David Swanson's Blog, page 188
February 18, 2012
Why Students Are Hunger Striking in Virginia
Twelve students at the University of Virginia on Saturday began a hunger strike for a living wage policy for university employees. They've taken this step after having exhausted just about every other possible approach over a period of 14 years. I was part of the campaign way back when it started. I can support the assertion made by hunger-striking student A.J. Chandra on Saturday, who said,
"We have not spent 14 years building up the case for a living wage. Rather, the campaign has made the case over and over again."
This is the latest in a long series of reports making the case.
Another striking student, David Flood, explained,
"We have researched long enough. We have campaigned long enough. We have protested long enough. The time for a living wage is now."
UVA was the first campus with a living wage campaign back in the late 1990s, but many campuses that started later finished sooner. UVA has seen partial successes. In 2000, the university raised wages to what was at the time a living wage. But those gains have been wiped out by inflation. Local businesses have voluntarily met the campaign's demands, and the City of Charllottesville has both implemented a living wage policy and called on UVA to do so.
When we started, no one dared to say the word "union," but by 2002 a union had formed. It lasted until 2008, and now a new organizing drive is underway.
Workers, however, still fear being fired for joining a union or for joining the living wage campaign. (Does anyone recall the Employee Free Choice Act from way back yonder in 2008? It would really come in handy.) With workers fearing retribution, students and faculty are the campaign's public face, and even some students (especially those with scholarships) and faculty are afraid to take on that role.
In 2006, UVA students tried a sit-in as a tactic to pressure the University's Board of Visitors. The students were arrested after four days, and wage policies unaltered. But now they are looking to the model of Georgetown University's successful hunger strike in 2005.
Since 2006, the campaign has been building support among workers, faculty, and the Charlottesville community whose economy is dominated by UVA and almost a quarter of whose population is below the federal poverty line. Here's a debate on the topic from 2011. A petition has been signed by 328 faculty members.
A rally was held on the steps of the Rotunda on Saturday to launch the hunger strike. Chandra told the gathered crowd that this 14-year campaign by an ever-changing cast of students who typically stay only 4 years has tried teach-ins, concerts, film showings, petitions, letter-writing, marches, seminars, reports, and community outreach of all sorts. Speaking privately, he told me that the university measures its success by its publications and many other quantities. "The well being of the lowest paid workers," he said, "has to be part of deciding whether this is a successful institution."
Without pressure for action, Chandra said, "the same passive acceptance of injustice that allowed blacks to be excluded from UVA until 1950 and women until 1970" will win out.
Hunter Link is another hunger-striking student, the only one of the 12 not currently enrolled. He graduated in December. He pointed out that UVA sends students abroad to do service projects with money it could have used to pay its own workers a living wage. Of course, it also builds giant sports arenas, raises its top salaries, and adds more buildings to its main campus all the time.
For most of the past 14 years, UVA had a president who gave no indication that I ever saw of caring in the least what happened to the people who scrubbed his toilets. Now, UVA has a new president, its first female president. Her name is Theresa Sullivan, and she has published books, including quite recently, advocating for a living wage. When it comes to actually paying one at UVA, where doing so would cost a fraction of a percent of the billions of dollars UVA is hoarding, Sullivan sings a different tune.
Hunter Link read to the crowd on Saturday a letter from an unnamed worker who complained that President Sullivan talks about "a caring community" but -- asks the worker -- "what good are values if you don't live them?"
It's popular in U.S. politics these days to prefer words to actions, but the UVA living wage campaign is taking the opposite approach, pointing out the deceptions in Sullivan's claims. "Contrary to President Sullivan's inexplicable claims," said hunger-striker David Flood, "real wages have declined in the past six years." Objecting to non-monetary compensation as an alternative to wages, Flood remarked to loud applause: "You cannot pay the rent with a course at UVA. You cannot buy medicine with a coupon good only at the UVA company store." Before UVA workers can take classes, Flood said, they must be able to buy housing, food, and medicine. They must be able to live in the community that they make possible. I would add that they must be able to quit their second or third jobs if they are to have time for taking classes.
