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Students welcome overhauling private loan industry

Pepe Lozano — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 16:50:00 -0500

Every year millions of students graduate from college with tens of thousands of dollars in student loan debt. Students then have to compete for a job during a time when the U.S. economy continues to struggle and unemployment figures are at record highs.

They, like so many these days, just need a break.

That's why student activists are supporting President Barack Obama's plan to end private-bank involvement in the student-loan industry. They're also hopeful such legislation, which would divert savings and boost Pell Grants to lower-income students and much more, will pass this year.

In his State of the Union Address to Congress last month Obama reiterated his support for the proposal, which would end subsidies and effectively cut private lenders from making loans. As a result the Department of Education would become the sole provider of government-backed loans.

"To make college more affordable, this bill will finally end the unwarranted taxpayer subsidies that go to banks for student loans," said Obama. "In the United States of America no one should go broke because they chose to go to college."

Obama was referring to the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act, H.R. 3221, which was approved last year. The measure however has become stalled in the Senate.

Jake Stillwell with the United States Student Association, one of the largest student-led organizations in the nation with 4.5 million members, said his group unanimously supports the president's plan.

"We have been working real hard to pass this bill because reform on this particular issue is absolutely needed," he said.

Stillwell said the federal government is perfectly capable of handling the student loan industry on its own. They're also more student-friendly especially when it comes to lower interests rates, income-based repayment options and dealing with a possible credit crunch, he notes.

"We think if the government is going to spend billions of dollars every year then it should go toward students and not the banks," said Stillwell.

The reform bill makes perfect sense and would save the government $87 billion over the next decade, he said. Key investments could be made toward minority serving educational institutions like historically black universities and community colleges, notes Stillwell.

According to Stillwell the average student borrower is almost $25,000 in debt after graduating from college.

The USSA communications director emphasizes the longer the bill is stalled in Congress the less federal savings is accumulated - "which why we need to pass this bill now."

Students are stuck with so much debt once they graduate, he said, and all this is during a time when the job market for them is widely seen as the worst on record. When students who graduate from college are chronically unemployed it really hurts the American workforce, he said.

How are young people going to invest in a home, a car or support a family, he asked. These are values that strengthen our economy and would make a permanent amends to the current economic crisis, he said.

According to a 2008 federal report postgraduate student debt has risen by about six percent per year since 2003.

Passing the legislation is vital because money that would be saved by cutting out the private-industry middlemen - about $80 billion over the next decade - could instead go toward expanding direct Pell Grants to students, according to a Congressional Budget Office. It would also establish $10,000 tax credits for families with loans, and forgiving debts eventually for students who go into public service, administration officials say, as reported in the New York Times.

Maria Escobar is the national coordinator with the Student Labor Action Project and said the bill is one of the most important pieces of legislation regarding students in the last several years.

The bill would make college more affordable, she said. It's really a stimulus proposal for students and could only improve the American economy, she notes.

Obama's plan is also in tune with challenging corporate power, which is also very important, said Escobar.

"We need to prioritize students and working people in general and pass this bill," she said. "How can students achieve the American dream if they're being denied access to higher education," she asked.

Meanwhile the bill faces fierce attacks from the lending industry including the entire Republican Party.

For example Sallie Mae, the nation's largest private student loan company, opposes the measure arguing it would eliminate thousands of jobs. Sallie Mae spent $8 million in lobbying against the bill in 2009.

Lenders have been leading town-hall gatherings, meetings with members of Congress and petition drives to support their opposition to the bill. They're also pressuring moderate Senate Democrats in crucial states in an effort to block the government's plan to overhaul the industry.

Democrats are considering an attempt to move the bill through a special procedure that requires a simple majority rather than the usual 60 votes needed to stop a filibuster.

Critics contend Sallie Mae and the Republicans are using tactics straight from the health insurers' playbook, similar to those used in the health care debate to obstruct the legislation.

Many foresee what eventually plays out in the health care reform process could also determine a similar outcome when it comes to passing federal legislation on the student loans business.

Nonetheless student activists and their allies are not wasting any time.

Hundreds are planning a march and rally on the nations capitol to support Obama's initiative during USSA's legislative conference scheduled next March. For more information go to www.usstudents.org.

Other actions that support reform are being organized to take place during the National Student Labor Week of Action scheduled from March 28th - April 4th. Go here for more information: www.studentlabor.org.

"We're hopeful that the Obama administration will be active and continue to support this legislation and pressure the Senate to do the right thing and move on this very important issue," said Stillwell.

Photo: Pepe Lozano

Extend jobless benefits!

CPUSA Labor Commission — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 09:44:00 -0500

Republicans say: Wall Street yes, Main Street no!

We say: Extend unemployment insurance benefits!

On Dec. 16, 2009, the House passed the Jobs For Main Street Act of 2010 (HR 2847).

The emphasis of the bill is on job creation and extended emergency relief for the unemployed (see details here). The bill would be funded with unspent TARP funds that had been set aside for the Wall Street bailout. The vote was 217 to 212 with not a single Republican vote in favor.

In his State of the Union speech, President Obama stated that 2010 would be the year of help and compassion. Senate Democrats are expected to bring the bill to the Senate floor in February, and Senate Republicans are signaling they will broaden their mantra of "No to Change" to include "No to Help, No to Compassion and No to Hope."

The lesson of the past year's fight for health care reform is that without a strong people's movement, change is difficult. Such movements, like brick walls built one brick and a bit of mortar at a time, are built by the accumulation of many small actions. Now is the time for one of those actions.

Contact your senators and let them hear the anger and frustration President Obama spoke of. Demand they include the same extension for unemployment benefits that is in the House bill. On Feb. 12 unemployment insurance offices around the country will be closing down the program. Without this extension millions of unemployed workers and families will be dropped from the rolls, falling deeper into poverty and hopelessness. Let's start laying brick!

Find your senator and contact information, including e-mail and telephone numbers here.

Photo: PW/Scott Marshall

Obama takes Volcker out of freezer, turns up heat on Wall Street

John Wojcik — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 11:27:00 -0500

Some folks hoped last year that President Obama would consider Paul Volcker for the top job at Treasury because the former Federal Reserve Board chair had come forward in recent years as a vocal critic of those raking in the money on Wall Street.

When everything went bust with the economy in 2008 Volcker blamed the global financial meltdown on the wild, unregulated chase after personal wealth then going full steam in the world of high finance.

The White House gave the Treasury job instead to Timothy Geithner, widely seen as a Wall Street-friendly guy. Volcker was put in charge of the White House Economic Recovery Advisory Board, which, some said, was like being put on ice - never to be heard from again.

That was then. This is now.

Last week, with Volcker at his side and Geithner in a corner, barely visible to the cameras, President Obama called for new regulations that directly challenge the power of the banks.

The president's strong backing for what he calls the "Volcker rule" plants him on the side of Main Street and in opposition to the Wall Street marauders who have so totally robbed the people.

The proposal from the former Fed chairman essentially restores the 1930s Glass-Steagall banking regulations that, for so long, helped prevent another Great Depression. It involves separating the activities of commercial banks, entrusted with the deposits of working people, from the gambling of the financial high rollers who are presumably dealing not with the peoples' money but with funds from wealthy investors.

The Roosevelt-era reforms were intended to heavily regulate and insure commercial banks to protect the savings of ordinary folks.

The thinking was that rich investors willing to take risks could fend for themselves and if their wheeling and dealing went bad there would be no innocent victims requiring a government rescue.

All of this worked the way it was supposed to until Ronald Reagan made the first move to change things in 1987 by replacing Volcker with Alan Greenspan, a man who shared Reagan's belief in totally "unfettered" free markets. The deal involved leaders of both major parties, however, and was finally sealed with the repeal of Glass-Steagall in 1999, when President Clinton signed it into law.

A lot of folks feel the move by Obama has come not a moment too soon.

There is increased worry about the ever-intensifying concentration of wealth at the top and the continuing party on Wall Street.

The seriousness of the situation is underlined in a report issued last week by the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation.

In 2010, the tax panel says, 1 million taxpayers will report incomes over $500,000. These 1 million will earn $241 billion more in income this year than the 80 million taxpayers who will take home less than $40,000 each.

We know the congressional panel is striking at a sensitive nerve as we observe the effort under way on Wall Street this week to paint itself as a bunch now sorry for its sins.

The CEO of Goldman Sachs announced that his company would devote only $16.2 billion to the pay pool for its 32,500 employees, "far less than the $20 billion plus that financial analysts had predicted," he said.

He also boasted that Goldman is devoting only 35.8 percent of its record 2009 revenue to pay. (Last year it was 48 percent, he reminded everyone.) David Viniar, Goldman's chief finance officer, said, "We are not deaf to the calls for restraint, and we heard them."

The Goldman definition of "restraint" means that the "average" employee will be left with a mere $498,153 this year. What they don't mention is that only a handful will see anything near a half million dollars. The top few are making so much that it pulls up the "average." The clerks and receptionists, as usual, will earn a relative pittance.

What is really outrageous, however, is that less than a year after the bailout by the people the details of how much is going to whom are unavailable.

There is no place where this reporter or anyone else can go to look for the information about how much that handful of top dogs at Goldman is really getting. We have to wait until later this year when New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo will release his analysis of bank payouts.

One key Goldman-Sachs shareholder, however, is unwilling to wait.

The Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority - the public agency that runs mass transit in the Philadelphia area and that just signed a new contract with its union-represented workers after it forced them into a six-day strike last year - has filed suit against Goldman executives for their ongoing bonus grab.

The Philly investors are warning that no one should buy the Goldman argument that it has already paid back to the Treasury the $10 billion taxpayers gave it. They note that the bank received another $43.4 billion of direct benefit from other bailout programs that has never been reimbursed.

What's probably the most worrisome for Goldman, however, is that it is operating now in a country where not only some of its investors but the nation's president and the broad majority of the people are on to its game.

Popular support for taking on Wall Street is soaring even faster than the president's recent improvement in the polls. A recent Washington Post-ABC News poll found that 73 percent of Americans would support "a special tax on bonuses over $1 million."

A CBS poll shows that by a 72-19 percent margin Americans feel the federal bailout has benefited "mostly just a few big investors and people who work on Wall Street."

Super Bowl ads stir controversy

Pepe Lozano — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 10:37:00 -0500

Sunday is the big day for football fans across the country as Drew Brees and the New Orleans Saints go head to head with Peyton Manning and the Indianapolis Colts in this year's much-anticipated Super Bowl.

Many foresee the game to be a competitive match-up between the league's two top teams, both of which played exceptionally well all season.

However for some, tuning in every year is more than just about football. It's also about the much-hyped commercials.

Millions are expected to watch one of television's biggest nights, in between guacamole and chips, to view ads that attract many who could care less about the game.

Yet some ads have already stirred up some controversy.

This year CBS, the network airing the game, has decided to feature an anti-abortion commercial showcasing college football star Tim Tebow along with his mother. Many are questioning the network's decision to air the ad because it deals with the sensitive issue of abortion and is sponsored by the anti-choice conservative group Focus on the Family.

The ad features Tebow's mother telling the story of her son's birth. She recalls how she was on a missionary trip in 1987 when she became seriously ill. Her doctors urged her to have an abortion. She chose not to and wound up giving birth to a son who grew up healthy. Tebow went on to become a football star at the University of Florida as well as a Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback.

But the move by CBS to air the ad has infuriated reproductive rights activists, leading some groups to petition the network to cancel it.

Critics call the commercial "extraordinarily offensive and demeaning," as it promotes the decision of one woman who went against her doctor's advice in an at-risk pregnancy.

The National Organization for Women said in a statement, "While NOW would never disparage any woman's reproductive choice, we believe that all women should be free to make the decision that is right for them. We also believe that this ad could potentially put women's health and lives at risk by promoting ideology over medicine."

NOW President Terry O'Neil told The Associated Press she found the ad "extraordinarily offensive and demeaning." She added, "That's not being respectful of other people's lives. It's offensive to hold one way out as being a superior way over everybody else's."

Cecile Richards, of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, in an e-mail message to supporters, said of the ad, "Mrs. Tebow weighed medical and moral considerations and decided what was right for her. She made her choice in private, and without government interference. That's exactly what we want every woman to be able to do."

"The truth is," Richards added, "the Tebows' experience is completely consistent with what Planned Parenthood doctors and nurses have learned from the millions of women they've served over nearly a century. Women take decisions about their health very seriously. They consider their doctors' advice, they talk with their loved ones and people they trust, including religious leaders, and they carefully weigh all considerations before making the best decision for themselves and their families.

"That's the way it should be."

The action fund is inviting the public to add their names to a statement affirming the right of every woman to "make important personal medical decisions for herself." Meanwhile, athletes Sean James and Al Joyner have made a powerful video advocating for women's health and rights. Watch it below.

NOW points out that women are vastly under-represented in high-level decision-making roles at the television networks. Despite this disadvantage, NBC managed to make the right decision last year, refusing to run an anti-choice ad during the Super Bowl, the group notes.

But, NOW says, "Anti-abortion forces are on the offensive. They don't want to help women make informed decisions - they want to, in the words of Focus on the Family, make abortion ‘both illegal and unthinkable.' We must stand up to their campaign to deny women their fundamental rights."

Meanwhile gay rights activists are also disappointed with CBS's decision to turn down an ad sponsored by a gay dating site called ManCrunch.com.

The 30-second ManCrunch ad shows two men on a couch watching a football game rooting for their respective teams. They both reach for chips at the same time and their hands touch. As music builds in the background they kiss, rather comically. See the ad below.

Sponsors of the ad say it's harmless, not controversial or sensational.

They were told by CBS that no spots were left to air the commercial. CBS claimed ManCrunch did not meet credit requirements to pay for the ad.

However critics charge anti-gay bias is the real reason behind the network's decision. Gay rights activists are calling for a boycott of the Super Bowl and CBS.

Athletes Sean James and Al Joyner:

"Mancrunch" ad:

Photo: (AP/David J. Phillip)

Pentagon leaders say they favor gays serving openly

John Wojcik — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 16:37:00 -0500

In a historic first, the Pentagon's top leaders called this week for an end to "don't ask, don't tell," the policy preventing gay men and lesbians from serving openly in the armed forces.

Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Michael Mullen announced the formation of a working group charged with developing a plan "to create full equality and full access to all of the benefits and obligations required by military service" in about a year's time.
Rea Carey, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Taskforce, commented as she prepared in Texas today for this weekend's annual gathering of her group.

"We thank Gates and Mullen for their strong statements. We have called on the president to find a way for people to serve openly, and it appears he is trying, though we are not satisfied with the length of this timeline," Carey said. "We continue to call for the immediate halt to all discharges of service members because of their sexual orientation until Congress fulfills its responsibility to overturn this archaic, unjust law."

The Taskforce continues to call out lawmakers, particularly Republican Senators, for their role in continuing the discriminatory policy. Several Republican senators on the Armed Services Committee, describing the current policy as one of "live and let live," favor continuing the current law.

"Committee members like Sens. Chambliss and Sessions have their head in the sand on the true impact of the existing law," said Carey. "Contrary to their statements, the real story is ‘Live and don't make a living. Live and lie.' The military has already had 16 years to think about this and other countries have been able to implement equality in the armed services. Let's get moving."

Gay rights organizations are insisting that the working group mentioned by Pentagon leaders draft a comprehensive new policy that guarantees full equality for gay and lesbian service members.

They want a policy, for example, that would not restrict gay or bisexual service members from exhibiting their sexual orientation on the job if straight service members are not similarly restricted.

They are also saying that the Pentagon should be obligated to provide for domestic partners and that the domestic partners of gay service members should receive the same treatment as domestic partners of straight service members.

Gay activists, meanwhile, are reminding the public that elimination of ‘don't ask don't tell" is only one step and that much more must be done to achieve full equality. They note that all over the United States workplaces, for example, remain dangerous places for LGBT people and that at those workplaces they can still be fired for who they are.
The National Gay and Lesbian Task force points out that it's still legal in 29 states to fire someone because of their sexual orientation. In 38 states, people can be fired for being transgender - not fitting in to gender stereotypes.

"The president's push to hold hearings on this is a step in the right direction," writes Laura Flanders in The Nation today, but "what we need now is an inclusive employment non-discrimination act that applies to all jobs, and all people, not just the military, and we need it now."

Photo: AP Jacquelyn Martin

Melanie Shouse, health care activist, dies at 41

Tony Pecinovsky — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 14:59:00 -0500

ST. LOUIS -- Melanie Shouse was 37 when she first felt the lump. She couldn't believe it. But she kept up her fighting spirit, especially for health care reform.

"When I first noticed a small lump on my breast, denial seemed the only option," Ms. Shouse told this news site at a Jobs with Justice, MO State Workers' Union rally held outside of a Department of Social Services office here.

Melanie Shouse died Saturday, January 30. She had been fighting cancer and the insurance industry for over 4 1/2 years. She was 41.

When she first found the lump in her breast she didn't know what to do. She couldn't afford the $5,000 deductible her catastrophic health insurance policy required.

"For weeks after diagnosis," Melanie told me, "I was in a state of near panic regarding how I would pay for treatment. I had no savings and no real assets, and no idea how I was going to cover these monumental co-pays and deductibles."

"And with this prize-winning pre-existing condition, I had no opportunity to seek a better private health plan. I was shut out of the market," she concluded.

Ms. Shouse, like many people throughout the nation, faced a recalcitrant and irresponsible health care system. She faced a system that cared more about profits than life. And until the end, Melanie bravely faced that system and spoke truth to power.

At a health care rally last November, Ms. Shouse said, "we need to take on the big insurance monopoly and liberate American families from the slavery of skyrocketing insurance premiums and canceled coverage, which leave millions of us in a state of perpetual fear and insecurity..."

In addition to advocating affordable health care for everyone, she was an activist for clean energy, economic reform and public transportation. Additionally, she was a long-time supporter of the People's Weekly World, the predecessor of the People's World.
Ms. Shouse grew up in Indiana, graduated from high school in Plano, Texas, and then from Texas A&M University with a major in biology.

She moved to San Francisco, where she met her future partner, Steve Hart, on a picket line. They were together for 20 years.

Melanie and Steve then moved to St. Louis and started Sweet Meat Stix, a well known meat market that sold only humanely raised beef.

Ms. Shouse requested that her body be cremated wearing her Obama T-shirt.

