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A Primary Challenge for Obama?

One can only hope progressive momentum builds around this idea:

Worried the liberal voice is being drowned out in the presidential campaign, progressive leaders said Monday they want to field a slate of candidates against President Obama in the Democratic primaries to make him stake out liberal stances as he seeks re-election…

“What we are looking at now is the dullest presidential campaign since Walter Mondale — and that’s saying something, believe me,” [Ralph] Nader told The Washington Times. Continue reading “A Primary Challenge for Obama?”

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Pragmatic and Progressive, Driver’s Licenses for All Residents

This week the Governor made the progressive case for issuing driver’s licenses or driving permits to state residents, regardless of their immigration status:

Responding to questions about a vote by the Board of Governors for Higher Education to approve in-state rates for undocumented students, Chafee said being able to drive would help people who need transportation to go to school or work or to look for work.
He said has spoken with officials in Utah, which he said is the only state that has established a special class of driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants.

“I’m working on it,” he said. Continue reading “Pragmatic and Progressive, Driver’s Licenses for All Residents”

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Moving in the right direction: Woonsocket event celebrates electric vehicles, RIPTA, and intercity bike paths

In order to avert inexorable and ever-worsening climate crisis, we need to get moving. That was the message of Saturday’s Moving Planet RI event, jointly hosted by the Sierra Club RI and the YWCA of Northern Rhode Island.

Moving Planet was an event that took place not only in Rhode Island, but around the world, coordinated by 350.org, an international movement named in honor of the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration deemed by scientists to be the maximum that the planet can sustain without suffering rapid and drastic repercussions for humans and other species. Each year in September, community groups in all corners of the globe get together in their respective locations to advocate for lessening carbon dioxide concentrations to that target level. Those concentrations are currently at 390 ppm and climbing; reaching the 350 ppm target will be possible only through a focused effort on a global scale.

Continue reading “Moving in the right direction: Woonsocket event celebrates electric vehicles, RIPTA, and intercity bike paths”

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State Representative Dan Gordon arrested by RI State Police

The esteemed (sic) Representative from the East Bay was arrested over the weekend on multiple charges.  Included in these were driving with a suspended license and evading police.  He had a warrant out for his arrest.  We also learned that he has a violent crime history – shocking, right? WPRI and PROJO both had the scoop and more details on their sites.

P.S. Dan sent me a photo from jail letting us know he is alright.  He mentioned something about after all the fun he had this weekend in jail that he changed his mind on that club in Tiverton and wanted to start one of his own, but I didnt catch all of it…

 

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What’s the solution?

 Julia Steiny wrote a piece in GoLocalProv today making the case against the use of teacher seniority in pretty much any school situations.

I am no great lover of seniority. The school I work in was forced to make some layoffs last year, and a teacher recognized by most students as one of the best teachers in the whole school had to leave because she was one of the newest teachers. Anyone who would argue this is a perfect system has an imperfect understanding of our schools.

But I want to know what the alternative solution is!

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T is for Theocrat

Progressives have long been skeptical of “grassroots” movement born with a rant on corporate media and promoted by folks like former House majority leader, Dick Army, and a bevy of right-wing billionaires. But that hasn’t stopped the right-wing from claiming the Tea Party is “surprising new political force” out to upset the status quo. So which is it? Surprise, surprise!

Beginning in 2006 we interviewed a representative sample of 3,000 Americans as part of our continuing research into national political attitudes, and we returned to interview many of the same people again this summer. As a result, we can look at what people told us, long before there was a Tea Party, to predict who would become a Tea Party supporter five years later. We can also account for multiple influences simultaneously — isolating the impact of one factor while holding others constant.

Our analysis casts doubt on the Tea Party’s “origin story.” Early on, Tea Partiers were often described as nonpartisan political neophytes. Actually, the Tea Party’s supporters today were highly partisan Republicans long before the Tea Party was born, and were more likely than others to have contacted government officials. In fact, past Republican affiliation is the single strongest predictor of Tea Party support today. Continue reading “T is for Theocrat”

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Make Serious Investments to Create Good Paying Jobs for Rhode Islanders

Dear Mr. President:
Over recent weeks I have visited Main Street small businesses and toured manufacturing facilities throughout Rhode Island’s First Congressional District. I have met with jewelry makers, boat builders, and creators of cutting edge medical devices and aeronautical components, and heard from restaurant owners, small textile retailers, and information technology start-ups. Across this diverse array of interests I hear one common and constant concern – in order to survive, prosper, and grow, entrepreneurs and seasoned small business owners alike need consumers, and those consumers need jobs.

