From clawson@sadri.umass.edu Sat Aug 1 12:50:37 1998 Labor-Rap@csf.colorado.edu; Sat, 1 Aug 1998 14:50:28 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sat, 01 Aug 1998 14:53:31 -0400 From: Dan Clawson Subject: Fw: Sociology of Labor and Labor Movements Section To: Labor Research and Action Project I'm re-posting this message about forming an A.S.A. labor section, in hope of generating additional responses. If you have already responded, it would be terrific if you could try to recruit one or two additional people, your friends or students. Remember that we can only count people who are currently dues paying members of the A.S.A. I will shortly post an additional message, a "vision statement", required as part of the A.S.A. application process. Comments and suggestions much appreciated. We moved ahead in hopes that, if we can recruit enough members by day 2 of the meetings, and if the relevant committee accepts this "vision statement," we will be on the dues check off form this fall and will not have to wait an additional year. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------- Dan Clawson clawson@sadri.umass.edu work 413-545-5974 home 413-586-6235 fax 413-545-0746 Dept. of Sociology, Machmer W-36, Univ. of Massachusetts, Amherst MA 01003 -----Original Message----- From: Dan Clawson To: Labor Research and Action Project Date: Thursday, July 16, 1998 10:11 PM Subject: Re: Sociology of Labor and Labor Movements Section > >If you support forming an ASA section on Labor and Labor Movements, >to comply with A.S.A. requirements please write a one line message saying > >"I agree to join the Sociology of Labor and Labor Movements Section for >the next 2 years and pay dues of $8.00 per year." > >And send your message to Judy Stepan-Norris: > >jstepann@uci.edu > >DO NOT SIMPLY HIT REPLY or the whole list will get your message. > >Another message will be sent out shortly discussing the agenda for the >Sociology Labor Network meeting on Saturday August 22 at the A.S.A. >meetings in San Francisco. > >By all means pass this around and work to recruit others. > >Dan Clawson > >> >To: ASA Members Interested in the Labor Movement >From: Signators below >Re: The Formation of an ASA Section: Sociology of Labor and Labor >Movements > > At the last two ASA meetings sociologists interested in labor and >labor movements have gathered together to discuss issues of common >concern. At the 1997 meeting, the group discussed the possibility of >organizing an ASA section in order to institutionalize and obtain support >for our discussions and activities. These meetings have been well >attended, and have been characterized by stimulating discussion and >debate. At the last meeting, there was a good deal of support for >organizing an ASA section on labor and labor movements. With that >discussion as our starting point, we are initiating the process to create >an ASA "Section in Formation." > >Having a Labor and Labor Movements section will benefit those of >us who are interested in labor issues by providing a regular forum at the >ASA annual meeting in which to present papers, give awards, and exchange >ideas about our research as well as about new developments in the labor >movement. With an ASA section, the group will not have to rely on the >volunteer efforts of the few people who have served as facilitators in the >past. Instead we will have elected officers with regular >responsibilities, a newsletter to keep members abreast of information and >activities during the year, and the dispersal of the organizing work to a >greater number of people who will served limited terms in office. > >This is a petition to solicit the signatures of 100 current ASA >members who support this effort. Signing below indicates that the signer >agrees to pay section dues (set at $8.00/year) for at least two years. >Once we have the required signatures, we will submit the proposal to the >ASA Committee on Sections for approval in order to begin the section in >formation process. > >All the signers below are ASA members in good standing who agree to pay >dues to the Sociology of Labor and Labor Movements Section for at least >two years. > >This petition is supported by the following ASA members: > > Dan Clawson, Univ of Mass, Amherst > Judy Stepan-Norris, Univ of California, Irvine > Kim Voss, Univ of California, Berkeley > Hector Delgado, Univ of California, Irvine > Terry Boswell, Emory > Larry Isaac, Florida State > Michael Wallace, Indiana > Howard Kimeldorf, Univ of Mich > Mike Dreiling, Univ of Oregon > Bruce Western, Princeton > Robert Perrucci, Purdue > Sam Cohn, Texas A&M > Holly McCammon, Vanderbilt > Maurice Zeitlin, Univ of California, Los Angeles > Ruth Milkman, Univ of California, Los Angeles > Amy Wharton, Wash State > Pamela Roby, Univ of California, Santa Cruz > David Wellman, Univ of California, Santa Cruz > Cathy Rakowski, Ohio State > Jeff Leiter, North Carolina State > Dan Cornfield > > >Remember: return a one line statement (above) to: > >jstepann@uci.edu > >-- >Dan Clawson 413-545-5974 (work) >Dept. of Sociology 413-545-0746 (fax) >W-36 Machmer Hall 413-586-6235 (home) >Univ. of Massachusetts >Amherst MA 01003 email = clawson@sadri.umass.edu > From clawson@sadri.umass.edu Sat Aug 1 12:58:03 1998 Labor-Rap@csf.colorado.edu; Sat, 1 Aug 1998 14:57:57 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sat, 01 Aug 1998 15:01:00 -0400 From: Dan Clawson Subject: ASA labor section "vision statement" To: Labor Research and Action Project Here is the draft "vision statement" for a proposed American Sociological Association section on Labor and Labor Movements. I have also posted another message, containing a call to join the section, and information on how you can do so (by sending a message to Judy Stepan-Norris, jstepann@uci.edu). Discussion of any of the issues raised by this draft statement is very welcome, but remember that if you join, don't hit reply and send the news to the entire list; send a message only to jstepann@uci.edu. I hope we'll have a chance to revise this statement, but given the compressed timetable, and the fact we will discuss this at the Sociology Labor Network meeting at 8:30 p.m. on Saturday August 22, it'll be a challenge to make changes before the meeting of the relevant ASA committee, which I believe is the next day. Dan Clawson > >VISION STATEMENT FOR PROPOSED SECTION >ON LABOR AND LABOR MOVEMENTS > > Sociologists have devoted surprisingly little attention to >the labor movement. A discipline centrally concerned with class, >organizations, and social movements produces many more studies of >welfare and the poor, despite the fact there are more people in >union families than in poverty families. (Some, of course, are >in both). Even left academics who study class or the labor >process tend to neglect the importance of group processes of >struggle (in practice, unions). For economics, Freeman and >Medoff found that the percentage "of articles in major economic >journals treating trade unionism dropped from 9.2 percent in the >1940s to 5.1 percent in the 1950s to 0.4 percent in the early >1970s" (in The Public Interest, 1979, 57:69). We know of no >comparable study for sociology, but would expect similar results. > > Unions provide a laboratory for the analysis of a variety of >social phenomena. Thirteen million members are in AFL-CIO >unions, including over 5 million women, 2 million African >Americans, and 1 million Latino/as -- not to mention the workers >in non-AFL-CIO unions, or the effects of unions on family >members. Consider just one example of the potential for >developing sociological theory and insight: Even at the present >time, unions successfully organize more than 150,000 workers a >year, and strikes involve around 300,000 members a year. Many >more workers are involved in unsuccessful organizing drives, or >efforts that are aborted before they receive official notice. >These organizing drives and strikes provide repeated instances of >similar actions, and thus the opportunity to study the effects of >variation by the strategy and tactics of the campaign, the nature >of the employer's counter-campaign, or the characteristics of the >firm, industry, workers, or sponsoring union. A similar point >could be made regarding a host of other issues. > > A section on the Sociology of Labor and Labor Movements, as >we understand it, is far broader than the study of unions per se. >The labor movement, broadly conceived, includes not only unions, >not only labor-like associations (such as the National Education >Association or the American Association of University >Professors), but also environmental groups that collectively >contest workplace issues (various COSH, Committee on Occupational >Safety and Health, groups; some struggles about company pollution >or waste dumping), cultural productions centrally concerned with >labor issues, actions centered around plant closings, corporate >campaigns and boycotts such as current anti-sweatshop actions, >community and religious coalitions addressing labor issues, >student groups that mobilize around a grape boycott, and a host >of other phenomena. > > But even with this broader understanding of what we mean by >the labor movement, we intend the section to cover more. The >"labor and" portion of our name indicates, for example, that we >hope section activities will include such issues as: What does >the rise of part-time and contingent work mean for the ability to >organize, for the kinds of movements that would be possible >and/or necessary? How does the post-war increase in the >proportion of married women who work for pay change the sorts of >goals workers would like to see addressed? In what ways does >globalization change the labor process, and what transformations >does this imply would be needed to successfully contest corporate >power? > > It goes without saying that these examples are partial and >selective indications of the full range of section activities. >In some sense, every A.S.A. section overlaps with every other >section. In our case, the potential for overlap is probably >greatest with the section on Collective Behavior and Social >Movements at one end, and with the section on Work, Organizations >and Occupations at the other. But, whether it be viewed >positively or as a drawback, our activities would connect with a >host of other sections. The Culture Section, for example, gave >its "best book" award to Rick Fantasia's Cultures of Solidarity, >a study of the labor movement; the Political Economy of the World >System gave a recent best paper award to Beverly Silver's work on >labor in the world system; Hector Delgado, recent chair of the >Latino/a section, wrote a book on New Immigrants, Old Unions; >members of the Political Sociology section might well wish to >study the character of the political process inside the 70,000 >union locals in the United States; Marxist sociology is centrally >concerned with our issues; and we could go on in this fashion for >virtually every existing section. > > One of the points we were asked to consider was the >intellectual rationale for the section, and evidence that the >area generates a substantial quantity of scholarly work. It >would be easy to list, and to discuss, enormous quantities of >material, but we assume that this is not necessary. Several >issues of the Annual Review, for example, contain review articles >on one or another aspect of the labor movement, and articles on >section related topics are frequently found in the pages of ASR. > > Finally, we want to address one non-issue that some might >consider an issue, our relation to political practice. This will >be the third year in a row that a Sociology Labor Network has >held a well-attended meeting at the A.S.A. convention to discuss >labor related issues, and these have included both intellectual >and political concerns. (We also have an electronic listserv, >Labor-Rap.) The Sociology Labor Network discussions debated the >issue of whether or not to form a section; those who decided to >do so intend the section to be for intellectual purposes. The >Sociology Labor Network will continue to exist; our expectation >is that most of the past participants will wish to be involved >both in section activities and in the more political activities >of the S.L.N., but some will be interested only in the section, >and others only in the S.L.N. Many groups that form sections may >be beginning from scratch; we have a stable on-going existence, a >history of past meetings and activities, 200 subscribers to our >listserv, and the potential for substantial growth. > > > > >-- >Dan Clawson 413-545-5974 (work) >Dept. of Sociology 413-545-0746 (fax) >W-36 Machmer Hall 413-586-6235 (home) >Univ. of Massachusetts >Amherst MA 01003 email = clawson@sadri.umass.edu > From xcruz@webtv.net Sun Aug 2 21:26:45 1998 X-WebTV-Signature: 1 ETAsAhQMiOH9zPEWuLKuSe4LGIH+xGBMwwIUDxiaZakJQNA2W3EHZ7frjRGEOrc= From: xcruz@webtv.net (Robert Chavez) Date: Sun, 2 Aug 1998 21:26:40 -0600 (MDT) To: Labor-Rap@csf.colorado.edu Subject: Seeking Chiquita series in the Enquirer... (fwd) From: clbartol@syr.edu (Crystal L Bartolovich) Date: Sun, Aug 2, 1998, 7:41pm (MDT+2) To: mlg-ics@andrew.cmu.edu Subject: seeking Chiquita series in the Enquirer . . . was wondering if anyone downloaded the recent series in the Cincinati Enquirer on corruption at Chiquita before they removed it from their webpage. I've begged and pleaded with the web-editor to no avail, and so I am now trying other sources. any ideas appreciated. Please send to me personally (if you have the series, just send it). many thanks . . . Crystal From aaron@burn.ucsd.edu Mon Aug 3 05:09:57 1998 Date: Mon, 3 Aug 1998 04:08:45 -0700 To: Labor-Rap@csf.colorado.edu, labor-l@yorku.ca, owner-marxism-news@buo319b.econ.utah.edu From: Aaron Subject: Chiquita story is at http://members.xoom.com/elmsford/chiquita.txt The Chiquita series is apparently available again at . (It had been unavailable when I checked over a couple of times a few weeks ago, but that was apparently due to some site maintenance.) - Aaron >Date: Sun, 2 Aug 1998 21:26:40 -0600 (MDT) >Reply-To: Labor-Rap@csf.colorado.edu >From: xcruz@webtv.net (Robert Chavez) >To: Labor Research and Action Project >Subject: Seeking Chiquita series in the Enquirer... (fwd) > >From: clbartol@syr.edu (Crystal L Bartolovich) >Date: Sun, Aug 2, 1998, 7:41pm (MDT+2) To: mlg-ics@andrew.cmu.edu >Subject: seeking Chiquita series in the Enquirer . . . > was >wondering if anyone downloaded the recent series in the Cincinati >Enquirer on corruption at Chiquita before they removed it from their >webpage. I've begged and pleaded with the web-editor to no avail, and so >I am now trying other sources. any ideas appreciated. Please send to me >personally (if you have the series, just send it). >many thanks . . . >Crystal From xcruz@webtv.net Tue Aug 4 11:04:13 1998 X-WebTV-Signature: 1 ETAuAhUAr0URz+1g1plkvFIFLQqPZtCgyO4CFQCcyNhR4gKlqLv72T1vEd4ntla8JQ== From: xcruz@webtv.net (Robert Chavez) Date: Tue, 4 Aug 1998 11:03:51 -0600 (MDT) To: Labor-Rap@csf.colorado.edu Subject: Echlin NAO decision (fwd) Sender: owner-lared-l@lmrinet.ucsb.edu From: rvazquez@inconnect.com (Robert Vazquez) Date: Tue, Aug 4, 1998, 10:23am To: lared-l@lmrinet.ucsb.edu Subject: Echlin NAO Decision (fwd) Reply to: lared-l@lmrinet.ucsb.edu From: robin alexander Subject: Echlin NAO Decision Brothers and Sisters: We received the Echlin NAO decision yesterday and I am attaching the press release which was sent out by the Teamsters. Thanks to all who contributed to this effort! I will keep you posted once we know what the consultation process will entail. In Solidarity, Robin For Immediate Release   For More Information Contact: August 3, 1998         Bob Kingsley, UE, 703-339-5241 or 412-471-8919                                                               Robin Alexander, UE, 412-471-8919                               Jeff Cappella, Teamsters, 202-624-8971 U.S. NAFTA Panel Cites U.S. Firm for Violence Against Workers in Mexico NAO Calls for Talks Between U.S. and Mexican Government Over Workers' Rights Abuses by Echlin WASHINGTON -- The federal agency responsible for hearing complaints under the labor side agreement to NAFTA is calling for ministerial consultations between the United States and Mexico following testimony that charged U.S.-based Echlin Inc. with dangerous working conditions and wide-ranging violations of labor law and workers' human rights in auto-parts plants in Mexico. The decision issued late Friday by the U.S. National Administrative Office finds merit in union allegations that Echlin committed massive discharges for union activity and connived in assaults and intimidation of union supporters by thugs. The petitioning unions also objected to a union representation election conducted by voice vote rather than secret ballot, in the presence of management officials and armed goons. This is the first NAO decision to involve allegations of health and safety problems. Mexican workers and health and safety experts presented testimony here in March that complained of routine exposure to asbestos and solvents, malfunctioning machinery and other dangerous conditions at Echlin auto-parts plants. A coalition of nine U.S. and Canadian unions filed the complaint along with the Mexico's Authentic Workers' Front (FAT), with support from the AFL-CIO, the Canadian Labor Congress(CLC), the new Mexican labor federation, the National Union of Workers (UNT) and dozens of U.S., Mexican and Canadian organizations. Bob Kingsley, organizing director for the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE), one of the petitioning unions, termed the NAO ruling "an indictment of Echlin, the Mexican government and the largest of the official unions in Mexico," as well as "a victory for workers in all three NAFTA countries." -- more -- Speaking on behalf of the Echlin Workers' Alliance, the union coalition, Kingsley said: "We call on Echlin and its new parent Dana to correct the violations cited by the NAO by offering immediate and unconditional reinstatement to the fired workers, recognizing STIMAHCS as the workers' representative, cleaning up the plant and providing conditions where workers' rights are respected." The Echlin Workers' Alliance is calling on the Mexican government to ensure these goals are met and to take steps that all future elections are conducted by secret ballot, under conditions which are free from intimidation, that measures be taken to ensure that the labor board functions fairly and impartially in supervising elections and selecting judges, and that registries be established to give workers access to information about unions and contracts. The Alliance also hopes that the Mexican government will ensure that the plants in question are subjected to a thorough inspection which includes environmental sampling, that the health and safety violations are corrected, and that steps are taken to correct deficiencies in the application of the inspection and penalty systems. "It's nice to see that the U.S. government is recognizing workers' rights abuses by U.S. corporations in Mexico," said Teamsters Vice President Tom Gilmartin. "But the fact that the government can't enforce any remedies against Echlin is an example of what's wrong with free trade agreements like NAFTA." In addition to the UE and Teamsters, the petitioning unions were the Frente Autentico del Trabajo of Mexico, Steelworkers (in both the U.S. and Canada), UAW, Canadian Auto Workers, Machinists, Paper Workers, IUE and UNITE! Robin Alexander UE Director of International Labor Affairs One Gateway Center, Suite 1400 420 Fort Duquesne Blvd. PGH., PA. 15222-1416 412-471-8919 412-471-8999 FAX HTTP://www.igc.apc.org/unitedelect/ (See alert section every two weeks for labor and related news from Mexico). From xcruz@webtv.net Thu Aug 6 09:18:12 1998 X-WebTV-Signature: 1 ETAtAhR10i6CTVHQFZFOL6Z5uQkB/tf6zgIVAKrp7feKAeVz44VqR+VGJkBXeEs1 From: xcruz@webtv.net (Robert Chavez) Date: Thu, 6 Aug 1998 09:13:39 -0600 (MDT) To: Labor-Rap@csf.colorado.edu Subject: March on NY City Hall(fwd) From:    ww@wwpublish.com                 To:    "Workers World News Service" Subject: March on NY City Hall Aug. 22 Date:    Wed, Aug 5, 1998, 12:34pm (MDT+1)                                       Sender:    listserv@wwpublish.com X-listname:    Organization:    WW Publishers ------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the Aug. 6, 1998 issue of Workers World newspaper ------------------------- MARCH ON N.Y. CITY HALL AUG.22: TIME FOR LABOR'S RESPONSE TO MAYOR'S WORKFARE ATTACK By Greg Butterfield New York In a July 20 speech, New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani announced his intent to "end welfare by the end of the century." Giuliani said that every adult receiving public assistance in New York will be required to work--regardless of disability, poor health or family circumstances. Speaking to bankers, the mayor departed from his speech's prepared text to also challenge the use of methadone to treat people trying to overcome heroin addiction. Giuliani called methadone "a terrible perversion of drug treatment" and said he would end it in two to three years. He said recipients receiving medical treatment for drug addiction will be forced to work for their benefits. The mayor's latest attack met with an immediate, angry response from workfare workers, who have been fighting to win real jobs and union rights. In a statement, Workfairness--an organization of more than 5,000 workfare workers forced into the city's "Work Experience Program"--condemned the speech as "a declaration of war on the unemployed, the poor, people of color and the unions in New York City." AUG. 22 MARCH ON CITY HALL Workfairness Co-chair William Mason said: "The mayor's diabolical intent is hidden under phony rhetoric about the virtues of work. His remarks are similar to those of Jason Turner, the new commissioner of Human Resources, who last month echoed the infamous inscription on the gates of Nazi slave-labor camps: `Work makes you free.´ "What does the mayor´s speech really mean? What is he signaling to his friends and benefactors on Wall Street and in the corporate boardrooms?" asked Mason. "He's saying that slave-labor workfare is going to expand 10-fold. It's going to move into the private sector in a big way, threatening the jobs of even more workers. The effect will be to lower everyone's wages." Mason listed Giuliani's recent targets: "Eliminate welfare by the year 2000. Eliminate methadone and drug treatment for heroin addicts. Eliminate remedial education and open admissions for CUNY students. Eliminate vendors. Crush the taxi drivers. "This is part of an open declaration of war on all of us. Isn't it time for New Yorkers to stand up and say no to Giuliani? Isn't it time to hit the streets in a big way?" Workfairness has called a rally and march to City Hall for 1 p.m. on Aug. 22. That day marks two years since President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, signed the so-called welfare reform law--a Republican document that was the centerpiece of the 1995 Contract with America. The law ended a 60-year guarantee of minimal government assistance to the poorest of the poor. The giant labor struggles of the 1930s had forced the government to enact a social contract between labor and bosses, guaranteeing a minimum living standard for the millions the profit system cannot employ even in the best economic times. Welfare was the real minimum wage. But with the 1996 law, the ruling class tore up that contract and said to unions, the unemployed, the disabled, and unemployed women workers and their children, "Go to hell." JOB CUTS Drug-treatment experts condemned Giuliani for seeking to ban methadone. "We believe it's a medical treatment for the medical condition of opiate addiction," Dr. Edwin Salsitz, director of methadone maintenance for Beth Israel Medical Center, the nation's largest program, told Newsday. "It certainly doesn't make sense for a politician to make time limits or decide who should or shouldn't be treated." Giuliani's declaration of war against welfare recipients and those suffering from drug addiction was calculated to put him back in the national spotlight. The mayor makes no secret of his national political ambitions. Some analysts call him a long-shot candidate for the White House in 2000. The fact that he wants to eliminate welfare altogether was no secret either, even before his July 20 speech. Today in New York about 50,000 welfare recipients are working in forced WEP assignments. Increasingly, these workers are women with young children at home. WEP workers clean the city's parks, sweep the streets, aid in hospitals, and administer offices. They are doing jobs that used to be performed by unionized city workers. But WEP workers receive no wages, only meager--and shrinking-- public assistance checks. Giuliani has cut more than 30,000 city jobs since 1994. A new round of cuts began in June. Public hospital workers are at the top of Giuliani's hit list. Their union, AFSCME Local 420, has been the mayor's most dogged opponent in the labor movement. So far, most other unions have backed away from a serious struggle against the job slashing. Last year, a New York state judge ruled that the state's prevailing-wage law applies to WEP workers and the city must pay these workers comparably with city employees. Had Giuliani implemented this court order, it would have effectively ended the slave-labor program he champions. Instead this former federal prosecutor, who brags of his "law and order" record, is breaking the law on a mammoth scale. TURNING AWAY THE POOR Earlier this year, Giuliani appointed Jason Turner to head the Human Resources Administration, which runs WEP. Turner was the architect of Wisconsin's "Wisconsin Works" program. Known as W2, the first comprehensive workfare program in the nation was a model developed and paid for by the far right. W2 forced single mothers in Milwaukee and other heavily Black areas of the state into sweatshop-type jobs administered by Goodwill Industries and other private, non- profit institutions. Turner and Giuliani want to impose the Wisconsin experiment on the huge New York working class. Since Turner's arrival, disabled people have been forced into WEP. Women are forced to work even when they can't find qualified child care providers. Poor people are being turned away from welfare offices before they can even apply for benefits. The New York Daily News recently reported that the city's new pre-application form for welfare benefits is deliberately designed to trick people into withdrawing their request for benefits. "The document, which must be completed to get a formal application for welfare, has two lines for signatures right next to each other--one to complete the form, and the other to withdraw it," according to the News. Giuliani says welfare offices will be replaced by "job centers" that focus on helping applicants get private-sector jobs. But the July 21 Newsday wrote that the "primary goal is to keep people off welfare using stricter standards; helping them find employment is secondary, a recent employees' manual says." In his July 20 speech, Giuliani bragged to the bankers that only 28 percent of those seeking welfare benefits have been approved at two new "job centers." That's down from a 54-percent approval rate last year. The next step is the centerpiece of the Wisconsin program: privatization. Republic National Bank, which hosted the mayor's speech, is one of those already benefiting from low- cost, forced labor. Republic, like the Gap, K-mart and others, is getting generous government handouts to place welfare recipients in low-wage, part-time, and temporary jobs. SLAVE LABOR FOR PROFIT New York ended its 1997-98 fiscal year June 30 with a budget surplus of more than $2 billion. City Comptroller Alan Hevesi reported in January that the surplus is directly attributable to the cuts in welfare and the free labor the city gets from WEP workers. The city's creditors--giant Wall Street bond holders, Citibank and Chase, the real-estate barons--are urging Giuliani to put that money toward the multi-billion-dollar debt service that the city pays yearly. They want a new multi-million-dollar sports stadium and light-rail service between midtown and Wall Street as part of the ongoing gentrification of Manhattan. And Giuliani is only too happy to comply. He vetoed the very modest budget passed by the City Council, which would have used a portion of the surplus to restore cuts to some services and community groups. That money could go a long way toward creating real jobs for WEP workers, organizers say. "It's not hard to see what the impact of the mayor's plan will be on the poor," says William Mason, "or its effect on the status of labor in New York. "This city has one of the highest unemployment rates of any major city in the United States, hovering just below 10 percent. In the Bronx, in parts of Brooklyn and in other poor neighborhoods it is double that or worse. The jobs aren't there." When all is said and done, Mason adds, hundreds of thousands of unemployed people who have no prospects for real jobs or public assistance may be forced to leave the city. "Mayor Giuliani might as well blow up the Statue of Liberty and put up a sign on the George Washington Bridge reading `NYC: off limits to the poor and jobless.´" UNITE TO FIGHT BACK AUG. 22 Mason told Workers World: "The mayor's speech makes it all the more important that the people of this city join the Aug. 22 `Welfare Rights Day´ march on City Hall. "It's not only WEP workers and people on welfare who are under attack. Giuliani is trying to push all of us back to the last century--before social services, before union rights, before civil rights. "Our battle cry will be `Real jobs, not slave labor workfare.´ Public pressure must be brought to bear on city hall until Giuliani is forced to enact a serious jobs program." A planning meeting for the march is scheduled for Aug. 1 at 1 p.m., in the Workfairness headquarters at 39 West 14 St., Suite 206 in Manhattan. More information is available at (212) 633-6646.                                                  - END - (Copyright Workers World Service: Permission to reprint granted if source is cited. For more information contact Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail: ww@workers.org. For subscription info send message to: info@workers.org. Web: http://workers.org) From rross@clarku.edu Thu Aug 6 14:38:29 1998 Date: Thu, 06 Aug 1998 16:33:02 -0400 From: "Robert J.S. Bob Ross" Subject: syllabus for nosweat To: Patty Ewick , Debbie Merrill , Eric Gordy , Shelly Tenenbaum , Bruce London , Robert Ross , Progressive Sociology Network , Labor List , "gifford, gail" , Al Haber , Allen Young , Betty Garman Robinson , Cathy Wilkerson , Clark Kissinger <73447.1527@compuserve.com>, David Wellman , Dorothy Burlage , "Goldsmith, Steve" , "JAMES W. RUSSELL" , Jim Monsonis , Jim Russell , Joan Goldsmith , Jonny Lerner , This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --------------A40A0BAE7F85432F85C6D854 Dear Friends, Colleagues and Comrades, I enclose in message my web-page/syllabus for a seminar on the sweatshop issue. I think you will find interesting material; feel free to send comments. Movin' on Bob http://www.clarku.edu/~rross/calsyl.htm -- Robert J.S. Ross Professor and Chair Department of Sociology Clark University 950 Main Street Worcester, Massachusetts 01610 Voice: 508 793 7376 Fax: 508 793 8816 Webpage: http://www.clarku.edu/~rross --------------A40A0BAE7F85432F85C6D854 m" syllabus for nosweat
 
DEPARTMENT OF SOCIOLOGY
 
 
 

Sweatshop:

workplace in which workers are employed for long hours at low

wages and under unhealthy or oppressive conditions. In England, the word "sweater" was used as early as 1850 to describe an employer or middleman who exacted monotonous work at very low wages. Sweating first became widespread in the United States during the 1880s, when immigrants from eastern and southern Europe provided a large source of cheap labour. In continental Europe the same conditions were present, and with the industrialization of parts of Latin America and Asia in the 20th century, the problem emerged there as well.

--Encyclopedia Britannica
 
 

Sociology 090
NO SWEAT!
A FIRST YEAR SEMINAR ON SWEATSHOPS IN AMERICA IN GLOBAL CONTEXT
 
Fall 1998
Wednesdays 2:25 - 5:00 PM

Prof. Robert J.S. Ross ("Bob")
Office: 400 Jeff
Phone: 793 7243, 7376
mailto: rross@clarku.edu

Office Hours: Tu-Thur 3-5
and by appointment

COURSE MISSION:

Low wages, long hours, and dangerous conditions characterized work in turn of the century sweatshops - especially the garment industry. These conditions are back, characterizing up to half the apparel industry. The seminar will explore the rise and decline and then the rise of the new sweatshops, with special attention to the ways in which child labor and super-exploitation in developing countries effects conditions here in the U.S., and what we can do about the problem. The course will develop student skills in using the Internet as a serious research tool to supplement but not replace libraries.
 

