day March. Campaigners handed out hundreds of leaflets about the September 13 event, and we marched to the Ex - the Canadian National Exhibition - in the blazing sun.

I'm told that years ago, people would hang around Parkdale, the Toronto neighbourhood that abuts the Ex, waiting for the Labour Day parade, then slip in to the parade to gain free admission to the fair. To prevent such shocking fraud, parade participants now get a plastic bracelet for admission. But there were plenty of extra bracelets making the rounds with parade watchers. So if you're ever desperate for free admission to the Ex...

Shortly after the parade ended, I took the GO train back to my car. We went to the Ex last year when one of our nieces was visiting, and honestly, that's enough for me. Plus, today is the big military day there. The so-called "air show" that is really a parade of war toys marketed as entertainment. No thanks.

It was fun for me to join a labour parade. I have labour roots, as my father was an organizer, then a representative, of textile workers. My first anti-war activism was through his union. In New York, I was active with the National Writers Union and I miss the UAW membership that brought me. Many Campaigners belong to the Steelworkers, and that union supports the war resisters in many ways.

The leafletting was good; I handed out several hundred myself. One interested woman told me she heard about September 13 from her Greenpeace email list. It's great to see people make connections between these disparate issues. Because what's the occupation of Iraq about, if not precious, dwindling resources? The forces that would destroy Iraq would destroy the planet in their quest to control and profit from the oil. The fewer soldiers who will fight these resource wars - the more people who will say NO to being cannon fodder for their profit - the safer we will all be.

The Greenpeace woman asked a lot of questions about Jeremy and Corey and Robin. She knew about the June 3 motion, and she wanted to know what she can do to help.

Never underestimate the power of word of mouth. Every person you educate is another change in the world. Each one, reach one.

sally jenkins: "the clouded air is just the most observable sign"

From Sally Jenkins in the Washington Post. It's an excellent piece, and I hope you'll read the whole thing. All emphasis mine.

You only have to breathe the air to understand that these Olympics aren't about sport. They're about corporate profit, a propaganda stage for the Chinese government, and the moral collapse of the Olympic movement, but the very last thing they're about is excellence or the well-being of the athletes. The real interests, the real priorities, are in the air.

A haze the color of dishwater hangs over the billion-dollar advertising billboards of profiteers such as General Electric and Visa. The miasma that forms over the vaunted futuristic Beijing skyline makes the industrial-aesthetic high-rises look like nuclear cooling towers. A smoke curtain lifts and falls, occasionally parting to reveal blue sky, as well as the workings of Chinese state power: Despite the fog, the China Daily said that it was "clear" Monday , and that the city is "green and beautiful." Very well then. It smells like roses.

Beijing has its splendors: ambrosial pear juice and duck skin in coarse sugar, ancient gnarled cypresses, bending willow trees, palaces with concealed courts, and sprawling districts in which nationalities blend into a worldly sauntering crowd. But the air is not one of those splendors. In fact, depending on which way the wind blows, it can seem as if the countryside is burning, or as if you are standing behind the tailpipe of a bus.

Athletes are threatening to skip the Opening Ceremonies because they're afraid the environment of the host city will sicken them or compromise their medal chances, and distance runner Haile Gebrselassie dropped out of the marathon because the fumes are too heavy for him to run that distance. The Chinese government has labored for years to clear the air in Beijing, with some success. But in the meantime the Games themselves have become polluted. No governing body truly interested in peak physical performance, in helping athletes to be swifter, higher or stronger, would have awarded the Games to a venue in which you can see the poisons in the air. According to Greenpeace's local director, Lo Sze Ping: "Beijing's air quality is not up to what the world is expecting from an Olympic host city. The sports teams have reason to be concerned."

So what is this Olympics really about? It's about 12 major corporations and their panting ambitions to tap into China's 1.3 billion consumers, the world's third-largest economy. Understand this: The International Olympic Committee is nothing more than a puppet for its corporate "partners," without whom there would be no Games. These major sponsors pay the IOC's bills for staging the Olympics to the tune of $7 billion per cycle. Without them, and their designs on the China market, Beijing probably would not have won the right to host the Summer Games.

Seven years ago, in controversially awarding the Games to the Chinese regime, the IOC assured us that a Beijing Games would be both beneficial and benevolent, and promote a more open society. Chinese officials, too, vowed that the Games would not only foster their economy but "enhance all social conditions, including education, health and human rights."

The clouded air is just the most observable sign of the many unfulfilled promises since then. If the society has opened somewhat, there has also been a specific crackdown on dissidents as a direct result of the Olympics. Thousands of people have been rounded up and jailed for expressing dissent -- right now a man named Hu Jia is in a prison just outside Beijing for "inciting subversion" because he testified via Webcam before the European Union that the Chinese government wasn't living up to its Olympic commitments. Hu is ill with hepatitis B and undergoing "reform" in Chaobai prison, while his family is under constant surveillance. The crackdown continued this week with the jailing of several farmers, and efforts to censor the Olympic media. Amnesty International estimates that half a million people are being held without charges here.

Anyone who believed the Chinese government would use the Olympics as an opportunity to become a human rights beacon and environmental model was either softheaded, or lying. Capitalism is not the same thing as democracy. China's interest then and now was the consolidation of state power via economics. The government is merely behaving as it always has.

But the bad air here has shown the IOC and its commercial sponsors in an especially ugly and damning light. They have been conspicuous cowards in dealing with Chinese officials, and maybe even outright collaborators, on every issue from human rights to the environment to censorship. The silence of IOC President Jacques Rogge in the face of the continuing dissident sweeps amounts to complicity. "In view of my responsibilities, I have lost some of my freedom of speech," he said last week. Rogge's idea of a solution to the thorny problems of these Games is to hope "the magic" will take over once they begin.

Most disgraceful of all is the fact that six of the 12 worldwide Olympic partners are American companies. This has to heart-sicken any patriot. These companies will reap the full exposure of the Summer Games, swathing themselves in the flag, and rationalizing that their business is helping uplift the Chinese people. Don't buy it -- or them. You should know exactly who they are: General Electric (which owns NBC), Coca-Cola, Visa, McDonald's, Kodak, and Johnson & Johnson. (The others are Canadian-based Manulife Financial; Lenovo, the Chinese personal computer maker; the French information technology services company Atos Origin; the Swiss watch manufacturer Omega; Panasonic; and Samsung.) When these acquiesced to the Chinese government's crackdown, and effectively accepted the censorship of the press during these Games, they fell into a special category of profiteers that Franklin Delano Roosevelt described in his "Four Freedoms" speech.

"We must especially beware of that small group of selfish men who would clip the wings of the American eagle in order to feather their own nests," Roosevelt said.

It's plain that the Chinese people have worked mightily to create a beautiful Beijing Games, from the elegantly manicured gardens to the whisked-clean streets, and that they are a source of immense national pride. No one could wish to injure that pride, and every one wishes them a successful Games. But the Olympics are not solely about the host, they are about all the participating nations, and the common goal of "preservation of human dignity." The moment it became apparent that the Beijing Olympics was causing a crackdown, and that basic Olympic values were being constricted rather than expanded, these Olympic partners should have spoken out, and threatened to withdraw if abuses didn't halt. When they didn't, it cast a permanent pall over these Games. Like the air here, the Olympic movement is struggling for a clean breath.

I'v heard it said that people in North America have no right to outrage and disgust over the Beijing Olympics, because our hands are not clean. Our countries damage the environment, they don't respect human rights, there is poverty, there is inequality. This is all true. But dirt is dirt. We should condemn it wherever we find it.

Can people in the UK or Iran or Peru criticize the US and Canada, even though their countries may also have skeletons in their closets? Of course they can. Concerned North Americans are no different. It's not as if by criticizing China, I am claiming that Canada is perfect.

