From meisenscher@igc.apc.org Mon Jun 1 23:56:35 1998 Mon, 1 Jun 1998 22:10:35 -0700 (PDT) Mon, 1 Jun 1998 22:03:10 -0700 (PDT) Date: Mon, 1 Jun 1998 22:03:10 -0700 (PDT) To: (Recipient list suppressed) From: Michael Eisenscher Subject: URGENT! LEONARD PELTIER SUFFERING FROM EXCRUCIATING PAIN [Apologies in advance for duplicates due to cross-posting.] --------- Begin forwarded message ---------- From: Angela Beallor Subject: URGENT! LEONARD PELTIER SUFFERING FROM EXCRUCIATING PAIN ( Date: Mon, 01 Jun 1998 17:27:17 -0400 From: Leonard Peltier Defense Committee http://members.xoom.com/freepeltier/index.html Subject: Peltier's health Date: Saturday, May 30, 1998 1:55 AM URGENT! URGENT! URGENT! LEONARD PELTIER SUFFERING FROM EXCRUCIATING PAIN Tonight we received an alarming call from Leonard . I have known Leonard since his capture from Lompoc when the FBI and prison administration sent Robert Standing Deer to kill him. I then met up with him in Marion Federal Prison where he was tortured. I know people don't talk much about the hell Leonard has been enduring for the past 22 years. Leonard never whispered a breath of pain and just endured as a good warrior. But, tonight he broke and expressed the pain and the suffering he has been living with because of the malicious medical treatment he received in Springfield Federal Medical Center in Missouri. Leonard cannot chew or move his jaw. He cannot eat a decent meal. The pain makes him dizzy. He said, that it fells like there is something in his jaw and that the pain is killing him. "I'm in pain, I'm in pain, I'm In pain" he kept saying. "Man, I ain't joking brother, this is really killing me." I sat and looked at Steve Robideau, Gina and Ronica and we all looked stunned. This is very serious folks, Leonard needs to get out for proper medical treatment. Leonard needs to see a qualified physician from outside of the prison system. While there are plenty of good doctors, (the Mayo clinic has agreed to provide their services) willing to see Leonard, the federal bureau of prisons are not allowing him to see any of them even though it is his legal right to do so. Now what we need is a qualified lawyer who practices in Kansas to file a lawsuit against Leavenworth and ensure that Leonard is able to see an outside doctor. What we do not want is for Leonard to be transferred to Springfield where they have already came very close to killing him. We are also concerned with the amount of radiation that Leonard was receiving in the jaw area while he was there. It has been noted by an independent physician that type of radiation is not normally used for correcting Leonard's problem. If people write to the prison concerning Leonard's health, be very clear in asking that Leonard be allowed to go to the Mayo clinic and to express their serious concerns with him being sent to Springfield. Bobby/LPDC Write letters to demand FREEDOM FOR LEONARD PELTIER NOW! Clemency: US Pardon Attorney Roger C Adams 500 First Street N.W. Suite 400 Ref:Leonard Peltier #89637-132 Washington D.C. 20530 (202) 616-6070 President Bill Clinton 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW Washington DC 20500 202-456-1111 Senate Hearings: US Senator Orin Hatch, Chairman Judicial Committee SD-224 1st and C Sts., NE Washington DC 20510 US Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell Chairman, Select Committee on Indian Affairs SH-838 1st and C Sts., NE Washingtion DC 20510 Letters for Leonard: (money can be sent to Leonard in the form of US Postal money orders. He must buy his own phone cards and his communication with the outside has proven to be life saving. He can also receive photos if they are not Polaroid.) USLP Leonard Peltier #89637-132 PO Box 1000 Leavenworth, KS 66048 ****************************************** >From the LPDC web site: International Office of the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee ------------------------------------------------------------------------ UPDATE-- May 21, 1998 Strengthening the fight for clemency: In 1993 we filed for Executive Clemency. Normally six to eight months elapse before a response from the president is given. It has now been nearly five years and we have heard nothing. Numerous resolutions from the European Parliament, the Belgium parliament, the Canadian Parliament, tribal councils, local governments, Nobel Peace Prize winners etc. in support of Leonard have been passed, millions of people from here and abroad have written letters to Clinton and other governmental officials, and yet we have heard nothing. We must put pressure on government officials in every possible way to continue the fight for clemency. This can be done through continued lobbying as well as grass root political action. Senate hearing investigations: We are currently pushing for Senate hearings that would investigate and expose the illegal role of the FBI in both the Peltier case and the Pine Ridge murders. These hearings are crucial to ensure that clemency for Peltier is granted. Other groups, such as the Black Panthers, who have political prisoners as a result of the FBI's COINTELPRO are also seeking similar hearings. The fight to release all political prisoners will be strengthened as the FBI's illegal interference in political struggles is revealed. Addition to legal team: Criminal lawyer, Tony Serra has agreed to join Leonard's legal team. Tony Serra represented and won the cases of both Native American Bear Lincoln and Hooty Croy. Serra was able to obtain a not guilty sentence for Croy on an appeal after he had been sentenced to death. He also won a not guilty verdict for Bear Lincoln whose case was quite similar to Leonard's. Needless to say, we are happy to have him join us as he will be an asset to the fight to free Leonard Peltier. May 4th Parole Hearing: According to Leonard Peltier, the May 4th parole hearing was a complete set-up in which the decision had been made before he and his attorneys had even arrived. None of his attorneys were allowed to speak at the hearing and Leonard said they made some amazing statements such as, "We spoke with one of the agent's wives and she wants you to die in here. You will not receive another parole hearing until 2008 then we'll take it from there." "The government can't prove who is responsible for the agents' deaths, but someone has to pay." Representing him was Carl Nadler, Jim Leonard, Ramsey Clark, and Mamie Rupnicke of the Prairie Band Potawatomi. Leonard said that it made no difference who was representing him, it was a set-up. Leonard has said that he has no faith in the system, neither should we. It is up to us to get him out. The attorneys are filing for a rebuttal now but we have not heard anything yet. When we do we will let you know. Come show your outrage at the June 27th demonstration at D.C. Leonard's current health status: Leonard needs to see a qualified physician from outside of the prison system. While there are plenty of good doctors, (the Mayo clinic has agreed to provide their services) willing to see Leonard, the federal bureau of prisons are not allowing him to see any of them even though it is his legal right to do so. Now what we need is a qualified lawyer who practices in Kansas to file a lawsuit against Leavenworth and ensure that Leonard is able to see an outside doctor. What we do not want is for Leonard to be transferred to Springfield where they have already came very close to killing him. We are also concerned with the amount of radiation that Leonard was receiving in the jaw area while he was there. It has been noted by an independent physician that that type of radiation is not normally used for correcting Leonard's problem. If people write to the prison concerning Leonard's health, be very clear in asking that Leonard be allowed to go to the Mayo clinic and to express their serious concerns with him being sent to Springfield. Upcoming event: June 27th Although the anniversary of the Pine Ridge shoot out is on June 26th, we decided to have the DC demonstration on the 27th in order to allow more people to participate. (There will be a strategy meeting on June 26th in DC). After the way Leonard's May 4th parole hearing was handled, it is very important that all make special effort to come to this event so that we can show our outrage with the continued abuse and corruption of the injustice system. Leonard has no faith in the system and neither should we. The government has again admitted that they do not know who shot the agents. Let's show Leonard and the rest of the world that this fight is no where near being over and that we will not go away. The demonstration will be from 12pm-5pm at Ellipse Park in front of the white house. Lakota elder, David Chief will be opening the event with a ceremony and drumming. Speakers include Steve Robideau of the LPDC, Laura Serrano of SAIIC, a representative from the United American Indians of New England, Lakota Jean Bordeaux, Robert Pictou Branscombe, Anna May Aquash's cousin, Pam and Ramona Africa of the MOVE organization, Bobby Castillo of the LPDC, Keith Mc Henry of Food Not Bombs, and special guest, Robbi Robertson, music and more. You can make a camping reservation at Green Belt National Park by calling 1800-365-2267. If you make a reservation, let us know so that we can figure out about how many people will be there. Food will be provided by Food Not Bombs. ___________________________ We are looking for a new T-shirt design. If your design is chosen you will receive a lithograph, a T-shirt with your design on it, and a bumper sticker. Send us your ideas!!! What you can do: Start or join a local support group in your community. Support groups are important elements in the struggle to free Leonard. Write letters and encourage others to write letters to govt. officials. Organize ways to create more awareness around the case. Show videos, distribute literature, organize demonstrations and benefits, etc. Organize and plan to attend the June 27th demo in DC. Raise funds for Chiapas and for LPDC. Our supporters' donations allow us to keep the office running. THANK YOU for your support! -LPDC ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The Leonard Peltier Defense Committee is in dire need of funds. Please consider making a donation to help free this innocent man. No amount is too small. Please send checks or