WORK

There will be two brief essay exams and a research paper for the course. The essays will come before the midterm and then during the last two weeks. Students will also present their work and papers in class and participate in discussion of reading and lecture material. Very good drafts of the research papers will be due approximately December 2; final versions will be due December 14th. In addition, each student will participate in the group project of creating an educational web-page on the sweatshop issue. The class will be divided up into teams, and each team will have an assigned portion of the project. All team members will get the same grade for their contribution. The page will be presented at an appropriate public occasion.
 

Grade Distribution:
Class participation 20%
Webpage design and research 20%
Essay I 15%
Essay II 15%
Research Paper 30%
Total 100%
 

Class Expectations: Students are expected to master, understand, and to be aware of ALL deadlines and products. See the Table of Significant Dates and Assignments If you are in doubt: call; email; come to office hours. Students are expected to have read the assigned reading by the time class meets and to actively engage in discussion and explanation of the readings.. Lack of preparation will show in your participation and will effect your grade accordingly. If readings are difficult for you, come to class with your questions - answering questions is what I get payed for and what I am supposed to teach you to do. If readings annoy you come to class with your disagreements and your arguments. Outside of meditation sessions, silence enlightens no one.
 

The Web Page Project (WPP) and Research Papers

Webpage assignments will be accomplished by groups of two and three. Students will choose assignments from a list distributed during the first week of class. I will try to honor first choices but a certain amount of spread is necessary to insure topical coverage. During the second week, preference sheets will be distributed to students and I will make assignments. See Web Page and Research Project description. NOTE: This syllabus is available on the World Wide Web at . Wherever you see text which is blue on monitor or oddly faded in print, it means that it is linked to a world wide web resource, or some file I have put on computer. You access it by "clicking" your "mouse" on it; it's called hypertext.
 

Since the project is a collaborative effort, a great deal of your work this term involves the organizing and use of individuals' efforts in relation to a team goal. For instance, you will need to establish some rules regarding meeting times, responsibilities, division of labor, and equity in contribution. Group expectations should be consensually defined and clearly articulated. Failure to meet these expectations, (i.e., persistently "forgetting" meetings, not completing drafts, uncooperativeness and so forth), must be responded to immediately.
 

However, as in life, each team member must take group responsibility for the product. Each team member will receive for the project the same grade. Choose partners with care and then learn to get the most from each other's work! Since the success of your paper is tied to your ability to work effectively as a team, you must master the principles of group work.
 

ESSAYS: These will be take home essays requiring about four pages, double-spaced typed (word-processed) answers. The first will be distributed on September 30th and due on October 14th. The second will be distributed on November 18th and due on Dec. 9.
 

Books Available for Purchase and on Reserve at the Library:
 

Mc=John McClymer, The Triangle Strike and Fire

NS= Andrew Ross, ed., (no relation), No Sweat: fashion, free trade and the rights of garment workers.

GAO= General Accounting Office, Sweatshops in New York: A local example of a national problem.

NLC=Made In China, National Labor Committee.
 

Available for Purchase will be a Packet of Readings ("Packet"), each of which Should be available at the Reserve desk of Library. It includes (in order of assignment):
 

  1. Kerr, Thomas J. IV. "The New York Factory Investigating Commission and the Minimum Wage Movement." Labor History 1971 12(3): 373-391.
  2. Ross(Robert): " The New Sweatshops in the United States: How New, How Real, How Many, Why?" Paper presented American Sociological Association Annual Meeting, August, 1998.
  3. Appelbaum and Gereffi: "Power and Profits in the Apparel Commodity Chain." >From Bonacich et al, Global Production: The Apparel Industry in the Pacific Rim.
  4. Jones, Jackie. 1995. "Forces Behind Restructuring in U.S. Apparel Retailing and its Effect on the U.S. Apparel Industry." Industry Trade and Technology Review. March.. p. 23 U.S. International Trade Commission.
  5. National Labor Committee: Miscellaneous Nicaragua Material from http://www.nlcnet.org/press.htm
  6. Anita Chan: "Bootcamp at the Shoe Factory" Washington Post
  7. Ross (Robert): "NAFTA and the New Sweatshops", prepared for edited collection on liberation theology and global capitalism.
  8. Guess Packet, including, Behar: "Guess What's Behind This IPO?" Fortune, Oct.14, 1996.
  9. Korzeniewicz: "Commodity Chains and Marketing Strategies: Nike and the Global Athletic Footwear Industry." in Commodity Chains and Global Capitalism. Edited by Gary Gereffi and Miguel Korzeniewicz. Westport, Conn.:Greenwood Press.
  10. Nike Packet: including Glass, "The Young and feckless," New Republic, Chan letter, and Vietnam Labor Watch report on Nike in Vietnam.
  11. Ross, Robert: "Restricting Immigration: A sweatshop nonsolution" In Janice McCoart , editor, An Academic Search for Sweatshop Solutions: Conference proceedings. Pages 32-45. Marymount University. Arlington, VA.
  12. Material from the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS).
  13. The Sweatshop Quandary, ed. by Pamela Varley, Chapter One: "Corporate America on the Hot Seat."
  14. Richard Rothstein, "The Starbucks Solution," The American Prospect no. 27 (July-August 1996): 36-42 ( http://epn.org/prospect/27/27roth.html).
  15. Rothstein- Amsden Debate on Labor Standards (Boston Review).
  16. Ross (Robert) Apparel Industry Task Force Summary
  17. >From Varley, ed. "The Quest for a Universal Code and Compliance Scheme."
  18. Lora Foo "The vulnerable and exploitable immigrant workforce and the need for strengthening worker protective legislation." Yale Law Journal, 103, 8: 2179-2212.
  19. >From Varley, "In Defense of Sweatshops

In the Table of Assignments below, "Read" indicates material onReserve or available for purchae at the Bookstore. "Packet" indicates material distributed at the Sociology Office. It is also on Reserve. Please Note: "Browse" does not mean walk through casually, it means, strictly, "read material lodged on the Internet."


 
Table of Topics and Assignments
Date Class # Topic/Reading Skill or Special Session 
Part One: Sweated Labor in the United States, 1911-1942
02Sep98 1 Sweated Labor: 1911 

The Triangle Strike and Fire 
 

Read: Mc:Chapters 1 and 2. 

Browse: 1)  McClymer's Triangle Fire Page  2) Cornell's Triangle Page: The Kheel Documentation Center Archive. 

3) The Wreck of the Home: Homework in tenements. 

4) Jacob Riis' famous pictures from How the Other Half Lives: among them, Sewing and Starving in an Elizabeth Street Attic and ""Knee-Pants" at Forty-Five Cents a Dozen-- A Ludlow Street Sweater's Shop": http://www.cis.yale.edu/amstud/inforev/riis/riis24.gif

 email 

Opening a webpage; navigating URLs
09Sep98 2 1. After the Fire: The Factory Investigating Commission and Reform 

2. Reform and the New Deal 
 

Read: Mc: Chapter 3 

in Ross, ed., Howard: "Labor History and sweatshops in the new global economy." 
 

From Packet: 

Kerr, Thomas J. IV. "The New York Factory Investigating Commission and the Minimum Wage Movement." Labor History 1971 12(3): 373-391. 

Browse: Smithsonian Institution Exhibit, Between a Rock And a Hard Place 

 web search/ library search/Nexis
16Sep98 3 The Decline and Rise of Sweatshops 

Read: In Ross, ed., Meza, "Testimony." Su, "El Monte Thai Garment Workers: Slave Sweatshops". U.S. General Accounting Office: "Sweatshops" in New York City: A Local Example of a Nationwide Problem. 
 

From Packet: 

Ross(Robert): " The New Sweatshops in the United States: How New, How Real, How Many, Why?" 
 

Browse: The El Monte portion of the Smithsonian Exhibit: 
 
The El Monte Condo where workers were held as slaves in a garment factory (1995) 

El Monte ; Given: " Inside a Sweatshop: An Eyewitness Account."

 Sending and saving web material
Part Two 

The Structure of the Apparel Industry in Global Context
23Sep98 4 The structure of industry: Retail concentration
30Sep98 5 Conditions in Central America 

Read: 

In Ross, ed., Kernaghan, "Paying to Lose Our Jobs." Krupat, "From War Zone to Free Trade Zone." National Labor Committee, "An Appeal To Walt Disney." 

From Packet: National Labor Committee: Nicaragua Material  http://www.nlcnet.org/press.htm 
 

Video about Walt Disney in Haiti from the National Labor Committee

 Video 
07Oct98 6 China and Pakistan conditions 

Read: National Labor Committee: Made in China, including Appendices 

From Packet: Chan: "Bootcamp at the Shoe Factory." 

Browse: Silver: "Child Labor In Pakistan." The Atlantic Monthly, February 1996. 

Video about Bangladesh from the Dutch Clean Clothes Campaign

 Video
14Oct98 7 Global Production and Two Case Studies: Nike and Guess Jeans 

Guess and the North American Free Trade Agreement: 

From Packet: Ross (Robert): "NAFTA and the New Sweatshops"; Guess Packet, including, Behar: "Guess 

What's Behind This IPO?" Fortune, Oct.14, 1996. 

Nike: 

From Packet: Korzeniewicz: "Commodity Chains and Marketing Strategies: Nike and the Global Athletic Footwear Industry."Nike Packet: Glass, Chan, and Vietnam Labor Watch
Part Three: Explaining the New Sweatshops
21Oct98 8 Overview and 

The Decline of Unions and Deregulation 
 

From Packet: Review Ross (Robert). " The New Sweatshops in the United States: How New, How Real, How Many, Why?" 

Browse: 

http://www.dol.gov/dol/esa/public/nosweat/nosweat.htm

 Speaker tba
28Oct98 9 IMMIGRATION and IMPORTS 

From Packet: Ross, Robert: "Restricting Immigration: A sweatshop nonsolution" In Janice McCoart , editor, An Academic Search for Sweatshop Solutions: Conference proceedings. Pages 32-45. Marymount University. Arlington, VA. Material from the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). 
 

Browse: Common Threads , a mural and labor history project by artists and union supporters in Los Angeles. 
04Nov98 10 The anti - Sweat Shop Campaigners 

Read:In Ross, ed., Cavanagh,"The Global Resistance to Sweatshops." Shaw: "The Labor Behind The Label: Clean Clothes Campaigns in Europe." Spielberg: "The myth of nimble fingers." 
 

From Packet: The Sweatshop Quandary, ed. by Pamela Varley, Chapter One: "Corporate America on the Hot Seat." 

Browse:
11Nov98 11 Codes of conduct and Labor Rights in Trade: 

Read: From Packet: Rothstein: "The Starbucks Solution."Rothstein-Almsden Debate Ross (Robert) Apparel Industry Task Force Summary 

From Varley, ed."The Quest for a Universal Code and Compliance Scheme." 

Guest at 4 PM 

Ms. Tara Holeman, Human Rights Coordinator at Reebok Inc., will bring a video about a shoe factory. 

 Speaker and video from Reebok
18Nov98 12 Public policies 

From Packet: Lora Foo "The vulnerable and exploitable immigrant workforce and the need for strengthening worker protective legislation." Yale Law Journal, 103, 8: 2179-2212.From Varley, "In Defense of Sweatshops"
25Nov98 Thanksgiving
02Dec98 13 reports
09Dec98 14 reports and demonstrations/Party
 
 

The Web Page Project (WPP) and Research Papers
 

Each seminar participant will be in a Web Page Project Group. Each group will be responsible for finding links to resources on the web, pictures and illustrations, and writing brief guides to and summaries of material. While there are many advocacy oriented sweatshop web pages, ours will be especially useful to researchers, for we will link into the subjects (like history and industrial structure) which are only of passing interest to activist groups. Our syllabus already has many good links to other pages and information. However, we need to systematically design both the look and the information structure for it. There are many good pages on this subject, so we can tie them together in way which will help others do good research. Of course, we hope this work will help activists in their goal of improving the lives of apparel workers world-wide.

Within each Project Group individuals will focus on a sub-topic for his or her research paper. Research on this term paper will help each person contribute to the web page.
 

Here is a rough division of labor for six groups of 2 or 3 people each. One part of the WPP is central but every group and person should help on it, and we'll need some expert help: graphic design and layout.

Web Page Project groups (tentative - as of July 31, 1998)
 

Group OneTurn of the Century (1900-1910) sweatshops

  • Triangle Strike and Fire
  • Conditions of work
  • testimony from workers and investigators
  • causes
  • Analytic questions:
  • How did working conditions compare for non-immigrants in this or similar industry?
  • How did conditions compare, for example, in the United Kingdom?, France?
  • Assuming they were similar (bad) was it only or mainly for immigrants?

    •  
Group Two

The Era of Reform 1909-1942

  • Unionization
  • Factory Safety
  • Wages and Hours legislation in the States
  • The abolition of industrial Homework in apparel
  • The Fair Labor Standards Act
  • The Wagner Act
  • About the laws above: testimony for and against; interests for and against
  • Analytical questions
  • Did things improve in the 1920s as a result of state level reforms?
  • What role did the full employment of WWI and WWII (as distinct from legislative reform) play in improving conditions?
  • A tough question: what was more important: The Wagner Act (giving workers the right to jin unions) or the Fair Labor Standards Act (setting out minimum wages and regulating hours)?
 
 
 

Group Three

The Decline of Unions in Apparel

  • Membership levels in ILGWU/ACTWU/UNITE
  • Analytical questions
  • The role of Geographic dispersion to the South
  • What were conditions like in the Fifties in the South? in NYC?

    •  
Group Four

Globalization

  • Rise of imports from poor countries
  • NAFTA ( North American Free Trade Agreement)
  • GATT/WTO (Eneral Agreement on Tariffs and Trade/ World Trade Organization)
  • Caribbean Basin Initiative (CBI)
  • Analytical idea: Can we make an average of imports by estimating average apparel wage in each sending country and then calculating its percent of all imports?

    •  
Group Five

Testimony and conditions from the global apparel industry

  • Asia: Pakistan, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Malaysia
  • China
  • Central America and Carribean
  • New York
  • Los Angeles

    •  
Group Six

Industrial Structure and Change

  • Retail Power
    • Concentration
    • Case studies
    • Nike
    • Guess
    • May's
    • WalMart
  • Federal Regulatory power
    • Department of labor and Wages and Hours Division personnel
    • The Trendsetter List

    SOC. 090/No Sweat!/F98
    PROJECT PREFERENCE FORM:

    NAME:

    BOX NUMBER

    EMAIL:

    PHONE:

    FIRST CHOICE:
     
     

    SECOND CHOICE:
     
     
     
     

    Relevant Background/ Personal Reasons for Topic Preference:

    _________________________________________________________________

    _________________________________________________________________

    _________________________________________________________________
     

    Person You want to work with:

    _________________________________________________________________

    _________________________________________________________________

    _________________________________________________________________
     
     
     