Not criticizing China because we think we appear racist or North-America-centric seems to me like racist pandering, however unintentional. We are all human beings. All governments have a responsibility to people, and all people have a responsibility to the planet. There are no exceptions.

Many thanks to s1c for alerting me to this excellent piece, and to Sally Jenkins for reminding us of what's really going on in Beijing.

fewer starbucks in the world is not a bad thing

Further to our recent discussion of the pleasures and pitfalls of iced coffee, I note that Starbucks is closing 600 US outlets. That represents about 6% of the company's 7,200 US stores.

This is very bad news for 12,000 people who will find themselves unemployed. So I say this with great sympathy for those workers: I told you so! And so did everyone else.

There are 235 Starbucks in New York City alone. There aren't enough people to drink all that coffee, or to spend their hard-earned dollars on over-priced non-essentials in such difficult economic times. We all wondered why they wanted to open an identical store on every block. We wondered how long it would last. Apparently, this long.

It won't be easy for those 12,000 newly unemployed people, and I shouldn't be jubilant about anyone losing work, especially a decent-paying, union job. So the labour activist in me is poking the New Yorker in me with a sharp stick.

But as someone who loves New York City, I can only hope that at least half of those 235 stores are destined to get the ax. Hooray and hurrah. Shutter those babies and grow weeds in their place if you have to.

Long live the New York City coffee shop.

The Starbucks closing story is actually about three weeks old - two weeks older than the last iced coffee post!

child slavery in china

From Reuters:

Thousands of children in southwest China have been sold into slavery like "cabbages", to work as labourers in more prosperous areas such as the booming southern province of Guangdong, a newspaper said on Tuesday.

China announced a nationwide crackdown on slavery and child labor last year after reports that hundreds of poor farmers, children and mentally disabled were forced to work in kilns and mines in Shanxi province and neighboring Henan.

"The bustling child labor market (in Sichuan province) was set up by the local chief foreman and his gang of 18 minor foremen, who each manage 50 to 100 child labourers," the Southern Metropolis Newspaper said.

"The children generally fall between the ages of 13 and 15, but many look under 10," it added.

The newspaper said 76 children from the same county, Liangshan, had been missing since the Chinese Lunar Year festival in February, 42 of whom had already left the region to work.

"The youngest kids found in the child labor market were only seven and nine years old," it said.

According to a contract exposed by an undercover reporter, a child laborer is paid 3.5 yuan ($0.50) an hour and must work at least 300 hours a month.

"These kids are robust and can do the toughest work," a foreman was quoted as saying, as he pulled a scrawny girl to stand beside him, the paper said.

And meanwhile, guess where the uniforms for Team Canada are being made?

When I wrote about not watching the Olympics because of China's rampant human rights abuses, I was slammed for... well, what wasn't I slammed for. Western hypocrisy, because you're only allowed to be outraged if you come from Ideal World Where Everyone Is Perfect. Ineffectiveness, since not watching the Olympics will not in itself solve the world's problems. Politicizing the supposedly apolitical Olympics, which are awarded to countries to curry trade and political favours. Arrogance, because boycotting China supposedly implies I think the US is just grand. Bigotry, because China is in Asia and I am white.

Not watching the Beijing Olympics and Paralympics is a symbolic action. Just like the torch relay is a symbol, and protests against it symbolic, too. Like standing for a national anthem, or remaining seated.

Not watching the Olympics, in itself, solves nothing. But if I don't watch the Olympics, and I tell you why, perhaps you will talk about it around your dinner table or on your own blog. Perhaps more people will learn about what is happening in China.

If enough people don't watch the 2008 Summer Olympics because they are being held in Beijing, perhaps the IOC and Beijing will notice.

Surely it's not sufficient. But just as surely, it's worth doing.

may day

I almost forgot my annual May Day post!

May 1 is the international workers' holiday, celebrated almost everywhere in the world except the US, Canada and South Africa.

This May Day website from Alberta has some great links about the history of the day, and how it became a workers' holiday.

Today is a day to recognize your common bond with all working people, to reflect on our shared dignity and worth, and the need for all people to earn a living wage.

Update: By "celebrated almost everywhere in the world," I meant officially recognized as a national holiday.

ttc strike as litmus test of progressive worldview

The Toronto Transit Commission is on strike.

Full disclosure: I don't rely on the TTC for my daily commute.

However, I lived for 26 years in cities wholly dependent on public transportation, and never owned a car before moving to Canada.

I support the striking transit workers.

I support striking workers everywhere.

The transit workers have power, and they should use it. I wish all workers - myself most definitely included - could wield the kind of power the transit workers can.

People on all points of the political spectrum are foaming at the mouth because union leadership already had announced there would be no strike. But union membership rejected the deal, as is their right to do so. Too often union leadership pushes deals down membership's throat. This time democracy prevailed.

I'm a freelance writer, and an office worker. Although in the US I belonged to the National Writers Union (to my tremendous benefit), I have little power in either of my work capacities. People who actually provide a service that is not easily replaced - television writers, professional athletes, transit workers - should use that leverage to their best advantage. I only wish more of us could be described that way.

I've seen many supposedly progressive bloggers writing (paraphrasing), "I'm all for unions, but..."

Just the other day, in comments on another blog, I was noting how people say, "I'm not racist, but..." then tell you how [these people] are always so lazy/smelly/stupid/tricky. Or, "I'm not gossiping, but..." then tell you personal details about your co-workers that you aren't supposed to know. "I'm not sexist, but I just cannot work for a female supervisor. They're always such bitches."

If you say, "I'm all for unions, except when they inconvenience me," you are not for unions.

A much better post about this is here on Dr. Dawg's Blog. Plus, Dawg calls out the pseudo-progressives by name.

Robert McClelland has run the numbers:

Here's the history of strike action by the union representing TTC workers.
1952: 19 days
1970: 12 days
1974: 23 days
1978: 8 days
1991: 8 days
1999: 2 days
2006: 1 day wildcat
2008: 2 days+
Total: 75 days over 87 years (the TTC was established in 1921)
Average: 0.86 days of strike action per year

Does less than one day per year of inconvenience (or hardship depending on your point of view and economic situation) justify stripping someone of their labour rights?

The TTC is not an essential service. I'm not even sure there should be an essential-service exception to the right to strike.

More power to them!


Update: Judging from the first comment, I guess I wasn't explicit enough. In Philadelphia and New York City, I wasn't car-less for environmental reasons. I didn't own a car because I couldn't afford to (and because in those cities you don't need to). In other words, I took public transportation because I had to, not because I wanted to. I don't commute by TTC now because I live in Mississauga, outside of TTC territory.

sane thoughts on spp

Unlike many of my cohorts, I don't much worry about North American Union, Deep Integration, and other scenarios that picture Canada losing its sovereignty to the United States. That's an old Canadian fear - and a justified one - but there's too much paranoia and hyperbole in the mix for me, and I avoid it. Wmtc had a big discussion about it a while back, if you want to catch up on my perspective, and that of several of wmtc's most thoughtful readers.

This doesn't mean I think there's no issue. The current crew in Ottawa is happy to walk in lockstep with the US, and that can only be dangerous - no matter who is in Washington. We need to protect the interests of the people, as opposed to the interests of the rich and powerful. That's always the case, and it's no less true about SPP than it is about anything else.

On the other hand, a highway connecting Mexico to the US and Canada - which, by the way, already exists - does not threaten Canadian sovereignty.

SPP, like most corporate schemes, is bad for labour, bad for the environment, and bad for democracy. There are good reasons to oppose it without envisioning the loonie being replaced by the greenback and a monument to George Bush being erected in Ottawa.