money orders to LPDC, PO Box 583, Lawrence, KS 66044. Thank you! Earth First! Media Center Andy Caffrey, facilitator 707/923-4949 efmc@asis.com http://www.geocities.com/RainForest/Vines/9901/ JAIL HURWITZ! Save Headwaters Forest! http://www.jailhurwitz.com To visit the Luna/Julia Butterfly website turn your browser to: http://www.northcoast.com/~sohum/luna Contributions to support any of the above campaigns, payable to Earth First! may be sent to Earth First! Media Center P.O. Box 324 Redway, CA 95560 ----------------------------------------------- Leonard Peltier Defense Committee http://members.xoom.com/freepeltier/index.html ----------------------------------------------- WHEN SPIDERS UNITE, THEY CAN TIE DOWN A LION --Ethiopian Proverb --------- End forwarded message ---------- _____________________________________________________________________ You don't need to buy Internet access to use free Internet e-mail. Get completely free e-mail from Juno at http://www.juno.com Or call Juno at (800) 654-JUNO [654-5866] From culturex@vcn.bc.ca Tue Jun 2 12:29:22 1998 Tue, 2 Jun 1998 11:27:38 -0700 (PDT) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 1998 11:27:33 -0700 (PDT) From: Franklin Wayne Poley Subject: Re: COMBINING PRODUCTIVE ACTIVITIES AND HELP FOR WELFARE RECIPIENTS WITH THE FALSE CREEK HOUSING PROJECT. To: Paul Riess publabor@relay.doit.wisc.edu, labor-l@yorku.ca, labor-rap@csf.colorado.edu, united@cougar.com, union-d@wolfnet.com, labmovs@sheffield.ac.uk In-Reply-To: <199806012154.RAA01585@ns.itn.cl> On Mon, 1 Jun 1998, Paul Riess wrote: >> To Franklin >> I am citing your latest posting on False Creek: > False Creek may have no industry built in other than the usual (e.g. a > neighbourhood clinic given that out of 5,000 typical Canadians there are on > average 10 MD's and 25 nurses). But it can still function very well as a > planning centre of future villages which meet all of these ailments as long > as it simply sees how a "critical mass" can provide the greater remedy. >> If this is what you really expect, it is completely realistic and in my >> opinion you even underestimate the possibilities offered. Under such >> conditions you will certainly have no objections to put my own >> proposals up for discussion in the workfare and the laborforum groups. The "critical mass" can be one large city. AFL-CIO has a "Labor Cities" policy. They want to influence the political systems of as many cities as possible to be pro-union. How far could one go with that? What if a city became all unionized? What if the workers also owned all industries? Mondragon is one model. It has 30,000 worker-owners so counting dependents we must be looking at close to 100,000 people. But you can take a Directory out of the library to show you that there are many large >50% worker-owned companies in the US. With Canada-USA increasing by 2-3,000,000/year AFL-CIO could plan a city for 1,000,000 built from scratch. Who could design the worker-owned conglomerate company for it? Any business administration department at a major university. But I see the neighbourhood/village as the social-political-economic unit. And the village must have the constitution firmly in mind. In other words given that this system works for people what makes it work? Can we come up with 5,000 people at False Creek who can spell out the big picture of an economy which is "by the people, for the people"? Currently NAFTA/GATT/MAI/APEC etc. are rich mens' clubs. They are not by the people, for the people. Let me repeat what I have said about the larger unit which is an integration of model villages. It must meet these criteria: full and fair employment; an end to absolute poverty; economic self-sufficiency so as to be immune to the predations of those rich mens' clubs. All three criteria are attainable. There's nothing 'utopian' about this. It is only good sound social science. Full and fair employment is attained by having the employable unemployed share the work as well as the profits and acknowledging that poorer people deserve as much of a choice in jobs as richer people. They too should have jobs in the conglomerate which are in accordance with their aptitudes-interests-education and so on. As long as the sharing is fair and productivity is as high as it should be in this era of technology marvels there will be no absolute poverty. Economic self-sufficiency is attained by working "what you grow and what you mine" through to finished goods and services to meet the criteria for the lifestyle sought. Livestock and seeds and mineral concentrates are obtained very cheaply. Ask those business administration departments what kind of conglomerate it will take to refashion them into cars, housing units, TV sets etc. How large a population? That is the size of your "Union City". It produces first to meet its own needs, ie local markets. Then it can export the surplus. FWP. *** False Creek Model Village in Vancouver. Join the discussion of an exciting Millenium Project:http://www.onelist.com/subscribe.cgi/falsecreek to subscribe to list; http://www.vcn.bc.ca/fc for backgrounder. *** From meisenscher@igc.apc.org Wed Jun 3 02:17:29 1998 Wed, 3 Jun 1998 00:13:45 -0700 (PDT) Wed, 3 Jun 1998 00:07:12 -0700 (PDT) Date: Wed, 3 Jun 1998 00:07:12 -0700 (PDT) To: (Recipient list suppressed) From: Michael Eisenscher Subject: [PEN-L:390] Brazilian Universities, might have been Diploma Mills do Sul >A LETTER FROM BRAZILIAN PROFESSORS TO THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY > >The Brazilian Public University has been under its worst crisis lately. >Governamental policies aiming at turning public >universities into private ones and at worsening public services have >handicapped this patrimony, which was slowly and >carefully built, decade after decade, by Brazilians. Public institutions >play an important role in the development of this >country. They are responsibe for 90% Brazilian scientific production and >for professionals formation in different fields, >at graduate and undergraduate levels. Morevover Brazil has a complete >public system of professional formation, >without which there would be no developing country at all. > >Fernando Henrique Cardoso's governamental policies concerning public >universities could be fully apprehended when >Master's and Doctorate scholarships were cut off ; likewise resources >for investment in science and technology were >abolished. Low budgets have affected even basic maintenance such as >payment of water, electricity and telephone >bills. There has been no proper condition for University work and low >salaries have not been raised for the last three >years, in spite of about 50% inflation .About 8,000 (eight thousand ) >professors have retired or quit their teaching >careers due to threats at the withdrawal of labour rights. > >In spite of all these hazardous problems and thanks to professors' and >researchers'intellectual, technical and cultural >production,, Brazilian Public Universities have been recognized as the >best centers of professional formation by >Brazilian society and by the international community . Brazilians'needs >and Universities interests have been joined as >one , so as to find solution for very urgent problems and to construct >Brazil's future. Hence, Brazilian Federal University >Professors went on strike last March 31st. > >At this sorrowful crisis moment , Brazilian professors are requesting >the international community support, which will >surely help convince Brazilian authorities sensitive to solutions of the >above referred crisis, and to give Brazilian Public >University servants - salary raise, without which no professor can do >his/her job with dignity. President Fernando >Henrique Cardoso 's and the Minister of Education Paulo Renato e-mails >are as follows: > >The President of Brazilian Republic: PR@PLANALTO.GOV.BR PR@CR-DF.RNP.BR >Ministery of Education: SESU@SESU.MEC.GOV.BR >The e-mail of some national newspapers are also included: >Jornal de Brasilia: JBRREDA@BR.HOMESHOPPING.COM.BR >Correio Braziliense: EDUCACAO@CBDATA.COM.BR >Jornal do Brasil: CARTAS@JB.COM.BR >Estado de SP: OESPBSB@BRNET.COM.BR >Folha de SP FOLHA@UOL.COM.BR >Gazeta Mercantil FLAMBACH@GAZETAMERCANTIL.COM.BR >O Globo : LEANDROF@BSB.OGLOBO.COM.BR > > Tom Kruse / Casilla 5812 / Cochabamba, Bolivia Tel/Fax: (591-42) 48242 Email: tkruse@albatros.cnb.net From meisenscher@igc.apc.org Wed Jun 3 02:17:32 1998 Wed, 3 Jun 1998 00:11:42 -0700 (PDT) Wed, 3 Jun 1998 00:06:10 -0700 (PDT) Date: Wed, 3 Jun 1998 00:06:10 -0700 (PDT) To: (Recipient list suppressed) From: Michael Eisenscher Subject: [PEN-L:382] More on digital diploma mills *** Report from the Digital Diploma Mills Conference (372 lines) >From Langdon Winner TECH KNOWLEDGE REVUE 1.1 June 2, 1998 It was billed as "a second look at information technology and higher education," a gathering of students, professors, administrators, and union leaders concerned about the effects of computer-based learning in our colleges and universities. Organized by historian and social critic David Noble, the conference on "Digital Diploma Mills?" took place in late April at Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, California, and featured some of the most intense, personally moving discussions I have ever heard in a scholarly setting. While descriptions and diagnoses ranged across a broad spectrum, there was a widely shared sense that a crisis in higher education is now at hand. At one level the question had to do with how well the new media of computerized instruction compare to conventional, classroom-centered methods of teaching. As students connect to new networks of "distance learning," what exactly are they getting? How does their experience compare to that gained on traditional college campuses? Almost all speakers at the conference took care to recognize that there are some definite advantages in what the new technologies and digital institutions offer. Several professors described ingenious attempts to use the Internet and Web in their teaching, for example, a seminar in global political economy that links teachers and students across several continents. Many acknowledged that, for great numbers of students today, sources of electronic information and occasions for on-line instruction are actually superior to what would have been available