Friends and family plan a celebration of her life at 2:30 p.m. Feb. 14 at Central Reform Congregation, 5020 Waterman Avenue.
The family suggests memorial contributions to Women's Voices Raised for Social Justice, 412 Greenleaf Drive, Kirkwood, Mo. 63122; Susan G. Komen for the Cure, St. Louis affiliate, P.O. Box 790129, Dept. SK, St. Louis, Mo., 63179-0129; or St. Louis Jobs with Justice, 2725 Clifton Street, St. Louis, Mo. 63139.

Melanie Shouse will be missed.

Photo: Melanie Shouse, far right, and her partner, Steve Hart, at a health care rally in St. Louis. Tony Pecinovsky/PW

Against the odds, independent politics advance in Illinois election

John Bachtell — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 18:22:00 -0500

CHICAGO -- Voters in the Feb. 2 Illinois primary election seemed to send a message to politicians: We're fed up with corruption; we want solutions.

Illinois has the earliest off-year primary in the country, a factor that depressed voter turnout to a mere 25-30%, according to analysts.

With a record state budget crisis, Main Street depression and an impeached former Democratic governor and Democrat-controlled legislature, Republicans anticipate a comeback this year. Especially, the Republican Party sees the state's U.S. Senate seat, once occupied by President Obama, as a key race nationally. Rep. Mark Kirk, who handily won the Republican Senate nomination, immediately tried to employ "Scott Brown" tactics calling for an end to "one party" rule in Illinois. Kirk's challenge will be to unite the extreme rightwing and more moderate sections of the state Republican Party which has been in shambles for several years.

State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias, with significant labor backing, won the Democratic nomination for U.S. senate and will face Kirk this November. At his victory party, Giannoulias who was widely seen out of the three-way Democratic primary race as having the best chance to win in November, was surrounded by workers from HartMarx, a garment factory he fought to save. He hit hard on the need for jobs creation in his speech.

In close primaries for governor, current Governor Pat Quinn, a maverick on many issues, seemed to narrowly win against State Comptroller Dan Hynes, who comes from a Chicago political machine family. Quinn had the political misfortune of stepping into office in the wake of a scandal by his predecessor, Rod Blagojevich, and the biggest budget crisis in state history. The Republican race for governor is too close to call.

Hynes had enraged the progressive community and African Americans with an attack ad that repeatedly showed a speech by the late Mayor Harold Washington criticizing Quinn upon firing him from his administration. But the Hynes family, including the comptroller's father, had been one of the chief obstructionists to the Washington administration.

Cook County government has long been a bastion of political patronage and corruption. Now the economic recession has compounded the government's budget crises. The Cook County Board of Commissioners President race was closely fought among Democrats vying for the nomination. Current Board President Todd Stroger, appointed by Democratic Party bosses after his father had a massive stroke, ran against three other candidates. He came in last. Many voters were reacting to a recent sales tax increase that he implemented. Plus budget cuts have heavily impacted health care and other vital services.

Alderman Toni Preckwinkle won the Democratic nomination for Cook County board president. Preckwinkle, an African American and seen as the most progressive of the candidates, could be the first woman elected to the post. She put together a coalition that reflected the racial diversity of the city.

Cook County Democratic primary winners in heavily Democrat Cook County are seen almost as shoe-ins for the general election. Although there will be Republican and Green Party candidates on November's ballot.

But perhaps the most important results for Chicago-area independent politics came from the city's southwest side in the form of two races.

The first race was the decisive victory of Jesus "Chuy" Garcia over Mario Moreno in the Democratic primary for Cook County Commissioner of the 7th District. Moreno, a Democratic Party machine incumbent, is widely seen as corrupt and a do-nothing. Organizers see the Garcia win as a victory for grassroots political empowerment in the Mexican American community, as well as, progressive coalition politics seeking to address the widespread economic troubles of voters.

"Tonight all of Chicagoland and suburbia is watching this new southwest side," declared Garcia triumphantly to a jubilant crowd at a packed victory party in the Little Village neighborhood here. "We demonstrated that progressive politics are possible anywhere in the Chicagoland metropolitan area."

Many see Garcia's win as putting back on track the movement Garcia helped to lead as state senator when Chicago's infamous Democratic Party machine ganged up to defeat him in 1998. The defeat chilled the city's progressive independent movement. The 22nd Ward Independent Political Organization, of which Garcia is a leader and founding member, was one of the main groups still trying to carry on an independent, progressive and pro-working families agenda. Garcia was an early supporter of the late Mayor Washington and the first Latino elected to the state senate.

Garcia called for other communities to come forward with an alternative vision and to build broad unity around a new agenda for the metropolitan area that could challenge the old machine politics, much like the coalition that carried Washington to victory in 1983 and 1987.

The second significant race on the southwest side, which profoundly shook up the political scene was for state legislature. In his first race for public office, Rudy Lozano, Jr. lost by just 434 votes to Rep. Dan Burke, from one of the most powerful and connected families in the state. Lozano's campaign in the 23rd legislative district won 46% of the vote, but had to contend with a record low voter turnout across the state.

Lozano, an educator and community organizer, inspired an army of young grassroots activists and leaders, who with their courage and audacity refused to be intimidated by the machine thuggishness, intimidation and efforts to isolate Lozano's campaign. They braved Chicago's hot summer and cold, snowy winter to canvass the neighborhoods daily.

Garcia jumped into the race for commissioner late, teaming up with Lozano and bringing many veterans of previous campaigns with him. It helped open up resources and gave both campaigns the feel of an intergenerational movement.

The threat of Lozano's campaign so worried the establishment that powerful House Speaker Michael Madigan became personally involved, first dispatching his attorney in an attempt to drive Lozano from the ballot, then marshalling the remnants of the old corrupt Hispanic Democratic Organization to back Burke with a public display of Latino support while intimidating Latino political support for Lozano.

Efforts were made by both Madigan and the Burke family to deny any support for Lozano in the labor movement. Lozano still garnered endorsements from United Electrical Workers (UE), Workers United and Citizen Action Illinois.

Lozano racked up surprising vote totals in stronghold precincts of the Burke and Madigan machines. This also reflected the large demographic change on the southwest side and the desire for elected officials who are honest and responsive to a district hard hit by joblessness, home foreclosures, school overcrowding and concerns with gang violence, as well as, Latino representation in the state house.

"This is just the beginning," Lozano told the crowd at Little Village's Mi Tierra Restaurant. "Regardless of the outcome we have already won a great victory. We have a movement on our hands not just on the southwest side, but across the city of Chicago. We have put progressive independent politics on the map and it's here to stay."

As part of the Garcia-Lozano alliance, progressive independent Alderman Ricardo Munoz was elected to the State Democratic Party Central Committee.

In other races closely watched by labor and progressives, Robyn Gable, director of the Illinois Maternal and Child Health Care Coalition won the Democratic nomination for the 18th Legislative district being vacated by Rep. Julie Hamos. Gable who is part of the progressive movement around Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), vowed to continue the fight for health care reform.

Hamos had given up her seat to run for U.S. Congress in the 10th Congressional District, the seat currently occupied by GOP Senate nominee Mark Kirk. Hamos ran against Dan Seals, an African American who had challenged Kirk twice. Seals defeated Hamos and his victory in November would flip the seat for Democrats.

Photo: Jesus Garcia, left, addresses the victory party crowd Feb. 2 with Rudy Lozano. John Bachtell/PW

Communist Party and African American equality - a focus unequaled in U.S. history

Tony Pecinovsky — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 14:58:00 -0500

In honor of African American History Month, the third article in our series on the Communist Party's 90th Anniversary surveys a few documents written by leading African American party members in the struggle against racism. (See first and second articles in the series.) This article limits its focus to one document in each of the following decades - the 1940s, '50s, '60s and '70s.

The first document is a 1943 pamphlet, "The Negro People and the Communists," by Doxey A. Wilkerson. At this time, Wilkerson was the educational director for the Maryland Communist Party and lecturer at the Jefferson School for Social Sciences.

Before joining the Communist Party, Wilkerson served as chairman of the Department of Secondary Education at Virginia State College; associate professor of education and summer school director at Howard University; research associate of the President's Advisory Committee on Education; editorial staff member of the Journal of Negro Education; member of the National Advisory Committee on WPA Education Programs; and vice president for both the American Federation of Teachers and the International Labor Defense.

In his pamphlet, Wilkerson wrote, "Communists have always understood this need for Negro-white unity better than any other group in society. It was Karl Marx, father of scientific socialism, who during the Civil War pronounced the famous dictum: Labor with a white skin cannot emancipate itself where labor with a black skin is branded."

He continued, "In its struggle for the working class of our country, the Communist Party has always understood that the achievement of Negro rights is fundamental to the welfare of the people as a whole."

Wilkerson clearly understood that the struggle for African American equality and working class solidarity in general are connected; we cannot have one without the other.

He wrote, "The Communist Party has deeply influenced the thinking of hundreds of thousands of white Americans, especially in the ranks of organized labor. It has won increasing numbers of allies for the Negro people."

Undoubtedly, the Communist Party did (and continues to) place unique emphasis on the role of white workers in the struggle against racism.

The second document, from 1951, titled "We Demand Freedom!" reprints two speeches given by Communist Party leader William L. Patterson, who also served as national executive secretary of the Civil Rights Congress, a broad-based civil rights organization that many credit with laying the groundwork, building the infrastructure and training the cadre that would lead to the civil rights movement.