    Back to Syllabus

--------------A40A0BAE7F85432F85C6D854-- From rkmoore@iol.ie Thu Aug 6 17:24:54 1998 Date: Fri, 7 Aug 1998 00:24:36 +0100 To: Labor-Rap@csf.colorado.edu From: rkmoore@iol.ie (Richard K. Moore) Subject: (1/n) "Globalization and the Revolutionary Imperative" ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Globalization and the Revolutionary Imperative Copyright 1998 by Richard K. Moore 5 August 1998 - rkmoore@iol.ie First in a series: "Introduction" NOTE TO READERS: This material, and subsequent pieces in the series, are a "draft book in progress". They are being distributed on several internet lists, and further forwarding is encouraged. Please forward only in complete form, with original headers and signature. And _please, copy your comments and suggestions directly to the author at rkmoore@iol.ie. The developing book will be maintained on "http://cyberjournal.org". Introduction ^^^^^^^^^^^^ This book is an investigation into capitalism, democracy, imperialism, nationalism, and political change. These turn out to be intimately related themes in a drama which has been unfolding for the past two centuries. Corporate globalization, or what many call the neoliberal project,is a crisis turning point in this drama, with profound consequences for all of our topics. Corporate globalization (I'll just call it globalization) is indeed a project -- a coordinated, coherent suite of initiatives -- and it is unfolding on a canvas much broader than is generally appreciated. Tight budgets, competitive markets, downsized companies -- these aspects of globalization are known to nearly everyone. Those who inform themselves -- and there are many useful books available -- learn that globalization also brings accelerating environmental damage, increased poverty, destabilized societies, a house-of-cards global financial system, and a severe threat to democracy. But even that does not adequately capture the scope of the globalization project. I hope it will become clear, as this investigation unfolds, that globalization amounts to an overall restructuring of the world order, a political rebuilding project that goes very deep. The image that comes to mind is a block of small shops being bulldozed away to make room for a shopping center. Globalization is a revolutionary project, not an evolutionary one. In globalization's new world order, it is democratic governance and national sovereignty which are to be bulldozed clean from the global building site. The system of strong national republics, which was the West's heritage from the Enlightenment era, is being systematically dismantled. Political arrangements are being scraped way back, and old political strata, so to speak, are re-emerging. In some ways, globalization scrapes us back to the robber-baron era of the late nineteenth century, when laissez-faire capitalism reigned supreme, boom and bust cycles were frequent, and politicians were "in the pockets" of magnates such as John D. Rockefeller and the J. Pierpont Morgan. Today they call it deregulation instead of laissez-faire, and it is giant transnational corporations (TNCs) that exert the political influence instead of colorful robber barons, but the game is the same, and the results are identical. In other dimensions, the globalization project is scraping back even further, taking us back to the feudal era, with wealth and power concentrated in the hands of a super-rich elite, and with the rest of us reduced to a kind of disenfranchised serfdom. We are to have no-entitlements employment, instead of fiefs, and the relationship of the person to the TNC is becoming that of vassal to lord. In still other aspects, globalization takes us all the way back to the Roman Empire, only this time on a global scale. Instead of an Emperor and Roman Legions, we have a World Trade Organization (and associated agencies) and a high-tech US/NATO strike force. And again the once-sovereign citizens of republics are being reduced to consuming bread and circuses -- and to unquestioned obedience to arbitrary imperial pronouncements, as Korea recently learned at the hands of the IMF (International Monetary Fund), and as Iraq learned under the barrage of Desert Storm. Globalization also takes us forward in time, to the worst nightmares of science-fiction lore. ID-card technology, already being tested around the world, and the rapidly developing global digital network, are ushering in an era when every person can be tracked from birth, and every activity can be monitored in real time. Meanwhile, thousands of genetic experiments are being unleashed on the world, with utter disdain for the awesome risks involved, and with complete disregard for the ethical and spiritual questions raised by playing God with the very fabric of life. Technology, under globalization, is being developed systematically and recklessly, with the dual aims of defending corporate power and enhancing corporate profits. US President Bill Clinton opened a recent speech to the UN in Geneva, on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of GATT, the first of the global free-trade agreements, with the statement "Globalization is not a policy choice; it is a fact." He is well aware that it is a policy choice, but in the broader sense is he right? Is globalization politically inevitable? In every crisis, according at least to the Chinese ideogram for crisis, there is both danger and opportunity. The opportunity brought by globalization is for people everywhere, from all walks of life, to wake up to the dire threat that faces them, and to do something about it. The globalization regime is too thoroughly entrenched for meaningful reform to be accomplished through standard political channels. And the corporate system is too dependent on endless "growth" for economic reform to be possible within the terms of that system. Only a radical restructuring of economic arrangements can provide for livable, sustainable societies. And only a radical shift of political power -- the dethroning of the corporate establishment -- can create a political environment in which such a transformation can be accomplished. History shows that radical political change of this kind comes about only under certain conditions. There must first be some constituency, or class if you prefer, that is aware of itself. Next, that constituency, in its collective self-awareness, must be motivated: it must be faced by unacceptable conditions, and there must be a shared vision of a preferred alternative. Finally, there must be a means available, by which the constituency can effectively achieve political power and implement its changes. The central thesis of this book is that these conditions are potentially present today, latent in the circumstances of globalization. The constituency for radical change are ordinary people everywhere. In much of the Third World, people have already identified globalization as a source of dire danger, and are organizing themselves into peasant movements and other modes of mass resistance. But the mechanisms by which the West dominates the Third World are formidable, having been perfected over centuries of colonialism. Only when people in the leading Western nations wake up to the threat as well -- and in their shared danger achieve collective self-awareness -- can a constituency arise that is sufficiently powerful to overcome the globalization juggernaut. The means available to such a constituency, to achieve radical change, is a global grass-roots political movement. The bulldozers have not yet completed their tasks -- our democratic institutions still exist, for the time being, and nations, the major ones, still have the power to undo the globalization project -- but only for a while, only until the institutions of globalization have fully consolidated their absolute power. Until then a mass movement could achieve political power through peaceful elections, and implement programs of radical transformation before it is too late. This investigation will take a critical look at various past movements, seeking to understand how they succeeded and how they failed. We will learn that every movement has a predictable set of obstacles to overcome, ranging from internal divisiveness to co-option at the very gates of would-be triumph. The most serious obstacles, however, are to be found following victory. From the unlikely lips of George Bush was articulated the central principle of radical change, it's "that vision thing." Martin Luther King understood about vision. He said to millions "I have a dream!" and he articulated the importance of keeping ones "eyes on the prize." Gandhi's vision was particularly deep and far-sighted, and he was up against odds that could only be overcome with the help of such outstanding vision. A movement must have a sound vision, a vision that inspires, and a vision that can be translated into workable policies and programs. Indeed the vision of a livable world is being articulated by people everywhere. A wealth of useful published material is available, regarding sustainable systems, appropriate technologies, locally-based economies, electoral reform, financial stabilization, stronger civil societies, corporate reform, etc. ad infinitum. This investigation will develop an overview of this emerging vision, and will provide references to further information. The basic elements of a societal vision have been developed, and the technical problems are solvable. There is one primary area, in this author's opinion, where an adequate vision has not been articulated, and that area is democracy. This investigation will look closely at the question of democracy, from a broad historical perspective. In particular the experience of the Western Democracies will be reviewed critically, and we will ask the unthinkable question: Have we been living under democracies or under plutocracies? We will also look beyond the standard democratic models, and dare to examine the Cuban system, and systems used by indigenous societies. A vision of grass-roots democracy -- genuine democracy -- will be developed, grounded in successful precedents, as a contribution to the "vision thing." In fact the question of genuine democracy arises when the movement is still in its early stages. A massive global movement must find a way to coordinate itself, to find a sense of common direction, and of solidarity. This movement won't be led by an existing aristocracy, as was the American Revolution, nor does it come with a pre-packaged ideology, as did the Russian Revolution. It is rising from the people themselves, starting from a thousand places around the world, and a thousand circumstances, and with a thousand agendas. As the movement evolves, one can hope that it develops democratic ways of operating, and finds ways to develop consensus agendas that originate from the grass roots. Such a movement, in fact, can become the vehicle of genuine democratic governance. Not a political party, such a movement would be better characterized as an empowered civil society -- a sound basis, I will argue, for a robust and lasting democratic system, which is in turn a sound basis for a sustainable, humane, and livable world. These then are the themes to be developed in this investigation. The purpose of this book is to inform and to empower -- to broaden the perspective from which globalization and democracy are understood, to encourage the development a global democratic movement, and to raise the issues that must be faced by such a movement if it is to ultimately achieve its goals. Your humble author may or may not succeed in this mission, but he wants to be clear about his objectives. Richard K. Moore Wexford, Ireland ------------------------------------------------------------------------ a political discussion forum - cj@cyberjournal.org To subscribe, send any message to cj-subscribe@cyberjournal.org A public service of Citizens for a Democratic Renaissance (mailto:cdr@cyberjournal.org http://cyberjournal.org) ---------------------------------------------------------- Non-commercial reposting is hereby approved, but please include the sig up through this paragraph and retain any internal credits and copyright notices. .--------------------------------------------------------- From priesz@itn.cl Fri Aug 7 17:12:06 1998 Date: Fri, 7 Aug 1998 19:10:09 -0400 To: Labor-Rap@csf.colorado.edu From: Paul Riesz Subject: Re: (1/n) "Globalization and the Revolutionary Imperative" Dear Mr. More: I read your posting about "Globalization and the Revolutionary Imperative" with great interest and though my views are much less radical than yours, I do agree with many of your ideas; especially on the excessive influence of wealth in Western democracies, indicating an urgent need for reforms (you use the term of plutocracy, which seems to hit the nail on the head, but might cause negative reactions from people, who remember that is was a mainstay in German propaganda against the allies during World War 2). As to your absolute opposition to globalization and your opinion that it is a strategy by multinational corporations to take over the world, I have some reservations. In my opinion the liberalization of trade brought great benefits to all of us during a long time and if now some harmful consequences have appeared, it only shows, that Free Trade, just as many other great ideas, has limits beyond which it becomes counterproductive. As to multinationals they DO take great and undue advantage of globalization, but probably only because their executives need to maximize profits for their shareholders (and themselves) if they want to retain their positions and not as part of a worldwide conspiracy. Therefore measures should be taken to keep the liberalization of trade within reasonable limits, to pay more attention to the concerns of ordinary people and to curb the excessive power of multinationals, which could be done, not through revolutionary means, but through REFORMING institutions such as the WTO and the IMF. The way to achieve such reforms might be, to make the voice of the majorities heard, when members of their governing boards are appointed or when it comes to approve financial contributions of member countries. As long as only "Chicago boys" sit on such boards, their policies will not favor the interests of common people. To do all that would certainly be difficult, but nowadays it should be somewhat easier through using Internet. As a reference I can point out an initiative to introduce an "electronic democracy" in British Colombia, which might be approved in the near future; for more info contact Dr, Frankilin Wayne Pole at "culturex@vcn.bc.ca". The same means should be applied to achieve a thorough reform of campaign financing in the US (see enclosure). Finally some remarks why I feel justified to issue opinions on such weighty matters, though lacking an academic background and not having really studied these subjects carefully on my own. This is based on my conviction that on matters of public policy, the only thing that counts is simple common sense, since the greatest experts, such as holders of Nobel prices in economics give diametrically opposed advice to governments, with often disastrous results. Whether or not my own opinions are based on such common sense is not for me to decide; therefore I have written down my ideas on several such subjects and posted some of them for discussions on Internet groups, but either no response did come forward or comments came only from radical Marxists, who do not accept any ideas, unless they are entirely based on the works of their idols. Hopefully they could receive some more objective comments on your discussion group; I shall therefore subscribe and later post them there. In order to find out, what the reactions might be, I am now including the latest one about the need for reforming liberal democracies. Here are my positions in a nutshell on a few other items on which I wrote down my ideas for discussion: 1. Trade relations: "Trade between countries can only be reasonably free, if it is also reasonably balanced. 2. The increase of juvenile violence: "As long as the airwaves are inundated with scenes of unprovoked extreme violence and/or irresponsible driving, kids must come to the conclusion, that such behavior is absolutely normal, that to become rich or gain attractive bed-partners on MUST use violence". 3. Drug addiction: "fighting SUPPLY is an unwinnable war, as long as so much money can be made with little effort though selling drugs. Drug addiction should be treated as a dangerous, communicable disease; therefore the community can DEMAND that it be treated, in order to reduce DEMAND. Please let me know what you think. Greetings Paul Riesz ENCLOSURE: During several months, WORKFARE has been discussed on several Internet groups, becoming apparent, that a considerable number of labor activists and supporters of the poor feel, that the actions of Western democratic governments and legislators have become very unfair. Many of them seem to have given up hope, that this situation can be improved through regular mechanisms of correction and are proclaiming the superiority of a Marxist alternative. They concentrate on pointing out real or imagined shortcomings of democracy and with such arguments are able to attract a great many people, who seem to have forgotten, that all known Marxist societies had much greater shortcomings, among them a complete lack of checks and balances. Under such circumstances it might be opportune to analyze the situation in depth and I therefore hope to find groups or forums, where this could be done and where I should like to issue the following: INVITATION TO DISCUSS WHETHER OUR DEMOCRATIC SOCIETIES SHOULD BE REFORMED, IN ORDER TO PRESERVE THEIR PRESENT PREEMINENCE AND ENHANCE THEIR BASIC VALUES. To claim that such reforms might be urgently needed, at the very moment, when democracy is on a triumphant ascendancy worldwide, would seem to be completely unwarranted, almost ridiculous. After all, our Western liberal democracies have proved to be foremost in wealth-creation, through economies based on free markets and also respect human rights and individual freedom, conditions lacking in totalitarian alternatives. Nevertheless it cannot be denied, that they have lately developed some great shortcomings, that affect the vital interests of a great number of their citizens and might cause them to lose faith in the system, thus undermining the support of the great majorities and maybe threatening their very existence in the not too distant future, since: 1. DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE RICH AND THE POOR HAVE BECOME ENORMOUS and 2. THEY FAILED TO OFFER REASONABLY EQUAL OPPORTUNITIES TO ALL THEIR CITIZENS, something many of us consider the most important issue of a democratic society: Unfortunately the normal checks and balances, which should have provided corrections and improvements, have lost a great deal of effectiveness, since lately WEALTH HAS ATTAINED AN EXCESSIVE INFLUENCE ON DECISION MAKING through a. financial contributions to election campaigns and b. very effective lobbies, representing powerful minority groups. Under such conditions, legislators feel obliged to give a great deal of priority to issues of interests to such groups and often neglect to deal with problems, that are bothering or even tormenting other, quite numerous sectors of the population. Such lopsided attitudes, caused despair among the underprivileged, inciting them to violence and criminality, with the loss of safety in the streets and whole neighborhoods and also fomented drug-addiction. The main problems refer to the fact, that ACCESS TO EDUCATION, HEALTH-CARE, JUSTICE AND JOBS HAVE BECOME MUCH TOO UNEVEN FOR A HEALTHY DEMOCRACY. There are a great many additional issues, that should also be addressed in a thorough program of reform, such as homelessness, a veritable blemish of society, Nevertheless to give such a program better chances to succeed, one should establish priorities for a step by step approach, among which THE REFORM OF CAMPAIGN FINANCING MIGHT BE CONSIDERED THE MOST URGENT, not only because it would eliminate the very root of many other problems, but also because such an initiative has already been proposed and seemingly enjoys majority support among voters. At a second level of priority, A MORE PROGRESSIVE RATE OF TAXATION SHOULD BE REINTRODUCED, with yields to be used to offer more equality of opportunities and better access to services, that by now are considered basic for a decent human existence. On the other hand, ONE MUST NOT FORGET THE NEED TO MAINTAIN INCENTIVES FOR INVESTMENT AND TO ALSO PROTECT THE VITAL INTERESTS OF THOSE INDIVIDUALS AND CORPORATIONS, WHOSE GREAT PRODUCTIVITY ARE CREATING THE SUPERIOR WEALTH OF DEMOCRACIES, thus preventing a large-scale transfer of wealth towards areas, where it might enjoy more favorable conditions. Furthermore significant exemptions should be granted for investments, that create new jobs for displaced blue collar workers. Therefore reformers must use a BALANCED approach for their proposals, in order to achieve really effective and enduring results. One should also provide measures to ensure the effective use of the higher yield of taxes, (maybe a mandatory supervision by independent local or regional bodies). Though the grave shortcomings of our societies should be eliminated for the sake of fairness alone, one must also consider, that the failure to address them might become dangerous to the continuity of free societies, since it might not be too farfetched to assume, that in that case A GREAT AND POSSIBLY RISING PERCENTAGE OF THE POPULATION MIGHT START TO GIVE THEIR ALLEGIANCE TOTALITARIAN ALTERNATIVES of the LEFT or the RIGHT. Since the regular avenues of change and correction have become somewhat less effective lately, unconventional types of actions should be preferred, e.g. the wide and varied use of the Internet for contacting legislators and for organizing and coordinating campaigns to make people aware of the danger to ignore such vital issues. I should appreciate comments on these points and especially concrete proposals for starting an interchange of opinions from as many different viewpoints as possible. Greetings Paul Riesz From priesz@itn.cl Sat Aug 8 07:36:30 1998 Date: Sat, 8 Aug 1998 09:36:53 -0400 To: freechat@vax6.drc.com From: Paul Riesz Subject: Re: Employer vs. Unions At 02:11 6/08/98 -0400, John Walsh wrote: " A better approach, in my opinion, is for workers and unions to fight for a " profit sharing situation where the more successful the employees are, the " more successful the owners (or stockholders) are Though we are still far apart on many points, I agree with your idea, that negotiating an equitable profit-sharing scheme would be the best way to harmonize relations between capital and labor and that unions should prefer to pursue such policies to their normal efforts to push fixed salaries up beyond reasonable limits. Paul Riesz From xcruz@webtv.net Sat Aug 8 13:15:20 1998 X-WebTV-Signature: 1 ETAsAhQlV7RBqnxgqt16jGlSkso3SqUCZAIUH7suKRB6Sk0lpCfuQBPQeN7mjXY= From: xcruz@webtv.net (Robert Chavez) Date: Sat, 8 Aug 1998 13:15:15 -0600 (MDT) To: Labor-Rap@csf.colorado.edu Subject: Fwd: Fruit pickers' summer of squalor --WebTV-Mail-649867796-213 --WebTV-Mail-649867796-213 [207.79.35.92]) by postoffice-121.bryant.webtv.net (8.8.5/po.gso.24Feb98) by mailsorter-102.bryant.webtv.net (8.8.5/ms.graham.14Aug97) with Date: Sat, 8 Aug 1998 12:32:29 -0600 (MDT) Reply-To: lared-l@lmrinet.ucsb.edu Sender: owner-lared-l@lmrinet.ucsb.edu From: Robert Vazquez To: lared-l@lmrinet.ucsb.edu Subject: Fruit pickers' summer of squalor Local News : Sunday, August 02, 1998 Fruit pickers' summer of squalor by Lynda V. Mapes Seattle Times staff reporter As Washington's $1.7 billion tree-fruit industry booms to record harvests, the state is losing ground in the battle for decent housing for tens of thousands of farmworkers who bring in the crop. Gray light seeps through the pines as first one car door, then another, creaks opens. It is barely 4 a.m. as this encampment awakens. Families yawn from cars and tents, and stumble amid piles of beer bottles, clotheslines strung with raw meat and grocery sacks stuffed with clothing. The morning fills with hasty rituals of ablution: feet shoved into shoes damp with dew, a toothbrush stuck in a stump to keep it out of the dirt; the rustle of bushes pressed into use as a bathroom. A nearby stream serves as kitchen sink, laundry, shower and, sometimes, toilet for the 60 or so migrant pickers camped here for the brief cherry harvest. "It's part of the battle of life," says Eloisa Alonzo, 56, groggy after a poor night's sleep in the back of a car. The camp, perched on Department of Natural Resources land outside Wenatchee, empties within minutes as the workers head for the cherry trees on Stemilt Hill. There they will provide the delicate, arduous labor needed to harvest some of the most profitable orchard land in Washington. As they leave, Alonzo goes to work in her woodland kitchen - under a blue plastic tarp stretched atop a length of irrigation pipe. She shreds cooked chicken meat, left unrefrigerated overnight, into a vat of chili. She leans to her elbows in the red sauce, stirring with her hands, making the first of hundreds of tamales she hopes to sell in the orchards that day. For seven years, Alonzo and her mobile tamale kitchen have trailed the harvest, from crop to crop, while the men in her family pick the fruit - oranges in California, then cherries and, finally, apples, in Washington. They travel together, a family of seven spanning three generations. Alonzo's 6-month-old great grandson stays tucked in the tent, his stuffed animals lying outside in the dirt "It is very hard like this," says Alonzo. "You see us, how we walk around on the earth like pigs? It makes me feel embarrassed for you to see how we live." Check out the rest of the story at: http://archives.seattletimes.com/cgi-bin/texis/web/vortex/display? storyID=53402&query=farmworkers ** Note: The best way to access the site is to first copy the url from this message, and then paste it to your web browser. "LaRed Latina" WWW site: http://www.inconnect.com/~rvazquez/sowest.html ************************************************************************ --WebTV-Mail-649867796-213-- From culturex@vcn.bc.ca Sun Aug 9 11:38:06 1998 Sun, 9 Aug 1998 10:37:35 -0700 (PDT) Date: Sun, 9 Aug 1998 10:37:34 -0700 (PDT) From: Franklin Wayne Poley Subject: How Much More Unreasonable Can Workfare Become? ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sun, 09 Aug 1998 02:58:48 -0400 From: Julie Star To: workfare-discuss@icomm.ca Subject: [Fwd: Volunteer work and the dole] Dear listmembers, First of all let me introduce myself. My name is Julie Star. Some of you I know have seen my posts on the IWPR and WLC lists. I am a 38 year old college student/veteran/welfare recipient/activist. I got involved with fighting welfare reform last summer after my workfare hours raised from 8 hours per week to 20 hours per week while I was attending school full time working on two associate degrees simultaneously. We started hearing rumors that our hours would be raised even further to 40 hours per week so I started doing some research. I found the IWPR listserv and posted my story. Marc Cohan from the Welfare Law Center in New York saw my posts and offered his help in fighting "deform" here in Ohio. In October of last year, the Sandusky County Department of Human Services (SCDHS) wanted me to sign a new self-sufficiency contract agreeing to work 40 hours per week for them. They were assigning all recipients to 40 hours across the board irregardless of their benefit amounts. I filed for a state hearing stating that the contract was illegal. With the help of Marc at WLC and Bill Senhauser at the Equal Justice Foundation in Toledo Ohio we were able to get SCDHS as well as the Ohio Department of Human Services to comply with Minimum Wage Laws and the Fair Labor Standards Act. I have filed for three more state hearings since then on various issues. Only the last has actually gone to hearing. It is based on the fact that I was improperly assessed and assigned to my current workfare position. The have me working in the Counties mock up factory. In my hearing I also claimed that I thought some of the jobs that I was being asked to do there could be detrimental to my health. The sent me for a medical evaluation and because it came back saying that I could not perform my required job duties they purposely tried to keep the report from me until after my hearing. They are still keeping me working in the same place doing the same jobs with some modifications while we are awaiting hearing results. That is my story. I learned a lot about what is going on in Canada watching the discussion with C. Ditmar. Please excuse me if it takes me a bit to get up to par as this is all new to me. I will keep you informed as to what is going on down here in Ohio. I look forward to some lively discussions with all of you and hope that together we can stop this madness! Resisting in Ohio! Julie Star 1240 Sycamore St. Fremont, Oh 43420 (419) 334-8205 star@nwonline.net From Badenova@mail1.remote.uva.nl Sun Aug 9 13:55:24 1998 Date: Sun, 09 Aug 1998 21:53:29 +0200 To: Labor-Rap@csf.colorado.edu From: Ron van Baden Subject: Fruit Pickers and Wisconsin in the Netherlands For your information: Dear friends, For a lot of Americans Amsterdam was the place to be last week. Amsterdam was, as you all know, the host city of the Gay Games. 15.000 participants from all over the world saw 'tolerant' Holland at its best. But they would know better if they could read the dutch newspapers. Tolerance is, we think, our trademark. But at the same we import ideas from abroad (especially America) that have nothing to do with tolerance. In the saturdays newspaper I read two articles. One article about the wisconsin-system and one article about fruit pickers. Our dutch policy-makers found the solution to their problems, labor-shortages in nearly all branches of the economy, in Wisconsin: ZERO TOLERANCE WITH THE UNEMPLOYED. In the near feature private organizations will be able to sell the labour power of the unemployed and 'welfare-parasites' and make a whole lot of money. Fruit pickers are a special case. Farmers can't find workers for their irregular, bad paid and lousy jobs. So they have to find people that can't refuse to do this kind of work. And according to the farmer organization they have found them: people who have requested asylum. The Gay Games were wonderful. We earned a lot of money and asked them to visit our tolerant country again. But if they will visit our country in 2005 I really don't know what kind of country the will find. I guess that the harsh reality in the states for the poor and low-paid workers (as the fruit pickers) images our own future. Greetings, Ron van Baden Amsterdam 'Working is the curse of the drinking classes' Ron van Baden * Tidorestraat 136 1095 HL Amsterdam 'If you don't know where you're going, then every road will take you there' From xcruz@webtv.net Sun Aug 9 23:48:15 1998 X-WebTV-Signature: 1 ETAuAhUAxpnc7cPYb1OkLJ7zvshIDmZwBHwCFQCXqP13GoolGI0GKTs0SH8HbH12vg== From: xcruz@webtv.net (Robert Chavez) Date: Sun, 9 Aug 1998 23:47:53 -0600 (MDT) To: Labor-Rap@csf.colorado.edu Subject: 50 Years On, The Wages of Slave Labour The Times of London                         August 10 1998 OPINION   Michael Pinto-Duschinsky on the Holocaust survivors' split                                                                 50 years on, the wages of slave labour                                                                                                                                         An intense, symbol-laden argument is dividing Britain's community of survivors of the Nazi Holocaust. The dispute is over strategies for pursuing financial claims related to their treatment in the Second World War. One side favours public protest and legal threat; the other defends the age-old approach of Jewish organisations: private negotiation and compromise. The immediate issue is the question of compensation from German companies which employed Jewish slave labourers. These include Volkswagen, Daimler-Benz and Siemens. Other claims concern insurance companies and banks (Deutsche Bank and Dresdner Bank) which financed and benefited from many of Hitler's operations. All these companies have major British interests. It may seem strange that, 53 years after the war, this controversy has resurfaced. The former slaves, who tried to bury memories of the past in order to rebuild their careers and to raise their families, now face old age. This has brought renewed anguish and the realisation that this may be their last chance. Quite apart from the money, the fact that they are not entitled to payment for their slave labour while their former overseers (including SS officers) receive pensions leaves many with feelings of outrage and injustice. The survivors leading the campaign for compensation have received support from younger Jewish professionals such as the lawyer Anthony Julius. This is part of a shift in Anglo-Jewish attitudes. Traditionally, Jews — like other minorities — felt that the price of social acceptance was outward conformity. Yet Britain is now a pluralist nation. While most official Jewish institutions cling to the traditional line of not "making waves", the approach is beginning to lose its logic. The activists among the Holocaust survivors are at loggerheads with the Jewish Claims Conference, a worldwide organisation which includes representatives of the Board of Deputies of British Jews. Since the early 1950s, the Claims Conference has negotiated with the German Government and occasionally with German companies. At times it has been successful. But it has almost always negotiated in private, shying away from open confrontation. In recent years it has concentrated on obtaining compensation for Jewish victims of the Nazis living in the former Soviet bloc. Its critics argue that the Claims Conference has become addicted to the inside track; by its aversion to protest it has made some poor deals. When Daimler-Benz and Volkswagen refused to compensate their former Jewish slaves, the Claims Conference agreed instead to accept derisory offers of £3.6 million and £1 million for Jewish institutions such as old people's homes. The specific condition of the companies was that none of the money be paid as compensation to former workers for fear of creating a legal precedent. Controversially, the Claims Conference used bank interest on unspent money from Daimler-Benz to pay for a public relations consultant. The timidity of many Jewish representative bodies has meant that some of the most effective campaigns against the recalcitrant German corporations have come from individuals and groups within Germany itself. It was Baron von Munchhausen, a professor at Bremen University descended from the famous storyteller's brother, who in 1990 initiated a long series of legal actions against the German Government on behalf of Jewish women who survived the cruelties of slave labour. His own mother, a Jewess, had died at Auschwitz. When the Claims Conference rejected his appeal for help, he obtained financial backing from an anonymous German donor to pay the heavy legal bills. After seven years, Munchhausen finally succeeded in obtaining compensation of £7,000 for one woman who had been a slave labourer in Bremen in 1944. This limited victory paved the way for a campaign in Nuremberg which resulted in payments by the Diehl company to 250 Jewish women. Munchhausen then threatened legal action against Volkswagen unless it agreed by July 31, 1998 to compensate its former Jewish workers, which it previously had resolutely refused to do. Within three weeks, VW complied. At the end of July, Deutsche Bank issued a statement acknowledging moral (but, significantly, not legal) repsonsibility for "the darkest chapter in its history". Meanwhile, the German Government has taken modest steps to restrict pension rights of German war criminals. Legal actions against VW and other German corporations are being prepared in the US. The Claims Conference finally decided in July that it, too, will now assist Jewish slave labourers in their negotiations with the German corporations. The settlements so far agreed have been for small sums and for limited groups. The corporations doggedly refuse to accept legal responsibility; the Federal Government does not accept liability to pay for slave labour under the Nazi regime either. This could change if a coalition of Social Democrats and Greens wins power next month. But confrontational tactics are proving more effective than caution. If younger generations of British Jews, together with vociferous groups within Germany, are able to campaign effectively for justice for the survivors of the Nazi regime, there is more hope that a pluralist, democratic Europe may emerge after all. Copyright 1998 Times Newspapers Ltd. From brbgc@ix.netcom.com Mon Aug 10 10:55:44 1998 by dfw-ix9.ix.netcom.com (8.8.4/8.8.4) id rma021572; Mon Aug 10 11:53:03 1998 Date: Mon, 10 Aug 1998 12:55:11 -0400 From: Ric Brown Reply-To: brbgc@ix.netcom.com To: Bad Subjects , cultstud-l , "H-LABOR@msu.edu" , "H-WOMEN@H-NET.MSU.EDU" , INTERNATIONAL POLITICAL ECONOMY , Labor Research and Action Project , "marxjour@ccc.uba.ar" , PROGRESSIVE SOCIOLOGISTS NETWORK , psn-cafe , "regards.liste@regards.fr" , Social Class in Contemporary Societies , Spoon Collective , STUDIES IN WOMEN AND ENVIRONMENT , Patricia Clough , Stanley Aronowitz , Mitu Hirshman , Jennifer Disney , Subject: CONF. ANN.: INTERNATIONAL WOMEN AND DEVELOPMENT CONFERENCE: "WHICH WAY FOR WOMEN AND DEVELOPMENT?" CUNY, October 15-17 Please Forward THE GRADUATE SCHOOL AND UNIVERSITY CENTER OF THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK Presents WHICH WAY FOR WOMEN AND DEVELOPMENT? DEBATING CONCEPTS, STRATEGIES, AND DIRECTIONS IN THE 21st CENTURY To Be Held At The Borough of Manhattan Community College 199 Chambers Street October 15-17, 1998 **** For Complete Information, visit our WWW Page at **** http://www.geocities.com/athens/7364/Women_and_Development.html Our conference will bring together scholars and practitioners from around the world and working in divergent disciplines, including Women and Development experts, ecofeminists, postmodern and postcolonial feminist theorists and others, to address some