to them otherwise. Especially for non-traditional learners -- those who have jobs and families and want to return to college to expand their learning and earn new credentials -- computerized settings offer varieties of access and flexibility that traditional campuses do not provide. This is no small accomplishment. Weighing the Costs ------------------ Enthusiasm about the success stories, however, was countered by reports that distance learning is often a counterfeit of education, replacing well recognized essentials of teaching with glitzy software and shoddy pedagogy. Most sobering in this regard was the conference keynote, "Absence Makes the Heart Grow Colder," by Mary Burgan, General Secretary of the American Association of University Professors. Burgan argued that the methods of distance learning often lead teachers "to abandon our students to their own devices at exactly that stage in their learning when they most need guidance, exhortation and demanding critique from us." She noted that distance instruction tends to amplify some of the worst habits of today's students: an inability to concentrate in a sustained way, a tendency to read uncritically and a willingness to believe that one interpretation of a text or topic is just as good as the next. Particularly troubling, Burgan observed, is the way that computerized methods sever personal bonds between students and teachers. Speaking of participants in her own classes, she noted that "their intellectual difficulties are very personal," often tied to troubles with family, friends, lovers, substance abuse and the like. It is difficult enough to spot these problems in direct, face-to-face classroom encounters. If teaching increasingly takes place in the abstract realms of cyberspace, will teachers be able to respond to students' highly individual needs? Burgan's thoughts gave focus to a dispute that erupted repeatedly during the gathering: how to weigh the benefits and costs of on-line learning. For some vocal techno-optimists in the crowd, the central promise seemed to be that of "content." Content, they explained, is the crucial substance of any field of knowledge -- physics, math, history, etc. -- such that it can be "delivered" through a set of institutions, practices and technical equipment. Content plus delivery equals "access." From this standpoint, computerized education looks like a godsend. As Casey Green, Director of Campus Computing for the Claremont Colleges, exclaimed about the new technology, This stuff is great. This stuff is fantastic. This stuff is wonderful. This stuff offers tremendous opportunities for me as a scholar ... and tremendous opportunities for engagement for me and my students focused on the issue of content: what we teach, what we bring into the classroom and what we bring into the syllabus. Some in the group, however, balked at the enthusiasm over "content", wondering whether coming generations of students were fated to be taught by machines rather than living human beings. Mary Burgan acknowledged that knowledge of a certain complexion can be transferred via the new media. But she asked, "What happens to people who get their knowledge and then don't have to interact with other people in other settings?" Throughout the discussions there was a gnawing sense that even the most exquisite applications of distance learning run roughshod over crucial, social dimensions of learning. Gathering Forces of Change -------------------------- As the debate continued, it became clear that the pros and cons about the computer and Net were just the tip of an iceberg, one that the Titanic of higher education seems destined to ram. Enormous economic, demographic and political forces are gathering in ways that now promise (or is it threaten?) to transform higher education from top to bottom. How education is offered, by whom, for what audience, at what cost, and with what consequences for society -- all of that, conference participants agreed, is up for grabs. Among the most powerful forces are those in the corporate sector that see education as a huge, largely untapped market for new goods and services. If one totals all the money spent on education and training in every setting and every institution, public and private, in the United States each year, the amount comes to perhaps $600 billion. Several speakers pointed to the expanding reach of corporate innovations aimed at capturing markets that traditional colleges and universities now serve. New firms, the University of Phoenix and the Home Education Network, for example, have already taken a substantial bite of the growing market for distance learning and look forward to huge profits in the future. As the emerging Wal-Mart in this field, the University of Phoenix has some 31,000 students enrolled. Meanwhile, conventional institutions are scrambling to find a role, sometimes renting their reputations and even some of their faculty to cyberspace business concerns. Rick Worthington, professor of public policy at Pomona College, called attention to the controversial link between U.C.L.A. and the strictly for-profit Home Education Network. "Why would this firm be interested in the university?" he asked. "The reason is clear: U.C.L.A. is a good brand!" Another arrangement between business and the university that drew considerable fire was the California Education Technology Initiative, a sweetheart deal announced in December 1997, linking the entire California State University system to a consortium of information technology firms -- Fujitsu, Hughes, Electronics, GTE and, of course, Microsoft in the group first announced. The plan involves a $300 million upgrade of the CSU digital "backbone" and the transfer of the $80 million a year that CSU budgets for computing services to the new CETI monopoly. University administrators see the plan as a convenient way to improve information technology services within the college system. But students and faculty at the Harvey Mudd conference blasted the scheme as a corruption of the fundamental purposes of a public university, renaming it the "Corporate Education Takeover Initiative." Several speakers voiced fears that CETI corporate partners would begin to control the content of courses, reducing professors to a distinctly secondary role. One faculty member from a CSU campus reported that in the original CETI contract, professors were expected to become members of an active sales force, hawking products of the corporate partners to the 365,000 students on CSU's twenty-two campuses. [It's worth noting that as campus protests about CETI roiled this spring, Microsoft and Hughes Electronics withdrew from the negotiations. University officials remain hopeful that a deal of some kind can be worked out.] Social Pressures and the Educational Paradox -------------------------------------------- The background for commercial innovations like CETI can be found in social pressures rapidly building in American society. First is a huge demographic bubble in which growing numbers of college age and returning students seek higher education, placing tremendous stress on existing institutions. At the same time state governments, facing tax revolts from angry voters, are far from eager to spend the funds needed to build new campuses and hire permanent faculty. The situation was depicted most vividly by Lev Gonick, University Dean for Academic Computing at California Polytechnic University, Pomona. We are facing `Tidal Wave II' -- an additional 110,000 to 125,000 students in the next fifteen years. That represents building an institution the size of Cal Poly Pomona with 20,000 students every year for the next seven years. That's not going to happen. The brick and mortar solution is not going to happen. What is going to happen, Gonick made clear, is that public universities will look for ways to stretch their present campus facilities and faculties through the use of digital communications. Whether or not this strategy will work was hotly debated. Several who spoke on the economics of information technology noted with bemusement that universities rushing to the game are largely clueless about how much the new equipment and services will actually cost. "I.T. is as much marketing phenomenon as it is scholarly tool," educational policy analyst Christopher Oberg observed. "It is as much about keeping up with the Joneses as it is about keeping up with research." Even the notion that information technologies bring increased efficiency seems suspect. There now appears to be an "education paradox" at least as puzzling as the "productivity paradox" oft-reported in the business literature. As Oberg put it, "In the literature searches I've done and research reviews I've conducted, I cannot find a single claim that I.T. has delivered an equal learning product at a reduced cost." David Noble chimed in on this point, recalling that his studies of industrial automation two decades ago had reached similar conclusions. In fact, the managers and engineers he talked to simply did not want to talk about matters of cost, efficiency and profit that ostensibly motivated them. "We hear all the time about the bottom line ... cost effectiveness, austerity. The reality is otherwise. Trying to identify gains in productivity or economic gains -- the results are always ambiguous and quite contrary to the assumptions." Studies of supposed "gains from the introduction of computers in the service sector," he added, "have thus far yielded no gains in productivity .... Now all of this is coming to the universities." Many in the room called attention to another feature of the brave new academic economy -- increasing reliance on a corps of contingent workers, the tens of thousands of poorly paid "adjunct" professors, "Roads Scholars" if you will, who now teach a growing share of courses offered on American campuses. Nearly 50% of all college classes nationwide are taught by non-tenure track, part-time teachers, a source of increasing distress among students and faculty alike. Ann-Marie Feenberg, Associate Dean at the University of Redlands, called attention to one disturbing aspect of this trend: the de-professionalization of a whole generation of scholars. "We see our junior colleagues becoming independent contractors," she lamented. As members of the new generation of PhDs move from