Since becoming a member of Congress, I have hosted Town Hall and Tele-town Hall Meetings in communities across my District in an effort to hear directly from constituents. With unemployment in my state and across the country at unacceptably high levels, we must heed concerns from Main Street and the families we serve. In light of recent Congressional Budget Office projections that forecast slow economic and job growth, and in advance of your announcement outlining recommendations to spur job creation, I would like to take this opportunity to share the views of constituents in Rhode Island’s First Congressional District and some of my thoughts on this critical matter.

Rhode Island was the first state in the northeast to enter the recession three years ago, and at 10.8%, our unemployment rate continues to be among the nation’s highest. As you have consistently expressed, our government must set priorities, cut what does not work or is not needed, and make the investments that will create jobs, sustain our economy today and into the future, and ensure our ability to compete in the world.

Nationally, the manufacturing sector has been a bright spot even during these trying economic times. If this vital economic engine is to be sustained, we must continue our investments in programs that help manufacturers compete in a global economy, retool to be more efficient and effective businesses, and retrain the workforce so that skill sets utilized in declining sectors can be transferred to those that are expanding. This is the driving force behind my Make It In America Block Grant legislation and a number of common sense, job- creating bills that have been introduced in the 112th Congress to strengthen and modernize our nation’s manufacturing industry. I strongly encourage your Administration to carefully consider these proposals that will help bolster research and development, expand advanced manufacturing capabilities, and level the playing field with our foreign competitors.

If we are going to strengthen our manufacturing capabilities and make new products here at home, then we must have the ability to execute the timely and effective transport of goods, people, and ideas. This work will require significant investments, both public and private, in our nation’s infrastructure. A critically important first step in this effort is the passage of a robust surface transportation reauthorization.

Building and repairing our nation’s highways, roads, and bridges now is not only a surefire job-creating strategy, this important infrastructure work also helps advance the broader economy, enhances the safety of our citizens, and is a far more cost-effective investment today than it will be in the years ahead. Without a doubt, we must work collectively to rein in our nation’s debt. However, numerous studies, such as the Infrastructure Report Card from the American Society of Civil Engineers, clearly demonstrate that we cannot be responsible stewards of our nation’s finances if we continue to allow the price-tag for infrastructure improvements to escalate with each passing year.

This vital work also extends beyond roads and bridges, and includes our nation’s water systems, ports, schools, public parks and facilities, power grids, and telecommunications. The nearly 14 million unemployed Americans, more than 61,000 of which reside in Rhode Island, demand bold action from their government. When our nation endured the economic strains of the Great Depression, it was bold action in the form of the Works Progress Administration, the Civilian Conservation Corps, and the Public Works Administration that helped put Americans back to work, building and repairing our nation’s infrastructure.

While labor and financial market conditions in the 1930s may have been vastly different than today, what remains the same is the underlying notion that a robust investment in rebuilding our nation’s roads, bridges, and schools will generate job growth and enhance our ability to compete in the global economy. Investing today in building and restoring our nation’s infrastructure is not only smart job-creating policy, it is also smart fiscal policy – as continued deferred maintenance drives the future costs of repairs higher and higher. I strongly urge that your recommendations for job creation include a range of options that encourages both public and private investment in this important work – including the creation of an infrastructure bank and enhanced, innovative, and effective funding opportunities for states, cities, and towns that will put people back to work on priority infrastructure projects.

At the same time, we must recognize that a comprehensive proposal to create and sustain jobs in America must include initiatives that support workforce training and small businesses. Job growth today and into the future, especially for our nation’s manufacturing and construction sectors, requires enhanced support for effective on-the-job training programs, and greater collaboration between our elementary and secondary schools, higher education institutions, and employers in developing multiple career pathways for young adults and improving the skills of unemployed and underemployed Americans. Furthermore, as a member of the Committee on Small Business, I strongly encourage your continued efforts to expand small business access to capital, the lifeblood of small start-ups and longstanding businesses alike. The more than 95,000 small businesses in Rhode Island make up 96% of the state’s employers. They have endured the brunt of our nation’s economic downturn, and our country’s full and sustained economic recovery requires that small businesses have access to the resources that will allow them to form, grow, and prosper.

As the debt ceiling debate underscored, there is strong disagreement about the best approaches and the appropriate role for government in creating jobs. There is no shortage of ideas on how to put people back to work and spur economic growth in the near-term. But, the time for bold action is now. On behalf of my constituents in Rhode Island’s First Congressional District, I thank you for this opportunity to give voice to the small businesses, manufacturers, builders, and unemployed as you prepare your proposals. I look forward to hearing your recommendations, and working to find common ground across the aisle and between levels of government to help put Americans back to work.