of the recent debates over the goals, means, and theoretical frameworks informing the field of Women and Development. We will open with an evening plenary and continue for two more days of three panels each. The panels will cut across orientations, disciplines, and professions to provide the basis for an unprecedented interchange among scholars, practitioners and policy-makers to discuss some of the current challenges to the field -- intellectual, political, economic and ecological. Keynote Addresses by: ** Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Department of English, Columbia University ** Irene Tinker, Department of City and Regional Planning, University of California, Berkeley Panels Include: ** Re-Inventing Aid: International Agencies and the "Woman Question" in Development ** Locating Women/Locating Work: Emerging Capitalisms and the Gendered/Racial Division of Labor ** More Worldly Feminisms: Feminist Theories and the Politics of Location ** Stories from the Field: Theorizing Action/Acting on Theory ** Techno-Science Questions in Development: Intersections of Gender, Science, Media and Environment ** Can the Subaltern Desire? For the complete Conference Program, please visit http://www.geocities.com/athens/7364/program.html Participants Include: Lila Abu-Lughod, Rogaia Mustafa Abu Sharaf, Norma Alarcon, Peggy Antrobus, Tani Barlow, Eudine Barriteau, Linda Basch, Lourdes Beneria, Barbara Bowen, Patricia Clough, Jennifer Leigh Disney, Hester Eisenstein, Patience Elabor-Idemudia, Cynthia Enloe, Kimberly Flynn, Irene Gendzier, Noeleen Heyzer, Mitu Hirshman, Marnia Lazreg, Yvonne Lasalle, Marianne Marchand, Carmen Medeiros, Joan Mencher, Caroline Moser, Meera Nanda, Achola O. Pala, Jane Parpart, Shirin Rai, Kriemild Saunders, Vandana Shiva, Ella Shohat, Sinith Sittirak, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Noel Sturgeon, Irene Tinker, Dessima Williams, Ara Wilson and Brigitte Young. Sponsored By: Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research; Vice Chancellor of Academic Affairs, CUNY; The Office of the President, The Office of the Provost, The Center for the Study of Women and Society, and The Center for Cultural Studies, the Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York; Racolin Foundation; Diversity Initiative of the Program in Applied Sociology, Queens College; Sawhney Travels; The Tribeca Performing Arts Center; The Film Studies Certificate Program and Ph.D. Programs in Anthropology, English, History, Political Science and Sociology of the Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York; The National Council for Research on Women; The International Women's Tribune Center. From rkmoore@iol.ie Mon Aug 10 12:20:02 1998 Date: Mon, 10 Aug 1998 19:09:03 +0100 To: Paul Riesz From: rkmoore@iol.ie (Richard K. Moore) Subject: Re: Riesz on "Globalization and the Revolutionary Imperative" 8/07/98, Paul Riesz wrote: >I read your posting about "Globalization and the Revolutionary Imperative" .... >As to your absolute opposition to globalization and your opinion that it is >a strategy by multinational corporations to take over the world, I have some >reservations. In my opinion the liberalization of trade brought great >benefits to all of us during a long time and if now some harmful >consequences have appeared, it only shows, that Free Trade, just as many >other great ideas, has limits beyond which it becomes counterproductive. As >to multinationals they DO take great and undue advantage of globalization, >but probably only because their executives need to maximize profits for >their shareholders (and themselves) if they want to retain their positions >and not as part of a worldwide conspiracy. > >Therefore measures should be taken to keep the liberalization of trade >within reasonable limits, to pay more attention to the concerns of ordinary >people and to curb the excessive power of multinationals, which could be >done, not through revolutionary means, but through REFORMING institutions >such as the WTO and the IMF. Dear Paul, You hit the nail on the head with your statement "just as many other great ideas, [liberalization] has limits beyond which it becomes counterproductive". But it has become more than just a little counterproductive, it has become a global crisis threatening life on Earth, societies, and democracy. I recommend to you the book "The Case against the Global Economy", edited by Jerry Mander and Edward Goldsmith (Sierral Club Books, 1996). You are certainly correct that individual corporations are simply "playing the game", maximizing their profits, not participating in any "global conspiracy". But globalization is something at a higher level than routine corporate activity. It includes the well-orchestrated and well-funded campaigns of Reagan and Thatcher, the systematic destabilization of Western societies, the transfer of sovereignty to TNC-dominaged bureacracies, etc. This isn't really a "conspiracy" because you can read about it in right-wing think-tank reports. But it is not covered in the mass media and most people are not aware of its full dimensions and dire consequences. I think of it as a "stealth attack on democracy" rather than a "conspiracy" per se. You recommend _reform of the WTO and the IMF. That's fine, but how do you think that can be accomplished? Our governments are thoroughly captured by corporate interests, and our political parties and mass media are totally corrupted by corporate power. I personally see no way that any meaningful reform can be accomplished through "traditional channels". How else but through a massive grass-roots movement can systemic change be accomplished? yours, rkm http://cyberjournal.org From xcruz@webtv.net Tue Aug 11 02:16:09 1998 X-WebTV-Signature: 1 ETAuAhUAtBymLo53ibHnpKsf2FtAlbUEt78CFQCpCa3BCrGgSNHKyNMW067O1fVU+A== From: xcruz@webtv.net (Robert Chavez) Date: Tue, 11 Aug 1998 02:15:52 -0600 (MDT) To: Labor-Rap@csf.colorado.edu Subject: Gephardt's Got a Scrapper   TIME AUGUST 17, 1998 VOL. 152 NO. 7 If the Going Gets Rough, Gephardt's Got a Scrapper By JAMES CARNEY /WASHINGTON Get ready for a fight. That was the message Bill Clinton's allies on Capitol Hill sent Ken Starr and Republicans last Friday when they appointed Abbe D. Lowell as the Democrats' chief counsel for any impeachment-related proceedings against the President. Named one of Washington's 50 top lawyers last year, Lowell, 46, is a Bronx-bred former civil rights attorney who specializes in defending politicians and businessmen. Renowned within the Beltway for his combative manner and impressive trial record, Lowell is particularly skilled at turning legal and ethical problems into matters of mere politics--to the great benefit of his clients. And he has no fear of offending his opponents. Regardie's magazine once declared that Lowell "may well be the most irritating lawyer in Washington...always yipping and nipping in your face." Officially, Lowell will serve as counsel to the House Judiciary Committee's ranking Democrat, John Conyers. But the decision to hire him for what could be the highest-profile legal-defense job in a generation was made in large part by Richard Gephardt, the House minority leader, and two other committee Democrats, Barney Frank and Howard Berman. The goal, say insiders, was to bring in someone capable of fighting a partisan war on a legal battlefield. "This situation doesn't call for a law-school dean, former-judge type," says a source familiar with the decision. "This could be a pretty scrappy fight." And one in which Gephardt, a likely challenger for the 2000 Democratic presidential nomination, has a lot at stake. Not too long ago, Gephardt was engaged in some bitter policy clashes with both Clinton and Vice President Gore. But that was pre-Monica. Gephardt has spent the past seven months suppressing his own Oval Office ambitions in order to defend its current occupant. Every two weeks since April he has convened a meeting in his office with Conyers, Frank, Berman and top staff members to talk about the Lewinsky scandal, the timing of a report from Starr and its probable impact on Democrats in this November's midterm elections. The outcome of the elections could determine Gephardt's future. If the Democrats pick up 11 seats, Gephardt becomes Speaker of the House, a prime launching pad for a presidential campaign. But if the Democrats lose seats in an anti-Clinton tidal wave, Gephardt's prospects could be seriously diminished. "[Gephardt] knows his fate, and the fate of the whole Democratic Party, is inextricably linked to Clinton," says a party strategist. "For now, anyway, we're all on the same side." time-webmaster@pathfinder.com From xcruz@webtv.net Tue Aug 11 04:28:20 1998 X-WebTV-Signature: 1 ETAsAhRKVD943lBCgoYO/MFGuSGAE8uvAgIUBlibZYpLRT2Y/kgvjb7JbTrzWT8= From: xcruz@webtv.net (Robert Chavez) Date: Tue, 11 Aug 1998 04:28:13 -0600 (MDT) To: Labor-Rap@csf.colorado.edu Subject: Prison Industry Shuts Down Ga. Business   Tuesday August 11 2:31 AM EDT Prison Industry Shuts Down Ga. Business DAVID PACE WASHINGTON (AP) - After 18 years of making missile shipping containers for the federal government, Tim Graves ran into a competitor his small Georgia company couldn't handle - the government's own Federal Prison Industries. Operating under a 1934 law that requires federal agencies to buy its products, FPI began moving into the missile container market in 1991, taking over defense contracts that previously had gone to small companies like Graves' General Engineering Service in Forest Park, Ga. And even though Graves took FPI to court and eventually persuaded its board to get out of the missile container business, by last summer his company was gone, his manufacturing plant closed and his 100 employees scattered to other jobs. A year later, the 49-year-old businessman is still unemployed, still trying to sort through what happened and plot a new course for his life. ``I don´t know what I´m going to do,´´ Graves said in a telephone interview from his home in the Atlanta suburb of Marietta. ``After 18 years of building up that business, that´s your whole life. Graves can't forget the fact that the government gave the work to federal convicts, rather than to his employees. ``It´s hard for me to accept that the government would put the welfare and benefit of convicted felons above the interests of its taxpayers,´´ he said. Rep. Mac Collins, R-Ga., used Graves' experience last week to argue at a congressional hearing for eliminating the requirement that federal agencies purchase FPI products. A bill, sponsored by Collins and Reps. Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich., Barney Frank, D-Mass., and Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., also would make FPI accountable for completing contracts on time and to the satisfaction of the buying agency. Under the 1934 law, FPI is the sole judge of its performance. Collins said Graves' experience ``demonstrates both the weakness of the current law and the anti-business, anti-worker sentiment that has guided FPI to attack the livelihood of law-abiding citizens.´´ Business groups and labor unions have stepped up their assault on FPI's contracting preferences in recent years. The agency is the 37th largest federal contractor, with $512.8 million in sales last year. FPI is barred by law from selling its products in interstate commerce. FPI's industrial plants employ up to 25 percent of all federal inmates capable of working. The rest hold jobs related to running prisons, such as cooking, cleaning and laundry. Kathleen Hawk Sawyer, director of the federal Bureau of Prisons, recently called FPI ``the most successful prison industries model in American history.´´ The agency is not without its supporters. Rep. Bill McCollum, R-Fla., chairman of the House Judiciary crime subcommittee, has introduced legislation to expand the program by encouraging private companies to take over FPI plants. But Graves, who estimates he spent $150,000 fighting FPI's entry into the missile container market, said Congress should bring an element of fairness into the agency's dealings with other contractors, particularly small businesses. ``They´re tax exempt, they can borrow all the money they need from the federal treasury, they can build all the plants and equipment they need with our taxes, and they employ prisoners,´´ he said. Graves sued FPI alleging that the agency had failed to complete a study of how its entry into the missile container market would impact industry and labor, as required by law. When he got to court, he discovered another advantage FPI enjoys. ``They had a couple of federal prosecutors acting as defense attorneys,´´ he said. ``I was paying their wages too, and also had to pay for my own attorney.´´ Graves eventually settled the lawsuit when FPI agreed to complete the impact analysis and pay $22,000 of his attorneys' fees. He then took his case to the FPI board of directors, where he won an order removing the agency from the missile container business. But in the meantime, the Small Business Administration had used its legal authority to designate the missile container contracts for minority-owned small businesses. So after winning the battle against FPI, Graves found he was no longer eligible to compete for the contracts that had accounted for up to 70 percent of his $13 million to $15 million in annual sales. ``We didn´t have the funds to go after the SBA, so we just closed the business,´´ he said. ``I won but I lost.´´     Copyright © 1998 The Associated Press. From rkmoore@iol.ie Tue Aug 11 08:08:35 1998 Date: Tue, 11 Aug 1998 15:07:07 +0100 To: cj@cyberjournal.org, renaissance-network@cyberjournal.org, social-movements@staffmail.wit.ie, WOC-L@PGS.CA, corporations@envirolink.org, WSN@csf.colorado.edu, Labor-Rap@csf.colorado.edu From: rkmoore@iol.ie (Richard K. Moore) Subject: cj#813> re: Globalization book: ideology vs anarchy? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ From: Bill Blum [author of "Killing Hope, US Military and CIA interventions since World War II"] Date: Fri, 7 Aug 1998 22:36:48 EDT To: cj@cyberjournal.org Subject: Re: cj#812> 1st of series: "Globalization and the Revolutionary Imperative" rkm wrote: << In fact the question of genuine democracy arises when the movement is still in its early stages. A massive global movement must find a way to coordinate itself, to find a sense of common direction, and of solidarity. This movement won't be led by an existing aristocracy, as was the American Revolution, nor does it come with a pre-packaged ideology, as did the Russian Revolution. It is rising from the people themselves, starting from a thousand places around the world, and a thousand circumstances, and with a thousand agendas. >> Dear Richard, though I generally admire what you've written in this essay, I have a problem with the above paragraph. On the one hand -- coordination, common direction, solidarity, plus, earlier, "the vision thing" ... On the other hand -- no pre-packaged ideology. Does everyone bring their "own thing" to the great revolutionary party; i.e., total anarchy? Or are there at least a MINIMUM of ideas that MUST, IN COMMON, be understood intellectually and be inspired by emotionally? Elsewhere you do list some of these ideas -- though not categorizing them as rigidly as I am here -- but throughout your writings I find this tension between the the very appealing "everyone doing their own thing, everyone bringing to the table their own favorite dish" AND "It's time to get serious, people", like the first part of the above cited paragraph. To be continued. Bill ----------- Dear Bill, What I said is that there is no _pre-packaged ideology. With Marxism, by contrast, there is a whole cartload of ideology, such as "all value is derived from labor", history unfolds from "class conflict" and "dialectic materialism", etc. Similarly with globalization there is an ideology, or at least a rhetoric, that market forces are beneficial and that government has no useful economic role to play. I am a proponent of locally-based, grass-roots democracy. Perhaps _that is an "ideology", but I think that would be stretching the term a bit. In Chiapas, locally-based democracy would translate into communal land stewardship, while in Norway it would translate into a social-democracy, mixed-economy system. An approach which includes that much diversity in public policy cannot, in my view, be called an "ideology". My American Heritage dictionary says of "ideology": The body of ideas reflecting the social needs and aspirations of an individual, group, class, or culture. The Cassell Concise English Dictionary says: ...abstract or fanciful theorizing; the political or social philosophy of a nation, movement, group etc. Based on these definitions, democracy is perhaps a "meta ideology", a _process out of which different ideologies emerge in different places and from different conditions and cultures -- different "nations, movements, groups, etc" can be expected to identify their own "needs and aspirations" and "philosophies". Let's examine the "current situation", the context out of which a global movement might be expected to arise. My observation is that hundreds (thousands?) of grass-roots initiatives are underway worldwide, with many different focus of concerns. Some focus on over-population, others on fighting corporate influence, election reform, sustainable agriculture, anti-imperialism, reductions in armaments, improving labor conditions, media reform, etc. etc. My belief, which is shared by Citizens for a Democratic Renaissance (CDR), is that these different initiatives are too isolated from one another, that their political energy is fragmented, and that they can and are being played off against one another by existing political regimes. This is perhaps most clearly illustrated when environmentalists are accused of being "anti labor" because they oppose cutting down the last few remaining Redwood forests. Our agenda, or focus of concern, is to help build bridges between these different initiatives or "sub-movements", to encourage people to talk not only with those in their own sub-movement, but to reach out and dialog with people in other sub-movements. Our image of a mass movement is a "web", with the "spokes" being the diverse existing struggles, and the "circular strands" being links between the spokes. Thus we use the term "web weaving" to describe bridge-building between sub-movements. Out of such process we hope that a sense of common purpose can be developed, that the diverse struggles can be harmonized, that shared agendas can be articulated, and that unity of political action can be achieved. You ask: "are there at least a MINIMUM of ideas that MUST, IN COMMON, be understood intellectually and be inspired by emotionally?". I answer "Yes and no." "Yes", in the sense that self governance is an idea that we all can support, and which can inspire us. "No", in the sense that we don't need to agree in advance that "population control", for example, is more important than "taming corporations" or "election reform". Cesar Roberto, a Brazilian who has contributed to cj in the past, and who is a "friend of CDR", describes movement building as "establishing non-discriminatory alliances". This concept of "non-discriminatory" is what I mean by "non-ideological". An ideology-based movement would start by articulating an ideology, and would then try to get everyone to buy into it. A non-discriminatory movement starts from the concerns and initiatives that are already afoot, and then tries to get them to work together. This is a _process-based approach, rather than a _content-based approach. The "idea content" of the movement arises from the process of the movement, and varies from place to place, rather than being uniformly defined (pre-packaged) beforehand. --- I can offer an _analysis, not an ideology, regarding why such a movement is sorely needed, and why there is hope _today for such a movement to succeed, hope that was _not there as recently as the 1970's. That analysis, which should be familiar to cj readers by now, is that globalization is pushing us _all into a desperate corner. Prior to the "neoliberal revolution" of the 1980's, we had a system where the middle classes in the dominant Northern nations were granted privileges. These privileges, one might say, were bribes, encouraging dominant populations to permit the rest of the world (including their own less privileged citizens) to be exploited by corporate imperialism. But under neoliberalism (ie, Reaganism = Thatcherism = blind faith in market forces), the Northern middle classes are now being grossly exploited as well, with reduced social programs, increased unemployment, declining working conditions, etc. As more and more people in these dominant nations become aware of their declining status, and aware that under globalization things will only get much worse, it becomes possible for them to find common cause with those in the Third World who have been suffering for centuries under imperialism. Thus the "inherent conditions" today create the seeds of a massive grass-roots global movement. These conditions, however, do not insure that such a movement will arise, nor do they insure that things will move in the direction of democracy. Instead the energy of discontent can turn to religious fundamentalism, or xenophobic nationalism, or factionalism. When such discontent is manipulated by those in power, it can result in fascism. This is why I consider Marxists, and others, to be counter productive, when they say "Let things get worse, let capitalism collapse, and then utopia will spontaneously arise". I see no evidence whatsoever that a benign result can be expected to arise automatically from increased suffering. All evidence, in fact, is to the contrary. There is no evidence, in fact, that capitalism will collapse. Capitalism has proven itself to be extremely adaptable. It can survive depressions, in fact it can take advantage of them to consolidate its position even further, as when farmland in the US was repossessed by banks in the thirties, and as in Korea, where bankrupt companies are being bought up by outside interests at bargain prices. The natural direction of capitalism, I claim, is not toward collapse, but toward monopolization. It is leading us toward a world where a handful of TNC's (transnational corporations) own and run the world. This is not theory, this is what is plainly happening, as industry after industry is becoming rapidly concentrated, on a global scale, into the hands of a few major operators, and as political power is being monopolized by TNC-dominated bureaucracies such as the World Trade Organization and the IMF. Ultimately, one cannot deny, the limits of growth in a finite world will have to be faced. But with the world owned and run by giant TNC's, this will be expressed not by collapse, but by a transition to neo-feudalism, with TNC's in the roles which under classic feudalism were held by monarchs and landed aristocracies. --- The title of my book is "Globalization and the Revolutionary Imperative". "Imperative" refers to the fact that we _must seize the moment, we must accomplish a revolutionary change in political power, and we must do it before our democracies are completely destroyed and disempowered. If we wait, if we allow the corporate globalist regime to fully consolidate its power, then we'll _all be in the position that Third-World peoples have been in for centuries -- where the forces arrayed against them are so strong that effective resistance is nearly impossible. The challenge is for thinkers, and writers, and leaders, and activists to rise above their individual ideological positions and to work for "non-discriminatory alliances", to end their mutual factionalism, and to help build a unified grass-roots movement. The ideology, or ideologies, if they are needed, will arise from the process of the movement. That, I submit, is what democracy is all about. in solidarity, rkm Wexford, Ireland ------------------------------------------------------------------------ a political discussion forum - cj@cyberjournal.org To subscribe, send any message to cj-subscribe@cyberjournal.org A public service of Citizens for a Democratic Renaissance (mailto:cdr@cyberjournal.org http://cyberjournal.org) ---------------------------------------------------------- Non-commercial reposting is hereby approved, but please include the sig up through this paragraph and retain any internal credits and copyright notices. .--------------------------------------------------------- To see the index of the cj archives, send any message to: cj-index@cyberjournal.org To subscribe to our activists list, send any message to: renaissance-network-subscribe@cyberjournal.org Help create the Movement for a Democratic Rensaissance ---------------------------------------------- crafted in Ireland by rkm ----------------------------------- A community will evolve only when the people control their means of communication. -- Frantz Fanon From meisenscher@igc.apc.org Tue Aug 11 17:13:14 1998 Tue, 11 Aug 1998 16:12:06 -0700 (PDT) Tue, 11 Aug 1998 16:11:28 -0700 (PDT) Date: Tue, 11 Aug 1998 16:11:28 -0700 (PDT) To: labor-rap@csf.colorado.edu From: Michael Eisenscher Subject: [PEN-L:747] Re: Sociologists and others who lie SPIES LIKE US WHEN SOCIOLOGISTS DECEIVE THEIR SUBJECTS By CHARLOTTE ALLEN THEY CALL THEMSELVES GUINEAMEN. For more than two hundred years, they and their forebears have fished, hunted, raised livestock on, and otherwise made their living from a broad peninsula of marshland in a corner of the Virginia tidewater region, where the York River meets the Chesapeake Bay. Although many Guineamen now work outside the peninsula, a large number still ply the traditional Chesapeake waterman's trade, generating a distinctive local culture centered around the outboard skiff, Ford pickup, rubber wading boots, snap-brim cap, and plug of tobacco. When I visited them one afternoon this past summer, members of two Guinea families were sitting in the yard in front of their trailer homes. When I explained to them why I was there, they began jeering and trading jibes. The target of their mockery was not another local but Carolyn Ellis, a sociologist at the University of South Florida, whose prizewinning 1986 book about the Guineamen, Fisher Folk (Kentucky), transformed her in their eyes from a beloved outsider and frequent guest into a traitor. For nine years, from 1972 (when she was an undergraduate at the nearby College of William and Mary) to 1981 (when she completed her doctoral dissertation at SUNY Stony Brook), Ellis spent her weekends and summers researching a "kinship network" among a particular group of Guinea watermen. Her theory was that the Guineamen lacked the external social mechanisms--strong churches, economic cooperation, a sense of community beyond the extended family--necessary for them to prosper. The conclusions of the book were not flattering to the region, which already had a reputation for white-trash backwardness and marshland criminality. In her writing, Ellis used pseudonyms to conceal her subjects' identities--a standard practice in sociology. Guinea became "Fishneck," and members of the local families she described were given plausible-sounding made-up names. But that didn't stop her words from causing hurt. Ellis's "Fishneckers" were often illiterate, obese, poorly dressed, and ignorant of basic hygiene. "Scarcity of plumbing meant baths were infrequent," she wrote. "That combined with everyday work with fish produced a characteristic fishy body odor, identified by outsiders as the 'Fishneck smell.'" What most riled the fishing families who had taken Ellis into their homes, fed her meals, and let her stay over on many nights, however, was that she never once let on that she was using them for sociological research. "I thought she was nice," fumes one Guinea woman whose family hosted Ellis often over the years. "But she turned out to be a liar." SOCIOLOGISTS have argued over the propriety of deceptive research for decades. But in 1995, the debate took a decidedly heated turn. In April of that year, Ellis published a remorseful essay in the Journal of Contemporary Ethnography enumerating the ways she had deceived her subjects. And her essay, which provoked much discussion among her colleagues, was not the only controversial confession that year: The American Sociologist published a far less remorseful account by a sociologist who some felt had used deceptive techniques to research police interrogation procedures. Finally, this spring, after two years of raging debate on the topic, the American Sociological Association (ASA) approved a set of stringent new ethics guidelines for professional conduct More starkly than ever before, these events illustrate the degree to which the profession is caught in an uneasy bind between fulfilling research objectives and honoring ethical obligations. Sociological deception can take many forms, some more subtle than others, but all equally entangled in moral dilemmas: A researcher might not tell his subjects that he is using them for research purposes; or he might misrepresent the motives of his research; or he might violate a pledge to keep the identities of his subjects fully anonymous. In recent decades, researchers have practiced these forms of deception, and each has been earnestly defended and attacked within the profession. Ellis's behavior, it turns out, was unusual but not unique; in some ways, her deception was simply easier to see because--as she herself admitted--it was so blatant. ACCORDING to her confession in the Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Ellis secretly tape-recorded conversations with her Fishneck subjects, eavesdropped on their small talk, and coaxed data out of them while pretending to be visiting socially or doing favors, such as writing letters, baby-sitting, and driving them to doctor's appointments. "Initially, I told a number of the Fishneckers who knew I was a college student that I was writing a paper on fishing," she writes. As the years passed, nearly everyone forgot about the college connection, until finally, Ellis writes, "I was just Carolyn coming to visit." When he read her essay, veteran sociologist Herbert J. Gans of Columbia University was concerned. He wrote Ellis a reproving letter. "I told her that I'm old enough to be her Dutch uncle and that what she did was wrong," says Gans. "She told people she was their friend. I told her, 'Yes, you use friendly methods, but you're always a researcher. You arrange to tell people every so often, I'm not your buddy. I'm a researcher.'" Ellis agrees that she committed a sociological sin, and she said so with admirable candor in her essay--albeit after she had published her book, received a prize for it from the ASA, and won tenure at the University of South Florida. Still, she's convinced that deceiving her subjects was indispensable to her project's success. "I know I did them an injustice," she says from her Tampa office. "But I couldn't have done the study any other way. My study was predicated on my getting close to them, and if you're constantly reminding people that you're not one of them, you can't do that. They're afraid of the IRS, and I didn't want to make people suspicious of me." Unlike Ellis, a significant number of sociologists who have engaged in deceptive research remain unrepentant. This group insists there is nothing unethical about deceiving one's subjects to a greater or lesser extent in the name of scientific research. Those who defend deceptive techniques claim subterfuge is sometimes the only way to elicit information from deviant and marginal groups--or from socially powerful groups that can otherwise justify secrecy. Defenders of deception typically use a cost-benefit analysis: If the deception doesn't hurt anyone very much and the payoff in data is high, covert research is worth doing. Richard Leo's essay in the Spring 1995 issue of The American Sociologist made precisely this argument--in defiant, provocative language. Leo, then an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Colorado, boasted that he "consciously reinvented" his "persona" in order to gain admission into police interrogation rooms for research on his UC-Berkeley dissertation. Leo's larger point was that sociologists should have an evidentiary privilege--like doctors and lawyers--so they are not obliged to testify in court about what they see and hear in the field. But what struck many of his readers was his ardent defense of certain deceptive techniques. Leo declared that he had feigned conservative views (support for the death penalty, opposition to abortion and homosexuality) and had described his intimate relations with women in the same crude language he heard the cops use. In describing the ideological mask he had donned in order to study the ways officers question suspects, Leo proudly compared himself to "confidence men who wish to set up their marks." Leo's article had a crusading tone: He depicted police forces as deviant groups analogous to criminal gangs who broke laws (in the case of the police it was the Miranda rule and other constitutional protections) and required extreme measures to infiltrate. Leo's essay provoked an angry counterblast from the eminent Yale sociologist Kai Erikson, who accused him of engaging "in a degree of deceit that is more widely known in espionage than in social research." As a graduate student during the 1950s, Erikson's own ethical standards had been less rigorous. He had applied for, but failed to receive, a position on a team of undercover social investigators led by the sociologist Leon Festinger whose mission was to infiltrate a doomsday cult by lying about their professional identities and pretending to be believers. (The project resulted in a famous 1956 book by Festinger and two colleagues, When Prophecy Fails.) Soon after, Erikson changed his views about deceit and took an absolutist stance against it, a position he has held ever since. His arguments are both ethical and practical: It is morally wrong to lie, and it also tends to distort research. (By assuming a false persona, for instance, the sociologist forecloses opportunities to collect more complete information through direct questioning.) Yet, as even Erikson was forced to acknowledge, Leo's case hardly constituted the most egregious example of deceptive fieldwork. After all, Leo had informed the police department (in a city that he calls "Laconia") that he was a sociologist, and he had provided the officers with an accurate written description of his project. However, he also cut his hair short, shaved off a budding beard, and put on a coat and tie before he headed for the station--which for him was decidedly out of character. He might simply have been following the dictate of Erving Goffman, who declared in his 1959 sociology classic, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, that everyone is always role-playing and there is no such thing as one's true self. "I didn't lie to them about my views," insists Leo, who now teaches at UC-Irvine. "I just didn't try to argue with them when they raised the question of abortion or homosexuality. They'd say, 'You're not against the death penalty, are you?' And I'd just laugh. I know I gave the impression that I agreed with them. I just wanted them to think I was a normal person. From their point of view, a normal person was a conservative." Of course, it is possible that Leo, a self-identified Berkeley graduate student in sociology, fooled no one on the Laconia force with his Joe Sixpack impersonation. "These guys have fantastic bullshit detectors, if you'll pardon my French," says Robert Jackall, a sociology professor at Williams College who spent more than five years prowling crime-ravaged precincts with New York City detectives as he researched his latest book, Wild Cowboys (Harvard, 1997). Jackall maintains that he did not need to use deception to go where he wanted, including interrogation rooms. "I just adopted the persona given to me by the police," he says. "They dubbed me the professor. They were teaching me, and they loved the symbolic reversal. I didn't have to penetrate anything." Leo's response is that Jackall, a middle-aged tenured professor at a well-endowed liberal arts college, had time and job security on his side, which enabled him to dispense with deception, whereas he, Leo, a penniless doctoral candidate working on a law degree at the same time, could not afford to spend more than the five hundred hours he gave to his fieldwork in Laconia. "I was a full-time student in my twenties, and I just didn't have that kind of time," says Leo. "I had to get inside those interrogation rooms." But many of Leo's colleagues aren't buying this kind of reasoning. The Leo-Erikson debate, which continued through several issues of The American Sociologist, resulted in a panel discussion on the morality of deceptive research when the thirteen-thousand-member ASA met for its annual convention in August 1996. Then, this past May, the ASA voted in favor of a new code of ethics that specifically addressed deceptive research techniques for the first time. The new protocol requires sociologists to obtain their subjects' informed consent "when behavior of research participants occurs in a private context where an individual can reasonably expect that no observation or reporting is taking place." Further, it explicitly bans tape-recording and videotaping without subjects' permission, as well as the use of assumed identities. Despite its hard-hitting rhetoric, however, the ethics code contains a loophole: A sociologist may obtain a waiver (from his university or the ASA) for all these constraints. AFTER the publication of Fisher Folk, Carolyn Ellis was wholly unprepared for her subjects' backlash. She hoped that the Guineamen would never learn of the book's existence. Although she traveled annually to the tidewater to update her research and to visit friends among the residents, she kept mum about her monograph. "They can't read," she says. "I never took the book to them. I didn't know how to deal with it, and I hoped they would never see it." Perhaps she underestimated the literacy rate in Fishneck. (In Fisher Folk, she puts it at 50 percent.) She certainly underestimated the wrath of Victor Liguori, one of her former professors at William and Mary. A specialist in maritime sociology, Liguori has spent thirty years or so working on a still-unfinished magnum opus about