one part-time slot to another, it is all but impossible for them to build coherent careers in teaching, research and collegial relations. This result, of course, has little to do with computers or high speed networks as such. But as the use of temporary academic workers spreads, the idea of building new "wired universities" around them is a temptation that academic administrators and entrepreneurs find difficult to resist. Welcome to the global economy and its lean, flexible, just-in-time work places. These days I often hear unemployed PhDs say how thankful they are for the $3,500 fee they receive for doing occasional, on-line courses. As they adapt to this new regime, deplorable conditions are accepted as normal. Who Controls Education? ----------------------- A spark of humor on these dreary trends was injected by Christine Maitland, Coordinator of Higher Education for the National Education Association, who sketched several fantasies of campuses of the future. One of them, McCollege, yellow arches and all, would offer a complete line of drive-through, fast-consumption educational products including "The Big Degree." A special attraction of "Wired U," would be occasional performances by "The Three Tenures," the last three tenured professors on the planet. On the walls of her projected E.M.O. -- Education Maintenance Organization -- were signs reading: "Truth is the best commodity," "Scholarship means dollarship," and "Money in the bank is the best tenure." Maitland's point, however, was a serious one. Whether they realize it or not, college teachers are now involved in a fierce struggle over the control of the curriculum. The increasing use of technology in higher education raises persistent questions about what the curriculum will include and who decides. "It is the faculty that are the best judges of the content and quality of courses in their discipline," she insisted. With a "knowledge explosion" under way in all areas of learning, the idea that software developers can simply package lectures and lessons and pump them through digital pipes year after year is an illusion. Such knowledge would have a limited shelf-life. Hence, the best strategy is to allow those active in various fields of learning to oversee changes in the substance of courses. Maitland cited the example of the University of Maine, which attempted to institute distance education without including faculty in curriculum planning. Faculty fought back, eventually forcing the chancellor to resign. "The union won the right to have faculty review of distance education courses. There is now some very good distance education offered by the University of Maine and it is controlled by the faculty." This does not mean that college teachers should see themselves as protectors of traditional sinecures. Indeed, many at the meeting saw the true challenge of information technology as that of democratizing education, transforming deeply entrenched structures of prestige and privilege. Phil Agre, professor of communication at UCSD, observed that the very ideal of liberal education has long presupposed a distance between the educated person and the rest of society. A possible benefit of distance learning might be to overcome this distance. "The model of liberal education depended on a kind of leisure that our students mostly don't have and do not expect to have and can't identify with." Agre called for "a positive, democratic vision of what a liberal education is," one that would draw upon the power of digital technologies as an occasion for progressive social change. Andrew Feenberg, professor of philosophy at San Diego State University, chided college teachers for missing the boat on exactly this challenge. "University faculties have not been willing to address non-traditional learners. Because they haven't, those learners have been addressed by entrepreneurs and administrators who have created a whole parallel education system which they now control." In contrast to the kinds of high-cost pedagogy that now produce de-skilling and automation in education, Feenberg described some time-tested, inexpensive forms of computer-centered learning that bring students and teachers together around projects of shared inquiry. But he admitted that few have been willing to move forward with these approaches. And What about the Students? ---------------------------- As the conference wound to a conclusion, voices strangely absent from most discussions about technology and education announced themselves forcefully. A panel of students from the Claremont colleges and CSU system wondered openly how agendas for the corporatization, commercialization, and technological transformation in their learning environments had been launched without anyone bothering to ask them about their needs. While they appreciated the advantages that email and on-line information could provide, they were incensed at the mind-numbing foolishness that computer and media-centered presentations often involve. "We don't want edutainment," Maria Quintero exclaimed. "What we want is people to inspire or infuriate us." In a rambling monologue worthy of a stand up comic, Evan Blumberg described a fellow he'd noticed in a campus computer lab, one who would stare into his cathode ray tube for days on end, oblivious to the passage of time, the need for food or drink and the presence of people sitting right next to him. "Because these labs have no windows, you can't tell whether it's day or night. They're a lot like the casinos in Las Vegas. I think I know who `the house' is." Another of the students, Julia Baker, spoke as a leader of the revolt against CETI in the California State University system. Ms. Baker pointed to the destruction of the partnership between students and professors that systems of distance learning sometimes entail. Suggesting that the problem was ultimately one of corporate domination of education rather than technology itself, she announced that a "revolution in consciousness" is on the horizon, one quite different from the educational revolution corporate managers and university bean counters have in mind, an uprising that would bring students to renew their commitment to social justice and ecological principles. "When the revolt arrives," she asked, "will the faculty stand with us?" The event ended with no firm resolve other than a firm desire to keep the conversation moving. Evidently, there will be a second "Digital Diploma Mills" gathering in Wisconsin this fall. If it's anything like the first one, it will be well worth the journey to Madison. A Two-tiered Educational System? -------------------------------- I came away from the conference with several firm impressions: ** The extent of corporate penetration of higher education is even greater than I'd previously known and is spreading fast. ** State legislatures would now rather invest in digital bandwidth than spend money on conventional settings for teaching and learning. ** Most faculty of college and universities now seem unaware of or indifferent to changes slated for their ways of working in the years ahead. ** If professors ever do begin to squawk about the erosion of their scholarly autonomy, the general public probably won't care. ** In the coming decade, higher education seems likely to split into two distinctly different sectors: (1) two hundred or so institutions that deliver high quality, face-to-face teaching for those slated to become social elites; (2) several thousand semi-campus, semi-cyberspace, hybrid organizations -- colleges, universities and business firms -- ready to pump instruction and credentials to a flexible global workforce. ** The goal of shaping information technology to democratize education is highly appealing, but there are, at present, no strong, well-organized forces promoting that end. ** I plan to advise my sons to avoid college teaching as a profession, unless any of them demonstrates a taste for protracted conflict. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Tech Knowledge Revue is produced at the Chatham Center for Advanced Study, P.O. Box 215, North Chatham, NY 12132. Langdon Winner can be reached at: winner@rpi.edu and at his Web page: http://www.rpi.edu/~winner . Copyright Langdon Winner 1998. Distributed as part of NETFUTURE: http://www.oreilly.com/~stevet/netfuture/. You may redistribute this article for noncommercial purposes, with this notice attached. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael@ecst.csuchico.edu From eclick@roanoke.edu Thu Jun 4 17:20:31 1998 Date: Thu, 04 Jun 1998 19:30:22 -0400 From: "Click" To: labor-rap@csf.colorado.edu Subject: Roanoke, VA data. I am currently a senior sociology majorat Roanoke College in Salem, VA majoring in sociology. As an independent study, I have chosen to identify and analyze women's roles in the Roanoke City labor force during the 1930's as a result of the Great Depression; specifically, I would like to identify national trends dealing with numbers employed, jobs held, and wages received by women and then compare them to those of Roanoke. While my research thus far has been successful, I am having problems finding annual data for the 1930's specifically for Roanoke City. So far I have used the 1930 and 1940 U.S. Census data and the annual reports made by the VA Department of Labor and Industry, both of which contain excellent data for populations larger than Roanoke City (but offer little data for the city itself). in addition to those, i have also used the County and City Data Books, which do offer Roanoke data, though much of it is not gender specific. I am writing to ask if you might have any ideas, suggestions, or even sources (government data, books, similar research projects, etc.) you think might help me in collecting this data. I greatly appreciate any suggestions you can offer; please e-mail me with any questions or suggestions you might have. Thank you very much, Emily Click eclick@roanoke.edu From meisenscher@igc.apc.org Fri Jun 5 09:19:44 1998 Fri, 5 Jun 1998 08:01:27 -0700 (PDT) Fri, 5 Jun 1998 07:55:04 -0700 (PDT) Date: Fri, 5 Jun 1998 07:55:04 -0700 (PDT) To: (Recipient list suppressed) From: Michael Eisenscher Subject: [Fwd: PROPOSITION 227-THE MORNING AFTER]; View From the Trenches Path: news.igc.apc.org!cdp!not-for-mail From: jshultz@igc.org Newsgroups: labr.newsline Subject: PROPOSITION 227-THE MORNING AFTER: THE DEMOCRACY CENTER ON-LINE Date: 03 Jun 1998 13:17:34 Dear Readers, The morning after Election Day. Many of you are people who cared very deeply about the fate of bilingual education and Proposition 227 and this morning you are dealing with the disappointment of a lopsided loss. Others of you are journalists who will be writing in the next few days about the campaign and its aftermath. In either case, one of the tasks at hand is to try to understand what happened and why. What I write here won't make everyone happy, in fact I expect it will make some people angry. I have great respect for the time, dollars and commitment that so many people brought to the NO on 227 effort. I offer the following analysis in that spirit but also with a view that there are some hard lessons to be learned here. Jim Shultz The Democracy Center THE DEMOCRACY CENTER ON-LINE Volume 14 - June 3, 1998 PROPOSITION 227 - THE MORNING AFTER By any measure it is a stunning victory - 61% Yes, 39% No. It won in every county in California but San Francisco and Alameda. Exit poll reports indicate that the measure even won among the key litmus test, Latino voters. The day-after headlines, in California and around the nation, have discarded all the subtleties debated during the campaign and have stamped the results with one simple message - "Californians vote to end bilingual education". What happened, why, what lessons are there to be learned and what should we do next? WHEN AN ISSUE IS HOT DEAL WITH IT - THE ECHO OF PROPOSITION 13 The outcome of Proposition 227 was not decided this June 2nd, it was decided more than a year ago when bilingual education's chief advocates took a no-compromise stand on the issue in the Legislature. It was a mistake and easy to see why it happened. In the wake of Proposition 187 and Proposition 209 (immigration and affirmative action) all issues with an racial slant have become so politically charged that bilingual education was turned into a civil rights issue instead of an educational issue. The problem is that bilingual education was in fact a legitimate educational issue as well. Anyone who wasn't hearing complaints from Latino parents wasn't listening. The challenge for bilingual education's champions was to devise a strategy to address its weaknesses, protect its successes and steal the wind out of the anti-bilingual education movement's sails. Instead they convinced Latino lawmakers to keep reform stalled in the Assembly. Bilingual's advocates aren't the first ones to make this strategic mistake. In 1978 the political wind was about providing property tax relief. When state lawmakers failed over and over again to give voters what they wanted, with a reasonable tax relief program, the issue was captured by Jarvis and Gann and Proposition 13. The result (approved by almost the same margin as 227 exactly 20 years ago this week) was a law that tacked on to homeowner tax relief a tax break twice that size for owners of corporate property. In 1988 the insurance industry also made the same mistake, bottling up insurance reform in the Legislature for so long that they got stuck with Ralph Nader-backed Proposition 103. What's the lesson? If you've taken responsibility to lead on an issue where there are legitimate beefs, don't pretend those beefs aren't there. Deal with them before someone else comes along (like Ron Unz) and deals with them for you in a destructive way. DUELING MESSAGES - JARGON AND SIDE ISSUES VS. "PARENTS WITH PICKET SIGNS" A second lesson to be learned from the campaign is about message. Like all effective initiative campaigners Ron Unz crafted a strong story line. It went like this. "Bilingual education is an experiment of the 1960s that was tried and has failed. 95% of all English learners in California fail every year to learn English. Parents feel so trapped by the 'bilingual bureaucracy' that in one Los Angeles school they had to carry picket signs to get the school to teach their children English". I heard Unz deliver the tale calmly and robotically over and over again. No matter that it was at least half fiction. It was a story that sold well to both the media and the public. In response, the NO on 227 campaign crafted messages, largely driven by polling and focus groups, that were too general, too laced with education jargon and so often focused on tangential issues that it strained credibility. The first official campaign theme was about a provision in the initiative that allows teachers to be sued. Later a new theme would be selected - this one focusing on 227's appropriation of $50 million per year for adult literacy programs (dubbed "the $500 million taxpayer giveaway"). While these messages may have worked in theory in the sterile simulation of a focus group, they were no match for Ron Unz's dramatic rhetoric about Latino parents with picket signs. Even the campaign's general message, "one size fits all doesn't work", was too general. Voters are moved by what they can conjure up as pictures in their minds - little old ladies taxed out of their homes (Prop. 13), immigrants streaming over the border (Prop. 187). When NO on 227 backers tossed out terms like "untested methods" and "academic achievement" it didn't resonate. When they warned that the initiative would spend $50 million a year on adult literacy, reporters and the public said, "yeah right, that's why you oppose it." There were other ways to persuade people. The key was to use real examples about real kids and real families (not general characterizations) to show how authentically goofy 227 really is, especially on the issue of parent choice. When I confronted Unz in public about his "try it you'll like it" provision - the one that requires parents to put their kids in an English-only classroom for the first 30 days of each school year whether they like it or not - both Unz and his initiative just looked half-baked. The campaign also made a mistake, I think, by having its messages carried almost exclusively by advocates, public relations people and educators and rarely by actual parents with children directly affected. The professionals and their jargon played right into Unz's portrait of a self-protecting bilingual bureaucracy. WHAT NEXT? Now the campaign is over and Proposition 227 is the law. What should supporters of bilingual education do next? In the next day or so lawyers for MALDEF and others will go to court to challenge the initiative on Constitutional grounds. Maybe they will succeed, maybe they won't but I don't think that bilingual education supporters should just stand aside and hope that the lawyers bail the issue out in court. I think that parents, educators and others who genuinely care about bilingual education should proceed based on two essential principles. First, protect the ability of parents to select bilingual education for their children. Second, work to make bilingual education programs stronger and better so that they are worth choosing. To protect parent choice we need to help parents understand their rights under the law, need to sure that districts honor those rights and need to help parents get the information they need to make their own best decisions. To make bilingual education programs stronger we need to take seriously the criticisms leveled during the campaign, many of which resonated deeply in the Latino and Asian communities. Finally this - I spent much of Election Day on a school field trip with my daughter Elly's fifth grade class. Tomorrow they will graduate elementary school. These children are the bilingual education products of our public school and I've watched them closely as a classroom volunteer almost every week for six years. Most are brilliantly bilingual, much more than I am, but several others (who came to the U.S. in later grades) have not learned English well and are falling farther and farther behind. Bilingual education - it works well for some and not for others. That was the issue we needed to deal with before Proposition 227 and it is still the issue we need to deal with. ___________________________________________________________ THE DEMOCRACY CENTER ON-LINE is an electronic publication of The Democracy Center, distributed on an occasional basis to more than 900 nonprofit organizations, policy makers, journalists and others. Please consider forwarding it along to those who might be interested. People can request to be added to the distribution list by sending an e-mail note to "JShultz@democracyctr.org". Permission is granted to copy or excerpt any material in the newsletter, with notice and credit to The Democracy Center. Suggestions and comments are welcome. Past issues are available on The Democracy Center Web site. The Democracy Center 1535 Mission St. - San Francisco, CA 94103 (415) 431-2051 tel./ (415) 431-0906 fax e-mail: info@democracyctr.org Web site: http://www.democracyctr.org ================================================== Date: 04 Jun 1998 21:07:26 Reply-To: Conference "labr.party" From: ia728@primenet.com Subject: (fwd) FYIA: 226: Final Hours To: Recipients of conference X-Gateway: conf2mail@igc.apc.org Lines: 129 Here in Santa Monica, we ran our own campaign against 226 and 227. It was run out of the HERE L814 union hall by Santa Monicans Allied for Responsible Tourism (SMART) and L814. In the final days SMART turned out 60 volunteers and L814 about the same. Our goals were to identify and turnout 2000 NO voters, and to identify 100 new volunteers for future campaigns. The two main groups we worked on was a list of 1500 union members in Santa Monica and selected voting precincts that were primarily working-class Latino. Our final results were 1600 NO voters and 200 future volunteers. We feel we came out of Tuesday as the strongest political force in our city. Our next goals are to elect a 5-2 pro-labor majority to our City Council in November, create innovative new laws to support worker's rights and union organizing, support the ongoing struggle of the Miramar Hotel workers, and prepare to assist L814 when they open a long awaited new hotel organizing drive. For your interest, and especially for those outside the state, I'm forwarding my final campaign report that I had made for my union's (IATSE) rank and file e-mail list. Michael Everett Santa Monica, Ca =========================================================== >The final day of the 226 campaign was unforgettable. It was the >climax of weeks of phone banking and organizing and the day when all >our work came together to turn out our voters. LA County had 5000 >union members phoning and walking precincts. > >Here in Santa Monica (pop. 90,000) we had an army of volunteers that >fluctuated between 50 and 100. Half or more were hotel/restaurant >workers from HERE L814, whose union hall served as campaign >headquarters. Many of these workers speak limited english, so we're a >bilingual operation and everything gets translated. > >For the past 3 days I'd been running the phone banks with Emma, a >bartender and L814 shop steward at LAX. On the final day we put our >elderly volunteers on the phone banks and I was assigned to walk a >precinct with Marlena, another LAX bartender. Our goal was to pursue >every voter on our list of identified NO voters and hound them >relentlessly until they'd voted. Periodically, we'd check the list at >the polling place to cross off those who had voted. > >Our precinct was along 13th St., just south of the Santa Monica >freeway. It was a working class neighborhood, mostly Hispanic of low >density apartments and modest houses. I don't know how many times I >walked these few blocks, but after a while you start to know the >neighborhood and they start to know you. The idea is to track these >people down and not accept excuses for not voting -- which we get all >the time. Some people lie and say they voted, but when we don't see >their name checked off at the polls, we come back tell them they have >to vote now. If they say they'll do it later, we tell them there's a >car out front that will drive them right away. I personally drove >three NO voters to the polls. Luis, age 24 was a NO voter I'd been >looking for all day. When I finally found this kid, he was sitting on >his couch watching TV with absolutely no visible reason for not >voting, as I pointed out to him, but I still couldn't get him out. A >couple of hotel workers joined me and we hammered on him til we >finally got him in my car and down to the polls. Later we laughed >about it and he said he wouldn't have voted unless I'd pushed him. > >Another person I drove to the polls was a new citizen who'd never >voted before. I don't speak spanish and we couldn't communicate very >well so all I could do was hand her our door hanger and say "226, 227 vote >no, no, no!". When I drove her back, I told her she made history, >which I believe, and I hope she understood me. > >About 7:30, there was a last frenzy to haul in our targeted voters. >They locked the poll doors at 7:59 which of course we immediately >protested. At 10 seconds til 8 I spotted one of my NO voters ambling >down the street with his voting pamphlet like he had all the time in >the world. I yelled at him to run, but this guy was in a daze and he >didn't get to the locked door until after 8. Nevertheless, I'm >pleased to say, we convinced them to open the door again for one last >NO voter, so that's where the campaign ended for me. > >After that I picked up my 16 year old daughter and headed downtown to >the Biltmore for the victory celebration. The first returns weren't >good and by the time we got downtown it didn't look like it would be >much of a celebration. We weren't prepared for the surreal scene at >the Biltmore. Not only was there a NO on 226 celebration, but also >Checchi, Boxer, Grey Davis, and others. The place was swarming with >Democratic power figures and their hangers-on, plus the media. It was >pretty chaotic and the first person we ran into in the lobby was >Johnnie Cochran trailing his own small crowd behind him. > >I went to a bar and asked the (HERE L11) bartender where the >Heinsberger Room was. He smiled and said he didn't speak english. >When I turned to leave, he told me he was just joking and gave me the >directions in perfect english. I guess it was a 227 joke. > >The 226 celebration was in a much smaller room and more modest than >the others -- not so many suits and lots of tee shirts. With 24% of >the vote in, it looked to me like we were losing. Art Pulaski, head >of California labor and Miguel Contreras, head of LA labor gave >rousing victory speeches and we all wondered how they could muster the >enthusiasm, given the returns so far. > >We headed for Checchi's party under the assumption that for $40 >million he'd at least be providing a decent spread and free drinks, >which he wasn't. We couldn't get in to the Grey Davis party because, >being the winner, there was a very long waiting line. > >We left the Biltmore in a downbeat mood about 11:00 pm. It wasn't >until on the freeway heading home that we heard on the radio we were >going to win by six points. > >That's what I saw on June 2, but I'm sure there's thousands of more >stories out there. > >In a few days I'll have some info on exactly what we accomplished here >in Santa Monica, including what my own rate of success was in turning >out my assigned voters, and I'll let you know. > >In the interest of lighting fires elsewhere, please pass this post >along to anyone interested. > >Michael Everett >ia728@primenet.com From culturex@vcn.bc.ca Fri Jun 5 12:40:42 1998 Fri, 5 Jun 1998 11:39:50 -0700 (PDT) Date: Fri, 5 Jun 1998 11:39:47 -0700 (PDT) From: Franklin Wayne Poley Subject: CLTeam> Common Law: Fairness and Decency in the Workplace. (fwd) ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, 5 Jun 1998 11:36:38 -0700 (PDT) From: Franklin Wayne Poley To: team-commonlaw-l@teleport.com Subject: CLTeam> Common Law: Fairness and Decency in the Workplace. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, 5 Jun 1998 11:32:45 -0700 (PDT) From: Franklin Wayne Poley To: Paul Keenan labmovs@sheffield.ac.uk Subject: Re: Social Security Payments (Value of Welfare Labour). On Fri, 5 Jun 1998, Paul Keenan wrote: > Mr Franklin Wayne Poley you have introduced an aspect to the > discussion which does not fully relate to the Welfare State as > experienced in the UK (I take it from some context that you > might be cnandian - a completely different experience). > > Volunteer work in the welfare system neither adds to nor > detracts from the governments activity, which I believe is the > topic under discussion. There is no financial measurement, > therefore which HM Treasury might use in calculating whether to > gather more or less tax to support the Governments activity. There are a couple of UK subscribers on the Workfare-Discuss list and maybe they can reply. I thought that workfare had been instituted in UK at least at a preliminary stage. The message which the public receives on workfare is that those who draw from the public purse should pay back what they can in services rendered. You might say that is consistent with the English common law stated at by Prime Minister Blair as "(at least) a very minimum infrastructure of decency and fairness around people in the workplace". It seems like the decent and fair thing to do. If my neighbours are considerate enough to provide me with a subsidy (welfare) to keep body and soul together during difficult times then I should be decent and fair enough to provide a service where I can to offset the cash cost. However, it is implicit in workfare programs that we see in places like Ontario and New York City (where I have more familiarity with what is happening) that those on welfare are not presently doing work which would offset welfare cash payments and therefore must be put into work gangs and sent off to do some kind of public service. It is at this point that we immediately see that something is wrong with the statement on fairness and decency. Everybody here knows that there is an army of volunteer workers who already do a lot of good public service work. I have heard recent TV reports that there are hundreds of volunteers who help staff Vancouver Aquarium, one of the more popular tourism sites and hundreds more who staff community TV. I don't know how many volunteers there are at VCN which provides internet service to 10,000 but I would guess dozens at least. It is also known that among all these volunteers some are on welfare. So you would think that a government which is honestly concerned about fairness and decency in the workplace would do a survey of volunteer work already done on welfare. It might even exceed the cash cost of welfare. Moreover, keep in mind that there are additional administrative costs to workfare and that adds to the tax burden on the general public. And, a workfare participant who is forced to clean up the parks of Vancouver on workfare has less time to do those volunteer activities elsewhere. This is part of the "opportunity cost" of workfare. Let me give just one example of public volunteer service. VCN gives free courses on the internet. I have taken one at the introductory level and one intermediate. Now I know for a fact that some VCN teachers and tutors are on welfare. Those courses each cost over $50 when taken at the Vancouver Library where they are now being offered. I think you would find this value to volunteer welfare labour multiplied by many situations. And I am 100% sure that anyone concerned with descency and fairness in the workplace would find the value of such services before embarking on a workfare program which immediately targets and scapegoats the poor. FWP. From meisenscher@igc.apc.org Fri Jun 5 17:09:56 1998 Fri, 5 Jun 1998 15:23:06 -0700 (PDT) Fri, 5 Jun 1998 15:16:31 -0700 (PDT) Date: Fri, 5 Jun 1998 15:16:31 -0700 (PDT) To: (Recipient list suppressed) From: Michael Eisenscher Subject: Absentee Ballots Play Key Role in CA Vote Sunday, May 31, 1998 CALIFORNIA ELECTIONS Absentee Ballots Alter Dynamics of Campaigning Some candidates try to get the vote out early to avoid the impact of eleventh-hour attacks. Registrar says requests have hit high for a primary. By PETER M. WARREN, Times Staff Writer ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [As posted these data appeared at the close of the story.] Voting Trend California voters are increasingly making use of the absentee ballot as a way to exercise their franchise. Requests for the ballots for this year's primary far exceed those for 1994, the most recent non-presidential election year. The pattern is the same in counties throughout Southern