Amy Goodman's Blog, page 21
September 27, 2012
Romney Has a Jobs Plan ... for China
By Amy Goodman with Denis Moynihan
Freeport, Ill., is the site of one of the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates. On Aug. 27, 1858, Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas debated there in their campaign for Illinois’ seat in the U.S. Senate. Lincoln lost that race, but the Freeport debate set the stage for his eventual defeat of Douglas in the presidential election of 1860, and thus the Civil War. Today, as the African-American president of the United States prepares to debate the candidate from the party of Lincoln, workers in Freeport are staging a protest, hoping to put their plight into the center of the national debate this election season.
A group of workers from Sensata Technologies have set up their tents in a protest encampment across the road from the plant where many of them have spent their adult lives working. Sensata makes high-tech sensors for automobiles, including the sensors that help automatic transmissions run safely. Sensata Technologies recently bought the plant from Honeywell, and promptly told the more than 170 workers there that their jobs and all the plant’s equipment would be shipped to China.
You may never have heard of Sensata Technologies, but in this election season, you’ve probably heard the name of its owner, Bain Capital, the company co-founded and formerly run by Mitt Romney. When they learned this, close to a dozen Sensata employees decided to put up a fight, to challenge Romney to put into practice his very campaign slogans to save American jobs. They traveled to Tampa, Fla., joining in a poor people’s campaign at a temporary camp called Romneyville (after the Hoovervilles of the Great Depression). They organized a petition drive, getting 35,000 people to join their demand for Romney to call on his former colleagues to save their jobs. Since Freeport is close to two swing states, Iowa and Wisconsin, they traveled to a Romney rally and appealed directly to him there (Ironically, for appealing to Romney to save their jobs from being sent to China, the Sensata workers were jeered as communists at the rally, and removed by U.S. Secret Service).
Then the workers established Bainport. Set up at the Stephenson County Fairgrounds, with the full support of the community, the workers have spent more than two weeks camped out, with a dozen tents, a large circus-style tent serving as a covered gathering space and command center, and an outdoor kitchen. They built a stage with a banner reading, “Mitt Romney: Come to Freeport” and signs like “Romney does have a jobs plan ... too bad it’s for China.” Behind the stage they have built a small bridge that carries the workers across a gully to and from their remaining shifts at the plant.
September 20, 2012
Get the Frack Out of Our Water: Shale-Shocked Citizens Fight Back
By Amy Goodman with Denis Moynihan
Western Pennsylvania is considered the birthplace of commercial oil drilling. On Aug. 27, 1859, Edwin Drake struck oil in Titusville, Pa., and changed the course of history. Now, people there are busy trying to stop wells, and the increasingly pervasive drilling practice known as fracking. Fracking is the popular term for hydraulic fracturing, the technique used to extract natural gas from deep beneath the earth’s surface. Fracking is promoted by the gas industry as the key to escaping from dependence on foreign oil. But evidence is mounting that fracking pollutes groundwater with a witches’ brew of toxic chemicals, creating imminent threats to public health and safety. It has even caused earthquakes in Ohio. As people mark the first anniversary of Occupy Wall Street, popular resistance to the immense power of the energy industry is on the rise.
Underlying the problem of fracking is, literally, the Marcellus Shale (which is formally called, coincidentally, the Marcellus Member of the Romney Formation). This massive, underground geologic formation stretches from upstate New York across Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio, through West Virginia, Tennessee and parts of Virginia. Unlike the easily extracted crude oil of Saudi Arabia, the natural gas in the Marcellus Shale is captured in tiny pockets, and is hard to get at. In order to extract it with what the industry considers efficiency, holes are drilled thousands of feet deep, which then turn a corner and continue thousands more feet, horizontally. The detonation of explosive charges, coupled with the infusion of high-pressure fluids, fractures the shale, allowing the gas to bubble up to the surface.
The components of the fluids used for fracking are considered protected trade secrets, although they are known to contain toxins. Where the fracking fluids go is a key question. “Only 20 percent of that water returns, and that water returns with radioactive material—barium, strontium,” former Pittsburgh Councilman Doug Shields told me. “It’s inherently dangerous. There’s no environmental-impact studies on the part of the state. The state—the institutions of our government—failed miserably to do any kind of due diligence ... no environmental-impact studies, no health-risk studies. And now I’ve got sick people all over.”
Shields put forth a city ordinance banning fracking, which passed. The oil and gas industry fought back: “They went so far as to pass an act, Act 13, that pre-empted all zoning ordinances and authority for just one industry: the oil and gas industry,” said Shields, “And Pennsylvania has a use by right, under the law enacted in February, to drill anywhere —- [including] residential areas.” Pennsylvania townships sued, calling unconstitutional the obliteration of their local rights to maintain public health. They won, but are scheduled to defend their rights in Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court Oct. 17.
The problem gets worse in Ohio. Unlike Pennsylvania and New York, Ohio has not banned wastewater injection wells. These wells are used to dispose of waste liquids, by pumping the liquids far underground. Ohio has become the dumping ground for fracking wastewater from Pennsylvania and New York.