The living wage campaign is demanding a minumum wage for direct, contracted, and subcontracted employees of no less that $13, and that wages be adjusted each year to comply with the Economic Policy Institute's regionally sourced cost-of-living and inflation calculations. This must be implemented without reducing other benefits, including healthcare, without under-staffing, without reducing hours worked, and without demanding increased productivity. We started out demanding $8, and if the University had met that demand and indexed it to the cost of living, this campaign would have ended. Professor Susan Fraiman, who has been part of the campaign from the start, remarked on Saturday that she very much hoped she was speaking at the last living wage rally that would be needed. That will depend on the impact of the hunger strike.
The strikers have set up a permanent vigil between the Rotunda and the UVA Chapel. The strikers are informed, articulate, dedicated, and deadly serious. They've had physicals and will consume only liquids. One of them, Hallie Clark, pointed out that the Black Student Alliance rallied for higher wages at UVA in 1969. This has been a long struggle indeed. And the majority of the lowest paid workers at this slave-built campus are still black. The honor code still forbids cheating on tests or treating students as if they would cheat on tests. But it does not at the moment require presidents who have publicly articulated the moral demand for a living wage to actually pay one.
President Sullivan must work with UVA's Board of Visitors. The board members are almost all from out of town. Most students and workers have no contact with them. They are not a part of the Charlottesville community. Some of them are graduates of UVA's Darden Business School, which of course teaches the benefits of low pay for workers other than oneself and erases from consideration the question of whether a worker must hold a second job, or must use only emergency rooms for healthcare, or must leave his or her children unsupervised. When I was a graduate student in philosophy at UVA, I took a course at Darden that was jointly listed as business and philosophy. The course sought to apply ethics to the view of business regularly promoted at Darden, which felt a bit like applying a stick of lipstick to a large and fast-moving pig.
Here's a list of the members of the Board of Visitors along with their phone numbers. You can also click their names to email them. Or click HERE to email them all at once. Hunter Link told me the campaign had been in touch with Mark Kington of the Finance Committee and found him less than supportive. Here's what the various members do for their day jobs. Other than the student member and the ex-officio member, if you can find a connection between any of the other members and education please let me know. They seem to be almost all bankers, lawyers, CEOs, and . . . well, the sort of gang that ought to be the Board of Visitors for Darden Business School, not UVA; except they wouldn't have to visit as Darden has its own supply of these types.
President Sullivan is going to have to take the lead here. It is her students refusing to eat, across the street from her house. Her office phone is 434-924-3337. During the next week, she and the board members need to hear from every single one of us who cares. The Board of Visitors will be meeting next week. There will be rallies every day this week, leading up to that meeting. To get involved, go to livingwageatuva.org
February 16, 2012
Audio: Michael Feikema and David Swanson on OCCUPY, from WMRA -- NPR in Harrisonburg, VA
By Tom Graham
Listen
Who makes up the Occupy movement in Virginia?
What do they want?
Why are they doing it?
Expect some surprises when "Occupy" activists from our region share their answers.
Guests:
Michael Feikema, M.A. Activist with Occupy Harrisonburg. Former faculty member in the Department of History and Religion at Mount Marty College of Yankton, SD.
David Swanson, M.A. - Activist with Occupy Charlottesville. Author of The Military Industrial Complex at 50 [Swanson, 2012].
SOURCE: http://wmra.org/post/occupy-who-what-where-why
February 14, 2012
Talk Nation Radio
Talk Nation Radio (found at talknationradio.com) has long been hosted wonderfully by Dori Smith. I've enjoyed being a guest on her program and am now honored to be hosting the show. I'll have a new show available every week. Guests lined up include Robert Naiman, Pat Elder, Michelle Brown, Karen Malpede, John Horgan, Cindy Sheehan, Jeff Cohen, Coleen Rowley, Marcy Winograd, Jeff Clements, and Bruce Gagnon. But the first guest is Paul Chappell. Enjoy!