I recently read a good story on SPP on AlterNet. The authors, Manuel Pérez Rocha and Sarah Anderson, pull together both strands of thought, dispelling US wingnut fantasies and affirming Canadian progressive concerns.

This month, President Bush will host the leaders of Canada and Mexico to advance the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP), a project Lou Dobbs has predicted will "end the United States as we know it."

Lou sounds downright blasé, though, compared to all the online ranting and raving on this subject. And while there are plenty of reasons for progressives to be up in arms over this effort to expand the North American Free Trade Agreement, the xenophobes have clearly cornered the market.

In their paranoid fantasies, the three North American executive powers are secretly plotting to surrender everything they hold dear about the good ol' USA. The U.S. borders, the flag, and even the almighty American dollar would disappear as the country is submerged into a North American Union with Mexico and Canada.

Check out amerocurrency.com, whose creators are convinced that while the SPP hasn't replaced the dollar with a North American currency just yet, the switch is right around the corner. To raise alarm bells, these folks have gone ahead and designed our future money themselves. The cost of purchasing uno "amero": $10.

From the always imaginative John Birch Society, you can order a poster featuring our future North American Union flag, a collage of the three countries' current emblems with -- gasp! -- the socialist maple leaf dead center.

After an intro image of North America bursting into flames, Stopspp.com offers screeds by anti-immigrant Minutemen about how the SPP will fling open U.S. borders to terrorists, drunken Mexican truck drivers and tens of millions more illegal immigrants who will infect us all with tuberculosis.

The video "North American Union and Vchip Truth" cranks things up another notch. Viewed more than 4.8 million times, it presents the SPP as a big step towards a single world government, with David Rockefeller preventing any resistance by implanting us all with Vchips. We can only hope this is satire, but the 10,000 comments by Youtubers suggest that many viewers aren't getting the joke.

All this would be simply entertaining if it weren't for the fact that the SPP truly is a dangerous initiative -- but not for the reasons cited by the xenophobes.

Launched in 2005, the SPP is an ongoing process of negotiation between the three countries' executive powers to change regulations and other policies to boost business and support the U.S. War on Terror. Twenty SPP working groups on everything from financial services to intelligence cooperation hammer out details in between the annual presidential summits.

In Mexico and Canada, progressive activists are already highly mobilized on the SPP. And while the far right has dominated the U.S. discourse, this is beginning to change. A half dozen U.S. progressive groups organized a strategy meeting in Washington, D.C., in March with activists and legislators from all three countries. Together with local activists in New Orleans, the site of the fourth SPP Presidential Summit on April 21-22, they are planning a Peoples Summit and a trinational meeting of energy sector workers.

Here are 10 reasons why progressives are paying attention to the SPP:

1. No democratic oversight. Although elected officials in all three countries have demanded transparency, they continue to be excluded from the SPP Presidential summits, ministerial meetings and working groups. Legislators have formed a trinational task force to stop the SPP.

2. Secrecy. The SPP excludes civil society organizations and the media from all meetings. During a peaceful demonstration outside the last summit in Canada, the government sent in undercover agents posing as rock-wielding protesters. After being confronted with video footage, authorities fessed up to the scheme.

3. Only big business has a voice. Wal-Mart, Lockheed Martin, and 28 other corporations and business associations are part of an official SPP advisory body called the North American Competitive Council. The council made 51 proposals to SPP negotiators in February 2007 on issues as varied as taxation and patent rights. Six months later, they boasted that "all three of our governments have committed themselves to taking action on many of our recommendations."

4. Expansion of failed NAFTA policies. Even though the lifting of trade and investment barriers under the trade pact has failed to create good jobs, the SPP is further chipping away at remaining economic regulations. For example, at the last SPP summit, the three leaders announced (PDF) a weakening of NAFTA's "rules of origin" to allow products with a lower level of national content to receive preferential tariff treatment. This will undermine domestic industries by making trade in products from third countries like China even more profitable.

5. Privatization. SPP agreements announced thus far show a clear bias in favor of an expanded role for corporations. Two examples: 1) a North American Plan for Avian and Pandemic Influenza intended as a model for private sector and military involvement in emergency management and preparedness and 2) a Trilateral Agreement for Cooperation in Energy, Science and Technology that reflects the NACC's recommendations (PDF) to promote energy privatization in Mexico, where there has been strong resistance to opening up to U.S. oil companies.

6. Energy grab. Progressive activists in Canada and Mexico are particularly concerned about the likelihood that the U.S. government will use the SPP negotiations to push for greater control over its neighbors' resources, under the guise of a "North American integrated energy market." Common Frontiers, the Council of Canadians, and other groups point to an SPP workshop that envisioned a fivefold increase in environmentally destructive oil production from tar sands, with most of the increase to be exported to the United States.

7. Pipeline proliferation. The Sierra Club and others have raised alarm bells about the SPP's Transportation Working Group, whose mandate includes facilitating "multimodal corridors" that could include massive water and oil pipelines, with serious costs to the environment and communities. The Alliance for Democracy is calling for public hearings on the issue.

8. More border baloney. The SPP is focusing on facilitating transit of "legitimate people" and expanding border surveillance infrastructure, rather than addressing the root causes of migration or the rights of undocumented workers. There are also worrisome implications for civil liberties, as Mexico and Canada have agreed to share vast amounts of information with the U.S. government, including the fingerprints of refugees and asylum seekers.

9. Militarization. Mexico and Canada are enlisting in the U.S. War on Terror by creating a North American security perimeter and joining forces against not only external but also "internal threats." Some fear a U.S. multibillion-dollar military aid package for Mexico, supposedly to combat drug cartels, may also end up being used to suppress political dissidence and immigration flows.

10. Polarization. The zany anti-SPP xenophobes may be amusing at times, but their hysteria shows how government secrecy and exclusion can fan the flames of a racist movement and push us further away from any rational response to migration.

Having the leaders of our three deeply interconnected nations getting together to talk is a positive thing. The problem is with what's on the agenda -- and what's not. Rather than a misguided NAFTA expansion, they should be addressing people's real needs and planning a sustainable future.

See AlterNet for the story with linkage.

debbie shank and how many others

The good folks at Wal-Mart Watch want you to know that Debbie Shank was the tip of the iceberg.

Debbie Shank, you'll recall, was a Wal-Mart employee. She was permanently disabled and brain-damaged after a truck hit her car on the highway. Debbie now lives in nursing home. After Debbie's husband, Jim Shank, won a modest settlement from the trucking company that hit Debbie, Wal-Mart sued him for the cost of her care.

Yes, even though it takes Wal-Mart only 38 seconds to earn the $470,000 that they spent on Shank's care, they sued her suffering family to get the money back. And they got away with it! Which says something about the justice system, no? Only the huge public campaign publicly shamed Wal-Mart into reversing course.

So what it does mean that Debbie Shank is the tip of iceberg? Wal-Mart is the world's largest employer, and the single biggest employer in the United States. Yet fewer than half its employees are covered by the company health care plan. For those that manage to qualify, health care is still neither affordable nor accessible. Go here for details.

And this is some kind of iceberg.

Did you know Wal-Mart Watch is currently facing the largest class-action discrimination suit in history? 1.6 million current and former female Wal-Mart employees are charging the company with paying women less and offering them fewer opportunities for promotion.

But wait, there's more. There's a class action lawsuit filed by African-American truck drivers, and millions of dollars spent to settle lawsuits for discrimination against people with disabilities and violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Details and sources here.

Have you seen the "secret" Wal-Mart tapes? These videos were released to the public after the company gave the standard Wal-Mart treatment to (translation: screwed over) a production company that was making a video for them. Wal-Mart watch is using it as a handy organizing tool.

why give back when you can take back? wal-mart employees, katrina survivors in the same sinking boat

Have you heard of Debbie Shank?