Fracking as a political issue, like that tap water, is catching fire. Traveling the country on a 100-city tour covering the 2012 election, I continually meet people who are deeply concerned about what is percolating beneath them. Public outrage is shifting into coordinated action. Their message: “Keep the frack out of my water.”
Click here to read the entire column posted at Truthdig.
September 13, 2012
Mayor Rahm-Ney’s Attack on the Chicago Teachers Union
By Amy Goodman with Denis Moynihan
Unions are under attack in the United States—not only from people like Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, but now, with the teachers strike in Chicago, from the very core of President Barack Obama’s inner circle, his former chief of staff and current mayor of that city, Rahm Emanuel. Twenty-five thousand teachers and support staff are on strike there, shutting down the public school system in the nation’s third-largest school district. This fight now raging in Chicago, Obama’s hometown, has its roots in this historic stronghold of organized labor, and in the movement started one year ago this week, Occupy Wall Street. The conflict presents a difficult moment for Obama, who will need union support to prevail in his race with Mitt Romney, but who is inextricably linked, politically, to his brash, expletive-spewing former aide, Mayor Rahm-ney Emanuel.
At the heart of the conflict is how schools will be run in Chicago: locally, from the grass roots, with teacher and parent control, or top-down, by a school board appointed by Emanuel. Karen Lewis, president of the Chicago Teachers Union, worked as a board-certified chemistry teacher at King College Prep High School in Chicago. She understands how the system works. Months before the strike, I asked her about the situation in Chicago. The newly elected Emanuel had an appointed board comprised mostly of corporate executives, the Academy for Urban School Leadership. Lewis told me, “One of the biggest problems is that when you have a CEO in charge of a school system, as opposed to a superintendent, a real educator, what ends up happening is that they literally have no clue as to how to run the schools.” The AUSL not only relies on business executives with no education experience to run schools, but also brings in recent college graduates to teach. These recruits cost very little to pay, but arrive with little or no teaching experience.
September 5, 2012
No Papers, No Fear at the Democratic Convention
By Amy Goodman with Denis Moynihan
CHARLOTTE, N.C.—As the Democratic National Convention was gaveled into session Tuesday, outside in the rain, in the paramilitarized heart of Charlotte, democracy in its finest form found expression. Democracy, that is, if you believe that it’s built on a foundation of grass-roots movements: the abolitionist struggle, the fight for women’s suffrage, the civil-rights movement. In this city, where one of the first lunch counter sit-ins against segregation occurred, 10 undocumented immigrants blocked an intersection, risking arrest and possible deportation while calling on President Barack Obama and the Democratic Party to embrace the immigrant-rights movement and pass meaningful immigration reform.
“We are here to ask President Obama what his legacy will be,” Rosi Carrasco said as she climbed down from the “UndocuBus,” colorfully painted with butterflies, that the activists traveled in from Arizona. “What we want to say to President Obama is, on which side of the history is he going to be? Is he going to be remembered as the president that has been deporting the most people in U.S. history, or he is going to be on the side of immigrants?” Rosi’s husband, Martin Unzueta, said: “I am undocumented. I’ve been living here for 18 years. I pay taxes, and I’m paying more taxes than Citibank.”
August 30, 2012
Workers Feel the Pain of Bain
By Amy Goodman with Denis Moynihan
TAMPA, Fla. — Four hardy souls from rural Illinois joined tens of thousands of people undeterred by threats of Hurricane Isaac during this week’s Republican National Convention. They weren’t among the almost 2,400 delegates to the convention, though, nor were they from the press corps, said to number 15,000. They weren’t part of the massive police force assembled here, more than 3,000 strong, all paid for with $50 million of U.S. taxpayer money. These four were about to join a much larger group: the more than 2.4 million people in the past decade whose U.S. jobs have been shipped to China. In their case, the company laying them off and sending their jobs overseas is Bain Capital, co-founded by the Republican presidential nominee, Mitt Romney.
We met the group at Romneyville, a tent city on the outskirts of downtown Tampa, established by the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign in the spirit of the Hoovervilles of the Great Depression. A couple hundred people gathered before the makeshift stage to hear speakers and musicians, under intermittent downpours and the noise of three police helicopters drowning out the voices of the anti-poverty activists. Scores of police on bicycles occupied the surrounding streets.
August 23, 2012
Election 2012: Dreams of a Vote Deferred?
By Amy Goodman with Denis Moynihan
People remember 1929 as the year of the stock-market crash and the beginning of the Great Depression, the global economic disaster which remains the only one in history that dwarfs the one in which we now find ourselves. It was also the year Martin Luther King Jr. was born, who wouldn’t live to see 40 years.
August 16, 2012
Paul Ryan: A Man With a Plan, From the Fiscal to the Physical
By Amy Goodman with Denis Moynihan
Republican Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan is considered by many a champion of small government. For women, though, the federal government that Paul Ryan envisions is big, intrusive and controlling. Paul Ryan would ban all abortions, with no exceptions, even in cases of rape, incest or the health of the mother. In other words, the mother could die as a result of complications from the pregnancy.