Sincerely,

David N. Cicilline

Member of Congress

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Why you can’t simply can’t trust Education Reformers with the facts

Because they leave most of the real facts out:

from today’s POLITIFACT:

But the mayors’ statement leaves out an important fact: The DRA is a test that very few students take because it is given only in schools that don’t go above second grade. In all other elementary schools, the state uses the New England Common Assessment Program (NECAP), a series of reading, writing, math and science tests used by Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Vermomt and Maine. Those tests start in grade 3.

And as I wrote earlier this year, how did BVP do on the NECAP?

The NECAP scores are out and the policy wonks will be going over them I am sure.  Here is a little tidbit in the data.  The wunderkind of the charter school movement, Blackstone Valley Prep, AKA, the Mayoral Academy, with all of their hype, score well below the state average on the test in both reading and math.

The State average in reading is 71%: Mayoral Academy score? 61

The State average in math is 55%: Mayoral Academy score? 48

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Labor Day Address

labor day address

1934 was a tumultuous year for the Labor Movement in the United States, as the country continued to struggle its way out of the Great Depression. The Labor battles that raged in 1934 were preceded a year earlier with a sense of hope and promise for workers struggling for the necessities of survival against brutal oppressive employers. Following the Depression in the first year of Franklin Roosevelt’s presidency, a series of economic programs were implemented to aid in the recovery of our country. In June of 1933, Congress passed the “National Industrial Recovery Act”, which was the first actual Bill to guarantee and protect Collective Bargaining rights for workers in the United States.

Immediately, large scale organizing campaigns began in earnest up and down the industrialized east coast and other industrialized centers in the country. Yet, enforcement of the Act by those very individuals charged with its administration was woefully inept and met with stiff resistance from business leaders. Frustrated Union organizers fought with little success for the Collective Bargaining promised by the NIRA.

Once again, the stark reality became clear to the workers and the unions.

Once again, the government’s empty promises were not kept.

Once again, workers would be forced to win Democracy in their work placed – the hard way.

 

THE BATTLES LINES WERE DRAWN

In 1933 and 1934 workers organized across the length and breathe our Country.  Fed up with speed-ups, oppressive, unsafe working conditions, child labor and company control of too many aspect of their lives.  In those truly epic years workers in the United States fought for dignity and respect in their workplace by using the only weapon they had in their arsenal.  In 1934 workers hit the bricks and held fifteen major strikes.  Most notably were four strikes which labor historians agree were the most important strikes in the United States history.

  • The “Toledo Auto Lite Strike” in 1934, which pitted 6,000 automotive workers in a five day running battle with 1300 armed members of the Ohio National Guard.  Known as the “Battle of Toledo” the clash left two strikers dead and over 200 wounded, the victory led to wide spread unionization in Toledo and was the beginning of the United Auto Workers rise to prominence in organizing the automobile manufacturing industry.
  • The Minneapolis Teamsters Strike in 1934 which changed the city of Minneapolis.  The strike paved the way for mass organization of the over-the-road drivers throughout the Midwest and opened the doors of union membership to thousands of Minneapolis workers in other industries.
  • The 1934 West Coast Longshoreman’s Strike lasted 83 days; triggered by sailors and culminating in a four-day general strike in San Francisco which crippled the local economy and broke the back of the open-shop company unions and led to the unionization of all of the West coast ports of the United States.
  • The fourth and largest strike was the 1934 General Textile Strike which was the largest strike in United States History; involving over 400,000 textile workers from Alabama to Maine.  The strike began over fair wages and working condition in an industry awash with unfairness, abuse, child labor, dangerous working conditions, and minimal pay.

In September of 1934 in Rhode Island, the Great Textile Strike engulfed the primary industry in the Ocean State and required the calling out of the National Guard for riot duty.  By the second week of the strike, tensions between workers and owners erupted into open conflict centered in Saylesville, now Central Falls, where we stand today and in Woonsocket.  On September 10th, the continued misuse of force by deputy sheriffs, closely allied with the owners of the huge Sayles Textile Complex, provoked large scale rioting in and around the Sayles Bleachery and streaming out along Lonsdale Avenue and into this very cemetery where workers fled from guards and sheriffs armed with rifles and machine guns.  The workers used the headstones to block themselves from the incessant volley of bullets trained on them.

