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The
longest strike and lockout “in the history of
the supermarket industry” has ended, in southern California.
Seventy thousand United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW)
members are assessing the damage done to their families and
union by the Safeway, Kroger and Albertsons chains, which together
control 70 percent of the grocery business in America’s 100 largest
cities. Like all face-offs between labor and capital in the U.S.,
it was an uneven contest. Wall Street backed their boardroom
brothers to the hilt, boosting the chains’ stock prices despite
hundreds of millions in strike-related losses – a display of “class
solidarity that would make Mao Tse-tung’s Army blush a deep
red.”
“Wal-Mart is coming,
Wal-Mart is coming!” cried the supermarket owners as they slashed
away at employee health coverage. Yet, as we wrote in our February
19 Cover Story, “Remaking
America in Wal-Mart’s Image,” the supermarket owners are
eager to duplicate the Wal-Mart model:
Of
course, there is nothing intrinsically special about the cost
of health care – for the company, it’s just another labor expense,
albeit a fat and growing one. If Wal-Mart is the model – the
leader of the pack – then “the industry’s goal” is to bring all labor
costs “more in line” with the viciously anti-union trendsetter.
The larger objective is to break the union, as an organization
or in spirit. From the current corporate perspective, level
playing fields can only exist when the employees are flat on
their backs. Executives from purportedly competing companies
conspire and collude toward that end, all the while pleading
that “The Devil (Wal-Mart) made me do it.”
Lydia
Thomas writes from Riverdale, Georgia:
I
and several of my friends are boycotting Wal-Mart because
of its employment practices, its complete and total disregard
for US labor laws, its ultra-capitalist mindset, and its refusal to
coexist with other businesses in the community. I
simply can't contribute to such an abuse of power and would hate
to one day have Wal-Mart as my only option for everything
from sporting goods to groceries. This Walmartization
of America – and Bush – must be stopped!!
Wal-Mart
is a global engine of poverty – a buy-low, pay-low machine. While “the Walton
family spends millions on rightwing causes to undermine
what’s left of the social safety net, their corporation urges
employees to apply for every available government assistance.” In
Ms. Thomas’ state of Georgia, the public program for uninsured
children is “packed” with kids from Wal-Mart employee families,
according to the Atlanta
Journal-Constitution. A U.S. House committee study has
found that federal “taxpayers bear
$420,750 in social services costs for each Wal-Mart store with
200 workers” – a subsidy of more than $2,000 per employee per
year to one of the world’s largest corporations.
More Wal-Mart
evil-doing
The Walton family
is the most megalomaniac gene pool ever to emerge from the
state of Arkansas. Along with the arch-racist Bradley
Foundation, of Milwaukee, the Waltons invented and bankrolled the “movement” for
school vouchers – the wedge issue in their campaign to thoroughly
privatize American education.
The
Walton family’s
pet project in New Jersey is called Excellent Education for
Everyone (E-3),
a classic front group. E-3’s most recent assignment is a tricky
one, as we reported in “New
Scheme to Sell Suburbanites on School Vouchers,” on February
12.
Having
spent tens of millions of dollars to convince the public that
school vouchers is an authentic “Black” issue, the wealthy
financiers of the “movement” now seek support from white suburbanites,
whose kids already attend the best schools. To move this bloc
of voters, E-3 and its rich benefactors are preparing a campaign
of fear: If voucher programs are not soon established in the
inner cities, the line goes, minority students will spill into
the suburbs, while taxes soar to pay the growing costs of urban
education. Vouchers are the brainchild of the Hard Right, accomplished
fear-mongers who specialize in racial manipulation. It was
only a matter of time before they returned to their accustomed
themes.
In
New Jersey as elsewhere, the teachers unions are the biggest
institutional obstacle
to Wal-Mart’s privatization schemes. Steve Wollmer is Associate
Director for Public Relations for the New
Jersey Education Association. These days, a big part of Wollmer’s
job is to deconstruct voucher propaganda.
Congratulations
to for
exposing yet another element of the E3 voucher agenda in
New Jersey. If E3 is to gain any traction, it’s going to
need all the “public support” it can muster. Right
now, vouchers are “no sale” in suburban districts, so inciting
the fear of a minority influx under the Bush administration’s
so-called “No Child Left Behind” act is just what the doctor
ordered.