Like dozens of other Communist Party leaders, in the early 1950s Patterson was indicted under the infamous Smith Act, which in effect attempted to outlaw the Communist Party. During this period, communists were being rounded up in every state, jailed and denied their constitutional rights. Patterson's pamphlet reflects the fear and also optimism of the times.

"We face what must become the greatest American crisis in the fight to defend our constitutional liberties and human rights," Patterson wrote in response to the conviction of the first 11 Communist Party leaders imprisoned under the Smith Act.

He went on to write, "The continued existence of the Smith Act as an organic part of the law of the land spells the death knell of the democratic principles for which we have fought and bled. It must go in the name of democracy."

However difficult the struggle for democracy was, Patterson was optimistic, and his optimism was based on one fundamental idea, championed by the Communist Party: unity. "The fight to restore the Bill of Rights can and must be mounted," he wrote. "The American people are not indifferent to the needs of the moment. Unity in struggle is the guarantee of victory. White men, women and youth must understand that the key to the unity of progressive America lies in the unity of black and white."

In 1951, Patterson was 60 years old. He had committed his life to the struggle for workers' rights, equality and socialism; he had served as the national secretary of the International Labor Defense, where he led a worldwide struggle to defend the nine innocent Scottsboro Youth; he had helped save the Trenton Six -African American New Jersey youth wrongfully charged with murder; he led the defense of the Martinsville Seven in Virginia -black youth charged with the rape of a white women - andheaded the defense of Willie McGee; he presented the landmark study "We Charge Genocide" to the United Nations General Assembly, charging the United States with genocide of the African American people; during the 1960s he defended Angela Davis (who later became a member of the Communist Party) and other members of the Black Panther Party.

The third document is a1967 pamphlet, "Black Power and Liberation: A Communist View," by Claude Lightfoot. Lightfoot was a prominent Chicago party leader who ran for the Illinois Legislature in 1932 on the Communist Party ticket (receiving over 33,000 votes), served in the armed forces during World War II, was indicted under the Smith Act, and served as secretary of the Communist Party's National Committee in charge of the Department of Negro Affairs.

"Black Power and Liberation: A Communist View," provides a glimpse of the realities of the mid-1960s people's movement. "The present moment can be characterized as one charged with great economic, political and social turbulence," Lightfoot wrote.

He continued, "In every aspect of American life there is an unprecedented degree of dissatisfaction. The people are striking back. Sometimes they strike according to plan. Sometimes they erupt spontaneously. And sometimes they hit out blindly. But whatever the form they take, these are all struggles by the people against a system that hurts so many of them."

"Basically, this growing strife arises from a capitalist system in decay," he added.

On black-white unity Lightfoot wrote, "The struggle for Negro and white unity must go forward today in new forms. Yesterday's approach is too mild to meet the problems of this stormy period. The question is no longer one of just talking about black and white unity; the problem is how to forge such unity on the basis of complete equality for black people."

The forth document, "Black Liberation: A Draft Resolution," by Jarvis Tyner, isn't dated. It was first drafted in late 1969 and discussed in early 1970, around the time of the founding convention of the Young Workers Liberation League. It was a draft policy statement circulated by the National Organizing Committee for a New Marxist-Leninist Youth Organization - representing Communists, DuBois Club members and independent youth.

Tyner currently serves as executive vice chair of the Communist Party USA. He started his activist career in 1959 fighting against discrimination in employment, housing and social services in his native Philadelphia. Throughout the years he has served as national chair of the DuBois Clubs of America, leader of the Young Workers Liberation League and founding member of the Black Radical Congress,.

In "Black Liberation" Tyner wrote, "A multi-racial Marxist-Leninist youth organization that is weak and/or ineffective in its Black Liberation program, considering the centrality of this question to the United States, will find itself severely crippled in projecting its program in all other areas as well. Moreover, there is a need and tremendous potential for such a youth organization functioning within today's Black Liberation movement, giving added ideological strength and a stable, lasting, consistent quality to that movement."

Tyner continued, "It is the continued maintenance of second-class citizenship for the Afro-American that prevents the nation as a whole from achieving even the basic democratic rights. Racism is the chief ruling class weapon that divides and controls the U.S. working class and prevents it from propelling itself into the class struggle with sufficient vigor, militancy and unity. This holds everything back."

As Wilkerson, Patterson and Lightfoot argued in the 1940s, '50s and '60s, Tyner also argued that democracy cannot be achieved without the participation of the entire working class in the struggle against racism.

Tyner noted that there are three aspects to the oppression of African Americans.

First, he wrote, "there is national oppression. This basically identifies the all-class national character of Black oppression, meaning Black people as a national group have a common history (slavery specifically), are all victims of social ostracism and humiliation, economic discrimination, political inequality and racial segregation, regardless of station in life. There is, therefore, a basis for a broad unity of all Black people extending across class lines."

Second, Tyner added, "there is class oppression. As workers Black people are not just exploited but are super-exploited and a source of massive super-profits for the capitalists."

"The third aspect of Black oppression - racial oppression - refers specifically to racism and the physical features of Black people as a means by which they can be identified and singled out," Tyner concluded.

Throughout its 90 years, the Communist Party has placed special emphasis on the struggle against racism. While the forms of struggle have looked quite different from one decade to the next, the substance has remained the same. We find a consistency to the party's approach to the struggle against racism that transcends time and place; we find a focus, a determination, unequaled in U.S. history.

While the specifics of struggle changed dramatically - be it World War II and the defeat of fascism and the right to full participation in the war effort by African American soldiers, or the broad-based unity built during the McCarthy era that eventually led to the demise of the witchhunts, or the 1960s-era civil rights struggles and antiwar movements - one thing remained constant: the party's commitment to black, brown and white unity as the only way to build a more just, more democratic society.

Image: From the cover of William L. Patterson's "We Demand Freedom!"

Dallas re-lives its Black history

Jim Lane — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 11:43:00 -0500

DALLAS - The Dallas Peace Center jump-started Black History Month by inviting the Rev. James Lawson, one of the most famous of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s contemporaries in the civil rights movement, for a three-day tour beginning Jan. 31. The next day, Feb. 1, was the anniversary of the sit-in by African American activists at a Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro, S.C. It was a milestone of the movement.

Lawson organized the desegregation of downtown Nashville, Tenn. Among the many activists he mentored was young John Lewis, now a noted U.S. congressman. When bus-burning Klansmen nearly ended the Freedom Rides that were begun by another organization, Lawson's volunteers from Nashville went to Alabama and carried the actions through to a successful conclusion.

Here in Dallas, Lawson appeared at a special reception at the African-American Museum, church at St Luke's, a formal presentation at the Black Academy of Arts & Letters, and a luncheon with other veteran activists hosted by the Rev. L. Charles Stovall. Stovall is a local hero of civil rights struggles. A number of the long-time activists in attendance had attended the Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University. A great deal of local civil rights history owes its leadership to those Methodist ministers, both African American and Anglo.

The topic at the final luncheon was "How to Obtain Justice." Speaking there, the Rev. Lawson said, "What passes for justice in this country is sometimes criminal ... We have in this country a dominant political system that sees problems as an opportunity to create division and discord." He went on to say that there are 90 million Americans living in poverty. "Five women a day," he asserted, "are being murdered by their husbands, boyfriends, and others."

Foreign affairs soon entered the dialogue with condemnations of the U.S. role in supporting Israel's occupation of Palestinian land. Lawson commented, "American policy, military policy, is the number one problem for peace and justice in the world." He warned that imperialist forces planned to build military bases "up and down the East Coast of Africa" and that America was in danger of becoming a "colossal tyrant such as human history has never known."

Most of the questions for Lawson had to do with how to achieve unity in the struggles for justice. "By taking on specific projects that require mobilization, education and recruitment," he responded. He said he was especially proud of the way that his hometown progressives in Los Angeles had come together to support the Justice for Janitors organizing drive. "The issue," he said wisely, "is how you do the work."

Photo: Dorothy and James Lawson bring living Black history to Dallas. (PW/Jim Lane)

Blackwater swamp keeps on bubbling

Susan Webb — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 13:31:00 -0500

The Blackwater security company took its name from the water of the North Carolina swamp where the company is headquartered. After its involvement in a deadly shooting rampage in downtown Baghdad in 2007, the company changed its name to the innocuous Xe last year. It has also set up a proliferation of "affiliates" under various names. But Blackwater/Xe's swamp muck just keeps on bubbling.

The Justice Department's criminal fraud section has launched an investigation into whether Blackwater officials paid bribes to Iraqi officials, a possible violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, The New York Times reported Jan. 31.

The investigation was opened late last year, after the Times reported that top Blackwater executives had approved around $1 million in secret payments to Iraqi officials in an effort to "buy their support" for the firm to continue operating in Iraq after the Sept. 16, 2007, shooting spree in Baghdad's crowded Nisour Square.

The incident, which killed 17 Iraqis and left many others injured, created a furor in Iraq and drew worldwide condemnation. The Blackwater guards claimed they had acted in self-defense, but witnesses and victims say the guards, escorting a heavily armed convoy through Baghdad traffic, unleashed an indiscriminate, unprovoked attack. Victims said the guards had blocked traffic at the intersection and randomly opened fire at everything and everyone around them.

Blackwater also reportedly paid about $800,000 to families of victims in the incident. "It's unclear how much of those payments were settlements versus bribes," notes a report at MainJustice, a site that covers the Justice Department.