Gravestones tell the story of those who rest below them. And in this cemetery some of the gravestones tell another story.  Some of them carry the scars of machine gun bullets, as did so many of the workers who were wounded in that massacre and two who would not leave the cemetery alive.

The ultimate sacrifices born by workers in the strikes of 1934 and perpetuated upon them by guardsman, vigilantes and company thugs are unparalled in labor history even to this day.

Those workers earned and deserve our respect and recognition for paying the ultimate price of martyrdom so that others might be free from worker exploitation.

In 1934, thirty-three workers became martyrs in the Labor Movement:

In Florida – Frank Norman, an organizer kidnapped & murdered.

In George – textile workers Leon Carroll, Reuben Saunders and

V. Blalock were shot and killed.

In Texas – Charles Shapiro murdered on a picket line.

In Alabama – coal miners Edward Woolens, H.C. Collins and Ed Higgins were killed.

In Louisiana – longshoreman Murphy Humphrey murdered by sheriff’s deputy.

In Kentucky – miner Pezzy Adkins – ambushed and murdered by vigilante.

In South Carolina – textile workers John Blackborough, Lee Crawford, E.M. Knight, Ira Davis, Claude Cannon, C.L. Ricker and Maxie Peterson – ALL murdered by guards at the Chiguola Mills

In North Carolina – Ernest Riley killed on a picket line.

In Chicago – bakery worker Joseph Piskondwicz killed on a picket line.

In Wisconsin – Leo Wakefield and Henry Engleman were shot down by deputy sheriffs.

In Minnesota – teamsters Henry Ness and John Belor were killed by police.

In Washington – Shelby Daffron and Otto Heland, both longshoremen, lost their lives

In California – Longshoremen Howard Sperry, Nick Bordois, Richard Parker and John Knudsen killed during the Longshoremen Strike.

And in September 1934, textile workers in Woonsocket, Rhode Island, Jude Courtemanche & Leo Rovette fell from tyranny’s bullets as did Charles Gorzynski and William Black on this very hallowed ground in Central Falls where we stand on this Labor Day 2011.

My brothers and sisters, since we stood here on Labor Day one year ago to commemorate the Rhode Island martyrs of the Great Textile Strike of 1934 by erecting this memorial on this spot in the Moshassuck Cemetery to the martyrs of the Saylesville Massacre the renewed attack on the Labor Movement here in Rhode Island and nationally, strongly mirrors the oppressive treatment of workers so long ago.

Nationally, the Supreme Court, in a 5 to 4 decision in the case of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, made it possible to allow unlimited amounts of corporate money into the United States political system.  This played a heavy hand in the election of new anti-worker elected officials and the attacks that followed.  – and this madness is what followed in 2011:

Since the November 2010 election, the Big Business/Anti-worker agenda across the United States has introduced Right to Work legislation in fifteen states.

In several states, legislators have attempted to eliminate automatic dues deductions.

In Minnesota – legislators have attempted to take away whistle blower protections for meat packing workers, and over-time pay away from construction workers.

In Maine – Republican Governor Paul LePage removed a mural honoring workers and Maine’s’ labor history from the state’s Department of Labor Building.  He followed that with a Right to Work Law.

Republicans in New Hampshire pushed Right to Work.

In Missouri, in what can only be described as a Tea Party “side- show”, – Republican legislators tried to roll back child labor laws.

In Oklahoma – the Republican controlled legislature passed a law that requires a parent’s consent for teenagers working in a grocery store to be part of the Union.

Republican legislators in Tennessee want to make union rallies and picket lines a crime!

In Pennsylvania – the Republican Governor wants to privatize the state-run liquor stores, jeopardizing more than 500 million in revenue and threatening the wages & benefits of Union members who work in those stores.

In Ohio, the first state to legalize public sector collective bargaining – the Republican super-majority meant that the legislature passed and Governor Kasich signed into Law SB-5 – stripping Ohio’s public employees of the right to bargain collectively with their employers.

And in Wisconsin – the legislature passed and Governor Walker signed a budget that denies teachers, fire fighters and state workers the fundamental right to bargain collectively.

 

RHODE ISLAND SINCE LAST LABOR DAY 

The Westin Hotel in Providence where workers are represented by UNITE/HERE Local 217, attempted to impose a 20% pay reduction, an increase in health insurance costs, and an outsourcing of the jobs of many union workers.

In Providence, the labor movement was once again under attack and used as a scapegoat for the economic woes of the states and municipalities when the School Boards voted to fire all 1,926 teachers on February 4th.