In
fact, E3 will do anything to mislead the media and the
public about the
level of “support” vouchers enjoy, as long as the impression
of a “movement” is sustained. The truth has never stood
in their way.
On
two occasions – November
2001 and again in April 2003 – E3 purchased a question on
an Eagleton Institute/Rutgers University poll, and on both
occasions, claimed more than 60 percent of New Jerseyans
support school vouchers. A well-read observer might ask:
How could that be true, when voters in every other state
overwhelmingly oppose vouchers?
The
answer was in the wording of the question: “Would you vote for or against
a system of giving parents the option of using government-funded
school vouchers to pay for tuition at the public, private
or religious school of their choice?” In November,
2001, I immediately contacted the Eagleton Institute pollster
who conducted the survey. He admitted that the question,
as worded, did not measure whether New Jerseyans support
spending public tax dollars on private and religious schools – the
essence of a publicly funded voucher program.
The
problem is the inclusion of the word “public,” since there is never likely
to be a voucher program in New Jersey – or anywhere else – that
allows all students to simply enroll in any public school
system in the state. Of course, that’s not what E3
is telling urban parents – and suburban voters. It’s
more than willing to play the race card when it suits their
purpose.
E3
is engaging in what is called “push-polling” – using a
poll question to drive up support (false support, in this
instance) for its
position.
That
enables E3 to claim that “two-thirds of New Jerseyans support
vouchers,” despite the fact that it’s simply not true. Here’s
a suggestion for E3: In your next poll, tell people that by
voting for vouchers, they’ll also get free groceries and a
new car. That ought to get support up near the 90 percent
level.
New
Jersey’s legislature
is under court order to spend all the money it takes to bring
urban schools up to suburban standards – a unique circumstance.
Nowhere in the nation have suburban jurisdictions volunteered
to share their wealth with inner city schools. Rebecca DiLiddo,
from Shirley, Massachusetts, has spent a lot of time pondering
the problem.
If
the Bush administration were really interested in improving
public education it could start with requiring that all states
that receive federal funds for education:
-
must
have a state system for funding public education that is
equitable, does not rely on real estate taxes, and sets
a minimum spending level that reflects the cost of educating
each child in the state to meet student learning goals. Revenues
would be collected and distributed by the state to assure
that more revenue rich districts did not receive more than
their share.
-
must
show that all teachers in all classrooms meet the minimum
requirements for licensure within the state or hold a bachelors
degree in an appropriate subject and be under the direct
supervision of a fully qualified mentor teacher. Until
schools can meet this standard, there is no hope for them
reaching the NCLB standards.
- must
develop a paradigm for educators that provides a career
ladder from
the receipt of one’s high school diploma or its equivalent
through becoming a district CEO. This paradigm should
allow for training paths that require the combination of
work experience, classroom training, and internship to progress
from one professional level to the next. The paradigm
must form an integrated link between the teacher training
classroom and the public school classroom. No educator
should be able to move from one level to the next without
demonstration of competence in situ.
This new paradigm
is essential to meet the recruiting realities of the near
future and to assure that members of communities that have
not traditionally produced educators for their children can
do so.
I
live in Massachusetts. We
have something called Educational Reform on which we have
spent millions and have little except a growing drop out
rate to show for it. I am an administrator at a state
college. In the Fall of 2003 the first class of students
who had to pass a series of standardized tests reached us. This
class of “tested performers” had the same percentage of students
who tested at the developmental levels in writing and math
as we had for a decade before. So what did teaching
to the test and mandatory test get us? Bigger classes
at the community college and hundreds of minority students
who will never, despite 12 years of classes, graduate from
high school.
Let’s
spend our dollars on the teachers and the students and forget
about the tests.
It
is no longer possible to view commercial news media as
mere servants of
the ruling rich – they are full members of the presiding
corporate pantheon. General media consolidation has created
an integrated mass communications system that is both objectively
and self-consciously at one with the Citibanks and ExxonMobils
of the world. Media companies act in effective unison on
matters of importance to the larger corporate class. For
all politically useful purposes, the monopolization of US
media is now complete, in that the corporate owners and managers
of the dominant organs are interchangeable and indistinguishable,
sharing a common mission and worldview….