Author, Activist, War Veteran Paul Chappell on How We End War Forever 
Paul Chappell discusses the investigations into the making of war and of peace found in his books "Will War Ever End," "The End of War," and the just published "Peaceful Revolution: How We Can Create the Future Needed for Humanity's Survival." Chappell also authored a chapter in "The Military Industrial Complex at 50."
Total Run Time: 29:00
Host: David Swanson
Producer: David Swanson, in Charlottesville, VA
Music: Duke Ellington
Syndicated by Pacifica Network
Please encourage your local radio stations to carry this program every week!
Download from Archive.org, or AudioPort.org, or DavidSwanson.org.
Embed on your own site with this code: <iframe src="http://www.archive.org/embed/AuthorAc..." frameborder="0" height="50" width="400"></iframe>
February 13, 2012
A One Percenter Puts Over $200 Million into the Peace Movement
I'll tell you who did this below. First read part his rather unusual letter:
"I have transferred to you as trustees $231 million in bonds, the revenue of which is to be administered by you to hasten the abolition of international war, the foulest blot upon our civilization. Although we no longer eat our fellow men nor torture prisoners, nor sack cities killing their inhabitants, we still kill each other in war like barbarians. Only wild beasts are excusable for doing that in this, the Twenty First Century of the Christian era, for the crime of war is inherent, since it decides not in favor of the right, but always of the strong. The nation is criminal which refuses arbitration and drives its adversary to a tribunal which knows nothing of righteous judgment. . . .
"I hope the trustees will begin by pressing forward upon this line, testing it thoroughly and doubting not.
"The judge who presides over a cause in which he is interested dies in infamy if discovered. The citizen who constitutes himself a judge in his own cause as against his fellow-citizen, and presumes to attack him, is a law-breaker and as such disgraced. So should a nation be held as disgraced which insists upon sitting in judgment in its own cause in case of an international dispute. . . .
"Lines of future action cannot be wisely laid down. Many may have to be tried, and having full confidence in my trustees, I leave them the widest discretion as to the measures and policy they shall from time to time adopt, only premising that the one end they shall keep unceasingly in view until it is attained is the speedy abolition of international war between so-called civilized nations.
"When civilized nations enter into such treaties as named, and war is discarded as disgraceful to civilized men, as personal war (duelling) and man selling and buying (slavery) have been discarded . . . the trustees will please then consider what is the next most degrading remaining evil or evils whose banishment -- or what new elevating element or elements if introduced or fostered, or both combined -- would most advance the progress, elevation and happiness of humanity, and so on from century to century without end, my Trustees of each age shall determine how they can best aid humanity in its upward march to higher and higher stages of development unceasingly. . . ."
February 12, 2012
War Propaganda in the Anti-War Punditry
To the Charlottesville Daily Progress
To the Editor:
"Headed to another Persian Gulf War" is a helpful column in that it seeks to avoid a war on Iran, but unhelpful in that it makes that war just a little bit more likely.
Don Nuechterlein claims to know the motivations of our two presidents Bush in launching a pair of wars on Iraq. But he makes no mention of oil, of bases, of profits, or of global politics. The babies-taken-from-incubators fraud is forgotten along with the WMD lies. In fact, the WMD lies of 2002-2003 are given new support -- albeit baseless and undocumented -- in Nuechterlein's claim that the war was intended "to overthrow Saddam Hussein's regime and prevent it from acquiring nuclear weapons." It had of course been totally and entirely prevented from any such thing, prior to and without the war. Overthrowing a foreign government is not a legal basis for a war. Limiting weapons production, even when not a fantasy cooked up in Washington, is not a legal basis for war. In fact, there is no legal basis for war, which is banned by the Kellogg-Briand Pact and the U.N. Charter, and banned to presidents acting without the Congress by the U.S. Constitution.