Blackwater's bribery efforts were apparently unsuccessful, as the firm was subsequently barred from Iraq.

On Friday, the Justice Department appealed a court decision that dismissed criminal charges against five former Blackwater guards for the 2007 Nisour Square shooting.

A U.S. district court judge in December threw out manslaughter charges against the guards over procedural issues. The dismissal sparked outrage in Iraq. Iraqi President Nouri al-Maliki said his government would sue Blackwater on behalf of the victims. Last month, Vice President Joe Biden, on a visit to Iraq, said the U.S. government would appeal the dismissal.

At the time of the incident, Blackwater and all other U.S. personnel in Iraq were immune from Iraqi laws under a controversial order issued by U.S. occupation chief Paul Bremer in 2004.

That immunity was lifted in the U.S.-Iraq status of forces agreement signed in December 2008, in the last days of the Bush administration.

It was not until then, more than a year after the shooting spree, that the U.S. Justice Department issued criminal charges against the guards. The 35-count Justice Department indictment issued Dec. 8, 2008, charged five Blackwater guards with 14 counts of manslaughter, 20 counts of attempted manslaughter and one weapons violation count.

If convicted, the men would face 10 years in prison for each manslaughter charge, plus additional time for the other charges.

Meanwhile, two former Blackwater security guards were arrested last month and charged with murder for their role in the deaths of two Afghan civilians in Kabul in May 2009. Actually they were working for a Blackwater/Xe "affiliate" by the name of Paravant.

After Blackwater gained notoriety over the 2007 Baghdad incident, the State Department said it would stop doing business with the company, but a Feb. 1 ABC News report says that "several other agencies, including the CIA and the Pentagon, continue to employ the controversial company, under a myriad of names, often via secret, classified contracts."

The ABC report says Blackwater/Xe is "operating subdivisions under a variety of altered handles intended to lower its public profile. In some instances the flagship company has tried to distance itself from these offshoots, insisting they are merely ‘affiliates.'

"Public records and a source familiar with their ownership suggest, however, that the companies are nothing more than new names on the same old Blackwater." A total of 20 different entities, with names like Paravant, XPG, Greystone, Raven, Constellation, US Training Center, GSD Manufacturing, and Presidential Airlines, all are owned by Blackwater founder Erik Prince and registered to the same address as Blackwater-Xe, the ABC report says.

Although Xe was barred from Iraq after the Nisour Square incident, the report says, "Xe and its rebranded affiliates still work in Afghanistan, and continue to provide security and training," often as subcontractors to big name firms like Raytheon.

Another Blackwater/Xe "affiliate," Select PTC, later renamed XPG, has been involved in clandestine operations in countries including Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and the Philippines, according to the ABC report.

XPG currently has a Pentagon contract paying it $17,000 per day, or more than $6 million a year, to provide security services along Afghanistan's border with Pakistan, says ABC.

Last month Xe submitted a bid for another contract, worth about $1 billion, for training and security in Afghanistan. The Pentagon has not yet made a decision on that contract.

ABC quotes Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., a member of the House Intelligence Committee, questioning why Blackwater under any name still gets government contracts.

"After everything that has gone wrong ... with Blackwater, I cannot understand why the U.S. government has anything to do with them," she said. "I have yet to hear a convincing reason for their continued work for the government."

Photo: A helicopter operated by Blackwater Worldwide (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:OH-6_Cayuse,_LZ_Washington.jpg)

Senate moving toward smaller jobs bill

John Wojcik — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 13:12:00 -0500

The jobs bill now being drafted in the Senate, only half the size of the one passed by the House in December, is "not enough for labor," AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka declared yesterday. "We must act on a scale that will be meaningful. We need more than 10 million jobs just to get out of the hole we're in."

Aides to key senators involved in the drafting say the bill being put together in the Senate focuses on tax credits for small businesses as a way of creating jobs.

The bill that passed in the House, a $154 billion measure, includes extensions of unemployment benefits and COBRA coverage and additional funds for food stamps. It also provides states with money to allow them to hold onto workers they were able to retain because of the administration's original stimulus package.

The labor movement and its allies are growing increasingly concerned about the fact that the bill in the Senate does not extend aid to the jobless and about what they consider the overall small size of the bill shaping up there.

Senators say they hope to pass a bill by mid-February.

According to aides to Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin, D-Ill., a co-author of the bill, the smaller Senate measure includes aid to state and local governments, money to build infrastructure and funds for alternative energy in addition to the job creation tax credit.

The labor movement is not alone in its push for a bigger bill.

Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, and the chair of the Senate's Labor Committee, said yesterday that he too favors a much larger bill. "Smaller steps won't do it," said Harkin. "We have a big recession and we need big steps to deal with it."

Photo: At a job fair in Santa Clara, Calif., Jan. 23. Paul Sakuma/AP

Expect major changes in No Child law, officials say

Pepe Lozano — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 12:44:00 -0500

The Obama administration is proposing major changes to the nation's No Child Left Behind education law. The bipartisan No Child was signed into law eight years ago by President George W. Bush. Critics say tens of thousands of schools have been branded as failing without any real resources or leadership to help improve them. Failing schools are often closed, stranding children, teachers and administrators, and throwing communities into turmoil.

One proposed change is to eliminate the 2014 deadline for making every U.S. child "academically proficient." Such a deadline is "utopian" and unrealistic, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said.

Other proposed changes include the way federal school financing is awarded. Federal funds to schools would be based on academic progress, rather than by longstanding formulas that incorporate the number of low-income students and other factors. Such an income-based formula for distributing tens of billions of dollars in federal aid have, for decades, been a mainstay of the annual budgeting process in the country's 14,000 school districts.

Standardized testing is perhaps the most controversial issue under the current law. Educators, parents and students argue that standardized tests have many flaws and cannot tell the whole story of academic progress and learning.

In a statement after President Obama's State of the Union address, National Education Association President Dennis Van Roekel said standardized tests do not give an accurate assessment of student learning. We have to "stop this testing mania. Students are so much more than a test score." Van Roekel said student learning can't be assessed accurately just "one day out of the year." He called for a more holistic assessment that could measure student learning, what they need to learn and the best practices for teachers.

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, is calling for an entirely new teacher evaluation system that includes drastic improvements. Such initiatives should incorporate state standards that define teacher competence, and mentoring and support to assist teachers succeed in educating children.

Most teacher evaluation today is flawed because its too closely linked to scores students receive on standardized tests, she said.

"The public education system, which teaches over 90 percent of our children, still operates on an Industrial Age model and does not prepare students for the 21st century economy," said Weingarten. "And No Child Left Behind has made it worse, creating the pedagogical equivalent of a factory, reducing learning to a conveyor belt of rote prep sessions and multiple choice tests."

Both unions say the current use of standardized tests result in "teaching to the test," which gives short shrift to all subjects other than math and English.

Under the No Child law the nation's 98,000 public schools are required to use standardized test scores as the final determinant in issuing a failing score to an entire school. A failing score means the school district would either close it down or fire the whole staff and radically restructure it. Such standards cause teachers, school employees, low-income students and minority communities even further hardships, which they say already lacks proper resources and adequate economic support.

Obama administration officials say such a process fails to differentiate between schools in perpetual failure mode and schools where low-scoring students are improving with help and high-performing schools, which still appearing to neglect some low-scoring pupil. The administration seeks to implement a system that would divide schools into more divisions, offer recognition to those succeeding and adequate resources to failing schools to help them improve. The administration is not planning to abandon the current law's commitment to closing the achievement gap between minority and white students. Encouraging teacher quality is also going to be a continued goal.
No Child has generated tremendous opposition over the years especially from educators who contend the system has set impossible goals for students and humiliates teachers and students when they fall short.

To date, the current law has labeled some 30,000 schools -- or almost one-third of the nation's public schools -- as "in need of improvement," meaning they have missed the test scoring goals.

Teacher unions seemed cautiously optimistic about reforming No Child, although there are sticking points that include teacher merit pay based on test scores, and guaranteeing adequate resources to the nation's schools, especially federal funding commitments to what are called "unfunded mandates." For example, special education funding from the federal government is only a small percentage of the total costs to educate special needs children under the federal law, Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.

Third graders at Jane Addams Elementary School in Springfield, Ill., watch and listen to President Barack Obama deliver a televised address to classrooms across America challenging them to work hard, set educational goals, and take responsibility for their learning, Sept. 8, 2009. Seth Perlman/AP

‘This fracking sucks,’ concerned residents say

Dan Margolis — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 15:34:00 -0500

ITHACA, N.Y. - Residents in this western New York college town, known for its picturesque waterfalls, have joined with others across Tomkins County and the state to protest a plan to extract gas from the ground by a process known as horizontal hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.

Fracking has residents in upstate and western New York worried about their towns, and people in other areas, such as New York City, worried about possible contamination of their drinking water.

The procedure aims at extracting methane from an underground layer called the Marcellus formation, composed of sediments and organic material millions of years ago. In some areas, such as the town of Marcellus, the formation is near the surface, but in most places it is one to two miles below ground.

To bring the methane up from so far down, the gas company must drill far below the earth's surface, and then extend a pipe out horizontally for up to a mile. At the tip of the drill bore, explosives are detonated while two to six million gallons of water mixed with harsh chemicals are forced in at incredibly high pressure. The explosion creates fracturing in the rock, and the water forces the methane back towards the well to be harvested. Afterwards, the original drill area is sealed. The process is repeated every four to seven years in another portion of the horizontal well, over and over for up to 40 years. Each time, millions of gallons of fresh water is used-and contaminated.