After months of bargaining in good faith, Laborer’s Local 1322, Cranston Bus Drivers were faced with a bleak future when the city council recommended the privatization of the town’s school bus service.

At Amica Insurance in Lincoln, the company eliminated the jobs of 55 maintenance workers by privatizing their department to a contractor with a history of NLRB violations.

IBEW members at Local 2323 were forced out on strike when Verizon officials attempted to take back 50 years of contract negotiations by eliminating job security, slashing pays and benefits, and sending jobs overseas.

And RIGHT HERE in Central Falls, the site of the riots of 1934, the Rhode Island Department of Education waged war on the public school teachers halfway into a three-year contract.  On February 23rd, the Central Falls Board of Trustees voted to issue termination notices to all Central Falls High School teachers.  The Board read each name in a crowded auditorium.

Like the textile strike 77 years ago, the labor strife in Central Falls was once again national news.

AND WHAT DID LABOR DO?

We fought back as we always do.

We stopped the right wing’s agenda to legislate Right to Work Laws in all fifteen attempts this year.

We stopped them from repealing the Minnesota Whistle Blower Act of 1987.

Governor Guy LePage of Maine lost his bid to turn Maine into a Right to Work State.

In New Hampshire, Governor Lynch vetoed the Tea Party’s Right to Work Law the moment it hit his desk.

In Missouri, the anti-union state Senate would not have its way.  We soundly defeated their attempts to eliminate child-labor laws.

Pennsylvania will not be privatizing their liquors stores thanks to an extensive lobbying and education campaign by organized labor.

In Ohio, Governor Kasich’s approval numbers are in the 30’s and his anti-union Collective Bargaining Bill will be on the November 8ballot where the latest poll number show 56 – 32 to repeal.

In Wisconsin, Governor Walker’s numbers are worse than Governor Kasich’s’ after stripping public unions of collective bargaining rights.  And two safe Republican Senators lost their recall election and were replaced by pro-worker candidates.

 

AND WE FOUGHT BACK IN RHODE ISLAND TOO!

THE STATE HOUSE MASSACRE OF 2010

In November the members of Rhode Island unions sent a message to the State House… “If you’re going to run as a Democrat, than you damn well better VOTE like one!” The members proved it by working hard to defeat six incumbent democrats hostile to working families and replaced them with worker friendly democrats.

Westin workers, members of UNITE/HERE Local 217, ratified an agreement after a successful boycott with significant gains to their contract and no privatization of union members’ jobs.

The Providence Teachers Union reached a new three-year Agreement; with all termination notices rescinded.

After intense pressure from organized labor and the general public, the Cranston School Committee decided to end their fool-hardy quest to privatize the ninety bus drivers, members of Laborer’s Union, Local 1322.

IBEW, Local 2323 workers are back to work after being forced out by Verizon three weeks ago after the Company agreed to streamline negotiations and bargain in good faith.

And last week, the Rhode Island Board of Regents voted 7 to 1 to reject charter schools in Cranston.

They can knock us down, but they can’t lick us – this IS Labor Day – in the state which held the first Labor Day Parade in the United States.

And every working man and woman in this state owes a great debt of gratitude to those who were knocked down and got up before and to all of us who continue to fight back today.   We ARE the Labor Movement!

And we say to ALL of you workers – whether you are union or not –

YOU’RE WELCOME!

You’re welcome for:       Eight-hour day

You’re welcome for:    Forty-hour workweek

You’re welcome for:    Child labor laws

You’re welcome for:    Health insurance & Pension benefits

You’re welcome for:    Paid vacations & paid sick days

And you’re welcome for this Labor Day Weekend and every other weekend of the year – because…..

WE ARE THE UNION AND DAMN PROUD OF IT!

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Dan Gordon REMOVED from GOP Caucus by a majority vote

From Kathy Gregg @ Projo:

“PROVIDENCE, R.I. – The tiny House Republican caucus has voted to “expel” one of its members: freshman Rep. Daniel P. Gordon Jr. of Portsmouth.

House Minority Leader Brian Newberry confirmed Wednesday that 6 of the 10 House Republicans voted Tuesday afternoon to expel Gordon, at a caucus held at the State House. The meeting was held an hour before the full House and Senate gathered, for the first time in months, for a briefing on the state’s looming pension-crisis.

The reasons for this rare act are not yet entirely clear and Gordon, who describes himself as a self-employed contractor, was not immediately available for comment.”

Not available for comment?  Grow a pair Danny Boy!

“But in response to an inquiry, Newberry made public the letter he sent Gordon on Wednesday, and an earlier letter in which he took Gordon to task for making derogatory comments about his Republican colleagues in various online forums.

