Tom Hayden's Blog, page 18
June 1, 2014
Brown’s Steady March to an Alternative Energy Future
May 29, 2014
Will The Trickle Become The L.A. River? And For Whom?
The backstory on how Mayor Eric Garcetti succeeded in winning $1 billion for the LA River Restoration is a fascinating lesson in politics. Simply put, President Barack Obama owed the mayor, and the president came through.
Back in 2007, Garcetti took a chance on Obama against the overwhelming liberal consensus on Hillary Clinton. Garcetti, while L.A. City Council President, rode buses into the heat of Nevada to knock on doors for the long shot candidate, bringing LA volunteers with him. All that year, all over the country, Garcetti was one of Obama's durable supporters. He repeated in 2012.
May 27, 2014
Can Colleges be Hate-Free?
May 21, 2014
Open Letter to Secretary of State, John Kerry
Hon. John Kerry
U.S. Secretary of State
U.S. Department of State
2201 C Street NW
Washington, DC 20520
May 19, 2014
Dear Mr. Secretary,
As old friends and colleagues from the Vietnam War era, we are writing to support your condemnation of China's "provocative" behavior by installing an oil platform and sending some eighty ships to implement its unilateral claims to the South China Sea near Vietnam.
We are not proponents of what many call a "new Cold War" by our country against China. Too great a projection of US naval and diplomatic power, into what China understandably sees as its sphere of interest, is sure to escalate a conflict where we are disadvantaged as the historic Western outsider. The waters in question are called the South China Sea, or the East Sea, by the Vietnamese; and not the West American Sea, for obvious reasons.
That does not mean our government should be passive or remain neutral to a policy of Chinese expansionism when it threatens the sovereignty of smaller Pacific nations like Vietnam and the Philippines. Like you, we are deeply aware from experience that nothing is more precious for Vietnam than its independence. The Vietnamese have fought their "brother enemy" or China, twice since the US-Vietnam war, and 14 times over the centuries. As this month's extraordinary street protests have shown, Vietnamese public opinion is willing to confront China over the deployment of an oil rig 140 miles off the Vietnamese coast. The tensions even could escalate militarily with a Vietnam-China border battle on the one hand, and Vietnamese attacks on China's over-extended supply lines, on the other.
China, despite being a rising power, has shown great concern for its regional and global reputation through the exercise of soft power diplomacy. The United States government therefore should add its voice to those criticizing China's unilateral expansionism and indicate that Beijing will pay a diplomatic price for its behavior. In no way, however, should the US respond with any military threats, since those would be ineffective and play into the narrative of a new Cold War.
According to the international press, China says it will remove its rig by August 18 for the coming typhoon season. That allows time for the current dangerous brinksmanship to be transformed into a diplomatic process, which will ensure Vietnam's sovereignty, lessen regional hostilities, and restore China's standing as a good neighbor in the area. The idea of joint exploitation of resources benefiting powers with historically established contending claims should be explored.
We all know the perils of hubris, blind ambition, and over-reach. We also know the proven potential of meaningful steps towards conflict resolution. It is our hope that our government can summon the lessons of the bitter past to play a constructive role in protecting sovereignty while promoting coexistence in this case.
Over the long term we should deepen our relationships with Vietnam to make clear we are a committed partner to regional stability, and not a power seeking to use them as a counter to China. Of course it would bolster our reputation if we reconciled with Cuba, Vietnam's closest friend in our hemisphere.
We are encouraging many friends to sign or support this letter.
SINCERELY,
TOM HAYDEN JOHN McAULIFF
Peace and Justice Resource Center Fund for Reconciliation and Development
RICHARD FLACKS ANN FROINES
University of California Santa Barbara University of Massachusetts Boston (Retired)
MARILYN B. YOUNG CHARLES M. PAYNE
New York University University of Chicago
JERRY LEMBCKE VAN GOSSE
Holy Cross College Franklin & Marshall College
GWENDOLYN ZOHARAH SIMMONS, PHD
University of Florida
May 20, 2014
The Great Unifier: California Against Climate Change
May 6, 2014
A Global Living Wage
Get Involved with Stopping Sweatshops!
If President Obama wants to "pivot" to Asia, labor, human rights and anti-sweatshop activists should insist that he condemn the virtual slavery in which workers survive in China, India and smaller nations in that region. Apple, Nike, Wal-Mart, Gap and other multinationals profit from sweatshop labor to manufacture everything from cell phones to pom-poms to students and consumers here.
A US foreign policy based on aircraft carriers and drones protecting cheap labor zones cannot be sustained. Demands for "democracy promotion" that avoid workers' rights are hollow. Secretive "free trade" proposals mock democracy by a corporate race to the bottom.
The purchasing power of our federal and state governments can be a powerful tool for lessening inequality and bargaining for defenseless workers.
Here are some suggestions from Bob Ross, longtime author, professor and expert on international labor policies:
Children's Place petition and store action materials.
Wal-Mart petition and store action materials
Benetton petition
Sign UP to Bangladesh Accord: http://action.laborrights.org/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=6280
Tell them to vote NO on TPP:http://www.oakpark.com/News/Articles/4-29-2014/Stop-Fast-Track,-stop-a-bad-trade-agreement/
JOIN up: Cities, states other public agencies joining up topurchase more transparently, and with regard to human rights: http://buysweatfree.org/
The Conservative Fear of "Losing America"
May 5, 2014
Update: The Next Battle Against Wall Street?