The process is riddled with problems, say local residents, who have formed a coalition of organizations aiming to stop the fracking process before it starts in the state.

Andrew Byers, of Shaleshock, the anti-fracking coalition, says that even if the gas industry is right in saying that the procedure is safe - which seems not to be the case - there will be a massive disruption in the local lifestyle.

"You have 7,000 to 10,000 five-acre [wells] being drilled into the woods, with access roads to each one," Byers told the People's World. "Then you have diesel engines that are moving up and down every single one of those access roads. And every time a single well needs to be fractured, you have 200 tanker trucks that drive to it, and then 200 trucks that drive away, carrying the water. You have small country roads that are about to be inundated by chains of semi-trucks carrying fresh water from our local streams in, and toxic water out."

In order to be able to do this, gas companies need permission from landowners. Currently, in Tomkins County, where Ithaca sits, they have succeeded in getting 33 percent of the land leased to them. Under state Department of Environmental Conservation rules, once a certain amount of land is leased, the rest of the neighbors in the area must also lease the land, in return for monetary compensation.

According to Byers, the gas companies have been using tricky tactics to convince people to buy land in the area.

"No one in their right mind is going to purchase a piece of land with a lease on it that allows this type of activity," one disgruntled Ithaca resident told the People's World. "Why would someone choose to live next to something like that?"

In addition, there is the possibility of contamination of the water supply. In Pennsylvania, where fracking has already started, a recent small spill has had tremendous consequences: 37 miles of dead stream.

Water from the ground is normally clean because it is purified by aquifers, areas of dirt and rocks that purify the water as it moves towards the surface. But the drilling that is being done will cut through aquifers, many activists point out. The drills will introduce industrial-strength, highly poisonous lubricants into the aquifers. Further, the millions of gallons of water that are injected into the earth are full of chemicals, some of which cause such things as reproductive dysfunction in humans at one part per trillion. Activists claim that there has not been any proof that the water injected can't seep into other areas and mix with drinking water.

The waste water from fracking, after being brought to the surface, must also be dealt with. Municipal plants in New York can't handle it, so it must be brought to Pennsylvania and Ohio, both places that are nearly at capacity. Consequently, the energy companies plan to inject it deep into the ground and seal it off for future generations to deal with.

"God forbid there's an earthquake in this area," remarked Byers. He added that if one stream or lake in the area becomes contaminated, it would be nearly impossible to prevent rapid contamination of water across much larger areas of the state.

The DEC has only 17 field inspectors to oversee the entire operation of thousands of wells.

On January 25, concerned residents took their complaints to the state capital, Albany, calling for the state to put a halt to fracking. They are also pushing for passage of the "Frack Act" in Congress, which would remove a 2005 law that exempts oil and gas companies from the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Clean Drinking Water Act, and the Superfund Act.

Photo: One of Ithaca's scenic waterfalls, which residents fear could be at risk. (PW/Dan Margolis)

Chicago youth to Obama, Congress: We want to work!

John Bachtell — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 14:54:00 -0500

CHICAGO - A group of African American youth and community organizers who gathered to watch President Obama deliver his State of the Union address were most interested in what the president had to say about jobs.

"I'm hoping he can touch on what he said during the campaign - helping out the poorer classes, jobs - the change (Obama campaigned on)," said Deandrae Manuel, 27, one of the group who watched the speech at the Peace Corner on Chicago's West Side last week. "The unemployment here is real bad, 60 percent among the youth I know and my family," Manuel said.

The Peace Corner is a storefront youth center in the Austin neighborhood. Like other African American communities, it has been devastated by unemployment. The area had the nation's seventh-highest unemployment rate in 2008, 20.9 perent, even before the recession hit.

Obama's emphasis on jobs creation comes as a new report by the Center for Labor Market Studies shows teenage and young adult unemployment in Chicago at Great Depression levels, after having dropped precipitously over the decade leading up to the current economic crisis.

The "Lost Decade" study shows 85 percent of African American youth, 70 percent of Latino youth and 67 percent of white youth 16-19 years old were not working. Seventy-two percent of teens were not working statewide.

Sixty-six percent of African Americans aged 20-24 were unemployed in Illinois, along with 33 percent of Latino youth and 35 percent of white youth of the same age.

A staggering 23 percent of African Americans 16-24 were both out of school and out of work in 2008.

Job losses over the last 10 years suggest this economic crisis is different and a cyclical rebound won't address the problems. Special measures need to be taken to create jobs for teenagers and young adults, many are saying.

"I wanted to hear more about jobs for me and the people going through what I'm going through, said Leroy Clay, 25, a youth counselor at the Peace Corner. Clay described the Austin community as struggling with poverty, violence and drug problems.

Speaking of the future, he said, "I'm kind of scared. I do want to be involved in my community, especially helping the kids."

Clay said there is a need for people to join together and even protest, to show "we're trying and pushing for change."

Elce Redmond, a community organizer with the South Austin Coalition, said he was hoping President Obama would "institute a national jobs program to put the most vulnerable to work, the ex-offenders, youth and the chronically unemployed.

"There has to be some bill in place that puts people back to work," said Redmond. "Something that will put 3.5 million back to work over the next five-year period to jumpstart the economy."

Redmond says there is plenty to do in the Austin community including retrofitting and rebuilding schools, fixing streets, rehabbing abandoned buildings, weatherizing homes and hiring social service workers and community organizers.

Redmond's group, the South Austin Coalition, is one of many organizations that Chicago Jobs with Justice called together ron Jan. 25 to begin mapping out a campaign to win massive jobs creation and stepped up government intervention to get the country out of the economic crisis. The local effort is part of Jobs for America Now, a rapidly growing coalition of over 80 national labor, civil rights and community organizations.

Lionel Carter, 25, an intern at the Peace Center and a graduate student where he is working toward a Master's degree in social work, said the president had great ideas, "but it seems to leave out certain populations," especially people who have been in jail, and immigrants."

He said he saw Congress as "a major hold up." Change has to be a collaborative effort - the president, Congress and "average people," he said.

The Peace Corner is run by a not-for-profit organization led by Father Maurizio Binaghi. It has developed successful programs for youth who have been ensnared in the criminal justice system. Its programs include GED and computer literacy classes, tutoring and legal counseling. A jobs program in collaboration with the Community Investment Corporation acquires abandoned buildings in the neighborhood and rehabs them. The youth get valuable skills in the construction trades and many have gone on to get jobs in the industry. Over 100 youth have gotten jobs in the last seven years.

"I liked what (Obama) said," commented Father Binaghi. "But I was expecting something different. There is a lot of emphasis on tax breaks and the middle class. But what about the poor? A lot about tax breaks for small business and corporations but what about resources for not-for-profits like ours that are doing good work?"

"This is such a needed program especially in an area like this where there are no jobs, and for youth who are considered unemployable because of mistakes they have made in the past," said Binaghi.

The Peace Corner would benefit from the Put America to Work Act of 2009 introduced by Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN). HR 4268 would create 1 million jobs by granting $40 billion to local governments to create jobs in the public or non-profit sector and small businesses that provide public services.

Obama proposed to make available funds for community banks to lend to small businesses. Unfortunately, it comes too late for the one community bank in the neighborhood, Park National. The bank was healthy and gave 27 percent of its profits to local charitable projects, but was taken over by the FDIC then handed over to US Bank, one of the nation's largest.

Photo: PW/John Bachtell

Ray of hope for environmental justice

Marilyn Bechtel — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 13:45:00 -0500

SAN FRANCISCO - What do a hazardous waste disposal plant, a refinery, a former power plant site and a housing complex under construction have in common? Answer: They all rain pollution on the predominantly African American, Latino and Asian American neighborhoods nearby, say community members fighting for environmental justice in northern California.

Residents of Bay Area communities including Richmond, East Palo Alto, San Francisco's Bayview-Hunter's Point neighborhood and others have been fighting such polluters - all corporate giants - for years.

Demonstrators from around the Bay Area and beyond joined hands Jan. 27 at the regional office of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency here, in solidarity with nearly 50 protesters from the tiny Central Valley town of Kettleman City. There, many residents are pressing for tests to determine what - including emanations from a chemical waste disposal facility - could be related to a cluster of birth defects and infant deaths.

And raising cautious hopes that they might really be heard and things might be different this time, newly appointed regional EPA director Jared Blumenfeld stood among the crowd, listening intently.

Kettleman City residents, and Greenaction for Health and Environmental Justice, which supports their struggle, say the giant toxic waste company Chemical Waste Management has been dumping highly toxic PCBs at a nearby landfill - the largest such facility in the western U.S. - on a permit that should have expired a dozen years ago. The permit is now being considered for renewal.

Of 20 infants born in the 14 months starting with September 2007, residents say five were born with oral clefts and three of the five died. Among the most moving testimonials at the rally was that of Maria Saulcedo, whose baby daughter, Ashley, died last year. Speaking in Spanish, she told the crowd, "I do not want this to continue for the babies born in Kettleman City. We want justice and we don't want the community where we live to continue to be contaminated."

East Palo Alto youth activist Annie Loya told the new administrator, "Year after year we have stood on these steps, and the message has always been the same. We need help, we need restrictions and regulations to be stronger ... People of color are here asking for help, for respect, for prioritizing our communities as other communities are prioritized," she said.