By the next paragraph Neuchterlein is referring to Iran's "nuclear arms program," something the existence of which is supported by zero evidence, something the U.S. Secretary of "Defense" says does not exist. Neuchterlein doesn't argue that it exists. That would make him seem like a pro-war propagandist. He just assumes baselessly that it exists in order to proceed from there to an argument for being very reluctant and oh-so serious about going into another spree of pointless mass murder.
In the next paragraph we hear that Iran is refusing to negotiate. Iran has tried repeatedly to negotiate the end of its nuclear energy program or the exportation of its uranium for refinement outside of the country. It is difficult for Iran to negotiate when the U.S. State Department doesn't speak to it. Neuchterlein, to be sure, is opposed to acting rashly on the basis of Iran's supposed refusal to negotiate. Nonetheless he is in favor of pretending it exists.
We then learn that "All Arab countries, especially in the Persian Gulf region, live in fear of Iran's hegemonic ambitions." What world does that claim come out of? Can Neuchterlein name one Arab Gulf country with an Iranian military presence? Can he name one without a U.S. military presence? Two paragraphs later he's admitting that Syria (not a Gulf state) is aligned with Iran.
Neuchterlein frames the choices as including sanctions or war. But sanctions, for which Nuechterlein offers no evidence (and I know of no evidence) that they are having a serious negative impact on the Iranian government, are a step toward war, not away from it. They strengthen nationalism, not democracy. They punish ordinary people (and by punish I mean kill), not presidents.
Neuchterlein then describes Obama as a fellow reluctant warrior who might be forced into a war against his deep desire, despite the fact that Obama has been pushing very similar propaganda to Neuchterlein. Neuchterlein labels Newt Gingrich "pro-Israel," even though a majority of Israelies are against attacking Iran and Gingrich is for it. Neuchterlein pretends that Obama has no influence over Israel, even though the United States gives Israel billions of dollars worth of weapons, vetoes every measure of accountability for Israeli crimes at the United Nations, and works closely with the Israeli military and Mossad.
NBC this week reported that Israel is funding and training the Iranian group MEK to engage in terrorism in Iran. The MEK is a group the U.S. government has designated terrorist, but which a gaggle of big whigs like Howard Dean and Rudi Giuliani illegally work for, and which the U.S. government, like Israel, has been funding, according to Seymour Hersh. But the onus is on Iran to start "negotiating."
How about this negotiation: all paries stop threatening war, and all parties comply with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. You see the trouble? Iran has already met both of those demands and always had, whereas Israel and the United States have not and have no intention of doing so.
After his onslaught of lies, Neuchterlein proposes that we avoid war if possible. If possible? It is ALWAYS possible to avoid war. But there is no easier way to get into a war than by establishing that it might be "impossible" to avoid, thus removing all moral and legal responsibility.
Please check facts even in the "Commentary."
Thank you.
David Swanson
--
David Swanson is the author of "When the World Outlawed War," "War Is A Lie" and "Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union." He blogs at http://davidswanson.org and http://warisacrime.org and works for the online activist organization http://rootsaction.org
February 11, 2012
February 10, 2012
Learning From La Venezuela
Imagine that your son, your darling little boy, was killed during the past eight years in a war that served purely to kill a whole lot of Iraqis and enrich a small number of billionaires, while causing horrible environmental damage, stripping away our civil liberties, and poisoning foreign relations elsewhere. And imagine that, instead of avoiding this reality or lying about it, you confronted it. Further, imagine that you became so famous confronting it, that everybody wanted to be your friend, at least for a minute. You might even get invited to Venezuela by President Hugo Chavez, and you might go with a mind open to hearing what he had to say.