Guinea. He knows many residents on the peninsula, and it was he who introduced Ellis to her first Guinea contacts, as part of his custom of taking interested students with him on his research excursions. Ellis sent Liguori a copy of Fisher Folk upon its publication--with an acknowledgment of his help, for he had shared his research notes with her. What happened after that is a matter of some dispute. Ellis contends that Liguori, perhaps in a fit of professional jealousy because she had poached on his academic preserve, read the most damning passages of Fisher Folk aloud to the Guinea unlettered, suppressing everything positive she had to say about them and generally stirring up trouble. In her 1995 article, Ellis gave Liguori a pseudonym, "Professor Jack." Comparing him to a Pentecostal preacher on a Bible-thumping binge, she speculated: "Was he envious because he never finished his manuscript? Was any of his outrage justified? Or had he gone mad?" Liguori maintains that several Guineamen had obtained copies of the book, and others--who heard about it--contacted him and asked him to send them particular sections. Most of the Guineamen, he insists, read the book on their own--and then "went ballistic." In any event, a friend eventually tipped off Ellis that several Guineamen were upset about her book, and she hastened to the marshes to beg for forgiveness. According to Ellis, after some angry exchanges about factual errors, geographical discrepancies, and broken confidences, nearly all her favorite Fishneckers forgave her. Liguori, however, contends that the Guineamen are unlikely to pardon Ellis so quickly. "One woman came up to me a month or two ago and asked, 'Is it true that she had bad things in there about the girls?'" Liguori told me in September. "And I still can't take one of my students into the marshes, especially if she's a young, attractive woman. Someone would say, 'Is she going to be another Carolyn Ellis?'" The Guineamen aren't the only ones who may be permanently shaken. Ellis herself hasn't done any fieldwork since completing her book. Her remorseful 1995 essay is representative of the work that has occupied her for the last twelve years: auto-ethnography--in which the subject is primarily the sociologist herself. MODERN American sociology dates back to the 1920s, when the field, just beginning to get its bearings in this country, was regarded as a dubious European import. At the time, the discipline's stronghold was at the University of Chicago, where Robert Park eschewed the largely theoretical musings of his European predecessors--such as Max Weber--in favor of fieldwork based on long-term observation of one's subjects as they engage in social interaction. In Park's day, the possibility that a researcher at a local pub or political meeting might disguise his identity was virtually unthinkable. Indeed, the ethics of deceptive research did not become a controversial topic in the profession until 1958. The occasion was a massive Cornell University study of participatory democracy in a local community and its unanticipated spin-off book, Small Town in Mass Society, co-written by a former project employee, Arthur J. Vidich. The project sent teams of graduate students into Candor, NY, pop. 2,500, to gather statistics. Vidich moved to Candor in order to oversee data collection and supply a friendly human face that would encourage village residents to cooperate with the survey. Now a professor emeritus at New York City's New School for Social Research, Vidich says that Cornell even advised him to join a local church. Although he had no interest in religion, he gamely taught Sunday school. As part of the study, Vidich was also supposed to gather material for a more qualitative analysis of Candor's social structure. When he was hired, his supervisors showed him the code of ethics they had drafted. Vidich read it but "found nothing in it," he says today, "that related to the practical exigencies of day-to-day fieldwork. The code of ethics was a statement of intent, not a guide to conduct." (There was no provision for a participant observer like Vidich himself, for example.) After living in Candor for two and a half years, he took a job in Puerto Rico, and, together with Joseph Bensman, another sociologist, used what he had learned to write Small Town.. The book, which referred to Candor by the pseudonym "Springdale" and read like a Sinclair Lewis novel, exposed the political machinations of a clique of Springdale businessmen who ran the town behind its facade of folksy democracy. Springdale was supposed to be proudly self-reliant and scornful of urban ways, but Vidich and Bensman pointed out that the town relied heavily on federal and state intervention and was pervaded by mass culture. As they elaborated Springdale's political and social structure, Vidich and Bensman described specific townspeople and the roles they played. Although the sociologists did not use anyone's real name, it was clear to everyone in Candor who these figures were. The book became a local best-seller, à la Peyton Place--and a source of general outrage among residents. Vidich was hanged in effigy, and the village's Fourth of July parade featured a float carrying an image of him bending over a manure spreader. For many years afterward, sociologists, who feared that Vidich's conduct had jeopardized the field's newfound respectability, argued over whether he had done anything wrong. On the one hand, everyone in Candor knew he was the field director of a Cornell research project. On the other hand, many Candor residents might have thought (and been encouraged by Cornell to think) that the project consisted solely of the field-workers' demographic survey. In the end, sociologists failed to resolve the ethical questions that Vidich's course of action raised. "You have to remember that things are never quite all they seem," says Jackall, a close friend of Vidich's. "Research subjects are also trying to use the research for their own agendas and aggrandizement. People simply forgot that [Vidich] was a researcher." Vidich himself remained unrepentant. In a 1964 essay (reprinted in later editions of Small Town), he railed against imposing ethical restraints on social scientists. "It would be dangerous for the freedom of inquiry," he wrote, "if the formalized ethics of bureaucracy prevailed or predominated in all research." THE deception debate shook the profession a second time in 1970, and this time the fallout left permanent damage--at least in one well-regarded sociology department. That year, Laud Humphreys, an Episcopal priest-turned-sociology graduate student at Washington University in St. Louis, published Tearoom Trade, a study of homosexual encounters in men's rooms (called "tearooms" in gay slang) at public parks. To gather data for his doctoral dissertation on rest-room sex, Humphreys pretended to be gay, and assumed the role of voyeur and "watchqueen"--or lookout--for the police. He also wrote down the license-plate numbers of participants in order to obtain their names and addresses. Then he waited a year, disguised his appearance, and interviewed about fifty of the tearoom regulars at their homes (sometimes in the presence of their wives and children), on the pretext of administering a social health survey. His descriptions of this second encounter made it possible that many of the men and their families would recognize themselves once the dissertation was published as a book. Humphreys cited situation ethics--the application of rules of conduct on a case-by-case basis, a popular topic at theology schools during the late 1960s--as a justification for his modus operandi. The controversy over Humphreys's covert techniques ultimately spelled the end of sociology at Washington University. There was talk of revoking Humphreys's doctorate, and one well-known member of the department, Alvin Gouldner, delivered a blow to Humphreys's head that hospitalized him overnight. As a result, Gouldner was stripped of his title, Max Weber Research Professor of Social Theory. The sociology department never recovered from the demoralization brought on by the Humphreys incident, and, in 1989, the university disbanded the program. Alarmed by increasing reports of unethical research practices on campuses, the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) issued a stern report on sneaky bio-medical and behavioral research in 1978. The report came in the wake of the St. Louis scandal and adverse publicity over the filmed experiments that Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram carried out between 1960 and 1963. In his most famous work, Milgram told volunteers they were participating in a learning experiment in which they would "punish" (by means of remote-control electric shocks of ever increasing voltage) students in another room who failed to match word pairs correctly. The shocks were imaginary; Milgram was actually testing the volunteers' willingness to follow orders, which many of them did punctiliously. Milgram's film of his experiments, grainy black-and-white footage aptly titled Obedience, depicts its unwitting subjects as analogous to Nazi concentration-camp guards. It is shown to this day in many undergraduate classrooms. The HEW report led to federal regulations requiring all scientists who use government funds to conduct research on human beings to clear their procedures with institutional review boards or human-subjects' committees at their universities. The boards are supposed to ensure that subjects give informed consent and to approve any exceptions to this rule. (Richard Leo, for example, got permission from UC's Human Subjects' Committee for his dissertation research on police forces.) The new ASA ethics code advises sociologists seeking waivers of its informed-consent and deceptive-research guidelines to clear their projects even when they are not using federal money. THE CREATION of human-subjects' committees and the ASA's ethics protocol may force researchers to think twice before using deceptive techniques on a project. But neither innovation addresses the bigger questions that have dogged sociologists for years: When is deception of subjects permissible in social-science fieldwork? Should it ever be? "We do cost-benefit analyses to justify deception," says Yale's Kai Erikson. "But most often it's we who get the benefit and they who pay the cost. There have been sociologists who have gone into religious groups or Alcoholics Anonymous. We don't know how much harm it does to research subjects. There are some people who say, 'I'm doing it for the sake of science.' They're doing it for themselves. One of the things that I've noticed is that people who disguise themselves are always looking at groups less powerful than they are. If a doctor pretends to be a patient, that's all right, we say. But if a patient pretends to be a doctor, he'll get arrested." Erikson's observation clearly applies to Ellis's relationship with the generally less educated, rural Guineamen, but not all researcher-subject relationships favor the more powerful party. Before starting to work on Wild Cowboys, for example, Robert Jackall published Moral Mazes (Oxford), a 1988 study of managerial ethics at a large (and pseudonymous) chemical-manufacturing company. Jackall ran into trouble starting his research because thirty-six corporations had flatly turned down his request to study ethics on their premises. As a desperation measure, he worked with a public-relations expert to devise a project description that would sound acceptable to a CEO. Eventually, he found his way into a chemical company that encouraged him to study the effect of chlorofluorocarbon regulation on corporate practices. Jackall took a crash course in chemistry from a fellow Williams professor, and he was soon inside the corporate doors asking questions about ethics. His findings appeared first in a 1983 article in the Harvard Business Review and later in his book. Jackall concluded that the main "ethic" governing managerial practice was self-interest: protecting one's derriere and furthering one's career. He also found that organizational life was indeed a maze, a thicket of never-ending status jockeying and euphemistic doublespeak. (He included a glossary of job-performance-evaluation lingo, in which "quick thinking" meant "offers plausible excuses," and "requires work-value attitudinal readjustment" meant "lazy and hardheaded.") Jackall started receiving phone calls from managers deep within the company (and other companies) congratulating him for his acuity, but the top dogs demanded to know why he had been allowed on the premises. "All the managers had to do was pull my proposal out of the file and say, 'We thought he was here to study chlorofluorocarbon regulation,'" explains Jackall, adding that what looks like deception can sometimes be part of an elaborate linguistic code in which no one is really fooled and nearly everyone is satisfied--not least because there is always someone else to blame for the researcher's unflattering revelations. Nonetheless, Kai Erikson maintains that deception of any kind is bad for the profession. "It jeopardizes the reputation of all the rest of us when some of us sneak around," he says. "And it's also very poor research." In her 1995 essay, for example, Ellis conceded that some of her book's ribald facts about the Fishneckers' sex lives might have been tall tales. There are other, more horrifying stories of deception gone awry: sociology graduate students who checked themselves into mental hospitals or joined cults--only to discover that the people they were observing were other sociology graduate students. After infiltrating the UFO cult that evolved into Heaven's Gate, Robert Balch, a sociology professor at the University of Montana, came to conclusions similar to Erikson's about the morality and practicality of undercover research. Ironically, Balch's concern was not about unfairly harming his subjects but about inadvertently helping them advance an ethically dubious cause. In 1974, he became intrigued by the flying-saucer-obsessed organization, which he thought might be linked with the disappearance of twenty young people in Oregon. The following year, he and a graduate student approached members of the group as researchers with some general questions. When the cult refused to cooperate, Balch and his student spent two months posing as members, traveling with the cult from town to town in the West as it promoted its beliefs to susceptible crowds. "We were expected to do things that we didn't want to do," Balch recalls. One evening he was obliged to promote the cult to an audience of ninety people. On another occasion, he found himself talking to a couple who had driven thousands of miles looking for the UFO group. "They had a kid," Balch recalls, "and I had to tell them, 'If you join the group, you have to leave your kid behind.' That was enough to persuade them not to join--but what if they'd decided to give up the kid?" As undercover investigators, Balch and his student were subjected to the same unwritten rules that bound everyone else in the cult: no idle socializing (all references to one's past life were forbidden). "We had to take notes in the bathroom stalls, so we had to get up early and write them down on little scraps of paper," says Balch. "I came away with the feeling that it wasn't ethical, and it wasn't the best way to get accurate information. I wouldn't trade the experience for anything, but on every other study that I've done, I've identified myself as a sociologist." In the end, despite troubling experiences using deceptive techniques, few sociologists believe in hard-and-fast bans on covert research. Erich Goode, a sociology professor at SUNY-Stony Brook who sat on the ASA's deceptive-research panel in 1996 with Erikson and Leo, says that the decision boils down to a trade-off: "Less-than-complete honesty versus getting the information. Do you announce up front that you're a sociologist, say, when you're studying drug dealers?" Goode believes social scientists should be free to make the trade-off at their own discretion. Accordingly, he has not sought federal funding (with its accompanying constraints) for one of his favorite covert research projects: placing bogus personal ads in order to study the sociology of mate selection. In one experiment, he placed four different ads in four different publications, two purporting to be from women seeking men and two purporting to be from men seeking women. To do this, he invented four personae: a beautiful waitress, an average-looking female lawyer, a handsome taxicab driver, and an average-looking male lawyer. One need not be a sociologist to guess the breakdown of the nearly one thousand responses, the majority from men, that Goode received (and tabulated in several scholarly articles). The beautiful waitress was the overwhelming favorite for male respondents; women preferred the average-looking male lawyer (but not by so great a margin). Originally, says Goode, "I tried to do this kind of research aboveboard. I wrote to a couple running a newsletter focusing on personal ads and explaining that I was a sociologist, but I got no reply." GOODE'S attitude--that the knowledge gained can sometimes justify the deceitful means--may not dominate the profession today, but it represents a powerful challenge to absolutists like Kai Erikson. And it represents a faction of sociologists who are unlikely to be content with the ASA's stringent professional guidelines or with guilty, after-the-fact conversions like Carolyn Ellis's. As for Ellis, she has switched her main appointment at South Florida to communications (although she has retained a joint appointment in sociology). Her current projects fall under the rubrics of either auto-ethnography or "emotional sociology"--a brand-new subfield in which, as she describes it, the "emotionality of the researcher" plays a central role in the study. In her recent essays, Ellis puts many of the emotional events of her life on display, including her abortion and her brother's death in the Air Florida crash of 1982. In 1995 she published her most ambitious piece of auto-ethnography to date, Final Negotiations (Temple). Nearly twice as long as Fisher Folk, the book is a grim, often poignant account of her tempestuous nine-year-plus relationship with Eugene Weinstein, the late chairman of the SUNY-Stony Brook sociology department. Weinstein was already dying of emphysema when Ellis met him in 1975 at a faculty party, where he passed her a toke and a kiss even though he had arrived with another woman. He had a tangled marital and romantic past (he and Ellis collaborated on an article on jealousy in open relationships). Two months after their marriage, in 1985, he died. Ellis's book chronicles many details that might seem too tragic or intimate for other writers: LSD trips, sex with an oxygen tank in the bed, Weinstein's gradual mental decline, and his painful difficulties with elimination during his last days. Besides being fearfully ill, Weinstein was a demanding, complaining patient who could not stand to be alone. Ellis gritted her teeth and endured it--and then told it all in her book. Weinstein, she says, fully supported the project. The sociologist who once practiced her profession by telling the secrets of people she had deceived in order to get close to them is still telling secrets. This time, however, the secrets are mostly her own or belong tothose closest to her. For Ellis, auto-ethnography is a solution to the ethical quagmire surrounding deceptive research. But many sociologists are likely to find it an impractical one. Is researchyng oneself instead of observing others rather too high a price to pay for ethical purity?" Charlotte Allen is a contributing editor of Lingua Franca. Her book, The Human Christ: The Misguided Search for the Historical Jesus, is forthcoming from The Free Press. Copyright © 1997 Lingua Franca,Inc. All rights reserved. Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html) From brbgc@ix.netcom.com Tue Aug 11 21:19:40 1998 by dfw-ix4.ix.netcom.com (8.8.4/8.8.4) id rma011785; Tue Aug 11 22:19:07 1998 Date: Tue, 11 Aug 1998 23:19:03 -0400 From: Ric Brown Reply-To: brbgc@ix.netcom.com To: Labor Research and Action Project Subject: WWW Page address for CUNY Women and Development Conference Greetings, Please note that it is necessary to enter the address using the appropriate capital letters when typing in the web address for the conference. The correct url is: http://www.geocities.com/athens/7364/Women_and_Development.html For Netscape and MSExplorer users, you need only click on the address to link to the page. If you have any problems linking to the page, please email brbgc@ix.netcom.com Thanks for all your interest in the conference. ______________________________________________________ THE GRADUATE SCHOOL AND UNIVERSITY CENTER OF THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK Presents WHICH WAY FOR WOMEN AND DEVELOPMENT? DEBATING CONCEPTS, STRATEGIES, AND DIRECTIONS IN THE 21st CENTURY To Be Held At The Borough of Manhattan Community College 199 Chambers Street October 15-17, 1998 **** For Complete Information, visit our WWW Page at **** http://www.geocities.com/athens/7364/Women_and_Development.html -- From priesz@itn.cl Wed Aug 12 08:55:14 1998 Date: Wed, 12 Aug 1998 10:54:52 -0400 To: freechat@vax6.drc.com From: Paul Riesz Subject: EPLOYERS vs. UNIONS continued In a prior posting on this subject, there were some deplorable mistakes in wording; I am therefore sending a slightly corrected version now. It is deplorable, that in any discussion about relations between capital and labor, extremists from both sides seem to be the only ones interested in participating. While radical Marxists assert, that workers create all value and therefore feel, that whatever income is going to capital, is stolen from labor, while radical capitalists consider workers as just another input, to be paid for at market values, that can and must be dispensed with at the convenience of employers. Hardly anybody seems to feel, that FOR ACHIEVING THE BEST POSSIBLE RESULTS IN PRODUCING ANYTHING, BOTH CAPITAL AND LABOR MUST CONTRIBUTE TO THE BEST OF THEIR ABILITY. Employers must provide the original project, the best technology, the physical means and the organization and should afterwards continue their efforts to improve all these elements, while the workforce must carry out their assignments as conscientiously and efficiently as possible. (For other possible contributions of labor see below under "co-setermination") Trying to determine an equitable distribution of the income from such a venture, one might apply the following guidelines:: Both sides must first receive the basic values of their contributions: the employers could claim the interest on their investments (including the value of the project and the chosen technology) at market rates, plus yearly depreciation of the equipment, plus a percentage due to risks involved (I might have neglected some items) while workers should receive the average fixed wage in the respective industry; ANYTHING LEFT OVER WOULD BE CONSIDERED AS THE REAL PROFIT OF THE VENTURE AND SHOULD BE SHARED BETWEEN BOTH SIDES AT PERCENTAGES TO BE NEGOTIATED BEFOREHAND, WHICH WOULD AND MUST VARY ACCORDING TO THE SPECIFIC CIRCUMSTANCES OF EACH CASE. Once both sides have been able to agree on such conditions, they could achieve a higher income (the pursuit of happiness), not by arguing on how to distribute the pie, but through concentrating on increasing its size. Nevertheless there is one important point missing:: JOB SECURITY. In these times, measures for increasing competitiveness through restructuring downsizing, outsourcing and more automation are the most difficult issues between capital and labor. Even companies who used to guarantee lifetime employment to deserving workers (as was often the case in Japan) seem incapable to maintain such policies. Is there a way out? One of the greatest advantages of market based economies is the gift of employers (active or prospective) to find new market niches to attend . Any conscientious employers, considering the elimination of some jobs through the above mentioned measures, should make the greatest possible efforts for finding NEW, PRODUCTIVE ACTIVITIES FOR DISPLACED WORKERS. This could be done through retraining such workers for other jobs within the same company or in other places or through planning or participating in new activities. Unions should help in such efforts, instead of absolutely opposing the elimination of jobs, that are no longer necessary. E.g. they could try to use their influence for facilitating the approval of tax-exemptions for such new ventures. Only if such efforts have finally failed, employers should find other ways for carrying out their part of RESPONSIBILITY for their workers future, such as really adequate severance payments. Some American workers seem to like these ideas, plus the German concept of CO-DETERMINATION, through which representatives of the workers take part in a company's decision making. This has resulted in what probably are the most harmonious relations between capital and labor in the industrialized world": Discussing the planned fusion between Chrysler and Daimler-Benz, a Chrysler worker, Theresa Lilly, who installs transmission coolers in the sport utility vehicles, says Chrysler can learn a few things from Daimler-Benz. The merger should work out well, she says -- AS LONG AS THEY DON'T MESS WITH OUR PROFIT-SHARING AND OUR JOB SECURITY." Paul Riesz From jholling@ccs.carleton.ca Wed Aug 12 09:23:51 1998 Date: Wed, 12 Aug 1998 11:23:35 -0400 (EDT) To: Labor-Rap@csf.colorado.edu From: John Hollingsworth Subject: Re: EPLOYERS vs. UNIONS continued At 10:54 AM 8/12/98 -0400, Paul Riesz wrote: >In a prior posting on this subject, there were some deplorable mistakes in >wording; I am therefore sending a slightly corrected version now. > >It is deplorable, that in any discussion about relations between capital and >labor, extremists from both sides seem to be the only ones interested in >participating. >While radical Marxists assert, that workers create all value and therefore >feel, that whatever income is going to capital, is stolen from labor, while >radical capitalists consider workers as just another input, to be paid for >at market values, that can and must be dispensed with at the convenience of >employers. I think that these aren't emotional arguments being made by "radical" Marxists and capitalists, but perhaps a mutual recognition of the conflict-prone economic logic of the system in which labour and capital interact. For Marxists, this is based on the need to extract maximum surplus value from workers, and for the capitalists, this is based on the need to return an increasingly competitive (i.e. higher share value) return to shareholders. True, labour and capital need to be combined in industrial production -- the way the conflict in interests has traditionally been resolved has been through the industrial relations system. The ability of unions to get the goods for workers within the industrial relations system, indeed the very existence of it, has been built on years of struggle _against_ the interests of capital (and the "absolute" property rights of employers), which is the basic condition of workers without institutionalized compromises. Indeed, as seen in the recent UAW strike, it is increasingly necessary in order to maintain them. >Hardly anybody seems to feel, that FOR ACHIEVING THE BEST POSSIBLE RESULTS >IN PRODUCING ANYTHING, BOTH CAPITAL AND LABOR MUST CONTRIBUTE TO THE BEST OF >THEIR ABILITY. But it impossible to "grow the pie" without institutionalized compromises. All of which are weakened unless unionization densities keep pace with economic growth and development. >Employers must provide the original project, the best technology, the >physical means and the organization and should afterwards continue their >efforts to improve all these elements, while >the workforce must carry out their assignments as conscientiously and >efficiently as possible. (For other possible contributions of labor see >below under "co-setermination") >Trying to determine an equitable distribution of the income from such a >venture, one might apply the following guidelines:: >Both sides must first receive the basic values of their contributions: >the employers could claim the interest on their investments (including the >value of the project and the chosen technology) at market rates, plus yearly >depreciation of the equipment, plus a percentage due to risks involved (I >might have neglected some items) >while workers should receive the average fixed wage in the respective industry; >ANYTHING LEFT OVER WOULD BE CONSIDERED AS THE REAL PROFIT OF THE VENTURE AND >SHOULD BE SHARED BETWEEN BOTH SIDES AT PERCENTAGES TO BE NEGOTIATED >BEFOREHAND, WHICH WOULD AND MUST VARY ACCORDING TO THE SPECIFIC >CIRCUMSTANCES OF EACH CASE. There are a number of holes in your schema, most of which stem from the use of the concepts of "average fixed wage" and "market rates". >Once both sides have been able to agree on such conditions, they could >achieve a higher income (the pursuit of happiness), not by arguing on how to >distribute the pie, but through concentrating on increasing its size. But unless labour is strong, there is no way in hell that employers as a class will be "willing" to do this. I support co-determination (although I associate it with European industrial relations more than North American regimes), but that's a pretty "radical" demand for North America. >Nevertheless there is one important point missing:: JOB SECURITY. In these >times, measures for increasing competitiveness through restructuring >downsizing, outsourcing and more automation are the most difficult issues >between capital and labor. Even companies who used to guarantee lifetime >employment to deserving workers (as was often the case in Japan) seem >incapable to maintain such policies. Gotta provide that increasing "competitive" and "market-driven" return to shareholders. Did anyone read that recent letter from Ralph Nader to Bill Gates that's been circulating around the Internet? I believe it says that our present world condition is characterized by 348 individuals who control the same amount of wealth as the bottom 40 percentiles of the world population. Wonder when it will become 300 and 50%. >Is there a way out? I would a carefully-crafted political general strike on an international scale is probably the only way out, within the establishment of a unionized global labour market, a new global currency system, and a new global citizenship as the only real way out. But I don't think it's going to happen any time soon. >One of the greatest advantages of market based economies is the gift of >employers (active or prospective) to find new market niches to attend . Any >conscientious employers, considering the elimination of some jobs through >the above mentioned measures, should make the greatest possible efforts for >finding NEW, PRODUCTIVE ACTIVITIES FOR DISPLACED WORKERS. This could be >done through retraining such workers for other jobs within the same company >or in other places or through planning or participating in new activities. I agree with this. But you're going to have to fight the employer for it. >Unions should help in such efforts, instead of absolutely opposing the >elimination of jobs, that are no longer necessary. E.g. they could try to >use their influence for facilitating the approval of tax-exemptions for such >new ventures. I agree that unions that are only capable of defending redundant jobs are not really serving workers especially well. However, fighting for tax-exemptions for new ventures without AT AN ABSOLUTE MINIMUM tying that fight to greater co-determination and/or worker ownership is a bad idea. >Only if such efforts have finally failed, employers should find other ways >for carrying out their part of RESPONSIBILITY for their workers future, such >as really adequate severance payments. And their responsibility for "future workers" (not to be confused with "futureworkers"). Perhaps it is more accurate to say that it is the responsibility of the workers themselves to secure these things. And for union activists to sell that message to their co-workers. >Some American workers seem to like these ideas, plus the German concept of >CO-DETERMINATION, through which representatives of the workers take part in >a company's decision making. This has resulted in what probably are the most >harmonious relations between capital and labor in the industrialized world": >Discussing the planned fusion between Chrysler and Daimler-Benz, a Chrysler >worker, Theresa Lilly, who installs transmission coolers in the sport >utility vehicles, says Chrysler can learn a few things from Daimler-Benz. >The merger should work out well, she says -- AS LONG AS THEY DON'T MESS WITH >OUR PROFIT-SHARING AND OUR JOB SECURITY." It will be interesting to see what industrial changes occur in Chrysler as a result of the merger. I doubt, however, whether those changes will prove in the long-run beneficial to workers without a strong alliance or merger of the German and U.S. autoworkers into the same union. Cheers, John From p.meiksins@csu-e.csuohio.edu Wed Aug 12 09:59:08 1998 Date: Wed, 12 Aug 1998 11:58:00 -0500 To: Labor-Rap@csf.colorado.edu From: peter meiksins Subject: property is theft Hi: a minor intervention in the employers and unions discussion. One recent posting made reference to the alleged Marxist view that all profit is stolen from workers. This is not a Marxist view; it is a Proudhonian one, of which Marx was highly critical. Marx contended that employers pay market value for the commodity labor-power, which can be made to produce more value in a given period of time than its cost of reproduction. While this is exploitation, it is not theft. So what, you may say? Well, from the point of view of this discussion of unions, the theft argument would suggest that a fair resolution of the problem would be to raise wages so that individual workers were paid for the value they create. But, this is not a solution Marx embraced. It would, after all, create enormous inequalities, given differences in training, talent, etc. And a solution at this individual level would leave unanswered all kinds of questions about investment, public goods, etc. Moreover, Marx's argument about the nature of the exchange between capital and labor is part of his critique of unions as advocates for labor. Since what unions do is attempt to push up the price of the commodity labor-power, they are, in effect, fighting against the laws of commodity exchange. In the Manifesto, Marx and Engels refer to their ability, here and there, to push up the price for a time. But, their clear expectation was that employers and the market would erode these temporary gains. If it were not the case that the exchange between capital and labor were 'equal' (i.e., if it really involved 'theft') then this argument wouldn't make any sense. I'm certainly not arguing against unions, nor do I endorse the view that unions and managers should cooperate in order to create win-win situations. I'm simply pointing out what the logic of a Marxist argument about unions would be. Cheers. Peter Meiksins Peter Meiksins Department of Sociology Cleveland State University Cleveland OH 44115 216-687-4518 FAX: 216-687-9314 EMAIL: P.Meiksins@popmail.csuohio.edu From priesz@itn.cl Wed Aug 12 16:18:28 1998 Date: Wed, 12 Aug 1998 18:14:33 -0400 To: Labor-Rap@csf.colorado.edu From: Paul Riesz Subject: Re: cj#813> re: Globalization book: ideology vs anarchy? To Richard: In your answer to Bill Blum you gave a much clearer picture of your ideas, with most of which I agree. Nevertheless I again have some reservations about your conclusion: At 15:07 11/08/98 +0100, you wrote: "Globalization and the Revolutionary Imperative". >"Imperative" refers to the fact that we must seize the moment, we must >accomplish a revolutionary change in political power, and we must do it >before our democracies are completely destroyed and disempowered. > Though you speak of a revolutionary change, you do not spell out, how to effect this change in political power, which, in a democracy, are the people's elected representatives. In my opinion a revolution would probably have to be a violent one, which could hardly be based on the many different grass-roots movements (most of them small) you mention. In my opinion a REFORM movement, focused on changing the rules for campaign- financing and facilitating the election of public spirited men or women, who lack the backing of wealth. I do not pretend to know in detail how to achieve this, but firmly believe that there lies the root of most of the contemporary evils you describe, with the immense advantage, that such a reform would probably enjoy an immediate majority support. While organizing your wheelshaped, world-wide web would be a gigantic, long range project, concentrating on what I suggest would be much easier, especially using Internet. If successful, the new parliamentarians defending the interests of the majority could then address all the other problems one by one; they probably would give a high priority to sending different representatives to the WTU and the IMF. Greetings Paul Riesz From priesz@itn.cl Thu Aug 13 17:51:51 1998 Date: Thu, 13 Aug 1998 19:50:45 -0400 To: freechat@vax6.drc.com From: Paul Riesz Subject: Re: Profit-sharing and the proper role of government. John: Though we started out discussing the merits of profit-sharing, your concrete account was not about such a scheme gone wrong, but about neglecting the importance of correctly assessing market requirements and to encourage quality over volume. Here is an almost identical case: some Chilean mills producing hardwoods, primarily for export, are giving production bonuses to both their executives and key production personnel, which therefore are trying to produce the highest possible VOLUME. Since high grade logs are scarce and expensive, they buy lower grade logs and do not pay attention to obtain the highest possible yield of high grade lumber from their logs. As a result their output consists of a small amounts of export grade, plus lots of low priced lumber, only good for construction, plus mountains of unsalable scraps. Lacking the advantage of having studied the Harvard Business Report, I have been telling them to buy only high grade