Like more than one million Americans, Shank was an employee of Wal-Mart; unlike many of her fellow employees, she eventually qualified for the company's health insurance plan. Just three months later, Shank was in a horrific car accident, hit by a tractor trailer. She was left brain damaged and permanently disabled. Fortunately, the insurance paid her hospital bills, so at least Debbie's husband and three sons were not left destitute. Debbie now lives in a nursing home.

Debbie's husband, Jim Shank, sued the trucking company that hit her, hoping to cover some of the costs of Debbie's care. The Shanks won a modest settlement, which would go towards Debbie's round-the-clock care.

That's when Jim Shank got a call from Wal-Mart's lawyers: they were suing the Shanks for the settlement. This was, apparently, standard procedure.

With the help of Wal-Mart Watch, SEIU, and people all over the US, the Shanks fought back.

Shank's story has been the focus of a long battle by Wal-Mart Watch, who raised awareness, pressure and funds to help the Shanks. Last week, they won!

Wal-Mart agreed to allow the Shank family to keep the money they won from the trucking company responsible for Debbie's injuries, and dropped its legal proceedings against Jim and Debbie Shank. You can read more about the battle here at Wal-Mart Watch. However, the clause in the insurance contracts that entitles Wal-Mart to do this remains. The battle will not truly be won until Wal-Mart treats its 1.3 million employees fairly. (Does global warming cover hell freezing over?)

I thought of Debbie Shank when I read this story about survivors of Hurricane Katrina.

Imagine that your home was reduced to mold and wood framing by Hurricane Katrina. Desperate for money to rebuild, you engage in a frustrating bureaucratic process, and after months of living in a government-provided trailer tainted with formaldehyde you finally win a federal grant.

Then a collector calls with the staggering news that you have to pay back thousands of dollars.

Thousands of Katrina victims may be in that situation.

A private contractor under investigation for the compensation it received to run the Road Home grant program for Katrina victims says that in the rush to deliver aid to homeowners in need some people got too much. Now it wants to hire a separate company to collect millions in grant overpayments.

. . .

One-third of qualified applicants for Road Home help had yet to receive any rebuilding check as of this past week. The program, which has come to symbolize the lurching Katrina recovery effort, is financed by $11 billion in federal funds.

. . .

Brann pointed out that 5,000 collections cases would represent a 4-percent error rate for the Road Home that is "quite good for large federal programs."

Frank Silvestri, co-chair of the Citizen's Road Home Action Team, a group that formed out of frustrations with ICF [the contractor], sees it far differently.

"They want people to pay for their incompetence and their mistakes. What they need to be is aggressive about finding the underpayments," he said. "People relied, to their detriment, on their (ICF's) expertise and rebuilt their houses and now they want to squeeze this money back out of them."

The prospect of Road Home grant collections comes less than two weeks after the Louisiana inspector general and the legislative auditor said they were investigating why former Gov. Kathleen Blanco paid ICF an extra $156 million in her waning days in office to administer the program. With the increase, ICF stands to earn $912 million to run Road Home, a contract that also sweetened its initial public stock offering, and helped it buy out four other companies. It now reaches into government contracting sectors that include national defense and the environment.

. . .

Upon receiving money from Road Home, grantees sign a batch of forms, including one that says they must refund any overpayments.

Melanie Ehrlich, co-chair of Citizen's Road Home Action Team, which has documented Road Home cases that appear littered with mistakes, said she had no confidence that ICF had correctly calculated overpayments. She charged that the company was more likely using collections as retribution against people who had appealed their award amounts in effort to get the aid they deserved.

"I think they are looking for ways to decrease awards and that's part of dissuading people," she said.

Did you catch this part? "One-third of qualified applicants for Road Home help had yet to receive any rebuilding check as of this past week."

We moved to Canada the day of Hurricane Katrina. We have been here a few months shy of three years. Since that day we have lived in two houses, lost a dog, adopted another, lost and found jobs, written who-knows-how-many words, hosted two parties, travelled to Peru, collected Canadian Tire money, seen our team win another World Series... and there are people still waiting to receive a dollar of help to rebuild their lives.

why i won't watch the beijing olympics

I've been meaning to post about China and the Olympics for a long time. Now China's current military crackdown in Tibet has given me an excuse to focus on it.

I clearly remember learning that Beijing would host the 2008 Olympics, how stunned, and disgusted, and betrayed I felt. With that, any lingering illusions I had about the International Olympics Committee were stripped away. Giving the Olympics to China was the final admission of how political, corrupt, and morally bankrupt the IOC is.

In 1980, the United States and Canada boycotted the Moscow Olympics because of the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Japan, West Germany, China, and a few other countries joined the boycott; other countries made protests statements but didn't boycott.

A boycott of the Olympics because of an invasion. Seems kind of quaint now, doesn't it?

No one wants to piss off China. No wants to risk losing that powerful trading partner and access to all those cheap goods. Doing business with China means "staying competitive" - that is, ignoring the labour, safety, consumer and environmental standards your own country has built. And buying "Made In China" lets us all extend our standard of living. We buy artificially cheap products, and never count the true costs.

It's easy to sell cheap when you run sweatshops, dump untreated contaminants into the environment, have zero safety or health standards, and zero quality control.

So the western world, with its massive corporate and consumer power, doesn't just stay out of China's way. We reward China with the Olympics.

* * * *

No one blog post can detail China's many abuses. But although I can't do justice to the subject, I should at least give it a shot. So here, in no particular order, is why I won't be watching the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

Tibet: China's continuing occupation of this sovereign, peaceful nation.

Darfur: China is Sudan's largest trading partner and the main foreign investor in its oil industry. Most Western oil companies, under pressure from human rights organizations, have withdrawn from Sudan. And although we know that economic isolation and divestment can have a very powerful, positive effect (think South Africa), China continues to do business with Sudan, enabling slavery and genocide.

China: The list of China's abuses of its own people is a long and shameful one.

-- China executes more of its citizens than the rest of the capital-punishment countries combined and doubled. While China has a much larger population than those other countries, its rate of execution is still disproportionate. China has more capital crimes, and is believed to have more hidden executions and political executions, than any other country in the world.

-- China jails (and also executes) thousands of activists, political dissidents, journalists, and ordinary citizens who attempt free expression. Reporters Without Borders is a good source for civil liberty and human rights abuses in China, as is Human Rights Watch.

-- China's labour laws are a sad joke. Factory conditions sound like something out of Dickens or Upton Sinclair.

-- China pollutes water, air and soil with impunity, poisoning and sickening its citizens for generations to come.

This is the country that has been rewarded with the 2008 Olympic Games.

Some people believe that the international attention brought by the Olympics can be used to leverage change. Do they really believe that? Or they don't care, and only use this as lip service?

In the entire history of the universe, has change ever been made, anywhere, by giving a reward before anything has changed?

If you want to teach your child, or your dog, or your partner, that they must change their behaviour, do you hand them a huge reward, then ask them to change?

It's pretty basic. It's Psychology 101. If the IOC wanted to use the Olympics to effect change, it would have told China: clean up your act, and we'll consider you for future games. Here's a list of specific changes we want to see. You might have gotten the Olympics, but we won't reward you as long as you continue these crimes.

* * * *

An effective consumer boycott of Chinese products is virtually impossible. What's more - as we learned in the pet food scandal - many products labelled Fabriqué au Canada and Made In USA only get their final assembly or processing in those countries, with parts and materials that originate in China. Unless China is forced to deal humanely and fairly with workers, the environment and consumers - or unless North American businesses are forced into a trade embargo - or both - Chinese products will always undersell those made in North America. And we want to buy everything as cheaply as possible, so we can buy, buy, buy, more, more, more.

There are scattered calls to boycott the Beijing Olympics but they don't get any traction. Not because it's too late. Because no one wants to piss off China.