Cindy Sheehan did. And now she's published a book about it. If Venezuela makes it to the top of the list for the next U.S. war, this book will be a valuable tool for confronting the propaganda. But why wait? Our government has attempted a coup and is openly funding opposition groups. Why wait to consider what it is we're paying to try to undo?
Venezuela could be targeted for its oil, of course. But Cindy proposes another reason why the government in Washington, D.C., that we all so love to hate except when it kills lots of people, might be targeting Venezuela. In an interview included in the book, she asks Chavez: "Why do you think the Empire makes such a concerted effort to demonize you?" His response, which has been translated from Spanish, is:
"I think for different reasons. But I've gotten to the conclusion there is one particular strong reason, a big reason. They are afraid, the Empire is afraid. The Empire is afraid that the people of the United States might find out about the truth, they are afraid that something like that could erupt in their own territory -- a Bolivarian movement; or a Lincoln movement -- a movement of citizens, conscious citizens to transform the system. . . . So, why do they demonize us? They know -- those who direct the Empire -- they know the truth. But they fear the truth. They fear the contagious effect. They fear a revolution in the United States. They fear an awakening of the people in the United States. And so that's why they do everything they can. And they achieve it, relatively, that a lot of sectors in the United States see us as devils. No one wants to copy the devil."
But we might copy some little things even from the devil if they were worth copying. What is it that Sheehan and Chavez think might be contagious if we found out about it?
This is why the book is a valuable resource now, threat or no threat, war or no war. It's a story of a people's movement, largely nonviolent. It's a story of dramatic change that was slow in coming and then burst into fruition. It's a story of a work in progress that is moving in positive directions, investing in education, protecting the environment, raising the living standards of the majority of the people. Can a new political party succeed? Yes, it can. Can an outworn Constitution be rewritten at great length and well by a popular movement? Yes, it can. (PDF). Cindy lists some of the changes brought by this Constitution:
· added a "people's branch"
· added an "election's branch"
· citizens are able to recall the president
· health care is enshrined as a human right
· education is enshrined as a human right
· gender inclusivity in the language
· equal rights for women under the law
· only the people can amend the document
· aggressive indigenous rights
· commits the power of the state to protect the environment
The horror! I know some USians who don't dare HOPE for such a CHANGE. I even know some who are learning that such changes are perfectly possible, but that they don't come about through hoping, or through voting alone.
The weakness of the Venezuelan revolution, however, is very similar to the weakness of US liberalism. Each pins its hopes on a single messiah. Of course, Chavez is making the poor richer, while Obama is making the rich richer. But it appears entirely possible that positive movement in Venezuela will be thrown into reverse when Chavez dies. Chavez ought to be teaching his nation not to depend on one man. He ought to step down while alive and well enough to help guide his successor. He ought to move on to a focus on uniting the nations of South America. That he does not do this seems to me a mark against his character. But it does not change the fact that the Venezuelan people have been empowered to rule by referendum, while in the United States the presidency has been made more powerful than that of Venezuela -- and without the addition of direct democracy. The Venezuelan Constitution has already been amended, by public referendum. The U.S. Constitution hasn't been touched in 40 years except through dramatic changes imposed by the Supreme Court or the President.
The question that my mind focuses on in reading Cindy's account is not, however, what can I find wrong with Chavez. It's this: Can we make an Occupy movement worthy of the title Bolivarian?
February 9, 2012
Exactly How Cheap the University of Virginia Is
Let's approximate (and let's go high) that the University of Virginia in Charlottesville has 2,000 direct and contracted (it won't say how many contracted, so we have to guess) employees working for under $13 per hour as demanded by the Living Wage campaign. And let's imagine they work on average 40 hours per week and 50 weeks a year, and let's imagine they earn the bare legal mimimum of $7.25 per hour. That would mean that it would take $23 million to make things right, to allow fulltime workers to pay their bills, quit their second jobs, see their families, and take care of their health.
Who has $23 million?
It turns out that UVA has got $4.76 BILLION.
