Global

Yuppification . . . corporatization . . . bland o’rama.

What a drag it is getting older as the forces of reaction grow bolder. For a quarter century the people’s liberation front gathered at its headquarters in Columbus, Tradewinds. You entered the revolutionary space through a door under the sign of the Dragon.

On Wednesday, July 19, the Dragon breathed fire no more. Scott Solomon, lacking wisdom, evicted the store’s owner Yvette Garayalde Wyman from the legendary storefront. The late Libby Gregory, activist extraordinaire, founded the original store. It gave shelter to the Columbus Free Press when the underground newspaper was being hounded by a joint operation of the National Security Agency, CIA and FBI in the 1970’s. Indeed, there’s a certain nostalgia for the terms MH Chaos and COINTELPRO.

Perhaps it would have been a more fitting way for the store to go out being blown up by the neo-Nazi Gerhardt brothers in the early 80’s – in fact they testified under oath to plotting the bombing to destroy the progressive movement in Cowtown.

Most people would probably agree that TV news anchors and reporters should have a strong determination to search for and report the truth no matter what the economic consequences to their station or network might be. I bet they would also agree that it is a journalists’ duty to expose and challenge bias or censorship within the news media. But most people don’t know that in many TV newsrooms journalists are routinely discouraged and even contractually forbidden from performing these essential duties. Furthermore, violators are severely punished. Sounds alarming, but it’s true, as I found out last summer.

On July 26, 2000, without ever submitting a letter of resignation and with the corporate security chief waiting to escort me from the building, I “resigned” from my job from my job as a Meteorologist at WBNS-TV in Columbus, Ohio. To put it more accurately, I was fired (TV bosses nearly always say that anchors and reporters “resigned” no matter how their employment ended. To “fire” them might cause viewers to ask too many questions: the station would have to explain why they fired the employee.) And why did I get fired?

The biggest objection by allies to voting for a Third Party is the “wasted vote” argument — the idea that if you vote for someone who will not win, then the vote does not count.

Join any third party and merely suggest that another person consider voting for a third party candidate and you will hear, ad nauseum, “I don’t want to waste my vote.”

What is a Wasted Vote?

An unprincipled vote is the only wasted vote.

Voting for a third party, contrary to popular belief, is not a wasted vote.

What is voting? It’s a chance to tell the country — and perhaps even the world — what your vision of government and society really is.

But how do most of us vote? Do the majority of those who believe Harry Browne or Ralph Nader is the best candidate, most in tune with our own feelings, actually vote for them? No. Instead, most of us vote the “lesser of two evils” — a defensive vote, rather than an offensive one.

The lesser of two evils is still evil.

Mansfield, Ohio’s locked-out AK Steel workers celebrated “One Year of Solidarity” on September 9 by staging a rally and throwing a picnic for a few thousand friends and supporters.

On September 1, 1999, AK Steel, formerly Armco, commemorated Labor Day by locking out some 620 members of United Steelworkers of America Local 169 after their contract expired. Barbed wire and paramilitary thugs with jackboots and billy clubs greeted the night shift workers who tried to enter the plant.

The locked-out workers report that these so-called private security guards continue to follow Local 169 members and their families around Mansfield, to and from the Union Hall and even like to stake out local schools in an obvious attempt to provoke violence and intimidate the workers.

AK Steel is also employing the use of “slap” lawsuits against the Union, its members, city officials and even a local police officer, in a blatant effort to financially pressure the Union and its supporters. The company has even sought an injunction to prevent the locked-out workers from requesting public information from the Ohio Department of Commerce.

find a voice

the truth is revolutionary

we will not fear our voices

empowerment

we have power, built of each other

learning through action

confronting the world’s disparities

I - Will - Be - There

finding our skin

reaching beyond now to enact

tomorrow

gain power/ lose ignorance

expose and erase

our hate

our racism

our sexism

our heterosexism

injustice is our reality, but not our master

we reinvent union

Jobs with Justice

In the rich tapestry of our young adult lives, we have added another thread -- the one that ties us, the youth, with labor, community, and the environment in the struggle against injustice.