In a September 2 warning letter, Newberry said: “Many, many of the comments I have seen have crossed the line into personal invective and attack … It is simply not permissible for you to launch personal attacks against your colleagues. Disagreement is fine and no one is required to like any other member of the House on a personal level.”

But “none of that excuses your conduct or lack of decorum. Your actions are unbecoming of someone holding your office. If they do not cease immediately, I will have no choice but to take the necessary steps to impose appropriate sanctions up to and including possible expulsion as a member of the House Republican Caucus.”

His letter to Gordon on Wednesday began: “I write on behalf of the House Republican Caucus in follow-up to recent conversations and to my letter of September 2nd to inform you that the Caucus met last night and voted to expel you as a member. ”

I said from about a month after he was elected that Dan Gordon was no good.  He is a racist, a homophobe, and a low-life.  I couldnt be happier that this happened to him.  Now he can know once and for all that he IS NOT welcome.  You keep heading up to the State House to play Representative Big Dan, no one needs or wants you there though…

Looks like an easy win for this seat next year…

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They Are Not Starving, They Are BEING Starved!

Like a banal refrain in American discourse on Africa they ring out: death, disease, war torn, drought, famine, starvation, etc. The list could go on but it would not matter. Like the white noise of a humming fan on a hot summer day, we hear the Western refrain on Africa, yet, somehow we do not. That Africans starve, that they experience famine is common “knowledge”. But what if something is true at the very moment that it is untrue?

This is exactly the case with current mainstream reporting on the so-called drought induced famine in the Horn of Africa, which is threatening the starvation of millions of Africans. We are led to believe that the current drought (which many specialist attribute to climate change) and enduring “tribal” [“ethnic” is the appropriate term] conflicts are the root causes of food shortages in the horn of Africa. Nothing could farther from the truth!

There is a single country in Africa, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which has enough arable land to feed the entire rest of the Continent with food left to spare. Africa is the most resource rich land mass on the planet. Western nations (and increasingly China) have thrived off of the stolen natural and human resources of Africa for Centuries. From the extraction of coltan (a metallic mineral which allows cell phone batteries to retain a charge), to the displacement of Africa’s best prepared minds (brain drain) through Western neo/colonialism; from the guinea pig testing ground for pharmaceutical companies, to the dumping ground for weapons manufactures; from the illegal fishing off the Somali coast, to the unethical influence peddling of Uncle Tom African leaders, Africa is exploited, and that, unabated and without interruption.

Foreign nations, US colleges (Harvard, Vanderbilt, and many others), and private corporations are partnering with so-called African leaders in parasitic relationships to lease or buy vast areas (more than twice the size of Montana and counting) of the most fertile farmland throughout the African Continent. This land is being used to grow food and ship it back to their respective countries. Nikhil Aziz, executive director of Grassroots International, a human rights and international development organization that supports community-led sustainable development projects, sums it up this way:

African land is being sought in 90-year leases either to grow food crops for export to those countries with scarce arable land or to grow fuel crops like jatropha and palm oil for ethanol, even as almost 300 million Africans are hungry. Or, the land is sometimes being snapped up simply for speculative purposes.

We must come to understand that, technically, there is no actual food shortage in Africa. The Continent is producing sufficient quantities of food, even in the midst of drought stricken regions. But the food is not used to feed Africans. This is why we need to complete the revolutionary struggles that began so many years ago by the likes of Cabral, Biko, and Lumumba. Africa is not yet free.

What we find is that many of the nations which experience food shortages actually produce large amounts of food on land which they’ve either leased or sold to foreign nations or US and Indian corporations. The shocking irony is that many of these African countries have come to rely on food aid imports from Western NGOs at the precise moment that they’re exporting food grown on their own soil for other wealthier nations — indeed, some of the very same nations which run those NGO’s. It’s quite appalling!

Imagine that you discovered that a family whom you firmly believed was starving, actually owned many acres of prime farmland, but had leased it out to an out-of-state food corporation. You then learned that the food corp. was growing food on this SAME land and shipping it back to their home state to sell to others. What advise could be offered to this family? Should they expect to survive they’d do well to terminate the suicidal lease they’ve signed with the food corp, take their land back, and grow food to feed THEMSELVES.

This is the context of the so-called food shortages experienced in Africa. The “drought” argument is a red herring, a mass mediated perspective tendentious in its ignoring of the political economy of famine in Africa. Actual shortages of rainfall are clearly realities, but rainfall has less to do with the relationship of crop production to feeding hungry people as does intelligent economic and political decisions by the people’s alleged political leaders which ensure self-preservation.