August 9, 2012
On Gun Laws, It’s Bipartisan Consensus Not Gridlock That’s the Problem
By Amy Goodman with Denis Moynihan
With an average of 32 people killed by guns in this country every day—the equivalent of five Wisconsin massacres per day—both major parties refuse to deal with gun control. It’s the consensus, not the gridlock, that’s the problem.
August 2, 2012
The Obama Administration Torpedoes the Arms Trade Treaty
By Amy Goodman with Denis Moynihan
Quick: What is more heavily regulated, global trade of bananas or battleships? In late June, activists gathered in New York’s Times Square to make the absurd point, that, unbelievably, “there are more rules governing your ability to trade a banana from one country to the next than governing your ability to trade an AK-47 or a military helicopter.” So said Amnesty International USA’s Suzanne Nossel at the protest, just before the start of the United Nations Conference on the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), which ran from July 2 to July 27. Thanks to a last-minute declaration by the United States that it “needed more time” to review the short, 11-page treaty text, the conference ended last week in failure.
There isn’t much that could be considered controversial in the treaty. Signatory governments agree not to export weapons to countries that are under an arms embargo, or to export weapons that would facilitate “the commission of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes” or other violations of international humanitarian law. Exports of arms are banned if they will facilitate “gender-based violence or violence against children” or be used for “transnational organized crime.” Why does the United States need more time than the more than 90 other countries that had sufficient time to read and approve the text? The answer lies in the power of the gun lobby, the arms industry and the apparent inability of President Barack Obama to do the right thing, especially if it contradicts a cold, political calculation.
The Obama administration torpedoed the treaty exactly one week after the massacre in Aurora, Colo. In Colorado, Obama offered promises of “prayer and reflection.” As New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said, commenting on Obama and Mitt Romney both avoiding a discussion of gun control, “Soothing words are nice, but maybe it’s time the two people who want to be president of the United States stand up and tell us what they’re going to do about it.” Gun violence is a massive problem in the U.S., and it only seems to pierce the public consciousness when there is a massacre. Gun-rights advocates attack people who suggest more gun control is needed, accusing them of politicizing the massacre. Yet some elected officials are taking a stand. Gov. Pat Quinn of Illinois is seeking a ban on assault weapons, much like the ones in place in California, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York.
The National Rifle Association’s executive vice president, Wayne LaPierre, issued the threat before the U.N. conference that “Without apology, the NRA wants no part of any treaty that infringes on the precious right of lawful Americans to keep and bear arms.” The NRA organized letters opposing the treaty, signed by 51 U.S. senators and 130 members of the House. After the conference ended in failure, the NRA took credit for killing it.
July 26, 2012
U.S. Gun Laws: Guilty by Reason of Insanity
By Amy Goodman with Denis Moynihan
James Holmes, the alleged shooter in the massacre in Aurora, Colo., reportedly amassed his huge arsenal with relative ease. Some of these weapons were illegal as recently as eight years ago. Legislation now before Congress would once again make illegal, if not the guns themselves, at least the high-capacity magazines that allow bullets to be fired rapidly without stopping to reload. Holmes bought most of his weaponry within recent months, we are told. Perhaps, if sane laws on gun control, including the ban on high- capacity magazines, were in place, many in Aurora who are now dead or seriously injured would be alive and well today.
The facts of the assault are generally well-known. Holmes allegedly burst into the packed theater during the 12:30 am premier of the Batman sequel “The Dark Knight Rises,” threw one or two canisters of some gas or irritant, which exploded, then began to methodically shoot people, killing 12 and wounding 58.
“Everybody sort of started screaming, and that’s when the gunman opened fire on the crowd, and pandemonium just broke out,” Omar Esparza told me. He was in the third row, with five friends out for a birthday celebration: “He started opening fire on the audience pretty freely, just started shooting in every direction, that’s when everybody started screaming, started panicking. A lot of people had been hit at that point at those initial few rounds, and that’s when everybody sort of hit the floor and started to exit.”
Esparza continued: “It sounded like the bullets had stopped, and it sounded like he was either switching guns or reloading his rifle. At that very second when we sort of heard the silence, we realized that that was our only opportunity of getting out or of dying. So, at that split second, we had to react and had to exit as quickly as possible. And we barely made it, too, because approximately a second after we had exited, we heard him starting to shoot again.”
That moment of silence may have been when one of the weapons jammed. CNN reported that “the semiautomatic rifle used in the Colorado theater killings jammed during the rampage ... a law enforcement source with direct knowledge of the investigation said Sunday.”
Holmes allegedly had an AR-15, equipped with a 100-round drum magazine, as well as one or two Glock pistols with 40-round extended magazines and a Remington 870 shotgun that can fire up to seven shells without reloading. The AR-15 can fire from 50 to 60 rounds per minute. Holmes had a massive arsenal, easily acquired at retail stores and online.
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