Very fine words, you say, but what do they mean?

Eager to oust Slobodan Milosevic from power, the U.S. government has funneled millions of dollars to media projects in Yugoslavia. A lot of hypocrisy is involved. And we might wish for some kind of reciprocity.

"Charges of Chinese influence-buying in the 1996 U.S. presidential campaign caused a political storm in Washington that has yet to fully abate," the Washington Post noted recently. "By some measures, however, that episode pales by comparison to American political interference in Serbia." The announced tab for aid to foes of Milosevic during the just-ended fiscal year was $25 million. For the next year, the budget is $41.5 million.

We're told that the cash from the U.S. Treasury is necessary because unfair obstacles block opposition candidates as they try to communicate with the Yugoslav public. "The largest share of that money goes toward 'civil society' programs, such as those that support independent media," the Post reported. The newspaper added: "U.S. officials say they are seeking only to level the playing field."

Nothing has been more comical that Gore's "populist" posturings about the Republicans being the ticket of Big Oil, and he and Lieberman being the champions of the little people.

This is the man whose education and Tennessee homestead came to him in part via the patronage of Armand Hammer, one of the great oil bandits of the twentieth century, in whose Occidental Oil company the Gore family still has investments valued between $500,000 and $1 million.

At the Los Angeles convention, the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee were located on the 42nd floor of the Arco building, and the symbolism was apt. In 1992 Arco loaned the Clinton-Gore inaugural committee $100,000. In that same year, it gave the DNC $268,000. In the '93-'94 election cycle it gave the DNC $274,000. In the '95-'96 cycle it ponied up $496,000, and has kept up the same tempo ever since.

The collapse of the government's case against Wen Ho Lee last week represents one of the greatest humiliations of a national newspaper in the history of journalism. One has to go back to the publication by the London Times of the Pigott forgeries in 1887 libeling Charles Stewart Parnell, the Irish nationalist hero, to find an equivalent debacle.

Yet, not a whisper of contrition, not a murmur of remorse, has, as yet, agitated the editorial pages of the New York Times, which now righteously urges the appointment of a "politically independent person of national standing to review the entire case."

No such review is required to determine the decisive role of the New York Times in sparking the persecution of Wen Ho Lee, his solitary confinement under threat of execution, his denial of bail, his shackling, the loss of his job, and the anguish and terror endured by this scientist and his family.

AUSTIN, Texas -- A hearty round of congratulations to all concerned in this year's presidential race for three weeks of politics at their finest.

First, we had the great debate over whether the vice president smooched his wife for too long at the Democratic National Convention -- a matter of burning moment to the republic -- complete with exegesis of the smacker as to whether or not he frenched her. Comparison of the candidates' economic plans was shelved for that week.

Then we had the Debate on Debates, a subject gripping the nation and affecting the very lives of all who dwell herein, with the referees in solid concert that W. Bush's ploy to make Al Gore look slippery was too cute by half and only succeeded in underlining Bush's gutlessness. Consideration of global warming was postponed.

Next we had a reprise of that old favorite, the Open Mike Gotcha, with Bush calling a New York Times reporter a major-league casserole. Although it can be argued that Bush's failure to apologize was major-league tacky, the matter necessitated shelving all questions related to economic globalization.

AUSTIN, Texas -- When I was in my 20s, the subject of insurance was so vastly boring that it was a way to describe a bad date: "like talking to an insurance salesman." It's still sort of like your teeth -- something you'd rather not think about but have to take care of -- so let's plunge in.

As Jonathan Cohn pointed out in the May 1 New Republic, the object of health insurance is to get as many people as possible into one big pool, mixing the sick with the healthy. This way, the healthy pay a little more than they otherwise would, but those who get sick pay a lot less.

Since everyone gets sick eventually, if only from old age, it works out fairly. Your chances of never being sick a day in your life and then dropping dead of an undiagnosed heart condition at an early age are less-than-lottery-slim.