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Hegemony of Narrative: “The Help” as Freedom Myth

“Naiveté is often an excuse for those who exercise power. For those upon whom that power is exercised, naiveté is always a mistake.”

~Michel-Rolph Trouillot
“Ideology is a representation of the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence.”

~ Althusser

What is required for an empire to maintain the subjugation, if not the compliance, of its darker subjects? The Imperials must manage their subject’s collective memories about, not only who they were, but who and where they politically are. Hegemony of narrative of both the subject and subjugator is an indispensable tool in the hands of the colonizer.

With the release of the film “The Help” came the usual adoration associated with cinemagraphic attempts at complicated feel-good stories about race relations. All the usual suspects were presented: the white liberal heroine-protagonist (Skeeter), the Black role players (Aibileen and Minny) and depictions of personal prejudice rather than institutional white supremacy as merely a social inconvenience. Like “Precious” and “Crash”, “The Help” has become a race film of sorts in the modern era; not an all Black cast, but, indeed myths which shape popular perceptions about Black life.

The cultural danger in this film (and others like it) is that, via cinemagraphic nostalgia, they so often succeed at (re)inscribing ahistorical notions about racial inequality that, at best appear to be matters of mere social misfortune often at the hands single individuals, or “persons unknown”, and at worst completely obscure the visceral thrust of triune forces which bell hooks calls “white supremacist capitalist patriarchy”. The result of this? We enjoy a film’s romanticized representations of bad days gone by while being anesthetized into indifference toward the economic and social plight of our modern day “Help”.

Lest my disapproving criticism of the film stand alone, I join it with the chorus of other thinkers on these matters. Nelson George, filmmaker and author, wrote in the New York Times:

A larger problem for anyone interested in the true social drama of the era is that the film’s candy-coated cinematography and anachronistic super-skinny Southern belles are part of a strategy that buffers viewers from the era’s violence. The maids who tell Skeeter their stories speak of the risks they are taking, but the sense of physical danger that hovered over the civil rights movement is mostly absent. Medgar Evers is murdered in Jackson during the course of the story, but it is more a TV event, very much like the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, than a felt tragedy.

Or professor Rebecca Wanzo:

One of the three narrators, Aib[i]leen, says that she realizes she is more free than the racist character that destroys her livelihood, a claim that encourages readers to feel better about segregation because, in this logic, nobody can take real, psychological freedom from anyone. Freedom is really about how you feel, not about, you know, the law.

Yet, a more thorough critique is rendered in an open statement from the Association of Black Women Historians (ABWH). They speak to a problematic socio-aesthetic binary which emerges in the feature adaptation, and is patriarchal both in its asexual Mammy-gendering of Black women and its stereotypical portrayals of Black men and community.

“The Help’s representation of these women is a disappointing resurrection of Mammy—a mythical stereotype of black women who were compelled, either by slavery or segregation, to serve white families. Portrayed as asexual, loyal, and contented caretakers of whites, the caricature of Mammy allowed mainstream America to ignore the systemic racism that bound black women to back-breaking, low paying jobs where employers routinely exploited them. The popularity of this most recent iteration is troubling because it reveals a contemporary nostalgia for the days when a black woman could only hope to clean the White House rather than reside in it.”

And,

“We do not recognize the black community described in The Help where most of the black male characters are depicted as drunkards, abusive, or absent. Such distorted images are misleading and do not represent the historical realities of black masculinity and manhood.”

The film’s distortion of narrative, on its own, could stand as an eruption on the terrain of sound historiography on the period. But this tragedy, as suggested by the ABWH, is deepened by class cues which sketch “the most dangerous racists in 1960s Mississippi as a group of attractive, well dressed, society women, while ignoring the reign of terror perpetuated by the Ku Klux Klan and the White Citizens Council, limits racial injustice to individual acts of meanness.”

In 1935 a crucial piece of worker legislation, the National Labor Relations Act, was passed. Known as the “Wagner Act” after New York Sen. Robert Wagner, who in sponsoring the bill, reasoned that “Men versed in the tenets of freedom become restive when not allowed to be free.” The National Labor Relations Act constituted a seminal democratic moment in American labor and union organizing. Wagner’s bill, among other things, guaranteed protections for union organizing independent of company domination, the right to strike, boycott, and demonstrate against recalcitrant employers, and banned firing as a coercive tool to control union ranks.