There
is no question that Blacks and progressives must establish
alternative media outlets, and not just on the Internet. However,
there is no substitute for confronting the corporate media
head-on, through direct mass action and other, creative tactics.
The rich men’s voices must be de-legitimized in the eyes of
the people, who already suspect that they are being systematically
lied to and manipulated.
Bill Homans is a journalism-trained
entertainer, a reader,
and deep thinker.
It's been 18 years
since I earned my degree in journalism and history from the
University of Oregon. I've just read your commentary on the
destructive power of the corporate media, and I just want
you to know that I was aware of what I was going into from
my first week in J-School.
Professor
Duncan MacDonald (don't know where he is now) told his
class in
Mass Media in Society: "You young (I was 35, markedly
older than most of the class, and had served in Vietnam in
1969-1970) would-be journalists probably think that your
first imperative as reporters will be to satisfy some perceived
people's need or right to know. You are wrong. Your first
imperative will be to make the publisher a buck."
I went ahead and
finished my curriculum in journalism anyway, and have been
published sporadically in small outlets since then. But I have
no illusions that there is any real place for the stringer,
the free-lancer, the independent investigator in the profession,
though we may occasionally be found in print.
The economic concentration
within the media industry has (as Professor MacDonald told
us it would back in 1984, and as you said in this fine overview
I have just finished reading) become complete. Ted Koppel
isn't just a top-level gatekeeper, he now is a partner in
the ownership of the gate!
Bob
Dylan wrote the line, "money doesn't talk, it swears"; I don't
have any idea how to confront that many billions of dollars
worth of aggregate media power, which is no longer worthy
of being called "The Fourth Estate", but is totally
at one with the corporate structure of interlocking directorates.
There is no use for an antitrust division within the Department
of Justice any more, because globalist corporatism – and
specifically globalist media corporatism – has transcended
all the old definitions of monopoly to which Clayton and
Sherman had relevance.
We are like the
first mammals, under the feet of the dinosaurs of the Cretaceous
epoch. Like those little ones, may we survive.
Mr. Holman is also
known as the bluesman, Watermelon
Slim.
Dave
Hardy would “like
to hear more on this subject.”
Excellent,
excellent job on, “The Awesome Destructive Power of the CPM.” This
is by far the clearest, most literally effective synopsis
I’ve seen regarding the unprecedented power of the corporate
media and it’s consequences to democracy. You hit on
it with force from every angle.
Most
criticisms of today’s media are overwrought in technical jargon and
simply fail to speak to the urgency of the situation, partly
due, I think, to the fact that most mainstream journalists – left
and right – are wrapped up in the spectacle and allure of
television and don’t know how to separate themselves from
TV’s effect. It is an addiction of monumental proportions.
You
are definitely getting somewhere with your distillation
of the facts. What
you speak out about is at the leading edge of activism relative
to an enormously serious problem we face.
The last two paragraphs
of the piece are beautifully written:
“No
society in human history has confronted an enemy as omnipresent
as the US corporate media. Yet there is no choice but to
challenge their hegemony.
The
world can be changed, but only by changing the way others
see their
world.”
Indeed. I
ask, how do we challenge?
The
publishers of are
media veterans, and know from intimate experience that mass
broadcasting and print are the weakest links in the chains
of power. Their product is public credibility, a fragile quantity.
Relatively small numbers of determined activists can snatch
it from them. They are uniquely defenseless against demonstrations,
inherently so. We have seen managers cower at the mere thought
of being visited by angry activists – not because of possible
threats to their FCC licenses (although this was once a consideration),
but in fear of being exposed as just another business on the
make.
Freedom Rider
Readers
of The Black Commentator are aware that Rep. Harold Ford – the Black, Blue
Dog and Democratic Leadership Council politician from Tennessee – is
not our favorite congressman. Ford leans heavily to whichever
side of the fence he believes funding and fame can be found,
and was among the few Congressional Black Caucus members to
support George Bush’s Iraq War Resolution. (See “The
Four Eunuchs of War,” October 17, 2002.)
Thus, the publishers
of smiled
upon receipt of our colleague Margaret Kimberley’s February
26 Freedom Rider column, “Harold
Ford, Jr: Don’t Know Much About History.” Ms. Kimberley
noted that, during the 2000 election campaign, Ford backed
off opposition to a memorial honoring Ku Klux Klan founder
and Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest, in Nashville.