I'm just having my own boycott. I usually glue myself to the Olympics. This year my TV will stay off.




Photo from Reporters Without Borders, thanks to James.

equity pay in ontario, or, why we still need feminism

Antonia Zerbisias had a great column this week about equity pay - and the lack thereof - in Ontario.

A woman's work is not only never done, it's never valued as highly as a man's.

Ten years ago, the Ontario Public Service Employees Union announced that the average assistant teacher in child care centres was paid less than the average wage of a parking attendant.

Do we value jockeying our cars more than caring for our kids?

Nothing has changed.

Today, on the 20th anniversary of Ontario's pay equity legislation, women are even seeing their wages shrink relative to men's.

That's according to at least two major reports released last week.

The first is Working Women: Still a Long Way from Equality by the Canadian Labour Congress. It shows that, in 2005, female fulltime workers earned, on average, $39,200 compared to men, who earned $55,700 – a wage gap of $16,500, or 42 per cent of a woman's paycheque.

That means women earn 70.5 cents on the man's dollar, down from 72 cents just over 10 years ago.

It's not that the women are less-qualified or educated than men. It's that there are still "pink ghettoes" on the job market, entire job classifications seen as not worthy of parking lot attendant wages.

The second study, Putting Fairness Back Into Women's Pay, comes from the Ottawa-based Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. It accuses the Ontario government of shortchanging its own lowest-paid female workers.

"It has failed to deliver approximately $78.1 million in pay equity adjustments owing to women for 2006-07," the centre says. "A further $467.9 million is owed from 2008-11. As a result, the government is now open to another Charter challenge (the last challenge forced the Harris government to pay up)."

"This is the government with its own employees. It's outrageous," says NDP labour critic Cheri DiNovo.

Both groups hope that when Ontario Finance Minister Dwight Duncan tables his budget on March 25, female government workers will get some of the surplus he will no doubt be crowing about. They also want women's issues – which by extension include child welfare, poverty and the well-being of seniors – to get serious consideration.

Most important, they demand that pay equity enforcement measures be reinstated, to ensure employers comply with the law.

The column is here, and in this blog post, you can read more.

This reminds me, I didn't highlight Zerbisias' post on the C-484 vote. It's pretty much a round-up of what we've all been saying, but I thank her very much for writing so strongly about it. We are lucky to have her.

march 8: international women's day

This Saturday, March 8, is International Women's Day.

IWD 2008 is very special, as it marks 100 hundred years since the events that eventually became International Women's Day. The roots of IWD are feminist, labour, immigrant and socialist.

On March 8, 1908, 15,000 female garment workers marched through New York City demanding shorter hours, better pay and voting rights. Their activism would spur the labour movement and the movement for universal suffrage.

In many countries, IWD is a national holiday, similar to Mother's Day, but more political and less Hallmark-generated. You can see a list of IWD 2008 events by country here.

In the Toronto area, IWD 2008 is very much connected to labour rights, the rights of immigrants, and to the peace movement. IWD Toronto has all the info on the march, the rally, and a fair. The theme: The Rising Of The Women Is The Rising Of Us All!

Canadian women who care about reproductive freedom can use IWD 2008 as a forum to protest the anti-woman agenda of the Conservative Party and their Liberal collaborators. Don't let up.

learning spanish for your nanny

Trouble with immigrants? Try learning their language!

Thanks to AWE.

"the norm is disaster, the extreme is slavery"

Do you need any more reasons not to eat fast food?

Last week in The Nation, editor by Katrina vanden Heuvel wrote about conditions among migrant farm workers in Immokalee, Florida.

These farmworkers pick the tomatoes many Americans eat at McDonald's, Taco Bell, Burger King and other fast food chains. They are paid 45 cents for a 32-pound bucket of tomatoes. It's grueling work, as Fast Food Nation author Eric Schlosser noted recently in a New York Times op-ed: "During a typical day each migrant picks, carries and unloads two tons of tomatoes." For that two tons the worker can expect about $50, and annual wages of $10,000-$14,000. Wages have been stagnant for more than two decades. Two weeks ago, six people were indicted on slavery charges for beating workers, chaining and locking them inside U-haul trucks, and threatening physical harm if the workers left their jobs. This is far from a rare occurrence, as the Miami Herald wrote, "...farm crew slavery stories and the brutal exploitation of undocumented workers have long since lost their shock value in Florida."

The Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) - a community-based worker organization - has "exposed a half-dozen slavery cases" that helped trigger the freeing of more than 1,000 workers, and also advocated for better wages, living conditions, respect from the industry, and an end to indentured servitude. CIW recently scored critical victories in negotiating a penny-per-pound surcharge - so workers would now receive about 77 cents per 32-pound bucket - with McDonald’s and Yum! Brands (owner of Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, KFC). The corporations - not the tomato growers - would pay the 40 percent salary increase. Astonishingly, Burger King has refused to go along with the deal (tell Burger King to pony up) - it would cost them less than $300,000 annually and the corporation took in $2.23 billion in revenues in 2007. Not to mention three private equity firms control most of Burger King’s stock, including Goldman Sachs. In 2006 Goldman Sachs' top 12 execs took home bonuses exceeding $200 million - "more than twice as much money as all of the roughly 10,000 tomato pickers in southern Florida earned that year," according to Schlosser.) Even more outrageous is the response of the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange, representing 90 percent of the state's growers. The group has said it will fine any member $100,000 for accepting the extra penny per pound for worker wages.

Bernie Sanders, the maverick Senator from Vermont, joined Eric Schlosser in Immokalee, where they met with worker representatives and witnessed the working and living conditions for themselves. Here's what Sanders told vanden Heuvel.

...when we talk about the race to the bottom here in the United States I would say that Immokalee, Florida is the bottom. I think those are workers who are more ruthlessly exploited and treated with more contempt than any group of workers that I've ever seen and I suspect exist in the US.

What I observed is... I was out at 5:30 in the morning, where tomato pickers from all over the community assemble at several locations, primarily in a large parking lot. School buses come by to pick them up and take them to different growers' tomato fields. Some are selected and some are not. So, for a start, when you line up at 5:30 in the morning, you don’t know if you’re going to make a nickel during that day. You're standing there, and someone is pointing, 'you, you, you... but not you...' and you can see people dejected, because by 8:30 the buses are out and if you're not selected you're not gonna work. So these are desperate people then who have just discovered that that day they're not gonna earn a penny.

Then you get on the bus and depending on which farm you're going to it will be longer or shorter, but perhaps you’re going a half hour away.... You're getting to the field at 6:30 or 7:00 in the morning, and you don't go to work right away. You're getting paid piecemeal. The pay is very, very low to begin with, but you're getting paid piecemeal. You can’t pick until the sun comes out and dries the tomatoes. So we got photographs of workers just hanging around the bus waiting for the tomatoes to dry and that might be an hour, hour and a half. Now it's not only that this is your time, it is in a sense the contempt that you are so disposable, that we can get you out here just to sit around doing nothing while you're waiting for the tomatoes to dry...

Then you go out and you're picking tomatoes and you make on average about 45 cents for a 32 pound bucket of tomatoes - about a penny and a half per pound. That is not a lot of money. My understanding is that at the end of the year these are workers that will make 10,000, 12,000, 14,000 a year, working a very, very difficult job, under a very hot sun. After you do this job for a number of years your knees go out because you're bending over all of the time. Obviously there are no benefits that go with the job. I went over to the health center to see what was going on... I met with these workers, and talked to them - they just don't go to the doctor. Some of them are able to take their children to the doctor, they have no real access to healthcare.