California. Absentee ballot requests: County 1994 1998 % increase Los Angeles 267,433 385,815 44 Orange 95,286 157,988 66 Riverside 79,697 84,255 6 San Bernardino 50,632 72,531 43 San Diego 161,200 200,888 25 Ventura 34,449 57,743 68 Statewide 1,146,183 1,918,089 67 Sources: Orange County registrar, Los Angeles County registrar, California registrar Researched by PETER M. WARREN / Los Angeles Times ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Spurred in part by vigorous campaigns for governor and against Proposition 226, California voters are applying for absentee ballots in record numbers for a primary election. Two Democratic gubernatorial candidates as well as unions are running aggressive drives to get people to vote absentee because having lists of applicants gives the campaigns a chance to speak directly to those most likely to cast ballots--and possibly preempt the messages of others. "It is a very successful tactic," said Sacramento consultant Dave Gilliard. "There is no better mailing list than a list of actual absentee ballot applicants, because you know you are not wasting your money when you talk to them." So far, more than 1.9 million people statewide--far more than in any other primary--have applied to vote by mail in Tuesday's election, according to state officials. Absentee voters typically account for about a quarter of the ballots cast statewide, election officials said. Nearly 85% of those who apply for such ballots actually vote, they said. Voting by mail is a growing phenomenon that is shifting the timing of campaigns forward and changing the dynamics of races, say political observers and election officials. If candidates can get the vote out early, they can avoid the impact of eleventh-hour attacks by opponents. "No longer can you assume that last-minute attacks will be decisive," said Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, senior associate at the school of politics and economics of Claremont Graduate University. "Newspapers and others are endorsing earlier because last-minute endorsements may shut out nearly a quarter of the electorate." In Los Angeles County, absentee ballots went out to 385,815 voters in the past month. That is 118,000 more than for the gubernatorial primary four years ago and 32,000 more than for the presidential primary two years ago. "This is a record for a primary," said Conny McCormack, Los Angeles County's registrar. "Whether it will translate into a higher turnout is anybody's guess." In order to be counted, absentee ballots must be received by 8 p.m. Tuesday. Those who cannot mail them to the registrar in time can take them to the polls Tuesday and drop them off. In Orange County, absentee ballots have gone out to nearly 158,000 voters, about 63,000 more than four years ago and only 1,500 shy of the presidential primary two years ago. "Many counties are reporting absentee ballot requests definitely more along the lines of a presidential primary than a gubernatorial race," said Secretary of State Bill Jones. "This is a record-setting pace." The previous high was in the presidential primary two years ago, when more than 1.5 million voters statewide applied for absentee ballots, according to Jones. The secretary of state said that another reason for the popularity of absentee voting is the long blanket primary ballot, which lists all candidates together. Some people, he said, like the convenience of voting by mail and want more time to dissect the ballot, which includes nine propositions and far more candidates to consider. Orange County Registrar Rosalyn Lever said that with each election more of the electorate is realizing that it is "just a more convenient way" to cast ballots. Jones said that more attention to absentee voting by the media also has contributed to the increase. But the biggest factor is the expensive efforts by several candidates and unions to sign up absentee voters, political experts said. The campaigns of Democratic gubernatorial candidates Jane Harman and Al Checchi have together sent about 4 million absentee ballot applications to voters, said election officials, far more than are usually issued by statewide candidates. In addition, unions opposing Proposition 226, which would limit the use of union dues in political campaigns, have sent 1 million applications, largely to labor households, said Gale Kaufman, who is running the drive to defeat the ballot measure. Checchi sent more than 3 million and got back about 430,000 applications, said Darry Sragow, campaign manager. The campaign has targeted those 430,000 voters, he said, under the assumption that they may be leaning toward Checchi. "They are clearly going to vote and clearly are receptive," he said. "So it is far more effective and efficient to communicate with this universe than buy TV ads that reach 33 million people, of whom 32.5 million are not going to make the difference in the race." The other two Democratic candidates said the Checchi mail-ballot campaign has been largely futile. A poll last week by the Gray Davis campaign indicated that voters who received mail ballot applications from Checchi favored Davis more than 2 to 1, said his campaign manager, Garry South. "We were very clever--we actually had Al Checchi do our absentee ballot campaign for us," South said with a chuckle. Local candidates too are trying to take advantage of the early courting of absentee voters. Consultant Gilliard is using the strategy in 10 GOP races around the state, including for Assembly candidate Patricia Bates in Laguna Niguel and congressional candidate Barbara Alby, an assemblywoman from Fair Oaks. Mail-in drives have their roots in a 1978 change in election law that made it easier to vote by mail. The qualifications became pretty much what they are now: If you wanted to vote absentee, you could. Previously, voters had to meet strict criteria about disability or absence from the area on election day. An absentee drive is a distinct effort within the larger campaign, beginning and ending weeks before most voters focus on the contests. It has its own deadlines and mailers. The first statewide success of such an effort occurred in 1982 when Republicans seized on a mail-in campaign to boost Atty. Gen. George Deukmejian over Tom Bradley in the gubernatorial race. Deukmejian lost the walk-in vote at the polls, but mail-in ballots gave him a slim 93,345-vote victory. For years, the absentee vote was seen as the province of Republicans, whose voters included people more likely to be traveling on election day. These days, though, the strategy is used as effectively by Democrats. When they first were elected to Congress, both Harman and Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Garden Grove) had trailed at the polling places but won with absentee ballots. Checchi has been the most successful by far in recruiting voters to sign up for mail-in ballots. Harman ran her program in early May, several weeks after Checchi started, and got back applications from 10,000 voters. "The Checchi thing was huge," said Harman consultant Bill Carrick. "We mailed later because we wanted to get people as they were thinking about the election." The extraordinary aspect about the Checchi effort was the size of its initial solicitation. Checchi mailed to the state's most frequent voters, targeting people who had voted in three of the last four major elections, Sragow said. Those voters received a multicolored mailer that touted Checchi and contained a vote-by-mail application. "We were going to mail, so it made sense to include an application," he said. Candidates such as Checchi and Harman use absentee voter lists provided by county registrars during the month before the election to target voters by telephone and mail. Davis "tried to piggyback" on the unions' efforts, South said. The Defeat Proposition 226 campaign ran a similar but more directed absentee drive. It was designed to reach people predisposed against the measure and take advantage of the 30 days before the election to get them to vote by mail. That effort and the massive advertising campaign of the anti-Proposition 226 campaign has paid off. The measure, which was far ahead in early polls, has faltered. * * * Copyright Los Angeles Times From meisenscher@igc.apc.org Fri Jun 5 17:09:57 1998 Fri, 5 Jun 1998 15:22:22 -0700 (PDT) Fri, 5 Jun 1998 15:15:53 -0700 (PDT) Date: Fri, 5 Jun 1998 15:15:53 -0700 (PDT) To: (Recipient list suppressed) From: Michael Eisenscher Subject: Latino Voter Turnout Doubles; Final CA Returns (Propositions) Thursday, June 4, 1998 Latino Voter Participation Doubled Since '94 Primary By AMY PYLE, PATRICK J. MCDONNELL, HECTOR TOBAR, Times Staff Writers Latino presence at the polls continued an upward trend Tuesday, amounting to 12% of all California voters--double the number who voted in the 1994 primary, but not yet enough to determine the outcome of issues crucial to the state's fastest-growing population group, according to Times exit polls. On Tuesday, the diminutive size of the Latino electorate compared to the group's 29.4% share of the California population led Latino voters to lose the very fight that brought many to the polls. The issue was the bilingual education abolition measure, Proposition 227, which the exit poll found was second only to the governor's race in luring Latinos to vote. Latinos polled Tuesday said they opposed the initiative by a margin of 2 to 1, many describing it as discriminatory, but it passed in an almost mirror image of that vote. "It leaves you feeling deflated," said Francisco Dominguez, an Oxnard school district trustee and executive director of the Latino advocacy group El Concilio del Condado de Ventura. "Now we just need to convince voters to become much more active. That's when we will make a difference." 