"My heart and prayers go out to the people who are here today and their families. None of us in any circumstances would want that to happen to us," Blumenfeld told the crowd. "When it happens to a neighbor, to someone else you've heard of, or within a timeframe, you have to ask questions, and that's why you're here today, for answers. I want answers, and I want to help bring those answers."

Blumenfeld said he is ordering an internal review "of every single enforcement action that has happened," and pledged to visit Kettleman City the following week, to see the waste facility and learn what residents think should be done. He then returned to his office for a post-rally meeting with Kettleman City residents, Greenaction and other environmental justice leaders.

In a telephone interview, Greenaction executive director Bradley Angel called the half-hour meeting "a very positive discussion." Angel said he believes EPA is "taking Kettleman City very seriously for the first time ever, and expressed hope the Obama administration's new EPA leadership is serious about environmental justice.

Saying the EPA has had "one of the worst records of any agency on environmental justice issues," Angel emphasized that it isn't yet clear what the president's stated commitment to environmental justice will mean in practice, but said Blumenfeld's promised internal investigation and visit to Kettleman City are very promising steps.

"The residents were very appreciative, but they also made clear the proof will be in the action," Angel said, crediting the "ferocious community environmental justice struggle" for "action we never saw before from any government official regarding communities of color and environmental racism."

In a significant victory, Angel said, the state Department of Toxic Substances Control said Jan. 28 that it will work with residents to develop an environmental sampling plan to test pollution in Kettleman City. Though the department would not hold up its part of the permitting, Angel said he believes the process will be slowed because it's impossible to acknowledge the need for testing and still try to ram through the permit.

Meanwhile, other communities continue their struggles. Marie Harrison, Greenaction leader from Bayview-Hunter's Point, told the World before the rally that government agencies are failing to deal with dust flowing from a former Navy shipyard, and from new housing the Lennar Corp. is building in the neighborhood.

"Our children are constantly being made sick," Harrison said, "yet the old regime just turned a deaf ear and a closed eye to us. We are hopeful the new regime is going to open up their eyes and ears."

Photo: Marie Harrison (right) listens to Maria Saulcedo, whose infant daughter was one of the babies who died last year. (PW/Marilyn Bechtel)

Suburbs see huge growth in poverty

Joe Sims — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 12:20:00 -0500

Suburbs have become new centers of poverty, according to a new study by the Brookings Institution. Over one-third of America's poor are now living outside of urban centers according to the survey released last week, entitled "The Suburbanization of Poverty: Trends in Metropolitan America, 2000 to 2008."

Startlingly, the study points out that over one-third of all Americans live below 200 percent of the federal poverty level: "In 2008, 91.6 million people - more than 30 percent of the nation's population - fell below 200 percent of the federal poverty level," the report says.

Suburbs saw their poor populations grow by a whopping 25 percent during this period, which does not include 2009, the height of the Great Recession. The suburban working- class vote is a major source of voter discontent as seen in the recent Massachusetts senatorial election. Currently the Senate is considering important legislation that could provide 200,000 to 300,000 new hires. Economist Paul Krugman points out however, that 10 million jobs are needed.

The Brookings study indicates the greatest poverty growth continues to be in the Midwest, with some exceptions. For example, the greater Youngtown, Ohio, and Hartford, Conn., areas are tied for first place with poverty rates of 33.5 percent. Grand Rapids, Mich., is over 30 percent.

Chicago too is one of the areas that have been hit hardest. "Chicago ranks fourth in the nation among cities that have seen a large shift of poor to the suburbs, according to the study released last week," writes the Chicago Tribune. "Nearly half of the Chicago area's poor live in the suburbs, the study shows."

In the current recession, the Sun Belt has become a new center of suburban poverty as well. The Brookings report suggests that "Western cities and Florida suburbs were among the first to see the effects of the "Great Recession," indicated by "significant increases in poverty between 2007 and 2008."

The report continues, "Sun Belt metro areas hit hardest by the collapse of the housing market saw significant gains in poverty between 2007 and 2008, with suburban increases clustered in Florida metro areas - like Miami, Tampa, and Palm Bay - and city poverty increases most prevalent in Western metro areas - like Los Angeles, Riverside, and Phoenix."

The Brookings report will come as no surprise to working-class families in Ohio. Already in 2008 the Warren Tribune pointed out that "a third of Trumbull County's population is on some sort of public assistance, and they're not just living in the cities anymore, says the head of the Job and Family Services department."

Tracing the same time period as the Brookings study, the Warren Tribune observes, "In May 2002, there were 14,172 recipients of food stamps and money for emergency car repairs, clothing, shelter and utility payments in the county. In April 2008, the number of recipients jumped 55 percent to more than 22,000. Communities like Cortland increased 63 percent; McDonald 92 percent; and Mineral Ridge 85 percent, the numbers show."

Overall the number of people living in poverty in the state of Ohio has jumped nearly 40 percent over the last decade. Phil Cole, executive director of the Ohio Association of Community Action Agencies, says this points to the need for jobs and job training programs. "Now people will say that we still cannot afford it," Cole said. "But can we afford to continue to pay Medicaid and unemployment instead?"

Ending ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ is the right thing to do

Pepe Lozano — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 16:04:00 -0500

Gay rights activists welcome President Barack Obama's recent remarks calling for an end to the U.S. military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy. Obama made the appeal at the end of his first State of the Union speech Wednesday.

"This year, I will work with Congress and our military to finally repeal that law that denies gay Americans the right to serve the country they love because of who they are," said Obama. "It's the right thing to do."

Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign, the country's largest gay rights group said Obama's remarks are a step in the right direction.

Speaking to Reuters he said, "Our country simply cannot afford this discriminatory law that hurts military readiness by denying patriotic men and women the opportunity to serve."

Most gay rights activists are pleased to know a timeline has finally been issued on the matter. However more concrete actions and fewer promises, need to be taken, they say.

Obama should have addressed suspending the disheartening number of servicemen and women who have been dismissed for their sexual orientation, said Rea Carey, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.

"The time for broad statements is over," she told the Washington Post. "The time to get down to business is overdue. We wish we had heard him (Obama) speak of concrete steps," she said.

Critics say "don't ask, don't tell" is actively being used to drive gay men and lesbians out of the military. Reports estimate more than 13,500 have been dismissed from the military since 1994 and an estimated 644 people have been discharged under the law since Obama took office. According to the Washington Post between 1997 and 2008, the Defense Department fired more than 10,500 service members for violating the policy.

In a recent editorial the New York Times states, "The policy of drumming gay men and lesbians out of the military is based on prejudice, not performance." The law, says the Times, singles out a group of Americans for second-class treatment, forcing them to hide who they are and to live in fear of being found out and discharged. "The policy hurts the military by depriving it of the service of a large number of loyal and talented Americans."

Analysts note Obama is trying to make good on his campaign promise to end the Pentagon policy that began in the early 1990s, especially with his gay and lesbian supporters.

The policy was signed into law in 1993 by then-President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, as a compromise after the military objected to his calls to open doors to the gay and lesbian community.

The measure known as "don't ask, don't tell" stopped the government from asking recruits or anyone in the military if they were homosexual, provided they did not disclose their sexual orientation.

It's time to "end don't ask, don't tell," critics charge.

Repealing the law however faces resistance from Republicans in Congress, most notably from Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who said repealing the measure would be a mistake. McCain argues the policy has been "successful" for the last 15 years.

Republicans are pledging to block any legislative push for repeal. Democrats cite polls indicating 69 percent of voters support allowing gays to openly serve in the U.S. armed forces and are urging the White House to change the law.

In a recent statement House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said, "We look forward to working with [the president] on this issue of fundamental fairness and supporting the patriotic Americans who serve - and wish to serve - our country in uniform."

Defense Secretary Robert Gates is expected to unveil the Pentagon's plan to prepare for repealing the policy at a hearing Tuesday. According to a Pentagon spokesman, Gates along with Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen will not lay out specific legislative proposals to repeal the law, but rather detail some preliminary steps that need to be taken inside the military in advance of formulating a legislative plan.

Gen. John Shalikashvili, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, agrees it's time to repeal the controversial law.

"As a nation built on the principal of equality, we should recognize and welcome change that will build a stronger more cohesive military," he said on CNN.com.

Currently there is a bill in the House of Representatives, the Military Readiness Enhancement Act, which calls for undoing the current law. Rep. Patrick Murphy, an Iraq war veteran and Democrat of Pennsylvania, is leading the effort to get it passed. The measure has more than 180 co-sponsors. No similar Senate bill exists.

Meanwhile gay rights activists say some progress has been made by the Obama administration recently, most notably the enactment of the Matthew Shepard Act, which makes hate crimes against gay people federal crimes.

However, they add much more needs to be done, including recognizing same-sex marriage at the national level and passing a federal law protecting gay workers from discrimination on the job.

Repealing "don't ask, don't tell" would be an important step forward, they say.

Photo: Iraq combat veteran Lt. Dan Choi, shown at a June 30, 2009 news conference, was discharged from the New York National Guard for violating the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy. Gloria Wright/AP

Audio: Communist Party responds to Obama's SOTU address

Jarvis Tyner — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 10:13:00 -0500

The following is an interview with Communist Party Executive Vice Chair Jarvis Tyner in response to President Obama's January 27th state of the union address. It was conducted Thursday January 28th.