In terms of their living conditions, I visited trailers… and these trailers were old, decrepit trailers where you had 8 to 10 people living in the trailer. In the morning to get to the bathroom, sink, or stove, you gotta wait in line to do it, because there are a lot of people in front of you. And they’re paying in some cases $50 per person, per week! You got that? So, the landlord who owns this old trailer is getting $2000 a month. And what someone there told me - I don't know if it's true or not - they buy these old trailers for about $2000 so they get their money back at the end of one month.

The days I was there - it was raining, when it rains you don't pick. The next day it rained mid-day so you had half a day of picking. Then, an amazing coincidence - when I was there the US Attorney announced an indictment on slavery charges. So we have seen now - I don't remember exactly the number - of different indictments that have been made against different individuals for slavery… which means that some of these people are being held in captivity, in some cases in chains. I think in the last instances, a couple of workers literally forcibly busted out of truck in which they were held against their will. So, the norm there is a disaster, and the extreme is slavery. And this is taking place in the United States of America in the year 2008.

Now some people might say, 'Well, I don't pick tomatoes why do I have to worry about it?' And the answer is that so long as these types of abysmal working conditions exist in the US, they create a culture which leads us to the race to the bottom… which says that any worker can be subject to arbitrary actions on the part of an employer. Just create a very, very strong anti-worker culture, which is part of the destruction of the middle class, the increase in poverty, the lack of respect for working people in this country.

Now the good news is there is a very wonderful group called the Coalition of Immokalee Workers who have managed to put pressure on large buyers of tomatoes, i.e., fast food chains like Yum! which owns Pizza Hut and Taco Bell, and McDonald's, to pay an additional penny a pound. And if you understand that if someone is making a penny and a half a pound, and they get an additional penny, that's a very significant increase. Burger King has been resistant, and there is now pressure being put on Burger King and other companies. And I would hope that as Americans, we all do everything we can, to demand that companies pay these workers a living wage and end this horrendous exploitation.

The Tomato Growers Exchange seems to be playing a very reactionary role. They are claiming that this additional penny a pound is in violation of antitrust law... I myself think that the issue - if you look at the amount of money that is being asked to be contributed by McDonald's, Burger King, and so forth - it is nothing. Very, very small number. I don’t think the money is the issue. I think truthfully, in my gut, the issue is a question of a balance of power. It is a feeling right now that you have workers who are absolutely helpless, the feeling that if they achieve some victories, they may have more confidence in themselves and more of an ability to stand up for their rights.

So, imagine, just put yourself in their place. You don't know whether you’re gonna work or not, there are no guarantees that you are - I may pick you, I may not - if you come there, if I pick you, you're gonna wait around for an hour and a half. What does that do to you as a human being? But these are desperate people who need the work, so to my mind it was an eye-opening experience, and I hope that as a nation we can end that kind of exploitation.

The very good news - what was positive about my visit down there was - we did a press conference, and the reporters went to Burger King, and Burger King came forth with what appeared to be a conciliatory response. Now whether it is just talk or not, we can't tell. But we want to pursue that. And certainly what we released when I was down there was a letter that was written by Senator Kennedy, Sen. Durbin, Sen. Brown and myself. And Sen. Kennedy has been very clear in telling me that he is prepared to do hearings on this issue. And I think that's terribly important, not only in exposing the exploitation, but trying to explain to the American people how slavery can take place in the United States in the year 2008.

Full story with links here.

Wherever there are farms, there is migrant labour, and Canada has a surprisingly large agricultural economy. I'm reading online about conditions of migrant workers here, trying to educate myself. As with so many issues, it seems that Canada is better than the US, but only by degree. That is, an improvement over a shamefully low standard. I found this story in "Arthur," an excellent publication written by students at Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario.

Every year, over 20,000 migrant farm workers from the Caribbean and Mexico are employed in Canada through the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program (SAWP), with over 90% working in Ontario. The SAWP, one of Canada’s several "guest worker" programs, stipulates some basic labour rights --- protection from wage discrimination, the right to refuse over-time, entitlement to collect Workers' Compensation when injured on the job, and more recently, the right to refuse unsafe work.

But, as Min Sook Lee’s compelling 2003 documentary "El Contrato" reveals, these rights are mostly elusive for migrant farm workers. While "the Contract" provides an appearance of accountability and fairness, its foundations stipulate conditions that ensure that migrant workers are "unfree" while working on Canadian soil. Most fundamentally, by denying citizenship status to migrant workers, Canadian governments ensure an ongoing supply of "permanently temporary" (i.e., uniquely exploitable) workers on Canadian farms. Migrant workers cannot change employers without permission, and they must leave Canada at the end of their contract. The Contract also includes a unique and powerful "breach of contract" clause, a ready-made tool for use by employers who wish to "repatriate" (send home) workers. While employers are free to invoke this clause without scrutiny or penalty, workers are not free to appeal its use. By gesturing to formal labour rights but providing no means to access them, Canadian governments are fully complicit in a cover-up of the vast abuses, discriminations and inequalities that pervade migrant workers' experiences.

Despite immense challenges, migrant farm workers have been fighting to improve their working and social conditions and to gain legal rights. Just last summer, for example, migrant farm workers in BC staged a wild-cat strike - withdrawing their labour power to force the employer and the government to provide adequate housing - and they won.

Migrant workers have also built alliances with labour organizers in Ontario. Since 2001, migrant farm workers have been organizing with Justicia for Migrant Workers (J4MW), a grass-roots organization that works through community outreach and activism to create a worker-driven movement for migrant and non-status agricultural workers in Ontario. Through self-organizing and working with allies, migrant workers are making an impact. They are leading the labour movement in pushing for rights for some of the most vulnerable workers in Canada. They are also a leading voice against racism in Canada, including institutionalized state racism.

The story continues with an interview with a representative from Justicia, a coalition organizing for the rights of migrant workers.

Migrant workers in Manitoba won the right to organize and to collective bargaining just last year. In June 2007, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that collective bargaining is a right protected by the Charter.

I'm still reading and learning. If any reader has knowledge of conditions in Canada (or elsewhere) or the fight to improve them, I hope you'll leave a comment.

Please take a moment to tell Burger King to pay the penny per pound. And don't eat that crap.

random notes on the empire

This will not be a pleasant post.

I have a bunch of links sitting in my inbox that readers (mostly Allan and James, but some others as well) have sent - items I'd never see if I weren't blogging, and perhaps you haven't seen them, either.

I know I've been belabouring the war and war resisters lately, but as I've said elsewhere, this blog reflects what's on my mind. I'm so disgusted, enraged, heartsick, horrified - got any other words? - at what's going on in Iraq, at how veterans are being treated in the US, at how ordinary citizens are being treated in the US. Wmtc is a chance to vent that, and maybe bring some items to your attention that you haven't seen.

So here goes. We'll file these under "The Hidden Costs of War".

Low-income U.S. families planning to rely on a federal program to help pay expensive heating bills this winter are in jeopardy after President George W. Bush on Tuesday vetoed spending legislation that would have provided the financial assistance.

Bush rejected the compromise appropriations bill for the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, which also contained $2.4 billion in funding for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, commonly known as LIHEAP.

Bush's veto puts "the health and well-being of millions of families at risk this winter," said Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, chairman of a House Education and Labor subcommittee, which held a hearing on Tuesday on the LIHEAP program.

"With energy costs consistently on the rise, more and more families must make the tough decision whether to heat their homes or put food on the table," McCarthy said. "We'll fight for the money."

With prices forecast to be up for all heating fuels this winter, the poor will need LIHEAP assistance more than ever.

. . .

"Congress needs to cut out that pork, reduce the spending and send me a responsible measure that I can sign into law," Bush said.

In the same speech a few moments later, Bush also expressed his concern about high energy prices.

A detailed analysis of data obtained from death records from 2004 and 2005, found that veterans were more than twice as likely to commit suicide in 2005 as non-vets.