logs, devise a system of profit sharing for their managers and pay bonuses to sawyers for getting the highest possible yield in export grade, even if they have to reduce the volume of their production in the process. Whether or not this was good advice has not been established, since so far they have been unwilling to listen; in any case, one of them has already gone under and another one is on the verge of bankruptcy. Coming back to our more basic differences: At 12:33 13/08/98 -0400, you wrote: JW Perhaps in political circles only extremes of particular viewpoints are discussed, but I assure you in business circles, middle ground is discussed on an ongoing basis. The one common ground in this topic is that each situation is different, and needs be handled differently. The key, to my way of thinking at least, is to keep the discussion in the mode of a philosophical one, and out of a mode of a legislative action required. One thing you learn in business is that there is no way legislatively to either guard against stupidity, or encourage creativity. From a legislative standpoint, all you can do is set minimum acceptable standards. PR Based on recent history, you have good arguments against governments trying to encourage creativity, but to completely deny such a possibility might not be quite justified. If governments should really want to address the problems of millions of displaced blue collar workers, they could take different actions; e.g. tax exemptions for new ventures, that would create the type of jobs needed. On another discussion group I have outlined several possibilities along such lines, among them large scale timberstand-improvement schemes in second growth forests. In more general terms, the present movements for tax reductions across the board, could be replaced with reductions focused on new investment. A more radical idea would be to recognize the fact, that trade liberalization - just as many other great schemes - has limits, beyond which it becomes counter-productive. In my opinion TRADE CAN ONLY BE REASONABLY FREE, IF IT IS ALSO REASONABLY BALANCED. In more concrete terms: if Japan or China produce enormous trade surpluses with the US or the European Common Market year after year, the countries affected should claim the RIGHT TO DEMAND A BALANCED TRADE WITH THESE EXPORTERS and defend this right before the WTU. This would preserve many manufacturing jobs in the countries with the trade deficits, while the countries with a surplus would have to encourage consumption in order to absorb more imports and for this purpose also have to raise their wages; thus such a strategy would help both workers and general prosperity at both ends. There are many other fields, where legislative actions could improve the well- being of citizens, but there is a big reservation: DO GOVERNMENTS HAVE THE CAPACITY TO CARRY OUT SUCH POLICIES EFFECTIVELY? You are probably dead set against any such notions and I must admit that you would have good reasons. This brings us back to my main concern: that decision-making in modern liberal democracies is too much dependent on wealth and lobbies, with negative consequences for government efficiency (remember the big scandal about Savings and Loan Associations?) and for the well-being of the great majorities. Therefore, in my opinion, deep reforms are needed, with the highest priority for a reform of campaign financing. Greetings Paul Riesz From rkmoore@iol.ie Fri Aug 14 07:39:34 1998 Date: Fri, 14 Aug 1998 14:39:11 +0100 To: Labor-Rap@csf.colorado.edu From: rkmoore@iol.ie (Richard K. Moore) Subject: Re: Globalization book / Riesz's comments; "magic bullets" 8/12/98, Paul Riesz wrote: >Though you speak of a revolutionary change, you do not spell out, how to >effect this change in political power, which, in a democracy, are the >people's elected representatives. Dear Paul, The strategy is simple; the logistics challenging. *-> Strategy *-> massive movement arises; trusted write-in candidates are selected; they win overwhelmingly at all levels of government through peaceful elections; they remain connected to the movement; government and civil society collaborate in building new world. *-> Logistics *-> Among the most formidable of the logistical problems is avoiding the temptation to be seduced by the inevitable attempt of the Democratic Party (using the US as our example) to put forward a talks-the-talk candidate (ala FDR) who ultimately walks-the-walk of preserving capitalism through the "difficult times". Related to that is another formidable logistics problem: building an alternative-mass-media infrastructure by means of which the movement can be aware of itself and dialog with itself. The Internet can help with this, as a backbone shall we say, but it must be extended, via thousands of newsletters or whatever, to the more general population (such as third world where most people don't even have phones). And we must face the problem that if things get serious, the net will be taken away as an effective tool. There are so many means by which this can be accomplished that it seems silly to bother enumerating them, but I'll offer two immanently practical scenarios for any skeptics. (1) Through misuse of conspiracy / terrorism laws, aided perhaps by agent-provateur violent incidents, all of our sites are shut down by the Feds, who will have no problem obtaining international and industry cooperation. (2) "Spontaneous hackers" close us down with various kinds of mechanized spamming, similar to what happened recently with IGC vis a vis the Basque separatist site; arranging such spontaneous events is a childs-play exercise for US intelligence services, and there are any number of cultish groups who would be thrilled to be recruited for such an adventure. (I did _not suggest net libertarians!) >In my opinion a REFORM movement, focused on changing the rules for campaign- >financing and facilitating the election of public spirited men or women, who >lack the backing of wealth. I do not pretend to know in detail how to >achieve this, but firmly believe that there lies the root of most of the >contemporary evils you describe, with the immense advantage, that such a >reform would probably enjoy an immediate majority support. This is an example of the "magic bullet" approach to systemic change. _If _only we could have `genuine election reform', or _if _only we could `outlaw wealth over a certain amount', or _if _only we could `force corporations to pay the true societal and ecological costs of their ventures'... the list is endless, and more such ideas appear daily on the net. My friend Henry Volken, a seventy-six year old Jesuit missionary who has been an effective activist in India most of his life, says: "To understand reality, try to change it." Go ahead, try to get genuine election reform, see where it gets you. The closer you get to succes, the more formidable will be the forces arrayed against you. If you get _really close, then suddenly the government will proclaim the need for reform, and will advertise and implement its own wonderful program which _sounds close enough to the real thing to defuse the movement, but which will only make things worse when the dust from the fine print settles. The jewel is Sovereignty. It is held in the castle of Capitalism and it is guarded by the dragon called State. With a magic bullet, one hopes to creep into the castle and steal the jewel while the dragon sleeps. That is the stuff of myth, fable, and childhood stories, and it refers in fact to an internal quest, not one in the real world. In the real adult world one must study the terrain, prepare for the siege, and launch a coordinated assault, so to speak, if one wants to take the castle and inherit the jewel. There are no magic bullets. The jewel is not lightly guarded, and the dragon does not sleep, nor is what passes over Internet unknown to him. >While organizing your wheelshaped, world-wide web would be a gigantic, long >range project, concentrating on what I suggest would be much easier... I'm reminded of the Nasrudin story, you know, the one about the keys... It seems our man Nasrudin was looking around the ground under a street lamp late one night. A passerby inquired and Nasrudin said he was looking for his keys. The passerby helped for a while, could see there were no keys, and asked Nasrudin where he lost them. "Over there by the door," he said, "but the light's better here." Yes a magic bullet _would be easier, _if one were available. And if wishes were horses, beggars would ride. The keys are by the door, not near the easier lighted path. The jewel is in the castle. The dragon is powerful, alert, and a veteran of previous popular rebellions, some difficult, but all eventually won by him. I've proposed a strategy. If you think it's flawed, let's talk about it. If there's a better strategy, I'd like to see it. Once we have a strategy we agree on, then we can think about how long it might take to carry out. Ultimately it takes as long as it takes - that's reality - Rome wasn't built in a day. We must face the dragon openly and do what is required. The sooner we start the better chance we have. solidarity, rkm cdr@cyberjournal.org http://cyberjournal.org ------------------------------------------------------------------------ To join the discussion on bringing about a movement for a democratic renaissance, send any message to: renaissance-network-subscribe@cyberjournal.org --- To subscribe to the the cj list, which is a larger list and a more general political discussion, send any message to: cj-subscribe@cyberjournal.org From culturex@vcn.bc.ca Sat Aug 15 09:54:32 1998 Sat, 15 Aug 1998 08:53:14 -0700 (PDT) Date: Sat, 15 Aug 1998 08:53:13 -0700 (PDT) From: Franklin Wayne Poley Subject: Re: How Much More Unreasonable Can Workfare Become (fwd) ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, 14 Aug 1998 22:57:25 -0400 From: Julie Star To: "workfare-discuss@icomm.ca" Subject: Re: How Much More Unreasonable Can Workfare Become billbartlett@vision.net.au wrote: > > John Hollingsworth wrote: > > >Hi from John in Ottawa, Canada. It was good to hear from Julie about the > >situation in Ohio. I agree with Bill that there is a growing need for > >international solidarity. > > Yes, I would certainly like to do something, or even feel as though I was > trying to do something about some of the atrocities I am hearing about. I > still think one of the best things to do is tell other people what is going > on. What we have to do is get these stories packaged so that people who > don't know the story can understand it. > > Julie's 'Ohio Update' is a story that I think should be spread far and > wide, but it can't be disseminated here without some background, such as > the recent history of workfare in Ohio and the general US context. > > People here would be horrified that the mother of a joung baby is being > forced to work for benefits, this has not even been suggested by the > authorities here, workfare is a concept confined to the able-bodied > unemployed and even then only the young so far. > > The conservatives (who operate under the banner of the "Liberal Party" here > in Aust.) did advocate, a few years back, kicking single parents off the > pension when their youngest child turned 14. They went to an election with > that and other horrible policies, like limiting how long someone can get > the dole to 12 months, and other popular measures like a $3/hour "youth > wage" and a consumption tax. > > They managed with this policy mix to convert certain victory at the polls > to defeat, and many of those policies have not been mentioned since. But > they have now resurrected the consumption tax from the dead and are > parading its corpse around the hustings as I speak, so a week is certainly > a long time in politics! > > Anyhow that story needs to have a paragraph of general info about workare > is in Ohio, who is targetted, what the obligations are, what benefits are > provided and to whom and how that compares to other US states. > Workfare in the United States changed drastically two years ago when President Clinton signed into law the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996. This law was written by Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation. According to someone who spoke with Mr. Rector the law was written with the idea of putting an end to single parent households. This guy is imposing his religious beliefs about the immorality of single parenthood on all the single welfare recipient mothers in the country. He believes in the sanctity of the two parent home. So who is going to tell the fathers that! General Overview On July 2, 1997, Governor George Voinovich signed into law House Bill 408, landmark legislation that fundamentally changed the nature of welfare assistance in Ohio. The law eliminates the Aid to Dependent Children program and replaces it with two innovative new programs -- Ohio Works First and Prevention, Retention & Contingency. With these two programs in place, Ohio will transform public assistance from a system focused on entitlement to one focused on employment, personal responsibility, and sustained self-sufficiency. Who is targeted? Every recipient in the state including those who are considered sick and disabled by their doctors. I will be posting a new story shortly as an example. What are the obligations? The obligations vary from state to state and county to county. The federal government requires 20 hours of work per week minimum but they leave things wide open to the states. My understanding is that most states are using that 20 hours but I could be wrong. Ohio decided to go one better and is requiring recipients to work 30 hours per week. My county (Sandusky County) was requiring 40 of everyone "irregardless" of the amount of their benefits. Since our minimum wage battle, our "regular" work hours are computed this way: > cash assistance + food stamps - child support kept by state = income > income / minimum wage = workfare hours per month > workfare hours per month / 4.3 = workfare hours per week For the most part Sandusky County is now going by the state's 30 hour minimum requirement. If the calculation above comes out to less than 30 hours they fill in the rest with education and training or jobs searches. Parents with children under age one are not required to work under the federal law but it is left up to the states discretion to assign up to 30 "developmental" hours per week. Because these hours are not federally regulated, officials have tried in more than one case to ignore the minimum wage calculation. What are the Benefits? The benefits are Cash Assistance, Food Stamps, Child Care Assistance and Transportation Assistance. Eligibility for and amount of the benefits is determined by income, expenses (such as rent and utility expenses) and family size. How it compares to other states is the topic of much research at the moment. > Remember, what is happening to that one person is important in as much as > it starkly exposes the real situation compared to the propaganda, but > people need to know why and how such horrors can exist. Then they are > empowered to do something about it, rather than just be cowered by fear and > ignorance. > > The other thing that would be very handy with that story is a little > contact list, say the local newspaper in the town it is happenning (the > story didn't mention exactly where that was) E-mail address of course, plus > any contact info (e-mail preferred) for the criminals perpetrating these > atrocities. > > We need to be able to use this information in different ways, like writing > a letter to the local press where the atrocity is taking place, make an > international incident of it so to speak. And/or perhaps protest to the > perpetrators with the message "we know what you are doing, you bastard", > and of course spread the word to others who will do the same. We should > also be on the alert for the opportunity to use incidents like this on a > local basis, as an example of workfare "in action in its native > environment", a stark warning the dangers of what happens if people leave > it too late to stop the spread of the disease! > > Bill Bartlett > Bracknell tas. This all took place in Fremont, Ohio (Sandusky County). Here are the addresses for the County Director, State Director and the local newspaper. Any support would be greatly appreciated! Sandusky CDHS Don L. Morton, Director 2511 Countryside Drive P.O. Box 890 Fremont, Ohio 43420-9987 CDHS Phone: (419) 334-3891 CDHS Fax: (419) 332-2156 Internet E-Mail Address: scdhs@nwohio.com Arnold Tompkins, Director ODHS: Phone: (614) 466-6282 FAX: (614) 466-2815 Fremont News Messeger Reporter: Patrick Orr fremont@timewarp.gannett.com Thank you, Julie Star 1240 Sycamore St Fremont, Oh 43420 (419) 334-8205 star@nwonline.net From christopher.rhomberg@yale.edu Mon Aug 17 14:52:51 1998 Date: Mon, 17 Aug 1998 16:53:24 -0400 To: Labor-rap@csf.colorado.edu From: Christopher Rhomberg Subject: ASA fellow at Detroit Free Press -- UPDATE ON ASA STUDENT INTERN PLACEMENT AT DETROIT FREE PRESS -- Before the start of the ASA convention this weekend, let me post this update on the outcome of my queries on the intern placement at the Detroit Free Press. Below is a brief summary of correspondence over two months: In response to my original inquiry, the ASA executive office wrote to me on July 9, attaching copies of letters from the American Academy for the Advancement of Science and the Free Press Recruiting and Development Editor. The AAAS letter stated that AAAS had withdrawn its placements at the Free Press during the two years of the strike, but that it had since met with DFP management and accepted its claim that the dispute was over, as described in the letter from the DFP editor. The AAAS was unwilling to relocate the fellow who was already on-site, but said it would not place anyone there next year if it found the dispute was not resolved. The July 9 letter contained no reference to any communication by either ASA or AAAS with the unions involved, no understanding that while the strike is over the employers have imposed a lockout affecting more than a thousand workers, and no statement of the ASA's own position with regard to labor disputes or the Free Press case. In response to my further questions, ASA Executive Officer Felice Levine wrote back on July 30. In this letter, Ms. Levine says that in August 1987 the ASA Council approved a resolution stating that "the sociological profession regards the right to bargain collectively by working people as one of the basic human rights protected by law and tradition," and that the profession "regards attempts to prevent unionization, or to reverse union recognition by employers as inimical to the protection of human rights." With regard to the Free Press, Ms. Levine added: "ASA did not see [the letter from the Free Press editor] until after your initial inquiry, and the Association does not endorse any of the facts stated in the letter, which we have not verified in any manner. We have asked AAAS to inform us before any ASA-sponsored fellow will be placed at the Detroit Free Press in the future, so that we can determine the status of the labor dispute before approving the placement. I can assure you that part of this process will include contacting appropriate union officials to determine their position." I think it is extremely unfortunate that the placement of the fellow at the Free Press this year occurred without the prior exercise of appropriate steps under the Council's 1987 resolution, or any communication with the unions representing the newspaper workers. However, I am glad to note the efforts ASA has since taken to investigate the situation, express its concerns to the AAAS, and to promise a review of the case, including contacts with the relevant unions, before approving any future placement at the Free Press. I hope these actions indicate ASA's commitment to reaffirm its support for principles of fair labor. Of course, it is ultimately ASA members who must shape the organization's actions. The executive office says it will distribute copies of correspondence on the placement to the ASA Council at its August 1998 meeting in San Francisco. ASA members can raise concerns at the open business meeting there or communicate directly with the ASA President. I have asked ASA for a copy of the full text of the 1987 Council resolution, but have not yet received it. I appreciate list readers' attention to the issues raised in this case. This is but one of many that call out for our support, but remains an opportunity for sociologists to show where we stand. Chris Rhomberg, Ph.D. Assistant Professor Department of Sociology Yale University 203-432-3346 New Haven, CT 06520-8265 FAX: 203-432-6976 From rkmoore@iol.ie Tue Aug 18 01:44:10 1998 Date: Tue, 18 Aug 1998 08:42:58 +0100 To: renaissance-network@cyberjournal.org From: rkmoore@iol.ie (Richard K. Moore) Subject: GRI/I.1: "Evolution of geopolitics: from Pax Romana to Pax Americana, via nationalism" corporations@envirolink.org, Labor-Rap@csf.colorado.edu ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Globalization and the Revolutionary Imperative a book in progress Copyright 1998 by Richard K. Moore Latest update: 17 August 1998 richard@cyberjournal.org http://cyberjournal.org/cadre/gri/gri.html Table of Contents Introduction [5 Aug 98] Part I - Corporate globalization: what it is, where it came from, where it is heading Chapter 1 - Evolution of geopolitics: from Pax Romana to Pax Americana, via nationalism [preliminary, 17 Aug 98] Chapter 2 - Evolution of political power: from national kingdoms to global corporate rule, via democracy Chapter 3 - Economics: capitalism, development, and the finite Earth Part II - Envisioning a livable world: the necessity of democracy Part III - The Revolutionary Imperative: a millenia of serfdom or a millenia of freedom? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Part I, Chapter 1 - Evolution of geopolitics: from Pax Romana to Pax Americana, via nationalism [preliminary, 17 Aug 98] ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Pax Romana refers to the relative peace enjoyed within the bounds of the classical Roman Empire. At the boundaries of empire occurred wars of expansion, or of defense, but Roman hegemony and administration provided internal stability. When the empire fell apart, its Western dominions were largely inherited by the Catholic Church. Once again a Rome-centered administration -- this time theocratic -- provided a degree of central administration and coherence to those parts of Europe over which it held sway. This Vatican-based system was less cohesive than had been its Imperial Roman predecessor, and by the time of the Protestant Revolution much of Europe had declared both political and religious independence from the Vatican. In the Treaty of Westphalia (1648), even the remaining Catholic areas declared that in political matters, at least, monarchs would have ultimate sovereignty in their own domains. In Europe, the era of sovereign nation states was then firmly established. Europe's Age of Discovery began in 1492, with Columbus, and led eventually to European hegemony over nearly the entire globe, if we include North America as part of the "Euro community." To be sure, the affairs of the Roman Empire can hardly be called "geopolitics" (world-level politics), given its limited European scope. But it is the European model that eventually came to dominate the world. For that reason, it is fitting to trace the structural evolution of today's geopolitics from its European branch, and hence back to Rome. Euro powers were fiercely competitive over most of this era of sovereign nation states. This competition was primarily over colonies, and not about conquest of one Euro nation by another. There was some shifting of European borders, but by and large today's map of Western Europe is strikingly similar to that of 1648. The significant struggles between Euro powers were not over Euro territory, but were about external territories and the control of trade routes. The era of sovereign nation states was also the era of competitive imperialism. The fierce competition for empires, together with Euro leadership in the Industrial Revolution, led to the rapid development of superior military technology and to eventual global Euro hegemony. Most of the world was partitioned into colonies or spheres of influence, each under the sway of one or another Euro power. The final great competitive struggle of this era was known as World War Two (WW2), and this brought an end to the era of competitive, partitioned imperialism. By end of WW2 the US was -- on its own -- very close to total global hegemony. It had the run of the seven seas, an intact military machine and national infrastructure, a monopoly on nuclear weapons, greatly expanded influence in the oil-rich Middle East, and the lion's share of the world's disposable wealth and industrial capacity. Meanwhile, most of the rest of the world was in shambles, deep debt, and/or under occupation. The US had the prestige, power, and resources to guide the construction of post-war arrangements largely according to its own designs. Under US leadership, and with the fraternal cooperation of the European powers, a new geopolitical regime was established, replacing centuries of partitioned imperialism. This regime was structurally similar to the Roman Empire, with the "Free World" as the Roman domains, the "Communist Block" as the "barbarian outsiders," and with the US military providing Pax Americana and pressing the borders of empire against the barbarians. In this new regime, Euro imperialism did not come to an end, it merely changed form. What appeared to be an era of decolonization and national independence was in fact a reorganization of the Euro imperialist system. Under Pax Americana, partitioning had become outmoded and was replaced by a system of collective imperialism. Though granted nominal independence, what was to become known as the "Third World" was kept under collective Euro control by a variety of mechanisms. Among these mechanisms were the very borders of the newly independent nations. Rival ethnic groups, for example, were bundled into single countries, insuring national instability. Corners were cut off from national borders, denying access to the sea. Every attempt was made to leave the new nations in the hands of regimes that were friendly to, or dependent on, Euro interests. Frequent military intervention, primarily by the US, was employed to replace regimes by more Euro-friendly ones whenever necessary. The US established regional "defense" treaties to help secure the borders against the barbarians, and to provide an excuse for ongoing global US military presence. At the Bretton Woods Conference (1944), an international financial system was set up to stabilize currencies and to facilitate the smooth operation of the collective regime. The United Nations was established, providing what appeared to be evidence that an era of democratization was underway, but the UN was never allowed to interfere substantially with the system of collective imperialism. Perhaps the most significant of the methods of Euro domination during this era has been debt. Bretton Woods established the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. These institutions collectivized credit policy to the Third World, and guided economic development along lines advantageous to Euro economic interests. As debt levels grew the power of the Bretton Woods institutions increased, until today the IMF is able to dictate the micro-level policies of nations. This power has been used to "open up" countries to still greater control and exploitation by Euro interests. Eventually the "barbarians" were largely overcome when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. The Pax Americana system then took in the whole globe, with the single significant exception being China. China is the last major vestige of competitive nationalism, the final challenge to the Pax Americana geopolitical system. US policy makers articulate two competing approaches to China: engagement, and confrontation . (See: Foreign Affairs, March/April 1997, "The China Threat, A Debate.") The goal of engagement is to seduce China into subservience to the US-managed global system, while the goal of confrontation is to accomplish the same result through the use of economic pressure, and if necessary, of military force. Both China and the US are now embarked on aggressive weapons-development programs, each aimed at assuring the ability to control the outcome of this final episode of major national competition. China has said that it sees its "natural role" as being Asian hegemon, as said Japan in the years leading up to WW2. The US, meanwhile, has stated that such hegemony would be "contrary to US strategic interests," and reminds us that the US has fought three major Asian wars in this century to maintain its "strategic interests." But US strategic interests are no longer those of narrow national competition. It is the entire collective global system that China is actually confronting, with the US playing its traditional postwar policing role. As China begins to operate aggressively in global markets, and as its economic and military power grow, the China problem will not go away. How this question will be resolved cannot be precisely predicted, but there can be little doubt about the ultimate outcome. It is inconceivable that China would be allowed to reverse the direction of the collective system, to return the world to the era of major-power rivalries. With the Soviet Union dismantled, and acting under the assumption that China will be neutralized as an independent world power, Euro planners are already architecting and implementing a new regime of world order. The postwar regime was oriented around the "Communist Threat," and a new orientation is needed for the future. The new system of world order is to be one of regional imperialism, and it has been articulated in some detail by a darling of US the policy establishment, Samuel P. Huntington, in his book The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, (Simon and Schuster, 1997). Much of this book is devoted to elaborate rationalization, a brash attempt to make the case that regionalism is historically inevitable, and even that it represents a decline of Euro global power. The more informative part of the book deals with the explicit division of the world into eight "civilizations," and with a detailed description of the structure and dynamics planned for the new regime. Within regions there are to be core states, which are to have a special role in maintaining order within "their" region. Between regions we are to expect perpetual "fault-line conflicts," which are to be resolved through the auspices of "non primary level participants." What this actually means can be readily understood from the history of postwar interventionism and especially by looking at recent interventionist episodes. The new regional scheme represents no departure from the basic Pax Americana system, but is in fact a consolidation of that system. The primary role of the Pax Americana regime was and continues to be the maintenance of Euro dominance, which has increasingly come to mean the economic exploitation of most of the world, to the benefit of economic interests based primarily in the Euro nations. What is changing under regionalism is that the rationale for ongoing intervention is being being reformulated, and the global policing role is being opened up to wider Euro (NATO) participation. Huntington's "core" states are nothing really new, but are simply a renaming of what have been traditionally been called "Western client" states. Managing "fault line conflicts" becomes the excuse for intervention, in place of "defending strategic interests," but maintaining collective Euro domination continues to be the underlying agenda. The "civilization paradigm" provides a philosophical rationalization for the Euro powers to engage more openly in their ongoing business of collective domination. What also changes under regionalism is that a stable long range basis of world order is being implemented, in place of the unstable Cold-War-oriented system. During the Cold War era there was always the possibility of global armageddon, and an unmaintainable arms race created ongoing volatility and risk in the relationship between the US and the USSR. Under the regional regime there is no danger of armageddon, nor is there any hope of a final peace. Ongoing managed conflict is to be the order of things, providing dynamic stability, with the price in suffering to be paid by the people of the non-Euro "civilizations." Under this scheme the postwar myth of universal democratization is being explicitly abandoned. Instead each region is expected to exhibit its own "cultural norms," which "unlike the West" do not necessarily include a concern for human rights or democracy. What this in fact means is that the Euro-serving, oppressive Third World regimes which have long been the embarrassment of the "Free World," are now to be accepted as "normal" for "those parts of the world." Huntington's civilizational paradigm thus provides an ideal philosophical basis for a stable Euro-imperial global system. It gives Euro nations a plausible justification for acting collectively in their self interest on the world stage, namely that they are simply playing their natural role as one of the contending civilizations. It gives Euro forces a "right" to intervene, as "disinterested parties" adjudicating "fault-line" conflicts or "disciplining" core states. And it gives everyone reason to believe this should be the ongoing order of things, that the Euro powers continue to dominate, and that the "others" deserve whatever fate their "culture" has in store for them. In terms of its power relationships, this regional regime can be compared to the structure of mafia gangs. One can speak of "bosses" (core states) over territories, and of a "big boss" with the biggest gun (pax Americana / NATO), and the ultimate authority. These are hierarchical structures, they thrive on competitive conflict, and they allow the primary oppressor, the top-dog gang, to take on the public mantle of "peacekeeper." >From the European perspective, at least, geopolitics have, after a detour of some two thousand years, come full circle from the Roman Empire to the "Clash of Civilizations." A central regime is once again in control, only now on a global scale. Instead of the Roman Legions, there are the US-NATO "peacekeeping forces," and instead of Roman administration, there are the corporate-dominated bureaucracies such as the IMF and the World Trade Organization (WTO). While Rome was an open empire -- it had borders to contend with -- the Euro imperial system is a closed empire -- there is no "outside," at least not once the China Question is settled. Managed regional tension provides the control dynamic that border-conflicts provided to Rome, and which the Cold War provided to the immediate postwar era. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ To join the discussion on bringing about a movement for a democratic renaissance, send any message to: renaissance-network-subscribe@cyberjournal.org --- To subscribe to the the cj list, which is a larger list and a more general political discussion, send any message to: cj-subscribe@cyberjournal.org ----------------------------------- Non-commercial reposting is hereby approved, but please include the sig up through this paragraph and retain any internal credits and copyright notices. .--------------------------------------------------------- A community will evolve only when the people control their means of communication. -- Frantz Fanon From johnston@mail.cruzio.com Tue Aug 18 13:26:01 1998 Tue, 18 Aug 1998 12:24:53 -0700 (PDT) From: "Paul Johnston" To: "187-L - Resisting and Organizing Against Prop 187" <187-L@CMSA.BERKELEY.EDU>, "Barbara Laurence" , "Beverly Ellenberg" , "Bruce Hobson" , "Fernando Gapasin" , "Hector Delgado" , "Jessica Tully" , , "Maritza Barron" , "Mark Swindel" , "Michael Burawoy" , "Nathan Newman" , "publabor" , "ruth milkman" , , "Vote" , , Subject: Citizenship Organizing Job in Santa Clara (Silicon) Valley Date: Tue, 18 Aug 1998 12:24:41 -0700 This is a multi-part message in MIME format. charset="iso-8859-1" (VOTE! Central Coast Citizenship Project 931 E. Market St. Salinas, CA 93905 (408) 424-2713 fax 424-1309=20 Employment Opportunity: (VOTE! Project Director/Organizer, Santa Clara = County contact Paul Johnston at johnston@cruzio.com We are seeking an outstanding organizer to help lead our growing team in = Santa Clara County. In the immediate future, this position will have = primary responsibility for our (VOTE! campaign in that county, which = organizes new voters to help maximize voter participation. Like other = Citizenship Project staff, this person will also be involved in all = aspects of expanded citizenship, including support for the rights of = undocumented workers, community-based naturalization assistance, support = for labor movement activity, etc. Opportunities for leadership and = learning are limited only by the successful applicant=92s own capability = and initiative.=20 Compensation includes health and dental benefits, and our current salary = range is $28,000-31,000 per year. The most qualified applicants will be = those with bilingual skills, established relationships in the San Jose = and/or south Santa Clara County area, a history of grassroots organizing = that includes both labor organizing and political work, computer = literacy, and paralegal or related experience. This position must be filled as quickly as possible. Interested = candidates should contact Paul Johnston at (831) 423-4108 or Saul Garcia = at (831) 424-2713. Resumes should be faxed to Paul ASAP at 459-6948. * * * The Citizenship Project is an immigrant community-based organization, = founded by unionists in response to the passage of Proposition 187 in = 1994. We are dedicated to expanded citizenship. We organize networks of = support for expanded citizenship in unions, workplaces, neighborhoods, = labor camps, churches, schools, local governments and other community = settings. We work in many rural communities on the California=92s = central coast, and are currently building new projects in San Jose and = in the Imperial Valley on the Mexican border. charset="iso-8859-1"