The constellation of its lofty achievements notwithstanding, where the Wagner Act failed in its attempts to enhance the democratization of American labor was in its shameful exclusion of Domestic Workers. Southern senators, in an effort to safeguard their own economic greed, saw to it that no domestic worker could ever unionize under the legal indemnity of the Act. Political cooperation was contingent upon the prohibition of the domestic labor force, of which 90 percent were Black women in the South. Hegemony of dominant narratives create sinister silences around this issue via its omission. That domestic workers were left outside of the protective legal umbrella of the Wagner Act often goes under/unmentioned even in college lectures and text.

Possibilities of protecting the collective interest of our modern day “help” must be central in the overall struggle for workers rights, understanding that domestic labor, unlike other labor, is isolated work. At this writing only one state, New York, has passed a Domestic Workers Bill of Rights. California’s state government is under increasing pressure from organized domestic laborers and their allies to follow suit. In the context of the film’s ahistorical misrepresentation of the politics of Black women’s domestic labor there are existing ways to support private home worker’s economic rights. By organizing you can press your state legislature to pass a Domestic Workers Bill of Rights law.

Links to organizing:

domesticworkers.org/ny-bill-of-rightsdomesticworkers.org/members#rifuerza-laboral.org/caringacrossgenerations.org/

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Board of Regents say AF isn’t good enough for Cranston…but it’s fine for Providence?

It’s amazing how much you can learn about people–and the system they represent–by reading between the lines of their decisions. I was at the Board of Regents meeting today, and what I saw there taught me a lot about the different levels of value those in power assign to the different communities they are supposed to represent equally.

For those of you who haven’t heard yet, the BOR voted to deny Achievement First’s application to open their schools in Cranston, following the request of Governor Chafee, who advised the Board to take into account the opposition by the Cranston community over the past few months.

The governor then, a mere sentence after validating the concerns of the hundreds of Cranston parents and community members who have been protesting the AF proposal on the grounds that it could be damaging to the Cranston community (protesters have cited the financial ramifications of taking that much money out of the district, the loss of public accountability inherent in allowing a private board to take governing authority from public institutions like a school committee, and worries about the organization’s discipline policies which many believe to be excessive) made a recommendation that the Board instead explore bringing the charter management organization into Providence. And the Board, mere seconds after voting to keep Achievement First out of Cranston–presumably because they agreed with the Cranston community’s claims that it could, indeed, damage their district in all the ways cited above–wholeheartedly passed a motion to begin the process of looking into creating an AF district in Providence.

Wait…how does that work?

Now, there are a couple different ways to read the governor’s advice and the Board’s actions. But as someone who was there, listening to the debate, I can tell you that it seemed pretty clear to me that Governor Chafee and the Board of Regents made a simple decision, and one that those in power have been making regarding those who aren’t for centuries: what’s not good enough for us is good enough for them. Specifically, an organization that the clear majority of white, middle-class parents in Cranston don’t believe to be good enough for their students is just fine for all those low-income students and parents in Providence.

It’s hard for me to understand their line of reasoning. How can they recognize Cranston’s concern about AF’s military-like discipline and history of excessive punishment scandals, but still think this set of values is fine to inflict on kids in Providence? (I’m not a big fan of PPSD’s discipline policies, but I don’t think they’re comparable to those of Achievement First.) How can they agree that Cranston’s parents are right not to accept a disempowering administrative system in which they have little or no say in how their children get educated, but still think such a system should be acceptable to parents in Providence?

I don’t know how to answer these questions without going back to that same fundamental perspective: what’s not good enough for us is good enough for them. It boils down to nothing more than inequality of the worst kind.

Of course, there are already immense inequalities between Cranston and Providence schools. And I’m certainly not arguing that PPSD is a haven of perfect pedagogy and policy; on the contrary, I work with students in Providence–at times organizing against the school district–so I know very well the deep problems in our school system. We need to think creatively about how we can have better parent engagement, because our schools will never improve until parents are involved, and what we’re doing now clearly isn’t working; we need a curriculum that students find relevant to their lives, because what we’ve got now consistently alienates kids into boredom and apathy; we need to improve support systems for students and create more secure cultures of learning, because now those are few and far between; and, in the long-term, we need to change the way low-income communities are short-changed out of resources for their schools, because without more resources much of the above list won’t be possible.

These are not easy problems to solve. But they are solvable. And they are only solvable if we put all of our public attention, energy, and efforts on public education, rather than diverting these resources into creating a new, private district with even less public accountability and an even dimmer community focus. The people of Cranston have made clear that their students deserve better than Achievement First. Why should Providence’s students deserve any less?