It found that veterans were more than twice as likely to commit suicide in 2005 than non-vets. (Veterans committed suicide at the rate of between 18.7 to 20.8 per 100,000, compared to other Americans, who did so at the rate of 8.9 per 100,000.)

One age group stood out. Veterans aged 20 through 24, those who have served during the war on terror. They had the highest suicide rate among all veterans, estimated between two and four times higher than civilians the same age. (The suicide rate for non-veterans is 8.3 per 100,000, while the rate for veterans was found to be between 22.9 and 31.9 per 100,000.)

At least 20,000 U.S. troops who were not classified as wounded during combat in Iraq and Afghanistan have been found with signs of brain injuries, according to military and veterans records compiled by USA Today.

The data, provided by the Army, Navy and Department of Veterans Affairs, show that about five times as many troops sustained brain trauma as the 4,471 officially listed by the Pentagon through Sept. 30. These cases also are not reflected in the Pentagon's official tally of wounded, which stands at 30,327.

And from The Continuing Expansion of the Police State, we have...

Military recruiters already have the right to give presentations in public schools and to access databases with the contact information of all public school students whose parents do not remove their children from the list.

Now they can send retired veterans directly into public schools to teach them how to shoot guns and take orders.

One in 10 public high school students in Chicago wears a military uniform to school and takes classes -- including how to shoot a gun properly -- from retired veterans.

That number is expected to rise as junior military reserve programs expand across the country now that a congressional cap of 3,500 units has been lifted from the nearly century-old scheme.

Proponents of the junior reserve programs say they provide stability and a sense of purpose for troubled youth and help to instill values such as leadership and responsibility.

But opponents say the programs divert critical resources from crumbling public schools and lead to a militarization of US society.

"To call these young people child soldiers might be technically inaccurate, but it does reveal the truth of it," said Oscar Castro, a spokesman for the National Youth and Militarism Program, an advocacy group.

. . .

While military officials say the junior reserve programs are not used as recruiting tools, about 30 to 50 percent of cadets eventually enlist, according to congressional testimony by the chiefs of staff of the various armed services in February 2000.

This is particularly troubling given that the programs are concentrated in low-income and minority neighborhoods, said Sheena Gibbs, a spokeswoman for the Chicago branch of the American Friends Service Committee which lobbies against the programs.

"If you want to teach discipline and leadership then do it for everyone and don't make them wear (military) uniforms," Gibbs said. "Students (at regular schools) protest that they have to still share books but the military academy has laptops."

How about a man tasered for refusing to sign traffic ticket? Watch the video.

And finally, from so many wmtc categories that it almost defies categorization:

Wal-Mart is suing a former employee who is permanently brain-damaged for the cost of her medical care. And it's perfectly within their legal rights to do so. To paraphrase Yossarian, that's some law they got there.

Read about Deborah Shank's story here, here, here, and elsewhere.

what it is ain't exactly clear

It's been quiet on my weekend job, a rare occurrence these days, so I've been clicking around and reading a lot. Here are some goodies I found for you on activism - and backlash - happening all around.

A new game: Six Degrees of Exploitation, staring Kevin Bacon as a spokesperson for Hanes. United Students Against Sweatshops have been dogging him around the country, trying to get the actor to back up his progressive words with some progressive pressure on the company he shills for.

Tree-sitters in Berkeley are being arrested and harassed, as they bring attention to a grove of old trees, which is also a Native American burial ground. The University of California, Berkeley plans to bulldoze the area to make room for a $125 million sports centre.

I'm linking to the Common Dreams reprint, rather than the original in the San Francisco Gate, because the comments are more interesting (and less stupid). People are very quick to dismiss people who engage in these types of protest. But how many of us are committed enough to sacrifice comfort and safety for our beliefs?

Champion bridge players say, "We did not vote for Bush" and get in trouble for it. At the awards ceremony for an international bridge tournament, the champion US women's team held that simple written statement in the air. The United States Bridge Federation slapped sanctions on the players, including fines and suspensions. Note that the women didn't say "Bush is an evil dictator". They merely said "we didn't vote for him". Apparently that was too much. Richard Kim, writing in The Nation reminds us this is anything but an isolated incident.

But take heart, the fabulous ladies at the center of this controversy aren't ready to make nice, and I'm glad they're putting up a fight. All across this country the common but courageous dissent of citizens is being censored and attacked. Anti-war vets calling for withdrawal from Iraq were banned from a parade in Long Beach, CA. High school students in Chicago are threatened with expulsion for staging a peaceful anti-war protest. More than a dozen anti-war protesters, fittingly wearing gags over their mouths, were arrested outside of Boston's city hall.

And the list goes on. As individual incidents, each provoke a momentary pang of sympathy, a head nod, maybe an exasperated email to your bridge buddies. But taken as a whole, I suspect it adds up to a more disturbing picture--of a nation that went quietly mad, except for a few who spoke up and were ostracized for it; of a country where politics became so estranged from everyday life, that the ordinary expression of it was called treason.

People are comparing this story to that of Tommie Smith and John Carlos - the US runners who raised the Black Power salute at the 1968 Olympics - but I'm not ready to tag bridge with my "activism in sports" label.

And finally, Barbara Ehrenreich on child labor slavery for The Gap. It's truly stomach-turning. Hopefully it's enough to make you stop shopping at The Gap, and to tell them why.

the corporation (updated)

Movie Season has been in full swing here at Chez KaminkerWood. We've seen some good movies, but last night's was a big winner.

We saw "The Corporation," long recommended to us. If you haven't seen it, please do. It's a excellently produced documentary on our corporatized world - how it got that way, the price that we pay, and what might be done about it.

Among the more powerful interviews is Ray Andersen, CEO of Interface, a carpet manufacturing company. Andersen talks about his epiphany, when he realized that that he was a plunderer of the earth, and vowed to learn how to run a sustainable business. He uses a metaphor for our use of our planet that struck me as completely brilliant.

Andersen talks about the history of flight, when humans were experimenting with all sorts of contraptions, trying to achieve this collective dream. When you look at film of some of these attempts, you see that the man in the cockpit thinks he is flying. His face is filled with elation - and pride that he's achieved his goal. But in reality, he's in free fall. He's falling rapidly to earth and has no control - but he doesn't know it yet, because the ground is so far down.

Think about that. We are all in free fall.

Some people - Andersen calls them visionaries, and that is true - saw the ground rushing up faster than others, and warned us. Now many of us are trying to everyone. Many don't believe it; they still think we're soaring. But more likely, most don't care, because they don't believe the crash will come in their own lifetimes.

This immediately reminded me of a central metaphor from Jared Diamond's Collapse: a society that thinks it is spending its interest, when in reality, it is spending its principal.

In a sense, "The Corporation" can be seen as a visual companion to Collapse. Or, Collapse is what's happening, "The Corporation" is why.

Although I had heard of this movie, I didn't realize it was Canadian. So we're treated to some Canadian pundits, like Naomi Klein and Maude Barlow of the Council of Canadians, and a home-grown villain, then then-head of the Fraser Institute, Canada's far-right think tank. His segments are positively Orwellian: "...to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable...".

Please see this movie, and if you haven't yet read Collapse, visit your local library soon and get going.

* * * *

I also wanted to note that this movie ties in with two recent wmtc posts: Mark Morford on public education in the US and Naomi Klein's disaster capitalism. Both are important examples of mass privatization, and the price we all pay.

general strike

The October issue of Harper's has one the best ideas for activism in the US that I've heard in a long, long time. It's available online by subscription only, but it's something that should be circulated around the net as widely as possible. Garret Keizer calls for a general strike.