Howard Zinn: people’s historian

Norman Markowitz — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 16:51:00 -0500

Howard Zinn died yesterday but he will live on, as future generations read his A Peoples History of the United States and say "Wow!" - comparing it to both the old and new conventional wisdoms that they are taught to accept.

I knew Howard Zinn, not well but enough to feel personally sad at his passing. His world view was that of the broad left ,what the sociologist C. Wright Mills in the 1950s called a "plain Marxist." He was both a scholar and an activist, an "organic intellectual," a "public intellectual," all sorts of things that others write about, build careers on, but rarely are. He was never an "end of ideology," "no value judgments" man in the 1950s and 1960s. Concepts like "post-modernism," post-Marxism, the new idealisms of subjectivity and identity, in their own way more difficult to challenge because of their slippery nature than the old dogmas, never had anything to do with his work.

Born into a working class Jewish family, Howard Zinn was a bombardier in World War II and experienced the horrors of war - horrors which never left him. The GI Bill enabled him to get a higher education, a Ph.D. in government. He came to teach at Spelman College, an African American college, in 1956 as the civil rights movement was beginning to advance. His support for radical students at Spelman cost him his job. In 1964 he became an associate professor at Boston University, where he would stay until his formal retirement.

There he began to write books and articles for people's movements, civil rights and anti-war, that establishment academics largely ignored and newspaper critics baited. But progressives realized that there was something special here, and young people, then energized by the civil rights and anti-war movements as many today still are by the Obama victory, read these books to give them intellectual nourishment against the processed and predictable intellectual junk food that they were expected to purchase and digest for the rest of their lives.

These works included SNCC: The New Abolitionists (1965), Vietnam: The Logic of Withdrawal (1967), and Disobedience and Democracy (1968).

In 1980, Zinn published the first edition of A People's History of the United States, which has been read by millions throughout the world and has given people everywhere a history of social struggle in the U.S. against those who advanced slavery in the name of defending freedom, conquest of the West and destruction of native peoples in the name of manifest destiny, and exploitation of working people and the establishment of a global empire in the name of democracy.

Zinn earned handsome royalties from this work, which he needed, since John Silber, the tyrannical president of Boston University, himself a leading establishment figure, froze Zinn's salary, denied him teaching assistants for courses which students flocked to, and vilified him in public and private.

Among other things, Zinn had been active in trying to form a union at Boston University, which Silber successfully smashed. I remember being asked a few decades ago to go to Boston University and participate in a Ph.D. defense for a student. I did it gladly in part because Howard Zinn, along with a former professor I knew from my days at the University of Michigan, was on the committee. I was supposed to receive modest compensation for my trip (the cost of gas and the hotel) and the relevant documents were prepared for this. Later I was told that the history department couldn't process this because President Silber, learning that Zinn was on the committee, vetoed it.

Actually, I was a little flattered. It was perhaps the only time in my life, in the numerous situations where I have been denied something for political reasons, that I was merely an "innocent bystander"" to the events.

Silber, once the highest-paid college president in the U.S. is gone and fortunately forgotten, except as a bad memory to those he hurt Howard Zinn will never be forgotten thanks to his work.

Zinn retired from Boston University in 1988 but kept on writing and speaking. I would especially recommend You Can't be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times (1994). You can also find him on YouTube declaiming against the U.S. empire, or read his later Terrorism and War (2002) on post 9/11. You can even read the silly red-baiting attacks on him by the pipsqueak pundits of the right, who come from Rupe Murdoch's central casting office at Fox. You can read and maybe see his play, Marx in Soho. Howard Zinn is here, there and everywhere.

Let me conclude this tribute to Howard with what are the last lines of an old edition of The People's History of the United States. Marlin Fitzwater, George H.W. Bush's press secretary, responds to reporters who question him about a presidential dinner where huge sums of money were paid by corporations for the "privilege" of attending. Fitzwater says honestly: "It's buying access to the system. Yes." When he is questioned about those who don't have money for that kind of access, Fitzwater replies, "They will have to demand access in other ways.

Zinn's final comments are: "That may have been a clue to most Americans wanting real change. They would have to demand access in their own way." And that today, in the face of the monopoly banks, the rapacious insurance companies and the still sacred cow of the military industrial complex, is exactly what they, with the help of the work of Howard Zinn, can and must do.

Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/86886338@N00/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

Officials covered up deaths of detained immigrants

Pepe Lozano — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 16:41:00 -0500

The New York Times and the American Civil Liberties Union under the Freedom of Information Act recently obtained documents, memos and videos suggesting government officials systematically covered up malicious abuses contributing to the deaths of 107 immigration detainees held in federal custody since 2003.

The ACLU filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit in 2008 demanding access to any and all documents and information in the government's possession related to the deaths of detainees at immigration detention centers.

"Silence has long shrouded the men and women who die in the nation's immigration jails," wrote Nina Bernstein in the Times. "For years, they went uncounted and unnamed in the public record," she said.

Even in 2008 when the Times obtained and published a federal government list of such deaths, few facts were available about these people and how they died, she writes.

"But behind the scenes, it is now clear, the deaths had already generated thousands of pages of government documents, including scathing investigative reports that were kept under wraps, and a trail of confidential memos and Blackberry messages that show officials working to stymie outside inquiry," says Bernstein.

According to Bernstein documents show how officials - some who still remain in key positions - used their role as overseers to cover up evidence of mistreatment, deflect scrutiny by the news media or prepare exculpatory public statements after gathering facts that pointed to substandard care or abuse.

For example in 2007 Boubacar Bah, 52, a Guinean tailor had been left in an isolation cell at the privately run Elizabeth Detention Center in New Jersey. Bah had suffered a skull fracture and was left without treatment for more than 13 hours before an ambulance was finally called. It's unclear how he suffered the head trauma.

A video was obtained in the agency's confidential files showing Mr. Bah face down in the medical unit, hands cuffed behind his back, just before he was sent to a disciplinary cell. The tape shows him crying out repeatedly in his native language, "Help, they are killing me!"

A Times reporter had called an immigration spokesman to inquire about the dying man and was rebuffed after the official said that without a full name and alien registration number for the detainee, he could not check on the case.

However records show the spokesperson, Michael Gilhooly, had already filed a report warning top managers at the federal agency about the reporter's interest and sharing information about Bah.

While Bah lay in the hospital in a coma after emergency brain surgery, 10 agency managers in Washington and Newark conferred by telephone and e-mail about how to avoid the cost of his care and the likelihood of "increased scrutiny and/or media exposure," according to a memo summarizing the discussion.

Officials were faced with paying $10,000 a month for Bah's nursing home care so they decided a "humanitarian release" to his cousins in New York was their best option. Bah's cousins protested the decision because they had no way to meet his medical needs.

Bah died days before the planned release.

The day after Bah died Scott Weber, director of the Newark field office of the immigration enforcement agency, recommended in a memo that the agency take the unusual step of paying to send his body to Guinea for burial in order to prevent his widow from showing up in the U.S. for a funeral and drawing news coverage.

In the memo Weber wrote, "I also don't want to stir up any media interest where none is warranted" and helping to bury Mr. Bah overseas "will go a long way to putting this matter to rest."

Bernstein highlights how an immigration spokesman, Marc Raimondi, in April 2007 warned top managers that a Washington Post reporter had asked about a list of 19 deaths that the civil liberties union had compiled. The list included a dying man whose penile cancer had spread after going undiagnosed in detention, despite numerous medical requests for a biopsy.

"These are quite horrible medical stories," wrote Raimondi, "and I think we'll need to have a pretty strong response to keep this from becoming a very damaging national story that takes on long legs."

Will Matthews, writing on the ACLU blog, notes these stories and the recent information obtained about the callousness of immigration officials underscores the urgent need for overhaul and reform.

"Among other things, the immigration detention system needs to be infused with far greater levels of independent oversight and transparency than which currently exists," says Matthews.

"Congress should pass immigration detention reform as part of any comprehensive immigration reform legislation. And our nation as a whole needs to divorce itself from its reliance on detention in the first place," he adds.

Matthews notes the vast majority of people the government has forced into detention didn't ever warrant being detained, but they nonetheless have been victimized by an unyielding commitment to detention and deportation without the kind of individualized determinations that are the essence of due process.

"The time for the kind of sweeping, systemic reform that is so desperately called for is now," writes Matthews.

Last year the Obama administration vowed to overhaul immigration detention.

Meanwhile civil rights groups and immigration reform advocates have long been concerned with the way immigration detention facilities are run and have called on Congress to pass reforms.

In a 2009 report the ACLU and the National Immigration Law Center found that immigration detention centers - which are a combination of privately run jails, federal prisons, and county facilities - routinely violate detainees' basic rights, including the right to adequate access to mail and telephone, sanitary living conditions, and legal and personal visitation.

In December, Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., introduced comprehensive immigration reform legislation to fix the nation's broken system. The measure calls for an overhaul of the immigration system and would require the Department of Homeland Security to:

- Ensure adequate medical care;
- Provide immigration council during hearings;
- Ensure an immigration judge review of all detention decisions; and
- Clarify that immigration enforcement authority belongs exclusively to the federal government.

Gutierrez's bill has attracted national support and many say the measure is the first comprehensive immigration reform bill that aims to rectify some of the egregious immigration practices set in place since 1996.