(VOTE! Central Coast Citizenship = Project

931 E. Market St. Salinas, CA 93905 (408) 424-2713 fax=20 424-1309 

Employment Opportunity: (VOTE! Project Director/Organizer, Santa = Clara=20 County

contact Paul Johnston at johnston@cruzio.com

We are seeking an outstanding organizer to help lead our growing team = in=20 Santa Clara County. In the immediate future, this position will have = primary=20 responsibility for our (VOTE! campaign in that county, which = organizes new=20 voters to help maximize voter participation. Like other Citizenship = Project=20 staff, this person will also be involved in all aspects of expanded = citizenship,=20 including support for the rights of undocumented workers, = community-based=20 naturalization assistance, support for labor movement activity, etc.=20 Opportunities for leadership and learning are limited only by the = successful=20 applicant’s own capability and initiative.

Compensation includes health and dental benefits, and our current = salary=20 range is $28,000-31,000 per year. The most qualified applicants will be = those=20 with bilingual skills, established relationships in the San Jose and/or = south=20 Santa Clara County area, a history of grassroots organizing that = includes both=20 labor organizing and political work, computer literacy, and paralegal or = related=20 experience.

This position must be filled as quickly as possible. Interested = candidates=20 should contact Paul Johnston at (831) 423-4108 or Saul Garcia at (831) = 424-2713.=20 Resumes should be faxed to Paul ASAP at 459-6948.

* * *

The Citizenship Project is an immigrant community-based organization, = founded=20 by unionists in response to the passage of Proposition 187 in 1994. We = are=20 dedicated to expanded citizenship. We organize networks of support for = expanded=20 citizenship in unions, workplaces, neighborhoods, labor camps, churches, = schools, local governments and other community settings. We work in many = rural=20 communities on the California’s central coast, and are currently = building=20 new projects in San Jose and in the Imperial Valley on the Mexican=20 border.