General Forrest commanded the troops that massacred hundreds
of Black union soldiers at nearby Fort Pillow, in 1864. Rep.
Ford at first demanded that presidential candidate Al Gore
denounce the proposed Forrest memorial, then decided, “"I
don't want to offend the Sons of Confederate Veterans, or anyone
else, and the matter is dropped!"
Still,
Harold Ford is considered a “role model” in some quarters of the community.
His Black History Month speech to students at predominantly
Black Lane College drew Ms. Kimberley’s attention:
Mr.
Ford opined that he isn’t “a fan” of Black History Month because he looks
forward to the day when it will no longer need to be celebrated.
It is unclear what utopian age in the future would make it
unnecessary to remember American history. Even if our ancestors’ dreams
are realized and we reach the nirvanas of equality and justice
we will still need to ponder the past….
The
Congressman has achieved quite a lot at the age of 34 but he
wants to be a United States Senator. His calculations have
told him that the Sons of Confederate Veterans are not to be
trifled with, but the Sons of Fort Pillow can be easily disregarded.
Sandra Draper is also
no fan of the man that People Magazine named one of the Most
Beautiful persons in the world.
Ms.
Kimberley, thank you for a very insightful look at Harold Ford
Jr. And you should know that there are those of us who were
born and raised in the City of Memphis who feel as though this
man has no right at all being a representative for our city.
After all, he only won the seat after his father relinquished
it, and many of us are very upset that he never even lived
in the city growing up. How can he justifiably speak on behalf
of Tennesseans – no one who grew up there even knows him! For
him to bask in the limelight at every opportunity as "the
Congressman from Tennessee" bothers me every time I see
him! Thanks again for your article. Please expose him as a
fraud whenever you have the opportunity.
Leutisha
Stills keeps track of Congressman Ford from her computer
in Oakland, California.
I
read your Freedom Rider piece and thought to myself "Someone
just broke out their can of whoop ass" on the Tennessee
Congressman, LOL (pardon the slang, but I think you get my
point).
I
saw him on Charlie Rose show
right after the initial primaries
and when he was introduced,
the first thing that came
out of his mouth was "First
of all, I'd like to say that I'm a PROUD Democrat." I was thinking, "Why
did he feel a need to say that? Are those articles in publications
like getting
to him?" And lo, and behold, here comes your article, which spoke
the truth to power on a whole 'nother level.
On the other hand, I'm a softie and I feel sorry for him, trying to weave
between two worlds (trying to act like a Democrat while thinking like a Republican)
and not seeming to accomplish very much, 'cause he doesn't want to offend
anybody.
The Rape of
Haiti
We
titled last week’s
Cover Story on Haiti, “Bush,
Call Off Your Dogs.” On Saturday night, George Bush’s rabid
pack invaded President Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s living quarters
and, in “perfect coordination” with French imperialists, Shanghaied
him to the Central African Republic. These dogs have no shame.
Events
have overtaken both our February 26 Cover Story and many
readers’ responses.
However, Dr. Kweli Nzito and a few other writers’ comments
are, as we say in the news business, “evergreen.”
The
varied commentaries on the tragedy unfolding in Haiti are
right on the money. It
is a rebellion with White America written all over it. Bear
in mind that the color of the American predatory imperium
is manifestly white, in stark contrast to its reluctant subjects. Besides,
to our knowledge, Americans of color have not been handed
governments of their choice to overthrow. The U.S.
has made no secret of its scorn towards Aristide and his
leftist ways and it was only a matter of time before racist
machinations would rear their ugly head. We are still
smarting from the dizzying array of lies intended to justify
a racist criminal war against defenseless Iraqis. The
world is now being persuaded that the more than 15,000 innocent
Iraqi civilians murdered (5 times more than the just as innocent
victims of 9/11 terror) is a price to be paid for an unsolicited "democracy" whose
worth is comprehensible only to a White American elite.