I hate to have to point this out, but $23 million is less than a half a percent of $4.76 billion. (If my math is off that's UVA's fault too! :-)
If you earn $50,000 a year, do you ever give $200 or so to good causes? UVA isn't being asked to do that. It's being asked to pay people a decent humane wage for their hard work.
There's little less honorable than greed. Doesn't UVA have an honor code?
David Swanson to Speak in Harrisonburg, Virginia
David Swanson will speak and lead a discussion on the topic of
The Occupy Movement and the Antiwar Movement
WHEN: Thursday February 16, 2012, 6:40 pm Meet and Greet; Meeting time: 7:00 - 8:30 pm.
WHERE: Eastern Mennonite University (EMU), Seminary Bldg, Rm. 123 (front main entrance, street level). Website. Directions.
phone 540-432-4000
Eastern Mennonite University
1200 Park Rd
Harrisonburg, VA 22802-2462
Google Maps driving directions
SPONSOR: Occupy Harrisonburg, and ACRS (Anabaptist Center for Religion and Society)
Admission is free.
Swanson will sign his books which include:
Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union (2009)
War Is A Lie (2010)
When the World Outlawed War (2011)
The Military Industrial Complex at 50 (2012)
Swanson helped plan the nonviolent occupation of Freedom Plaza in Washington DC in 2011.
In December 2011, The Hook newspaper in Charlottesville, Va., named him a runner-up Person of the Year.
Swanson holds a master's degree in philosophy from the University of Virginia. He has worked as a newspaper reporter and as a communications director, with jobs including press secretary for Dennis Kucinich's 2004 presidential campaign, media coordinator for the International Labor Communications Association, and three years as communications coordinator for ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now.
He blogs at http://davidswanson.org and http://warisacrime.org and works for the online activist organization http://rootsaction.org
"David Swanson is a truth-teller and witness-bearer whose voice and action warrant our attention." —Cornel West, author.
"The world needs more true advocates of democracy like David Swanson!" —Thom Hartmann, radio host.
"David Swanson will be remembered and well recognized as the citizen who held up a lamp in the darkness and cried, as did good Tom Paine: 'We have it in our power to begin the world over again.'" —John Nichols, columnist, The Nation.
"David Swanson predicates his belief that nonviolence can change the world on careful research and historical analysis." —Kathy Kelly, Voices for Creative Nonviolence.
"David Swanson's War Is A Lie may be the most comprehensive antiwar statement available in the English language." —Kevin Young, Znet.
"Our times cry out for a smart, witty and courageous Populist who hasn't forgotten how to play offense. Luckily we have David Swanson." —Mike Ferner, President of Veterans For Peace.
"David Swanson, who has been a one-man wonder leading the charge for accountability, writes a compelling narrative that inspires not just outrage, but ACTION." —Medea Benjamin, Code Pink and Global Exchange.
"David Swanson despises war and lying, and unmasks them both with rare intelligence. I learn something new on every page." —Jeff Cohen, founder of FAIR.
"David Swanson's book is a masterful exposure of the emergence of a monarch-like president coupled with an effete, irresponsible, and constitutionally ignorant Congress." —Bruce Fein, former Associate Deputy Attorney General.
"David Swanson has written a fascinating account of how peace once became the law of the land. It is particularly pertinent in the era of the Endless War, by giving encouragement and suggestions of a path forward to those who want to give peace a chance." —Liz Holtzman, former member of the U.S. Congress.
"Swanson's book is far more uplifting and inspiring than virtually any other book in its genre, as it devotes itself to laying out a detailed plan for how American citizens — through the activism to which he has devoted himself — can bring about a rejuvenation of our political values." —Glenn Greenwald, Salon.com.
"David Swanson is an antidote to the toxins of complacency and evasion. He insists on rousing the sleepwalkers, confronting the deadly prevaricators and shining a bright light on possibilities for a truly better world." —Norman Solomon, author of War Made Easy.
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