From xcruz@webtv.net Thu Aug 20 02:45:23 1998 X-WebTV-Signature: 1 ETAtAhUAr/KrPYoe8qEd6/SLBJMJa9EL1g4CFEcu//MjnJ5YJx2LPIBu2PV7QB6J From: xcruz@webtv.net (Robert Chavez) Date: Thu, 20 Aug 1998 02:45:10 -0600 (MDT) To: Labor-Rap@csf.colorado.edu Subject: Real Jobs, Not Workfare Slavery! (fwd) From: ww@wwpublish.com To: "Workers World News Service" Subject: Real jobs, not workfare slavery! Date:    Wed, Aug 19, 1998, 11:16pm (MDT+1) Sender:    listserv@wwpublish.com REAL JOBS, NOT WORKFARE SLAVERY! CLINTON'S WELFARE REFORM EQUALS UNION-BUSTING By Greg Butterfield New York Workfare workers are raising their voices on the second anniversary of the federal law that ended a 60-year guarantee of government assistance to the poor. These workers say they refuse to be drowned out by the media hype about President Bill Clinton's testimony in the Monica Lewinsky case. Clinton signed the "Personal Responsibility Act" into law on Aug. 22, 1996. The real national scandal, these workers say, is the growing poverty, homelessness and suffering caused by welfare reform. Groups like Workfairness, Wisconsin's W-2 Workers Together, the Welfare Warriors and others are marking the anniversary with rallies, public meetings and testimony. A mass march of workfare workers and welfare participants will take place in New York. At 1 p.m. on Aug. 22, protesters will gather at City Hall in downtown Manhattan. Workfairness called the march. The group is appealing to its 9,000 members, as well as labor and community supporters, to turn Aug. 22 into "Welfare Rights Day." "Dignity, respect and real jobs, not workfare slavery," is the group's main demand. Milwaukee workfare workers plan to make the 24-hour drive to join the march in New York. WORKFARE ATTACK Workfare--forcing welfare participants to work for their meager benefits--is the centerpiece of the Republican- drafted law Clinton signed. New York is at the center of the national workfare experiment. Here Mayor Rudolph Giuliani runs the "Work Experience Program," the country's biggest. More than 40,000 people are enrolled in WEP. Last month Giuliani announced that by the year 2000, all of the more than 300,000 New York adults receiving public assistance-- most of them single parents--will be forced to work or lose their benefits. That includes the disabled and people being treated for drug addiction. Two-thirds of people on public assistance are children. WEP workers say workfare is a fraud. Giuliani claims the program provides job training and helps participants get real jobs. But there is no training. There is no help finding jobs. Instead, WEP workers are used as cheap labor to replace unionized city employees who've been downsized. It's a slave-labor program, the workers say. "We don't want to be used against the unions," says Workfairness Co-chair Vondora Jordan. "We want to be in the unions. We want equal pay and equal rights for equal work." A CHALLENGE FOR LABOR While Clinton and Giuliani say workfare leads to real jobs, a recent New York state report shows otherwise. Just 29 percent of the 400,000 people who left New York City's welfare rolls since 1995 have found jobs, according to the study. And many of those jobs are part-time or temporary. New York has yet to recover many of the 600,000 jobs lost during the last recession. Who benefits from workfare? Not the unemployed and the sick, who are forced to work for less than minimum wage, often under terrible conditions and with no legal protections under labor law. Those who benefit are the bosses. They can wring more profits out of workers who have such low pay and no rights. Workfare drives down everyone's wages by tossing more low- wage workers into the market to compete for jobs. A federal study found that the wages of the lowest-paid 10 percent of workers in New York fell more than 21 percent between 1979 and 1996. With workfare, the pace of wage cutting is accelerating. Now a global economic crisis is on the horizon. Wall Street's stock-market boom is turning sour. The capitalist crisis has already cost millions of workers' jobs in South east Asia and Russia. The effects are being felt in South Africa, Brazil and Mexico. What happens when the layoffs begin here? This should be of the greatest concern to labor unions and all workers. Will the unemployed have a safety net? Or will millions be pushed into slave-labor programs that further undermine the strength of the unions? SOLIDARITY Organizers of the Aug. 22 march are reaching out. The Million Youth March, scheduled for Sept. 5 in Harlem, has come under racist attack from the Giuliani administration and the whole New York establishment. Officials have tried to cast the event as a violent "hate march." But the organizers are holding firm. Workfairness has invited a youth representative of the MYM to speak on Aug. 22. Workfairness Co-chair William Mason issued a statement in solidarity with the march: "In our minds, as workfare workers," said Mason, "this is the struggle against a repressive city hall hostile to the needs of the poor and communities of color. We have an authoritarian mayor who's tried to stop taxi drivers from demonstrating, banned opponents from having news conferences at City Hall, and tried to force vendors off the streets. "Giuliani even tried to stop a march marking the anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination, which was led by some of the same labor leaders who endorsed him for re-election last year. "The only prospect of violence comes from the Giuliani administration, which is threatening to unleash the police on these young people." DETERMINED TO FIGHT BACK After Aug. 22, many single adults on workfare will have exhausted their benefits under the new rules. Those who have been unable to find real jobs--the vast majority--will have nowhere to turn. Thousands are shifted from one WEP assignment to the next. Each time they are promised that the next assignment will lead to a permanent job. But it never does. Meanwhile their lifetime limit on public assistance, mandated under the law Clinton signed, is being exhausted. It is increasingly common to see women workers cleaning city parks or sweeping dirty streets with their children in tow--since to leave them unsupervised could mean prison and there is no affordable child care available. But all these injustices have only increased WEP workers' determination to fight back. With few resources and much hardship, they have built and sustained organizations like Workfairness. They have reached out in solidarity, walking picket lines with striking workers and demonstrating against police brutality--because they know that an injury to one is an injury to all. Now it's time for organized labor to reach out to workfare workers. Organized and unorganized, together they can smash workfare slavery and open up a new era of struggle for jobs, equality and justice.                                                  - END - (Copyright Workers World Service: Permission to reprint granted if source is cited. For more information contact Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail: ww@workers.org. For subscription info send message to: info@workers.org. Web: http://www.workers.org) From jschaffner@labornet.org Fri Aug 21 22:16:18 1998 Date: Sat, 22 Aug 1998 00:08:37 -0400 From: J Schaffner To: yy-Labor Rap Subject: [Fwd: Justice for Jazz Artists] This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --------------6A19A14C8821FE4D876478BF --------------6A19A14C8821FE4D876478BF Return-Path: Fri, 21 Aug 1998 08:46:25 -0700 (PDT) Fri, 21 Aug 1998 08:46:15 -0700 (PDT) Date: 21 Aug 1998 08:39:10 Reply-To: Conference "labr.party" From: TDubnau@Local802AFM.org Subject: Justice for Jazz Artists To: Recipients of conference X-Gateway: conf2mail@igc.apc.org August 21, 1998 Dear Labor Supporter, and Music Lover I am writing to you on behalf of the 70 part time Jazz faculty at the New School, who have been trying for eight long months to negotiate a first contract with management. During our struggle to win the right to vote on union representation in December, 1997, many of you played a pivotal role in convincing the New School to live up to their progressive ideals and allow musicians to decide for themselves whether or not they wanted a union. As a result of hundreds of letters, emails, faxes, and phone calls, the New School allowed a vote, which overwhelmingly showed that the jazz faculty wanted a union. Since that time, Local 802 has been negotiating with management for a first contract. From the beginning, our elected bargaining committee has made it clear to management that four items must be included in any contract: a fair wage, pension contributions, job security, and health benefits. Although our current positions on wages and health benefits are not that far apart, to date the New School has refused even to give us a counterproposal on pension contributions, and our demands for job security have fallen on deaf ears. We believe that the New School -- once again -- needs a moral push. We are asking our allies in the labor, religious, neighborhood and political communities to lend your moral support to our struggle for a just contract with the New School. Please take the time email New School President Fanton to urge him to do what is right, and settle with the Jazz faculty who have made the Jazz program the best in the world. Dr. Fanton's email address is: fanton@newschool.edu We are asking for what is reasonable, and what the other unionized workers at the university already enjoy: a decent pension, and job security. Please forward all correspondence with Dr. Fanton to Local 802's Organizing Department. Email copies of your emails to us at: Tdubnau@local802afm.org. If you have any questions, please call Local 802 Organizer Tim Dubnau at (212) 245-4802, Ext. 185. Thank you very much for your help. In Solidarity, William Moriarity PRESIDENT, Local 802 AFM PS: Please feel free to forward this message to your friends. --------------6A19A14C8821FE4D876478BF-- From Herejobs@aol.com Mon Aug 24 01:55:19 1998 From: Herejobs@aol.com Mon, 24 Aug 1998 03:54:00 -0400 (EDT) Date: Mon, 24 Aug 1998 03:54:00 EDT Subject: Job announcement Please post & circulate (8/23/98) HOTEL WORKERS UNION SEEKS RESEARCHERS FOR EXCITING CAMPAIGNS THROUGHOUT NORTH AMERICA The Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union (HERE) is recruiting full-time research staff for its fast-growing Research Department. Positions are currently available in a number of regions across the U.S. and Canada, with new positions opening frequently (see listing below). The department is responsible for conducting in-depth research and for assisting in the development and implementation of strategic campaigns in support of organizing and bargaining struggles in the hotel, food service and gaming industries (casinos, riverboats and Native American gaming). Depending upon location and specific staffing needs, positions may be at the International Union or the Local Union level, and positions may be for senior or junior researcher analysts. Some positions may require substantial travel. Additional qualifications may apply to some locations. The qualifications for all analyst positions include: · Strong demonstrated commitment to labor/social justice organizing; · Investigative research experience, including industry, corporate and/or issue research; · Familiarity with basic financial concepts and/or analysis; · Demonstrated ability to research, strategize and implement plans around specific issues/campaign; · Significant work or volunteer experience with progressive/activist organizations; · Excellent writing skills/communications skills (oral, written and one-on- one); · Ability to handle multiple projects and tight deadlines; · Ease with working in a team environment; · College degree in liberal arts, social science, economics, planning or business. Research analyst openings are currently available (as of 8/98) in: Atlantic City NJ California (LA or SF base to be determined) Connecticut/Rhode Island District of Columbia Las Vegas San Antonio/Austin San Francisco Bay Area Toronto Certain locations will be filled on a priority basis. Also Administrative Assistant - San Francisco only. Qualifications include excellent office skills (including word processing, computer skills, database management); ability to organize and prioritize tasks; desire to work in a campaign atmosphere Salary is negotiable on the basis of experience; excellent benefits. Please send resume and cover letter specifying your geographic flexibility/interest to: Recruitment, HERE Research Department, 1219 28th St. NW, Washington, DC 20007-3389; Fax: 202-333-6049. No phone calls please. (Posted 8/98) From xcruz@webtv.net Mon Aug 24 13:45:19 1998 X-WebTV-Signature: 1 ETAuAhUAjbq6CNbiiuMH7P9NnBVpbP6B4RMCFQCNxdhh9TYWto//eEcphF4OW5BMDA== From: xcruz@webtv.net (Robert Chavez) Date: Mon, 24 Aug 1998 13:45:07 -0600 (MDT) To: Labor-Rap@csf.colorado.edu Subject: Fwd: [XColumn] A Nuclear Desert Sender: 2000seradc@galaxy.UCR.EDU From: beto@galaxy.UCR.EDU (Roberto Calderon) Date: Mon, Aug 24, 1998, 11:34am (MDT-1) To: xcruz@webtv.net Subject: [XColumn] A Nuclear Desert (fwd) Reply to: 2000seradc@galaxy.UCR.EDU From: Date: Mon, 24 Aug 1998 13:52:39 EDT To: AlbqX@aol.com Subject: A Nuclear Desert FROM UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE FOR RELEASE: WEEK OF AUGUST 21, 1998 COLUMN OF THE AMERICAS by Patrisia Gonzales and Roberto Rodriguez TO LIVE AND DIE IN THE SOUTHWESTERN DESERT Hundreds of people completed a four-day desert march in August heat from their border cities of El Paso, Texas, and Juarez, Mexico, to Sierra Blanca, Texas, 90 miles away. It was not a pilgrimage; it was a protest. Unless Texas Gov. George Bush intervenes, this small tumbleweed town could become home to the latest national nuclear waste dump. Sierra Blanca is already the site of the nation's largest sewage dump, where weekly, 250 tons of semitreated New York sludge is spread across the mountain range as twisted "range land revitalization." New York had to stop dumping its sludge in the Atlantic because it was contaminating the ocean. >From Washington, D.C., or even the state capital of Austin, the 90 miles between El Paso and Sierra Blanca no doubt seems to be a safe distance in the event of nuclear contamination. Yet marchers, under the banner of Operation Backbone, left their footprints in the desert sand -- on both sides of the border -- because 90 miles is not a safe distance when speaking of water and a dump that would contain nuclear waste with a radioactive life of hundreds of thousands of years. Texas State Rep. Norma Chavez, who partook in the march, said that if the nuclear waste were to contaminate the precious water beneath Sierra Blanca, it would spell an environmental and nuclear nightmare for the nearly 3 million people who live in the cities of El Paso and Juarez -- communities that will eventually depend upon the water underneath the proposed site. "The bottom line is that it's not safe. It's a threat to the environment," Chavez said. The proposed dump lies on top of a confirmed seismic fault with a potential for a major earthquake. The irony of this impending environmental disaster is that it's a "run from and for the border." At first, it will involve bringing nuclear waste from the U.S.-Canadian border to within 16 miles from the Rio Grande river and the U.S.-Mexican border. The placing of nuclear waste within 100 kilometers (60 miles) on either side off the U.S.-Mexican border is also in clear violation of the 1983 La Paz Agreement, said Chavez. The agreement calls for both countries not to contribute to pollution along the border. While the nuclear industry likes to guarantee the impossibility of spillages and contamination, opponents point out that the six other nuclear waste dump facilities in the country are fraught with major environmental problems. One site in Kentucky has been designated by the EPA as a "superfund" site -- meaning the government will have to sink many millions of dollars into cleaning up the contamination. Initially, the agreement to bring the nuclear muck to this part of Texas was supposed to involve nuclear waste only from Vermont and Maine. Now, due to Congressional shenanigans, the facility would have to accept waste from the entire country. Opposing the location are the entire Texas Democratic Party, the state's Mexican-American Legislative Caucus, 20 counties and 13 cities in Texas, five states, two cities in Mexico and the Mexican Congress. Opponents of the dump believe that a final decision by Gov. Bush will not be made until after the November elections. However, they have given him until Sept. 15 to affirm the decision of the two state administrative judges who recommended denying a permit for the dump. (After several months of hearings, the judges cited geological dangers and environmental racism as problems with the site.) The Sept. 15 deadline, according to Carlos Gallinar, a student at the University of Texas at El Paso and a march organizer, is a "citizen's deadline for Bush to come out against the dump." The governor and potential presidential contender is on record saying he would oppose the site if it is shown to be unsafe. The decision to affirm the judges' ruling is actually up to Bush's appointees at the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission. Mexico's Congress is particularly sharp in its criticism, believing that the dump and the decision to ignore the La Paz Agreement is both a racial matter and an affront to the national dignity of the Aztec nation. Much of the impetus for the Aug. 6-9 march came from young students who grew tired of having their communities stepped upon and neglected by both state and federal government. College student Melissa Barba said their action was named Operation Backbone "so as to put a spine into El Paso." COPYRIGHT 1998 UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE * Both writers are authors of Gonzales/Rodriguez: Uncut & Uncensored (ISBN 0-918520-22-3 UC Berkeley, Ethnic Studies Library, Publications Unit. Rodriguez is the author of Justice: A Question of Race (Cloth ISBN 0-927534-69-X paper ISBN 0-927534-68-1 Bilingual Review Press) and the antibook, The X in La Raza II and Codex Tamuanchan: On Becoming Human. They can be reached at PO BOX 7905, Albq NM 87194-7905, 505-242-7282 or XColumn@aol.com Gonzales's direct line is 505-248-0092 or PatiGonzaJ@aol.com From rkmoore@iol.ie Tue Aug 25 07:36:36 1998 Date: Tue, 25 Aug 1998 14:32:00 +0100 To: renaissance-network@cyberjournal.org From: rkmoore@iol.ie (Richard K. Moore) Subject: GRI/I.2- "Evolution of political power: from national kingdoms to global corporate rule, via democracy" Dear friends, Here is the second draft chapter of the globalization book. Your feedback and comments are welcome regarding this material and the theses presented. all the best, rkm Wexford, Ireland ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Globalization and the Revolutionary Imperative Part I - Chapter 2 - preliminary Copyright 1998 by Richard K. Moore 25 August 1998 - 3630 words comments to: editor@cyberjournal.org online book: http://cyberjournal.org/cadre/gri/gri.html ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Part I - Corporate globalization: what it is, where it came from, where it is heading ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Chapter 2 - Evolution of political power: from national kingdoms to global corporate rule, via democracy ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The previous chapter presented a one-dimensional perspective on power in the world. This perspective focused on the power of nations, and it identified economic power with the nations in which economic interests are based. This perspective is not wrong, indeed it remains central to understanding how the world system works, but it tells only one layer of the story. To gain a fuller perspective, we must examine more closely the structure of political power within nations, and power-constellations which cannot be identified with any nation. We must look at the role of elites and of corporations, especially transnational corporations (TNC's.) We must take a fresh look at democracy and question, based on the experience of globalization, what the Enlightenment was really about. To understand modern geopolitics it was necessary to go back to classical Rome, whose shadow continues in the Western psyche, and from whose regime modern Europe evolved. To understand modern political power one need not look back quite so far. Modern political structures were born in the Enlightenment (c. late eighteenth century,) in the form of republics, and the context out of which the Enlightenment arose provides an adequate starting point for understanding the primary political forces at work today. During the era of feudalism (c. 500AD - 1500AD), there were three European elites: the church hierarchy, the landed aristocracy, and the titled (nobility and royalty.) As that system ended, an additional elite -- the business wealthy -- gained status and influence through trade and manufacture. These elite groups competed for power, with different accommodations from time to time and place to place. For the general population, the elites represented security or tyranny, depending on ones perspective. But it was obvious to all that elites ran things; no one pretended society was democratic or that elites did not actively seek to maintain their power. With the advent of the Enlightenment and of "democratic republics" the older elites were removed from power, while the business wealthy, who ushered in capitalism, remained relatively undisturbed. Did this transformation bring about democracy in any genuine sense, or merely monopolization of power in the hands of the single remaining (capitalist) elite? We will consider this question in what follows. The fundamental Enlightenment philosophy was liberty, or liberalism. Enlightenment thinkers were opposed to top-down autocratic power, and wanted it to be replaced by bottom-up systems of control. Political liberty was expressed in constitutional democracies, which provided for popular representation and which theoretically created societies that were of, by and for the people. Economic liberalism was expressed as free markets which theoretically provided for bottom-up economic control through the actions of individual producers and consumers. Free-market economics has since come to be known as capitalism. The Enlightenment principle of democracy was most eloquently expressed by Thomas Paine, in his record-setting bestseller Common Sense (January, 1776). Indeed Common Sense has been credited with turning the tide of public opinion in America toward independence, which was declared only six months following the book's publication. The book had been read aloud in villages and towns, and its language was so plain and clear that even the illiterate could understand its message. Paine argued the legitimacy of popular sovereignty, a principle we take for granted today but which was initially disconcerting to a culture that for nearly two millennia had found social order in rule by elites, whose power had always claimed sacred legitimacy. Enlightenment economic principles were perhaps best articulated by Adam Smith in his Wealth of Nations (also 1776), which provides the classic and still often quoted rationalization for capitalism. Smith argued that competitive markets, through a mechanism he called the invisible hand, would provide optimum economic benefits to producers, consumers, and society generally. In Smith's model the economic role of governments was minimal, being primarily to see that markets remained competitive. Monopolies were eschewed by Smith, as they were seen as a form of autocratic power. There is a tension inherent in these two principles of political and economic liberty, a tension which is epitomized by Smith's minimal economic role for government. If popular sovereignty is expressed as democratic government, and if government's role is limited over economic affairs, then popular sovereignty is similarly limited. Inherent in Enlightenment principles, then, is a tension between democracy and economic liberalism, between popular sovereignty and the power of wealth. In the ideal world of theory this tension would not be a serious problem. If markets were truly competitive -- without monopolies -- excessive concentration of economic power would not occur. If the wealthy were not too powerful, and if democratic political systems truly embodied popular sovereignty, then one could expect the development of democratic societies with an equitable distribution of "life, liberty, and happiness", and the realization of "liberty, equality, and fraternity," to quote the customary American and French summations of the revolutionary Enlightenment goals. But as the map is not the territory, so theory is not reality. In practice the maintenance of competitive markets has been very problematic, and monopoly capitalism has arisen frequently in the post-Enlightenment West. The embodiment of popular sovereignty in constitutions and institutions has proven to be equally problematic, with all manner of corruption, demagoguery, and power-brokering leading to domination by undemocratic forces of one sort or another. The most corrupting of these undemocratic forces has proven to be the capitalist elite. From the very beginning the wealthy elite exerted influence in both politics and in economic affairs. The inherent tension between political liberty and economic liberalism expressed itself as political corruption, as the elite used their political influence to further their own economic interests. According to Smith's market model, and in actual practice, the goal of a capitalist is to maximize the profits from investments and to increase his or her wealth. In the competitive marketplace some operators proved more successful than others, and concentrations of wealth did occur. In addition, large concentrations of wealth pre-dated the Enlightenment republics, and these too distorted in practice the perfect theory of competitive markets. With the advent of the (capital-intensive) industrial revolution, wealth concentrated still further, and the capitalist elite emerged as an identifiable class and a political force of the first rank. Once wealth becomes concentrated the owners of that wealth, as might be expected, have always sought means to expand their wealth still further -- to escape competitive pressures, including whatever rules government might have imposed in the interest of assuring competitive markets. These means have included driving competitors out of business by selective price-cutting and other predatory practices, direct influence over political decisions, and using ownership of the popular press to influence public opinion, and hence indirectly the political process. In the rhetoric of democracy the fundamental role of elite power in republics goes unrecognized. Without the support of wealthy elites, who had in mind the economic triumph of capitalism, republican democracies would not have emerged, at least not as we have known them. As long as elite interests benefitted from strong republics, democracy had a partner-of-convenience in the form of nation-based capitalism. Democratic rhetoric gives too much credit to the power of popular will, and fails to recognize that healthy republics have been always contingent on the tacit acquiescence of the elite. With the advent of globalization, as will be discussed below, the weakness of Western democracy lies exposed -- as the capitalist elite withdraws its support, the fabric of republics disintegrate. In order to investigate political power within republics, the United States serves as an excellent example. Besides being the first modern republic -- beating France in this record by a few years -- American patterns have come eventually to dominate in the West. The US is central not only to geopolitics, as we saw in the previous chapter, but also to understanding the dynamics of political power and the role of the capitalist elite in Western societies. The problems of monopoly capitalism and giant corporations were not unknown to the framers of the US Constitution. The colonies had in fact been established by Queen Elizabeth I primarily as investments, and the entire colony of Pennsylvania was a private corporation owned by a single family. The sentiment in the new Republic was that the power of corporations must be limited, and corporate charters were in the early days granted only for limited purposes and limited times. But the mostly wealthy leaders who wrote the Constitution, and assumed leading public positions in the new nation, were split in their relative allegiance to the economic and political principles of the Enlightenment. The man credited with architecting the Constitution -- James Madison -- was from the school that feared an excess of democracy, what they called "mob rule", and believed that the nation should be run by "those who own it." Some of this school had openly advocated that the new nation be established as a monarchy, rather than a republic. The American Constitution was a compromise between those who wanted priority given to popular sovereignty, and those who wanted to insure that government's economic role be favorable to wealthy interests. Most of the language of the Constitution is devoted to formulating democratic mechanisms, with a reasonable system of checks and balances, a two-house Congress, guarantees of civil liberties, and firm protections for the Constitution itself. But there were also mechanisms included that gave the wealthy elite the foothold they needed to exert the special influence over the new society to which they felt entitled. As Noam Chomsky points out in his analysis of "Madisonian Democracy," property rights are given pre-eminence in the Constitution over other kinds of rights. One's right to property is guaranteed by law; one's right to liberty, happiness, or even life itself is largely contingent on one's being able to afford them. This emphasis on property rights represents what one might call a policy choice, favoring to a not insignificant degree economic liberalism over popular sovereignty. Perhaps more significant, the central banking functions of the nation were put under private ownership instead of direct government control. The power of banking can hardly be overstated, affecting as it does the operation of the economy, the stability of the currency, and the ability of the government to finance its programs. Control over the nation's banking and finances gave considerable leverage to the budding capitalist elite, as we can see in the power wielded by today's still-private Federal Reserve System, which gives higher priority to Wall Street performance than to national economic health. Still further, as Howard Zinn points out in A People's History of the United States, the system of representation tends to prevent the formation of popular movements for significant political change. The Senate, with its less representative base, and longer terms of office, acts as a conservative flywheel, and if a popular political movement occurs, it is likely that regional factionalism can be exploited trough power-brokering to maintain the status quo. US history has in fact been a see-saw battle for control between popular interests and business interests. At times, as in the 19th century robber-baron era, business tycoons brazenly ruled. John. D. Rockefeller bragged about how many government officials were "in his pocket." At other times, as during Franklin Roosevelt's administration, government seemed more responsive to the needs and wishes of the general population. By and large the claim "The business of America is business" (Calvin Coolidge, 1925) has been an accurate description of US political priorities. Much of domestic policy, and even more of foreign policy, has been dictated by the demands of capitalism, which have always been for ever-greater opportunities for growth and economic development. The general population has generally gone along with these priorities on the expectation that an ever-growing pie would provide benefits for everyone. But the distribution of the pie has not typically been equitable, and US history is full of bitter labor struggles against business operators who sought to wring as much as possible from their workers while paying as little as possible in wages. More often than not the power of government was wielded on the side of capital in such struggles, partly because such was the property interest involved, and partly because of the political influence wielded by the capitalist elite. Equitably distributed or not, development, expansion, and economic growth have been the unwavering and energetic agenda of American capitalism and of the American government. The first dramatic growth phase was westward expansion, accomplished through purchase (Louisiana Territory, 1803; Alaska, 1867), aggressive warfare (American Southwest, Mexican War, 1846-1848), and by exterminating most of the native Americans. As the US grew in military and economic power, it was able to extend its influence beyond its continental borders and enter into the game of competitive imperialism. With the Monroe Doctrine (1823) it effectively established all of Latin America as its own economic sphere of influence. Admiral Perry sailed to Asia (1852-1854) and forced Japan to open her ports to American trade. In the Spanish American war (1898) the US seized Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines from Spain. By the end of World War 1 (1918), the US had taken its place as a first-rank world power, a full member of the Western competitive-imperialist club. As American imperialism developed, the power and wealth of the capitalist elite was greatly extended. From an economic perspective, imperialism was primarily a capitalist affair. The US government maintained order in the territories and defended trade routes, but it was capitalists who built trading empires, exploited territorial resources, and who gained the primary economic benefit from the imperial system. Not surprisingly, elite capitalist control of American foreign policy has been even more total than over domestic affairs. America, and especially its capitalists, had grown accustomed to rapid and dramatic expansion. By 1918 America had become a major world power, and there were no easy pickings left to seize. Much of the world was already colonized by European powers. A war with Spain was one thing, but there was scant political likelihood of stirring up wars with other European powers in order to challenge control of their colonies. How was America to continue its never-ending dramatic growth? In the 1920's a kind of growth was obtained through hyped-up domestic development, but this was unsustainable and the collapse of the bubble contributed to the global depression of the 1930's. Selling weapons and supplies to Nazi German and Imperial Japan provided considerable benefits to American capitalism in the inter-war years, and the war itself was even more profitable. The war brought full employment and intensive industrial activity to the the US, providing for a brief time the kind of rapid growth to which US capital aspired. Whether by design or by luck, in the three decades between the end of WW1 (1918) and the end of WW2 (1945) the US rose from new entrant in the geo-competitive game to global hegemon, with the power and prestige, as we saw in the previous chapter, to guide the course of the postwar world according to its own designs. America's postwar power provided the means to insure favorable participation of US capital in the postwar global economy. The challenge for the elite was to use this means to provide the desired high level of ongoing capital expansion. During the course of the war the balance of domestic political power between popular interests and business interests shifted significantly in favor of business interests, and in particular in favor of very large corporations. The industrially-intensive war effort involved close collaboration between government and industry, leading to the creation of what President Dwight Eisenhower called the "military industrial complex." As a consequence of this consolidation of elite capitalist political influence, American postwar economic and foreign policy can best be understood in terms of the growth opportunities developed for American capital. >From a geopolitical perspective, as discussed in Chapter 1, the postwar American policy was to transform the partitioned, national-competitive imperialist system into a collectivized Western system. The collective empire was called the Third Word, or the underdeveloped world, and development was the name given to the ongoing practice of economic exploitation. >From a global-economics perspective, the collectivization of empire could be seen as a means by which American capital could elbow its way into realms previously controlled by European powers. With the Bretton Woods emphasis on open markets, and with immense postwar advantages -- controlling the lions share of the world's wealth and industrial capacity -- US corporations were well positioned to enjoy a considerable head start in the exploitation of the new global opportunities. Bretton Woods and Pax Americana provided the foundations for what was later to be called globalization, and the political power of American capitalism insured that the postwar geopolitical and economic agendas would serve corporate interests. One of the most striking consequences of this proto-globalization regime was the rise of TNC's. There had been early examples of TNC's, notably the "Seven Sister" petroleum majors, but it was in the Pax-Americana postwar world that TNC's came into their own. With imperial partitions removed, corporations which had been insulated from one another could now compete and expand into one anothers territories. TNC's became powers in their own right, no longer dependent on their home countries to defend their interests. Pax Americana not only ended nation-based competitive imperialism, it also severed the bond which had kept the Western capital elites to some extent "loyal" to their home counties. Increasingly the interests of nations and the interests of TNC's grew apart. Especially as a consequence of the anti-militarist and pro-environmental movements of the sixties and seventies, strong Western nation states were becoming more a hindrance than a support to ongoing capitalist expansion. TNC's found that Third-World conditions suited their operations better than did Western conditions. In many ways, globalization can be understood as the transformation of Western nations according to the Third World model. In 1973, President Richard Nixon took an action which fatally undermined the postwar Bretton Woods arrangements, and moved the world another major step closer to modern globalization. He took the US off the gold standard, purportedly a necessity to continue financing the Vietnam War. The cornerstone of the Bretton Woods financial-stability package had been a fixed rate of exchange among leading currencies, anchored by the US dollar which was pegged to gold. By going off the gold standard, the US ripped the scaffolding from under these arrangements, and floating global currency values immediately followed. This represented a major shift of financial power from nations to private international bankers, and set the stage for later financial collapses in Latin America and Southeast Asia. These collapses, whether engineered or fortuitous, were systematically exploited to the advantage of Western capital interests. Whatever was in Nixon's mind, his 1973 action amounted to the opening salvo in an assault by TNC's on the nation state. In 1980 the neoliberal revolution was launched, an all-out campaign to dismantle the leading republics (beginning with the US and UK,) privatize their assets, reduce their regulatory power, and bankrupt their treasuries. There was an accompanying propaganda campaign, played out in the mass media, aimed at demonizing government and politicians, denigrating democratic institutions, and hard-selling the virtues of free trade, privatization, and "smaller government." In parallel with these twin campaigns to destabilize Western republics, another project was being carried out in the realm of world trade agreements. In this arena as well, TNC's were busy wresting power from nation states, by transferring economic decision-making -- economic sovereignty -- from nations to corporate-dominated bureaucracies. In 1995, with the creation of the World Trade Organization (WTO,) the basic structure of a TNC-dominated world government was in place. These developments, together with the successful destabilization of the Soviet Union and the interventionist precedent set by the Gulf War, brought the globalization project to a near-final stage of completion. Lest the trees hide the forest, permit me to summarize what has been said so far, from a high-level perspective... As the upcoming wealthy elite in the West began to feel constrained by the elites of the feudal era, they sought a way to achieve greater power. By supporting and guiding the creation of republics, they got rid of the old elites, while preserving for themselves a privileged position in the new regimes. The public rhetoric of democracy minimized the role of the wealthy elite and encouraged people to believe that genuine democracy had been attained and that republics had arisen from popular will alone. In the era of competitive imperialism Western nations served as the fortresses of capital, the defenders of colonial economic territory. Capital was thus bound to, and supportive of, strong, sovereign, Western republics. But under Pax Americana, and non-partitioned imperialism, this bond was broken and the elite support of strong nation states was no longer profitable, in fact popular sovereignty and democracy became a net corporate liability. The elite therefore chose to scuttle and abandon the Western national ships of state. They escaped to a new vessel of their own design, a TNC-dominated global government, backed up by an appropriate system of geopolitical control (Chapter 1.) The rhetoric of patriotic nationalism, expounded by the wealth-controlled press for two centuries, was replaced by the denigration of governments and politicians, easing the way toward national destabilization. As living standards continue to decline in the West -- as the West becomes more like the Third World -- the blame is to be placed on "competing civilizations." Western populations can be expected to permit their declining national budgets to be spent on "peace keeping" operations and "defending the West." ------------------------------------------------------------------------ This material is a draft book in-progress. You are encouraged to send feedback to the author at editor@cyberjournal.org. Non-commercial forwarding is hereby authorized, in entirety, including this sig. Please keep in mind that this material is a preliminary draft, that the presentation is to be expanded, and that substantiating examples and references are to be included -- suggestions invited. Please visit the cyberjournal home page http://cyberjournal.org and learn about Citizens for a Democratic Renaissance - (CDR). ------------------------------------------------------------------------ a political discussion forum - cj@cyberjournal.org To subscribe, send any message to cj-subscribe@cyberjournal.org A public service of Citizens for a Democratic Renaissance (mailto:cdr@cyberjournal.org http://cyberjournal.org) ---------------------------------------------------------- Non-commercial reposting is hereby approved, but please include the sig up through this paragraph and retain any internal credits and copyright notices. .--------------------------------------------------------- To see the index of the cj archives, send any message to: cj-index@cyberjournal.org To subscribe to our activists list, send any message to: renaissance-network-subscribe@cyberjournal.org Help create the Movement for a Democratic Rensaissance ---------------------------------------------- crafted in Ireland by rkm ----------------------------------- A community will evolve only when the people control their means of communication. -- Frantz Fanon From meisenscher@igc.apc.org Thu Aug 27 12:41:52 1998 Thu, 27 Aug 1998 11:08:40 -0700 (PDT) Thu, 27 Aug 1998 11:02:34 -0700 (PDT) Date: Thu, 27 Aug 1998 11:02:34 -0700 (PDT) To: (Recipient list suppressed) From: Michael Eisenscher Subject: Planning to travel on Jan. 1, 1999? - FAA Systems: Serious Challenges Remain in Resolving Year 2000 and Computer Security Problems. T-AIMD-98-251. 19 pp. August 6, 1998. http://www.gao.gov/new.items/ai98251t.pdf ======================================== How confident are you about the nation's air traffic control system? Before planning that New Year's Day airplane trip to grandma's house, ask yourself, "In the millions of lines of computer code that go into the programs in the FAA mainframe computers, am I confident that they have really caught all the potential glitches that will be caused by the Year 2000 problem?" Science literature refers to "normal accidents." These are accidents which are nearly inevitably and arise out of the sheer complexity of systems. Three Mile Island might be an example. At some point even with all the fail safe features, very complex systems go awry. Care to offer odds on the FAA computers' reliability? From xcruz@webtv.net Fri Aug 28 11:46:42 1998 X-WebTV-Signature: 1 ETAsAhRzrYcmJTuGWycQOtSQ4kHdt1h/6gIUIyH5s2TCZ39+xvNOPbEb0VKcc2w= From: xcruz@webtv.net (Robert Chavez) Date: Fri, 28 Aug 1998 11:46:30 -0600 (MDT) To: Labor-Rap@csf.colorado.edu Subject: Adjuncts e-list (fwd) From: burnham@istar.ca (Clint Burnham) Date: Thu, Aug 27, 1998, 11:16pm (MDT-1) To: mlg-ics@andrew.cmu.edu Subject: adjuncts e-list Hi MLGers I was wondering if anyone knows of an e-list or such for adjuncts regarding organizing? I've tried through Workplace, the GSC website - anyone else have any ideas? Clint Clint Burnham #3-56 E. 5th Ave. Vancouver B.C. Canada V5T 1G8 (604) 874-0185 From xcruz@webtv.net Fri Aug 28 16:30:37 1998 X-WebTV-Signature: 1 ETAsAhRlBowXkkm7sMPrRKaZgsnV3xEaIwIUeAuq2uQBiIDLwltVYHzUyqffjd4= From: xcruz@webtv.net (Robert Chavez) Date: Fri, 28 Aug 1998 16:30:23 -0600 (MDT) To: Labor-Rap@csf.colorado.edu Subject: Bin Laden's Brother Is Director of U.S. Firm(Irridium) (fwd) Osama's brother is director of US firm (Irridium) DAWN (Pakistan) August 28, 1998 Masood Haider NEW YORK, Aug 27: The brother of Osama bin Laden is a director of a US telecom giant, Irridium LLC, according to reports. Although the Clinton administration has made Osama the world's most wanted man, the rest of the family does millions of dollars in business with the US, reports say. Sheikh Hasan bin Laden, one of Osama's many brothers in a Saudi family of immense wealth and far-flung enterprises, is listed by the Securities and Exchange Commission as a director of Iridium LLC, the New York newspaper Daily News said. And the irony of it all is that the family's construction company built a new desert base in Saudi Arabia for the US Air Force after the deadly 1996 Khobar Towers bombing blamed on Osama. Irridium, which plans to put the first global network of cell phones and pagers into operation next month, has launched satellites four times aboard China's Long March rockets. The launches by Irridium, Hughes Electronics and Loral Space and Communications triggered a furore in Congress this summer amid allegations that China picked up missile targeting know-how from its arrangements with the US firms. Irridium confirmed that Hasan bin Laden is a director of the Irridium Middle East Corp subsidiary and that the Saudi bin Laden Group, the family's investment arm, has put money into the global phone link firm. Neither the Bin Laden Group nor Osama's brother has any financial or professional association with Osama bin Laden, who became estranged from the family years ago and is accused of masterminding the US embassy bombings in East Africa this month. The Bin Laden family fortune has been estimated at $5 billion from its vast contracting and construction enterprises. The family's money web has come under scrutiny since President Clinton last week banned all financial transactions between Osama bin Laden and US firms and individuals. Clinton's action gave the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control authority to freeze any of his money that can be found in the US and also pressure foreign banks to cut off his funding. From xcruz@webtv.net Sat Aug 29 07:13:26 1998 X-WebTV-Signature: 1 ETAuAhUAx4c6qyaAqy5j1o/6eyHXR5V+gSsCFQDKldSStxxb8+ZY3oDCh355ApUi8w== From: xcruz@webtv.net (Robert Chavez) Date: Sat, 29 Aug 1998 07:13:21 -0600 (MDT) To: Labor-Rap@csf.colorado.edu Subject: U.S. West Strikers Hold Out Against Speedup (fwd) From: ww@wwpublish.com To: "Workers World News Service" Subject: U.S. West strikers hold out against speedup Date:    Fri, Aug 28, 1998, 9:19pm (MDT+1) Sender:    listserv@wwpublish.com U.S. WEST STRIKERS HOLD OUT AGAINST SPEEDUP By Stephanie Hedgecoke Member, CWA Local 14826, Printing Workers Sector New York On Aug. 16, some 35,000 workers in 13 states walked out on strike against U.S. West Inc. U.S. West's attacks on healthcare benefits and its demands that employees work more and faster sparked the strike. It is the first walkout at U.S. West, a "Baby Bell" company. On Aug. 21, as strikers held strong in what quickly developed into a hard-fought battle, AFL-CIO Secretary Treasurer Richard Trumka notified the bosses that the Communications Workers strikers "have the full backing of the AFL-CIO and of the 40 million union family members across the U.S." Trumka said he was calling a special session of the AFL- CIO Strategic Approaches Committee to give "leadership to the entire labor movement .... to provide immediate and long- lasting support for these workers." The company wants workers to accept an inferior health plan with reduced family coverage or pay to keep existing plans. Company spokespeople present this as "a free health- care plan." The number of U.S. West access lines has increased by 20 percent in the past five years. At the same time, bosses cut union jobs by 12.5 percent. Now they want employees to work 12-to-14-hour days with no overtime pay. Communications Workers District 7 Vice President Sue Pisha said, "U.S. West seeks to turn the calendar back 60 years to the time Americans struggled to establish the eight-hour day." U.S. West reported $1.25 billion in 1997 net income. Yet management wants technicians to accept a new pay structure with precise job-completion time standards. Technical workers in Western states face changing, sometimes drastic weather conditions. They often drive long distances to jobs, and have to overcome outdated network schematics and deteriorating cable and equipment. Strikers say they are already overworked. Outrage at the company's scheme to wring more profits from their labor drives the strike. Striker Ron Livingston said raising job-completion goals would threaten worker safety if workers feel compelled to work "fast and furious" while on poles or in bad weather. U.S. West bosses announced themselves "dumbfounded" over the strike. But they had trained 15,000 managers to do technicians' work in preparation for a strike. On Aug. 18 the union filed an Unfair Labor Practice charge against U.S. West for failing to provide requested information on conditions and proposals. In a tactic that has become more common lately, the company also filed a complaint with the Labor Board--accusing the union of "avoiding bargaining." Management threatened strikers' health coverage if they do not return to work by Aug. 31. Communications Workers President Morton Bahr responded to the scare tactic by assuring strikers that the union would maintain health services to them and their families at no charge. 6,000 MORE PHONE WORKERS WALK OFF JOBS Across the country, in Connecticut, over 6,000 phone workers represented by the Communications Workers and the Connecticut Union of Telephone Workers struck Southern New England Telecommunications on Aug. 22. These workers are on the offensive. They are demanding wage increases to bring their pay up to the industry standard, and that SNET abolish its two-tiered wage system. By Aug. 24, the strike had resulted in disrupted service in Connecticut. Meanwhile, the Communications Workers reached tentative agreement on a three-year contract with GTE on Aug. 19. The pact covers 5,700 workers in Arkansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas. Earlier in August, strikers beat Bell Atlantic's attacks and won organizing gains in a powerful strike that only took two-and-a-half days. And the union won access to jobs in growth areas with the other Bell companies, AT&T and Lucent Technologies.                                                  - END - (Copyright Workers World Service: Permission to reprint granted if source is cited. For more information contact Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail: ww@workers.org. For subscription info send message to: info@workers.org. Web: http://www.workers.org) From xcruz@webtv.net Mon Aug 31 09:48:23 1998 Received: from mailsorter-105.bryant.webtv.net (mailsorter-105.iap.bryant.webtv.net [207.79.35.95]) by csf.Colorado.EDU (8.8.5/8.8.4/CNS-4.1p-nh) with ESMTP id JAA17368 for ; Mon, 31 Aug 1998 09:48:19 -0600 (MDT) Received: from mailtod-121.bryant.webtv.net (mailtod-121.iap.bryant.webtv.net [207.79.35.89]) by mailsorter-105.bryant.webtv.net (8.8.8/ms.gso.08Dec97) with ESMTP id IAA11036; Mon, 31 Aug 1998 08:48:16 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from production@localhost) by mailtod-121.bryant.webtv.net (8.8.5/mt.gso.08Dec97) id IAA14223; Mon, 31 Aug 1998 08:48:16 -0700 (PDT) X-WebTV-Signature: 1 ETAuAhUAvNiAyTJx/mV60SCYD5+XgwWouo8CFQClRdW5gHHLyksggmZlUieQiETEtA== From: xcruz@webtv.net (Robert Chavez) Date: Mon, 31 Aug 1998 09:48:16 -0600 (MDT) To: Labor-Rap@csf.colorado.edu Cc: xcruz@webtv.net Subject: Syracuse University Strike (fwd) Message-ID: <2377-35EAC5C0-9258@mailtod-121.bryant.webtv.net> Content-Type: Text/Plain; Charset=ISO-8859-1 MIME-Version: 1.0 (WebTV) Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-MIME-Autoconverted: from Quoted-Printable to 8bit by csf.Colorado.EDU id JAA17371 From: awald@umich.edu (alan wald) Date: Mon, Aug 31, 1998, 11:46am (MDT+2) To: RDaniels@orst.edu Cc: mlg-ics@andrew.cmu.edu Subject: Information on Syracuse University Strike ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Mon, 31 Aug 1998 08:27:06 -0400 (EDT) From: Joel Reed To: FSGroup@umoja.syr.edu Subject: GET THE WORD OUT I've sent this letter to my friends and colleagues across the country to help build national pressure on the university--others may want to do something similar (feel free to use the text of my note in your own). j. ************** Date: Mon, 31 Aug 1998 08:08:56 To: From: Joel Reed Subject: STRIKE at SU Cc: Friends, Please forgive the form letter, but I'm writing to get the word out that 750 members of the Service Employees International Union, Local 200A at Syracuse University have gone out on strike this morning. 200A represents food service workers, custodians, groundskeepers, parking service workers, librarians, and skilled tradesworkers; issues the union wants negotiated in the new contract are familiar to anyone who has watched corporate union-busting strategies across the country: reduction in use of temporary workers, elimination of 'outsourcing' or subcontracting, simplification of job pay-scale and zone-management systems, inclusion of all union members in a single contract; additionally, pay equity for the librarians at SU, who suffer from incredibly low wages (not coincidentally they suffer from a very gendered system of pay inequity). The university is taking a very hard-line against the union and its supporters, paradoxically asserting to local media its willingness to negotiate and its entrenched commitment to a "final offer" only cosmetically different from the offer it initially presented the workers last June, and is busing in replacement workers (lowly paid temps with no benefits, of course), stationing guards around campus, threatening to fire student workers who sympathize with the strikers, and vaguely threatening students who leaflet for the union with legal action and loss of scholarships, fellowships, TAships, and other financial support; faculty and non-unionized clerical staff have received an ominous communique from the vice-chancellor, threatening that they'll be replaced or their pay will be cut if they honor picket lines. Since last spring a Faculty Support Group has been working with the union, beginning by collecting hundreds of signatures on a petition supporting SEIU which were submitted to the chancellor in a meeting, and a second attempt to meet the chancellor (frustrated when the chancellor refused to meet the FSG representatives). Last week we demonstrated our support for the union at convocation; many of us will be cancelling our classes or meeting them off-campus during the strike; a teach-in to educate students about the issues is being planned for Weds. What we need now is NATIONAL pressure on the university that will get them worrying about their reputation among academics (and among the parents who pay SU tuition!). Please e-mail or write Chancellor Kenneth Shaw at macarlso@syr.edu (Shaw's secretary's e-address: his own address is not listed...) or 300 Tolley Administration Building Syracuse University Syracuse, NY 13244 and urge him to cease threatening supporters of the union, and to sign a contract with SU's employees that respects their dignity, maintains their job security, and provides them liveable wages. For more information, write me, and/or look up the Faculty Support Group's web page (which contains strike plan updates and the 'official' threatening memos), at: http://www.maxwell.syr.edu/maxpages/faculty/merupert/SUlabor.htm Please also forward this note to your friends--thanks for your support! -- *********************************************** Alan Wald, Dept. of English, 3271 Angell Hall, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Mi. 48109   tel: 313-995-1499 e-mail: awald@umich.edu *********************************************** From xcruz@webtv.net Mon Aug 31 13:21:24 1998 Received: from mailsorter-105.bryant.webtv.net (mailsorter-105.iap.bryant.webtv.net [207.79.35.95]) by csf.Colorado.EDU (8.8.5/8.8.4/CNS-4.1p-nh) with ESMTP id NAA04985 for ; Mon, 31 Aug 1998 13:21:19 -0600 (MDT) Received: from mailtod-122.bryant.webtv.net (mailtod-122.iap.bryant.webtv.net [207.79.35.90]) by mailsorter-105.bryant.webtv.net (8.8.8/ms.gso.08Dec97) with ESMTP id MAA06037; Mon, 31 Aug 1998 12:21:16 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from production@localhost) by mailtod-122.bryant.webtv.net (8.8.5/mt.gso.26Feb98) id MAA26499; Mon, 31 Aug 1998 12:21:15 -0700 (PDT) X-WebTV-Signature: 1 ETAsAhRWnT/L4jq1MXPkiz3Is1OyVCdCuwIUeexrs14aNZk6EoBQxeUtEZ3VzRA= From: xcruz@webtv.net (Robert Chavez) Date: Mon, 31 Aug 1998 13:21:15 -0600 (MDT) To: Labor-Rap@csf.colorado.edu Cc: xcruz@webtv.net Subject: Dis Capital (fwd) Message-ID: <25032-35EAF7AB-10581@mailtod-122.bryant.webtv.net> Content-Type: Text/Plain; Charset=ISO-8859-1 MIME-Version: 1.0 (WebTV) Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-MIME-Autoconverted: from Quoted-Printable to 8bit by csf.Colorado.EDU id NAA04991   [ T H E_.R E L U C T A N T_.C A P I T A L I S T ]________ _____________Dis Capital                                                                                                                                           WHEN ANDY COX SPENT $798 DOLLARS ON AN AD-CAMPAIGN CRITICIZING OUR ECONOMIC SYSTEM, HE TRAMMELED ONE OF THE LAST TABOOS OF OUR LOOSE-LIPPED ERA.                                                                                                                                BY HEATHER CHAPLIN Unless you've been in a coma, there's one very important lesson you should have learned this year. And that is that there is almost nothing that can't be discussed in public. Not to worry, this isn't an article about Monica Lewinsky. No, I'll just say that CNN's seven-month, 24-hour analysis of our president's apparent taste for oral sex -- besides grossing me out thoroughly -- made it clear that forbidden topics of discourse are going the way of the dinosaur, the gaslit lamp and the tuna casserole. Or are they? I ask because a group of San Francisco artists last month seems to have hit upon something more shocking, more out of the ordinary, more scandalous than even Geraldo's crew of analysts, strategists, commentators and assorted gold diggers would discuss in their nightly rounds of Clinton dishing. Dare I mention it? They took out an advertisement that questioned capitalism. Picture this: It's midsummer in a subway station in downtown San Francisco, and the crowd is eager to get home. Office workers and business people are reading their papers, standing in the neat lines that San Franciscans form while waiting for trains, yawning and idly watching the TV monitors that hang along the platform. The monitors announce train arrivals, run local news teasers and show commercial advertisements. But not this time. This time, those looking for the usual black background and white letters that announce their trains see instead the flashing phrase "CAPITALISM STOPS AT NOTHING." One official at Bay Area Rapid Transit thought it was an ad for Forbes magazine -- a teaser to be followed by something like, "Forbes Doesn't Stop at Anything Either." Not everyone was so trusting, however, and a bewildered station agent began to get complaints. The ad -- which was supposed to run for the month -- was pulled. Why a fairly innocuous bit of street art got the ax so quickly is a good question, and no one is jumping at the chance to take responsibility. BART says Metro Channel, the New Jersey company that runs the programming, pulled the plug not because the spot was offensive, but because it was so strange Metro Channel concluded it was an unfinished product put into rotation accidentally. Metro Channel, on the other hand, says it wasn't involved in the decision to pull the ad, but that BART did it because of the complaints it received. And Andy Cox, who masterminded the spot, says Metro Channel told him explicitly that it couldn't run the ad without adding a disclaimer because of its controversial nature. Hmmm. The need for a disclaimer interested Cox, who inquired if Metro Channel always ran disclaimers on its advertisements, as in, "We don't endorse the idea that you need to buy this product to be happy." The answer was no. Metro Channel also wanted Cox to include his group's name on the ad, but after hearing the name, Together We Can Defeat Capitalism, the company chose to run its own disclaimer when it finally reinstated the ad. Cox does not seem the rabble-rousing type. He's a soft-spoken, 38-year-old civil engineer who describes his political stance as "confused." He is not aligned with any political party and said he only wanted the BART piece to inspire some sorely lacking debate. "Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the idea of a society based on equality has evaporated," he said, "and it makes me sad that such a dream has disappeared." Cox, who first ventured into guerrilla art last year with a bus terminal ad spoofing Citibank's "In Your Dreams Campaign" -- his featured a picture of Cuban rebel Che Guevara with the words, "In your dreams everyone is treated equally" -- is fully aware of the kind of baggage the very words "Soviet Union" carry. He's also aware that mocking or criticizing capitalism isn't necessarily going to win him any popularity contests. "It's like it's unpatriotic to even talk about capitalism," he said. Considering the kinds of prickly topics people will talk about, the idea of having a taboo against any topic now seems decidedly, well, un-American. Sex, arguably our longest-running taboo, now dominates public debate -- turn on the TV and Jerry Springer is interviewing the deviant of the week; pick up the New York Times and pundits are discussing the presidential penchant for oral sex; eavesdrop on any group of high school girls and the conversation is raunchier than I care to repeat. It's not just sex and political subjects that have become declassified either. Not too along ago, money was a taboo subject. There was a time when asking someone what they earned would have been the height of rudeness. Now, telling virtual strangers intimate details of your financial life is prime get-to-know-you talk. But the notion that capitalism -- the system that's swallowed and regurgitated the whole of Western civilization into marketable units -- might have its limits has developed the taint of the unspeakable. Which would make you more uncomfortable, your date explaining over martinis the benefits of his stock-option plan or suggesting that drinking $8 cocktails was a questionable habit so long as hunger still exists? In the rare moments when the media isn't pontificating about Lewinsky, they're talking about money too -- how to earn it, how to grow it, how to hide it from the long fingers of the government. There's no longer even a veneer of restraint paneling our national lust for wealth. You're a fool or worse to suggest there's value in working for anything other than personal profit and comfort. When was the last time you saw an article in Smart Money, Fortune or Forbes on how to share the fruits of your bull-market millions? (Articles on charities as tax write-offs don't count.) And while State of the Union addresses invariably serve up syrupy stories about "common" people moving from reliance on social programs (welfare, affirmative action, take your pick) to liberating entrepreneurial success, such stories are almost exclusively heralded as the triumph of free enterprise rather than evidence for the value of compassionate government. When President Clinton gestures, teary-eyed, toward the inner-city teacher who returned to the ghetto after her scholarship years at Harvard instead of taking a high-paying job on Wall Street, we applaud, thankful she's made the sacrifice so we don't have to. Together We Can Defeat Capitalism spent $798 on an ad that did nothing more than question capitalism and immediately it caused a minor news sensation. (I'd like to meet the ad man who's gotten as much value for his buck.) Of course there was the commotion over those Calvin Klein ads, which people complained smacked a little too much of kiddy porn. Klein eventually killed the campaign and issued an apology; the man doesn't want to be associated with pedophilia, after all. At least pedophiles get air time. Journalists love child-abuse stories. But when are we going to see the socialist, the anarchist and the Wall Street broker trading blows -- or at least getting makeovers -- on Jerry, Jenny, Sally or Ricki? Believe it or not, there was a time when socialism, anarchy and communism were important parts of the national debate, each ideology sustaining viable movements and counting significant numbers as members. In 1912 Socialist candidate Eugene Debbs ran for president and received 6 percent of the vote; in 1924, Progressive Socialist candidate Robert LaFollette ran for president and received 16.5 percent of the vote, actually carrying Wisconsin. Anarchy was also a serious movement in the earlier part of the century, not just a big letter "A" on punkers' jeans. But the end of the Cold War and the much-heralded victory of the stock market seem to have caused many Americans to merge the principals of capitalism and democracy into one neat package. Question one and you question the other. And who wants to get branded as an anti-democratic pinko commie? SALON | Aug. 28, 1998 From dreier@tiger.cc.oxy.edu Mon Aug 31 14:28:01 1998 Received: from sophri.oxy.edu (sophri.cc.oxy.edu [134.69.3.111]) by csf.Colorado.EDU (8.8.5/8.8.4/CNS-4.1p-nh) with ESMTP id OAA08425 for ; Mon, 31 Aug 1998 14:27:55 -0600 (MDT) From: dreier@tiger.cc.oxy.edu Received: from pdreier.ipac.oxy.edu (pdreier.ipac.oxy.edu [134.69.11.8]) by sophri.oxy.edu (8.8.6/8.8.6) with SMTP id NAA04799 for ; Mon, 31 Aug 1998 13:06:42 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <3.0.5.32.19980831130455.0088d7f0@pop.oxy.edu> X-Sender: dreier@pop.oxy.edu X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0.5 (32) Date: Mon, 31 Aug 1998 13:04:55 -0700 To: LABOR-RAP@csf.colorado.edu Subject: PROGRESSIVE L.A. CONFERENCE -- OCTOBER 3 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/enriched; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
0000,8080,0000P= ROGRESSIVE LA! A CONFERENCE ON SOCIAL MOVEMENTS IN LOS ANGELES:=20 UNCOVERING OUR HISTORY AND ENVISIONING OUR FUTURE=20 OPEN TO THE GENERAL PUBLIC!
Arial Rounded MT BoldSaturday, October 3rd, 1998 Keck Theater, Occidental College 0000,8080,0000Admission is free. Registration required by 9/21/98. Prepaid lunch $10.00. Checks payable to "Occidental College"
0000,8080,0000CONFERENCE AGENDA AND REGISTRATION FORM ARE BELOW. Arial Rounded MT Bold____________________________________
This conference commemorates the 75th anniversary of Upton Sinclair's arrest at Liberty Hill in San Pedro, which also led to the founding of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California. This event serves as a celebration of the efforts by Upton Sinclair and other progressives to bridge movements and serve as a catalyst for new activities.=20 The goals of the conference are to illustrate the role of progressives and progressive social movements in Los Angeles from the 1920s to the present and how these movements provide an alternative view of what Los Angeles has been and what it can become. Movements to be explored in terms of their contribution to this vision include the: =B7 labor movement =B7 civil rights and civil liberties movements =B7 environmental movement =B7 urban movements (housing, land use, transportation, etc.)=20 =B7 women's and gay/lesbian movements. 0000,8080,0000= =20 Through this exploration, the conference will discuss the conflicts and opportunities for linking movements in order to identify lessons from the past for the future of progressive politics in Los Angeles. =20 Arial Narrow0000,8080,0000Sponsors: American Civil Liberties Union *LA County Federation of Labor* LA Weekly* Liberty Hill Foundation* The Nation Institute* Occidental College * Southern California Library for Social Studies and Research. This project is made possible in art by a grant from the California Council for the Humanities, a state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
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0000,8080,0000 PROGRESSIVE LA 0000,8080,0000CONFERENCE AGENDA Saturday, October 3rd, 1998=20 0000,8080,0000 =09 8:30-9:00 am0000,8080,0000 REGISTRATION AND COFFEE 9:00-9:15 0000,8080,0000WELCOME=20 0000,8080,0000 =09 9:15-9:30 0000,8080,0000HON. AUGUSTUS F. (GUS) HAWKINS Former Member of Congress, EPIC Candidate 1934 =09 9:30-9:45 0000,8080,0000MUSIC FOR CHANGE Ross Altman, Folk Singer 9:45-10:100000,8080,0000 UPTON SINCLAIR AND PROGRESSIVE LA Greg Mitchell, Author of Campaign Of The Century =20 10:10-10:30 0000,8080,0000Break=20 10:30-10:40 0000,8080,0000MORE MUSIC FOR CHANGE left,left,out=20 out10:40-12:15pm 0000,8080,0000 WITNESSES TELL THEIR STORIES Moderator: Warren Olney, Radio Host "Which Way, LA?" on KCRW=20 left,leftBert Corona, Founder of Hermandad Mexicana=20 Alice McGrath, Sleepy Lagoon Defense Committee (Zoot Suit) Paul Schrade, Former Regional Director United Auto Workers Maury Weiner, Former Advisor to Mayor Tom Bradley=20 Frank Wilkinson, Civil Liberties and Public Housing Activist =09 12:15-1:30 =20 0000,8080,0000LUNCH/PRESENTATIONS=20 left,leftModerator: Sue Horton, Editor LA Weekly Miguel Contreras, LA County Federation of Labor=20 Norman Cohen, Professor Emeritus of History, Occidental College Ramona Ripston, Executive Director, ACLU- SC out,out1:30-3:10= 0000,8080,0000 GRASSROOTS LA=20 Torie Osborn, Executive Director, Liberty Hill Foundation Karen Bass, Executive Director, =09 left,left Community Coalition for Substance Abuse Prevention and Treatment=20 Jan Breidenbach, Executive Director, So. California Association of=20 Non-Profit Housing Roy Hong, Executive Director, Korean Immigrant Workers' Advocates Carlos Porras, So. California Director, Communities For A Better Environment=20 Frankie Quintero, Co-Director Radio Sin Fronteras=20 Anthony Thigpenn, Executive Director, Metropolitan Alliance and Chair, AGENDA 3:10-3:300000,8080,0000 Break 3:30-5:00 0000,8080,0000BUILDING OUR COMMON FUTURE=20 left,leftModerator: Harold Meyerson, Executive Editor LA Weekly Jackie Goldberg, Los Angeles City Councilmember Tom Hayden, California State Senator=20 Madeline Janis-Aparicio, Executive Director, L.A. Alliance for a New Economy Connie Rice, Former Western Regional Director of NAACP Legal Defense Fund=20 Mark Ridley-Thomas, Los Angeles City Councilmember Antonio Villaraigosa, Speaker of the California=20 Assembly 5:00-6:00 =20 0000,8080,0000INFORMAL RECEPTION sponsored by LA Weekly
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0000,8080,0000Progressive LA C o n f e r e n c e R e g i s t r a t i o n _____ I/we will attend the Progressive LA Conference on October 3, 1998 Admission is free. _____ Will be having lunch=09 Prepaid $10/person, please mail check to address below Conference Supporter _____ $25 _____ $50 _____ other $_______________ Register by September 21 Supporters will be listed in=20 conference program Name: Company/Institution: Address: City: State: Zip: Telephone: Fax: Email: Make checks payable to Occidental College Send to: =09 0000,8080,0000Progressive LA Conference Occidental College -IPAC 1600 Campus Road Los Angeles, CA 90041 213.259.1407 ph 213.259.2734 fx abrown@oxy.edu http://www.oxy.edu/departments/pperc <<<<<<<< <<<<<<<< <<<<<<<< <<<<<<<< <<<<<<<< ***************************************************** Peter Dreier Dr. E.P. Clapp Distinguished Professor of Politics Director, Public Policy Program International & Public Affairs Center Occidental College 1600 Campus Road Los Angeles, CA 90041 Phone: (213) 259-2913 FAX: (213) 259-2734