Of all the various depredations of the Bush regime, none has been so thorough as its plundering of hope. Iraq will recover sooner. What was supposed to have been the crux of our foreign policy—a shock-and-awe tutorial on the utter futility of any opposition to the whims of American power—has achieved its greatest and perhaps its only lasting success in the American soul. You will want to cite the exceptions, the lunch-hour protests against the war, the dinner-party ejaculations of dissent, though you might also want to ask what substantive difference they bear to grousing about the weather or even to raging against the dying of the light—that is, to any ritualized complaint against forces universally acknowledged as unalterable. Bush is no longer the name of a president so much as the abbreviation of a proverb, something between Murphy’s Law and tomorrow’s fatal inducement to drink and be merry today.

If someone were to suggest, for example, that we begin a general strike on Election Day, November 6, 2007, for the sole purpose of removing this regime from power, how readily and with what well-practiced assurance would you find yourself producing the words "It won’t do any good"? Plausible and even courageous in the mouth of a patient who knows he's going to die, the sentiment fits equally well in the heart of a citizenry that believes it is already dead.

Any strike, whether it happens in a factory, a nation, or a marriage, amounts to a reaffirmation of consent. The strikers remind their overlords — and, equally important, themselves — that the seemingly perpetual machinery of daily life has an off switch as well as an on. Camus said that the one serious question of philosophy is whether or not to commit suicide; the one serious question of political philosophy is whether or not to get out of bed. Silly as it may have seemed at the time, John and Yoko’s famous stunt was based on a profound observation. Instant karma is not so instant — we ratify it day by day.

The stream of commuters heading into the city, the caravan of tractor-trailers pulling out of the rest stop into the dawn’s early light, speak a deep-throated Yes to the sum total of what's going on in our collective life. The poet Richard Wilbur writes of the "ripped mouse" that "cries Concordance" in the talons of the owl; we too cry our daily assent in the grip of the prevailing order— except in those notable instances when, like a donkey or a Buddha, we refuse to budge.

The question we need to ask ourselves at this moment is what further provocations we require to justify digging in our heels. To put the question more pointedly: Are we willing to wait until the next presidential election, or for some interim congressional conversion experience, knowing that if we do wait, hundreds of our sons and daughters will be needlessly destroyed? Another poet, César Vallejo, framed the question like this:

A man shivers with cold, coughs, spits up blood.
Will it ever be fitting to allude to my inner soul? . . .
A cripple sleeps with one foot on his shoulder.
Shall I later on talk about Picasso, of all people?

A young man goes to Walter Reed without a face. Shall I make an appointment with my barber? A female prisoner is sodomized at Abu Ghraib. Shall I send a check to the Clinton campaign?

There have been successful general strikes in the United States, most famously in Seattle in 1919. I found a terrific website from a group documenting and commemorating this seminal moment in labour history: The Seattle General Strike Project. That same year, a time when socialism was flourishing in North America, there was also a general strike in Winnipeg.

The city of San Francisco saw a general strike in 1934. In 1886 Chicago, workers were preparing for a general strike when the Haymarket Massacre took place. Alarmed by labor and class activism, frightened city officials likely planted the supposed "bomb-throwing anarchist" to provoke the rioting, which led to the deaths of both workers and police, then the convictions and show executions of more innocent people.

A call for a general strike also has roots in the concept of the Moratorium, which I've blogged about several times. The 1969 Moratorium to end the war in Vietnam is thought to be a key factor in preventing Richard Nixon from using nuclear weapons against Southeast Asia.

In 1985, former President Richard Nixon revealed that he had considered using nuclear weapons to end the war in Vietnam. Richard Nixon went beyond merely 'considering' the option, he actually decided to use nuclear weapons.

In August 1969, the United States began a sequence of threats against North Vietnam, beginning with an ultimatum personally delivered by Henry Kissinger, stating that if by 1 November 1969 there had been no ceasefire by the Vietnamese resistance, 'we will be compelled -with great reluctance - to take measures of the greatest consequences.' Two nuclear bombs would be dropped on North Vietnam.

To demonstrate the sincerity of his intentions, President Nixon ordered a full-scale nuclear alert, raising US nuclear forces to their highest level of alertness, DEF CON 1, for 29 days.

On 13 October 1969, one of Nixon's aides sent a Top Secret memorandum to Henry Kissinger warning that 'The nation could be thrown into internal physical turmoil', requiring the 'brutal' suppression of 'dissension'.

That month, the US anti-war movement was organising a massive wave of demonstrations and mobilisations culminating in the Vietnam Moratorium demonstration in Washington. President Nixon later wrote in his memoirs, 'A quarter of a million people came to Washington for the October 15 Moratorium... On the night of October 15, I thought about the irony of this protest for peace. It had, I believe, destroyed whatever small possibility there may have existed for ending the war in 1969'.

The key factor in his decision not to drop an atomic bomb on North Vietnam was that 'after all the protests and the Moratorium, American public opinion would be seriously divided by any military escalation of the war'. Mobilised public opinion averted the world's second nuclear war.

I could go on with this history all morning. Few things excite my mind more than discovering what the struggles of ordinary people, organized and committed, have been able to achieve.

Those achievements are present in our lives every single day, in paid time off, in workplace safety codes, in Social Security, in fire codes, in fair lending laws. In Canada, that list includes universal health care. Hell, every time you read an ingredient list on a label, you're using a resource brought to you by organized consumers.

In the US, every single one of these hard-won gains has been at least threatened, and many of them under serious attack, since the Reagan era. That is less so in Canada, but Canadians - like people everywhere - need to guard and protect their rights against forces that would just as soon revoke them, because it would increase their profits.

So. Back to the general strike from Harper's.

You will recall that a major theme of the Bush Administration’s response to September 11 was that life should go on as usual. We should keep saying that broad consensual Yes as loudly as we dared. We could best express our patriotism by hitting the malls, by booking a flight to Disney World. At the time, the advice seemed prudent enough: avoid hysteria; defy the intimidations of murderers and fanatics.

In hindsight it's hard not to see the roots of our predicament in the readiness with which we took that advice to heart. We did exactly as we were told, with a net result that is less an implicit defiance of terrorism than a tacit amen to the "war on terror," including the war in Iraq. Granted, many of us have come to find both those wars unacceptable. But do we find them intolerable? Can you sleep? Yes, doctor, I can sleep. Can you work? Yes, doctor, I can work. Do you get out to the movies, enjoy a good restaurant? Actually, I have a reservation for tonight. Then I'd say you were doing okay, wouldn't you? I’d say you were tolerating the treatment fairly well.

It is one thing to endure abuses and to carry on in spite of them. It is quite another thing to carry on to the point of abetting the abuse. We need to move the discussion of our nation’s health to the emergency room. We need to tell the doctors of the body politic that the treatment isn't working — and that until it changes radically for the better, neither are we.

No one person, least of all a freelance writer, has the prerogative to call or set the date for a general strike. What do you guys do for a strike, sit on your overdue library books? Still, what day more fitting for a strike than the first Tuesday of November, the Feast of the Hanging Chads? What other day on the national calendar cries so loudly for rededication?

The only date that comes close is September 11. You have to do a bit of soul-searching to see it, but one result of the Bush presidency has been a loss of connection to those who perished that day. Unless they were members of our families, unless we were involved in their rescue, do we think of them? It's too easy to say that time eases the grief — there's more to it than that, more even than the natural tendency to shy away from brooding on disasters that might happen again. We avoid thinking of the September 11 victims because to think of them we have to think also of what we have allowed to happen in their names. Or, if we object openly to what has happened, we have to parry the insinuation that we’re unmoved by their loss.

It is time for us to make a public profession of faith that the people who went to work that morning, who caught the cabs and rode the elevators and later jumped to their deaths, were not on the whole people who would sanction extraordinary rendition, preemptive war, and the suspension of habeas corpus; that in their