So,
is it surprising that an elected leader in Haiti is being ousted
by a band of thugs subsidized by the Americans with a little
help from the Dominican Republic, (now a fully certified satellite
state) cheerfully doing its master's bidding? So what
else is new? Stand by for more action-packed drama coming
soon to a theater near you: Venezuela and a cast of millions – another
target for racist "democracy." Interesting
that countries with popularly elected leaders should require
a further dose of prescribed "democracy." Where
there is no oil and risk to (white) American lives is minimal,
a few dollars handed out to obliging gangsters, and you are
assured of "democracy" promptly delivered to your
doorstep. You must hand it to the White foot soldiers
of the imperium: their seemingly infinite creativity in fomenting
death and mayhem among people of color is truly astonishing. Yet
more astonishing is our inability to learn to identify the
donkey. Only then can his tail be well and truly nailed.
Dr. Nzito, an
assistant professor and scientist at the University of
Miami, has authored several Guest Commentator pieces for . His
last contribution was titled, “Imperial
Racist Fantasies and Digitalization of Colonialism,” August
14, 2003.
A reader who goes
by the pen name Whimps fils-aime shares his thoughts:
I
am a careful observer of the turmoil in Haiti. What is happening
today is a result of the direct and indirect involvement of
the US government in Haiti. Georges Bush, father and son, have
always hated Aristide and it is clear why. And what is the
bizarre coincidence that under both Bush regimes Aristide got
hit by his violent foes? The rebels are trained by who? Who
had provided these great uniforms, arms and ammunition – way
better that what the previous army had got? When Guy Philippe
said that his troops are waiting for orders, where did that
order is coming from?
Elaine Jenkins writes from John's Island, South Carolina.
While
Haiti burns, Uganda is awash in the blood of the slaughtered,
southern Africa starves, the inner cities of America
are fast deteriorating, and our Black institutions are
in crisis (colleges and university, newspapers, church,
etc), African Americans hold yet another eight-hour talk-fest on
the State of Black America. With all due respects
to Tavis
Smiley, Tom Joyner and the distinguished panelists,
I am really exhausted by the annual talk-fest on the state
of Black America that doesn't translate into a national
movement to galvanize Black America.
With
the advancement in technology, why aren't we organizing,
galvanizing, and motivating the African American constituency
in ways that Moveon.org, e-activist.org, commoncause.org
and other progressive groups are organizing and mobilizing
their groups?
We
are 35 million strong; we have more elected officials and
persons in policy-making positions than ever before; and
we have more Blacks who have moved into the middle class
(however tenuous that hold may be) than ever before. Yet,
these numbers have not appreciably bettered the conditions
of Blacks in Black America nor have they impacted policies
toward Africa and other Black nations. In fact, George
W. Bush refused to meet with the Congressional Black Caucus
for three years!
We
are 35 million strong! All it takes is one dollar
from each of us annually sent to a national organization
that would dispense it to our HBCU's who are in trouble;
to pay for our own lobbyists; to assist Black nations
like Haiti; to control our destiny so that we are a force
to be reckoned with!
I
am neither an intellectual nor the most articulate of persons. Like
the late Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer, I am just sick and tired
of being sick and tired about the condition of Black folks
in the world. Randall Robinson has left the United
States, and I think Black America and America are all the
less by his absence. I don't have the luxury or the
desire to leave America. I choose to make my stand
here.
We were delighted
to hear from Pedro Perez Sarduy, of the invaluable AfroCubaWeb.com site:
Your
articles are supreme. We in Diaspora need clear minds like
yours. I wish you all the best.
Letter on
Zimbabwe
Last
summer we published six articles rolled into one, under the
heading “The
Debate on Zimbabwe Will Not Be Stifled.” The multi-part
piece featured a range of analysis and commentary on the evolving
crisis in the southern African nation – albeit heavily weighted
to ’s
own viewpoint. Dr. J. Matare wrote to tell us that the July
31 issue holds up well.
Thank
you for being there. I am a black Zimbabwean professional in
the Diaspora. I thoroughly enjoyed your interview with Morgan
Tsvangirai and it made my day. Subsequently I e-mailed
the article to several pals of mine. Thank you
Richard Ross decided
to make our day at .
He succeeded.
I
just want to say thank you for writing as you do. Your articles
are so poignant and informative they bring joy to my heart
and tears to my eyes. Yours is a “voice” that should be heard
by all Black people. We need you to keep on keepin’ on. May
Almighty continue to bless with the gift that you use so
well.
Aboru, aboye, abosise.
Ache.
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