As promised, the City Council budget committee held a several-hour hearing Monday on the issues raised by the Fix LA Coalition's research paper on Wall Street profits from LA city funds. Chaired by Council member Paul Krekorian, the hearing saw five Council members engaging intently with the report's authors, labor leaders and community-based representatives. The hearing was uniquely significant in that the labor-community advocates for the first time were invited to have a seat at the table as part of the official city agenda. The hearing, which lasted several hours, was televised live on the LA city channel.
In a few weeks, the Fix LA Coalition will also hold another lengthy and detailed dialogue with City Controller Ron Galperin and experts from his office. Galperin, who is one of only three LA citywide elected officials, has independent audit powers. Recent Controllers' reports have questioned whether the city has gotten the best return on its investments, and whether passively managed investments are sometimes perform better than actively-managed ones, which obtain the higher management fees.
Normally, Wall Street fees and management practice are evaluated by methods comparing other cities and pension funds. Therefore if all comparable fees are within the same range, they are considered acceptable. In the growing debate in LA, officials are being asked to compare Wall Street fees with budget cuts for essential services like street repair and with the long-term costs of downsizing urban services.
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For full testimony, see A Balanced Plan to Fix LA and the Coalition of LA City Unions Presenation to the LA City Council Budget & Finance Committee
May 1, 2014
Remembering Tim Carpenter
Tom Hayden listening to friend and activist, Tim Carpenter, at a Progressive Democrats of America event in Santa Ana, October 21, 2013. (Photo: Carole Levers, 2013).Tim Carpenter is being buried today, May Day, in western Massachusetts; one of a long line of American revolutionary patriots fallen there. Left behind are his wife Barbara, two daughters, Julia and Sheila, and many thousands of activists, radicals, and progressive Democrats to fill his place.
I knew Tim first as a teenager and in his later years as a family man and father. His hair was always red, his blue eyes always twinkled, his chuckles were unforgettable, and the speed of his speech a subject of laughter. Middle age never slowed his fire. Maybe it was the decades of living with cancer that made him hurry. Maybe he simply loved his family, friends and purpose.
According to Barbara, Tim's passion for justice first flamed when he was twelve years old, 43 years ago. I came across him in those days, somewhere between the George McGovern campaign, the rise of Jerry Brown, the Indochina Peace Campaign, and the beginnings of the anti-nuclear movement in California.
If a monument ever is built to Tim it should be dedicated to The Activist, the unknown soldier of peace.
Tim was a rare combination of Catholic Worker, grape boycotter, the No Nukes resister, and constant campaigner for progressive and insurgent Democrats all along the way. He also defied his terminal cancer diagnosis for decades. But he knew he could not defeat death itself, and accepted his fate heroically. On Saturday night, it is said, Tim took his youngest daughter out for a steak dinner; on Monday night, he was gone.
Tim even prepared the organization he founded and led, the Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) for his transition, by scheduling a May 9-10 weekend of reflection in Northampton. Many of us thought Tim could simply will his life to last until the final meeting, but that was our false hope.
A memorial service is scheduled in Northampton for the afternoon of May 10th.
Tim's last crusade was to mount a petition, which gained 11,000 signatures calling on Senator Bernie Sanders to run in the 2015 Democratic primaries for the party’s presidential nomination. Sanders was to drop by the Northampton gathering. Also planning to attend was Representative Jim McGovern, a longtime friend of Tim's and a stalwart supporter of Hillary Clinton. Tim's roots ran deep and wide, across many political divides. He campaigned for Governor Jerry Brown in all of Brown's presidential efforts, and even in his last days Tim was phoning me to meet "Jerry" and push him on fracking and climate change leadership.
Tim built PDA out of the activist remains left behind by the Dennis Kucinich presidential campaign in 2004. There followed a decade of opposition to war under the slogan "Health Care, Not Warfare." Tim formed a progressive roundtable in DC, including leaders of the Congressional Progressive Caucus who sat down regularly with a team of activist leaders from around the US. He built effective links with National Nurses United and Communications Workers of America.
Although he lived many years "behind the Orange Curtain" in Orange County, Tim remained a legendary force in Massachusetts politics. I remember receiving a call from a frustrated Senator John Kerry in 2004, asking for advice on how I could prevent Tim from passing a resolution at the Massachusetts' state party convention demanding single-payer health care. I told the Senator that would be like stopping Tim from chanting, "let Jerry speak!" when the Clinton forces were shutting off the Brown insurgency at the 1992 convention.
Tim was instrumental in defending Elizabeth Warren in 2012, when some frustrated Massachusetts activists were complaining that she wasn't "progressive enough" during a time when her electoral chances were unpredictable. Tim could communicate both with Warren's internal team and the radical local activists, knowing that both sides needed to work it out and carry on.
As Tim was going down, he was very happy to see progressive fortunes improving in the elections of Warren and New York Mayor, Bill de Blasio. He was excited to send me to Washington for a round-the-clock campaign to prevent President Obama from bombing Syria.
His prognosis spread an urgency everywhere he went and to every phone call he made. Now that his fiery energy is spent, Tim leaves behind legacies and lessons for us all.
He proved that the volunteers of a lost cause could be galvanized to continue building a progressive movement in the absence of their original candidate. He endlessly counseled against the progressive tendency to "form a firing squad" aiming at each other. He forged an example of combining the fire of an "outside" strategy with the skills of an "inside" strategy to gain footholds within the institutions. He demonstrated that personal experience and learned qualities of leadership are at the base of more impersonal social movements and electoral campaigns.
Now he's laid his burden down. Tim's friends will tell his story, dry their tears, and carry on. As he knew from his own experience, there are more Tim’s out there.
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