4 Latinos in Bids for Statewide Office Still, Latinos' growing potential as an electoral powerhouse was evident Tuesday. For the first time this century, the likelihood of an elected Latino statewide official looms near, with four Latinos winning spots to compete in November for lieutenant governor, controller, state superintendent of public instruction and insurance commissioner. Based on Tuesday's results, state Assemblyman Cruz Bustamante (D-Fresno) will face state Sen. Tim Leslie (R-Tahoe City) for lieutenant governor; Assemblywoman Diane Martinez (D-Monterey Park) will face incumbent Insurance Commissioner Chuck Quackenbush; and San Mateo County Supervisor Ruben Barrales, a Republican, will face incumbent Controller Kathleen Connell. In the nonpartisan race for state superintendent of public instruction, pro-227 Latina Gloria Matta Tuchman also forced Supt. Delaine Eastin into a runoff. election. The one area where Latinos may have made a difference in Tuesday's vote was the defeat of Proposition 226, which would have restricted use of union dues. Exit polls showed they voted against it in larger-than-average numbers, likely in part because of the community's higher-than-average union membership. Earlier Times polls had shown Latinos favoring Proposition 227, albeit by a narrower margin than other voters. Poll Director Susan Pinkus said that last-minute campaigning by anti-227 groups in Latino media and the opposition of all four gubernatorial candidates probably tipped the balance. "Being largely working-class communities, many Latinos do not start paying attention until two or three weeks before the actual elections," said Harry Pachon, president of the Tomas Rivera Center, a Latino think tank. Pachon said that was precisely when mailers opposing 227 started arriving en masse and television commercials picked up. According to the exit poll, Latino voters were younger, poorer, less-educated, newer to the political process and primed for change. Two-thirds of Latinos polled were under age 50, 15% earn less than $20,000 a year, a third have at most a high school education and nearly a third voted for the first time in a primary election. Since they are predominantly registered as Democrats, Latinos were far more likely than non-Latino white voters polled to advocate for a change from 16 years of Republican occupation of the governor's seat. Of course, the notion of a Latino voting bloc is increasingly disputed in political circles as naive, particularly as electoral rifts emerge, often between newer and more established immigrants. For example, Jose Sandoval, a Huntington Park father of three voting in his first primary, favored Proposition 227 because he felt his children's years in bilingual classes were a waste. "They couldn't even read English," he said. By contrast, a mother of four from Bell said she voted against the measure out of concern for the educational experience of her youngest daughter who "says some words in English but she's still learning." Still, Tuesday's outcome appeared to follow other recent elections, where Latinos went against the tide on measures they took personally: the anti-illegal immigrant Proposition 187 and the anti-affirmative action Proposition 209. Latinos opposed both measures passed by state voters. "Contrary to state voting patterns, Latinos continue to reject wedge propositions," said Antonio Gonzalez, president of the Willie Velazquez Institute, which analyzes Latino voting patterns. "The story here is that Latinos, again contrary to statewide currents, reject Prop. 227 with a big turnout . . . We're kind of like Michael Jordan right now: Every time he scores a point in the playoffs he sets a new record." Latinos bucked the trends elsewhere as well on Tuesday, largely without success: They were more than twice as likely as voters overall to support multimillionaire Al Checchi--liking him almost as much as they liked Democratic nominee Gray Davis--a nod to Checchi's attempt to beat a Populist tom-tom over the condition of public education. And they favored fellow Latino Charles Calderon for attorney general, while the rest of Democrats whisked Bill Lockyer into the general election slot. Only Proposition 226 seemed to offer a glimpse of the shape of things to come in this state, where Latinos are expected to become the majority in 2040. Like three in four Latino voters, Jose Montenegro, a former warehouseman and Teamster from South Gate, voted against the union initiative. He thought it threatened to diminish the power of working people. And the way he figures it, from his current vantage point as an independent truck driver working out of San Pedro, large corporations already trample truckers' rights at every turn. "Unions have lost a lot of power," said Montenegro, 50, who has lived in California for three decades. "They need the money to get more active, to start organizing people more." The measure did lose and by just a few percentage points. Without Latinos, the exit poll of 5,143 voters showed, the measure would have been a dead heat. "Lots of interesting things are going to start happening in the next couple of years," said assistant professor Abel Valenzuela of the Cesar Chavez Center at UCLA. He said that as the impact of Latino voters grows, so too will their diversity of interest and options. "You're going to see [Latino] movement into statewide campaigns, as you did this election, and into Republican races and into predominantly white areas, too," Valenzuela said. Welcome News for Latino Politicians Although they are by no means assured of Latino support, Latino politicians generally consider this trend good news. This year, there are more vying for office than ever before. Barrales' campaign consultant, Kevin Spillane, said he considers the candidate a "benchmark for the Republican party," which lost the confidence of Latinos following Gov. Pete Wilson's advocacy for Proposition 187. "Obviously, the perception has developed that the Republican party is not friendly in the Latino community," Spillane said. "We have some work to do." The Latino Issues Forum in San Francisco issued a news release detailing those and other gains: of 20 state Senate seats up for grabs, seven have Latino candidates in the general election; of the 80 Assembly seats, 25 have Latino candidates. If November results emerge as expected, those candidacies could increase Latino representation in both houses to nearly one-fifth. "The giant is awake!" declared forum Director Guillermo Rodriguez. "No longer are we just electing Latinos from East L.A., but from places like San Luis Obispo and Monterey." In Los Angeles, statewide Latino political power follows a meandering route through East Los Angeles and the San Gabriel Valley. Tuesday's election indicates that trail may soon lead to the San Fernando Valley as well. There, the hotly contested state Senate race, which remained too close to call Wednesday, also had distinctly Latino overtones. City Councilman Richard Alarcon has repeatedly downplayed the role of the Latino vote in the race, but election returns pinpointed his base of support in the heavily Latino northeast Valley, while competitor and former Assemblyman Richard Katz drew more backers from the predominantly Jewish, middle-class neighborhoods of the southwest Valley. "I am only hopeful that people in the Northeast Valley now know they have this ability to impact the process," Alarcon said. An interesting case study in the pitfalls of defining Latinos as a monolith can be seen in the sharply contrasting voting results from from Huntington Park and Montebello, two largely Latino blue-collar suburbs of Los Angeles with similar population numbers--more than 60,000 residents each--but widely varying demographic make-ups. Huntington Park, where 92% of residents are Latino, is a new-immigrant enclave that is home to growing numbers of recent arrivals, especially from Mexico. Montebello, with a 68% Latino majority, is a more middle-class bedroom community, home to many multi-generational U.S. residents of Mexican ancestry. In Montebello, residents voted 58%-41% against 227, according to the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder. But voters in Huntington Park weighed in against the anti-bilingual education measure by 71% to 28%--almost matching the 3-to-1 margins by which Latinos statewide rejected Proposition 187 four years ago. The two cities' voting trends also show the more unified opposition to 226 among Latinos. In Huntington Park almost 80% voted against restricting union ability to fund political measures. Times staff writers Fred Alvarez in Ventura and Hugo Martin in the San Fernando Valley also contributed to this story. * * * The Latino Vote Primary Turnout 1994: 6% 1996: 8% 1998: 12% * * * Proposition 227 Yes: 37% No: 63% * * * Proposition 226 Yes: 25% No: 75% * * * By Candidate: Checchi: 30% Davis: 36% Harman: 11% Lungren: 17% Source: L.A. Times / CNN exit poll * * * Ballot Breakdown (Southland Edition, A1) 63% of Latinos voted no on Prop. 227 (to end bilingual education). 57% of Asians voted yes on Prop. 227. 20% of Democratic women voted for Jane Harman for governor. 49% of Democratic women voted for Gray Davis for governor. Source: L.A. Times / CNN exit poll Copyright Los Angeles Times ======================================= [Excerpted from LA Times Website] Thursday, June 4, 1998 FINAL CALIFORNIA ELECTION RETURNS PROPOSITIONS How California Voted 100% Precincts Reporting: votes (%) 219--Ballot Measures. Application. Yes: 3,179,530 (67%) No: 1,571,721 (33%) 220--Courts. Superior and Municipal Court Consolidation. Yes: 3,126,701 (64%) No: 1,741,016 (36%) 221--Subordinate Judicial Officers. Discipline. Yes: 3,851,146 (81%) No: 924,688 (19%) 222--Murder. Peace Officer Victim. Sentence Credits. Yes: 3,869,678 (77%) No: 1,162,928 (23%) 223--Schools. Spending Limits on Administration. Yes: 2,327,342 (46%) No: 2,777,825 (54%) 224--State-Funded Design and Engineering Services. Yes: 1,885,601 (38%) No: 3,053,797 (62%) 225--Limiting Congressional Terms. Proposed U.S. Constitutional Amendment. Yes: 2,617,937 (53%) No: 2,335,969 (47%) 226--Political Contributions by Employees, Union Members, Foreign Entities. Yes: 2,442,587 (47%) No: 2,808,678 (53%) 227--English Language in Public Schools. Yes: 3,253,333 (61%) No: 2,091,449 (39%) * * * How L. A. County Voted 100% Precincts Reporting: votes (%) 219--Ballot Measures. Application. Yes: 687,548 (63%) No: 412,157 (37%) 220--Courts. Superior and Municipal Court Consolidation. Yes: 729,914 (65%) No: 390,870 (35%) 221--Subordinate Judicial Officers. Discipline. Yes: 885,724 (80%) No: 220,022 (20%) 222--Murder. Peace Officer Victim. Sentence Credits. Yes: 852,693 (73%) No: 312,223 (27%) 223--Schools. Spending Limits on Administration. Yes: 549,870 (47%) No: 631,448 (53%) 224--State-Funded Design and Engineering Services. Yes: 423,019 (37%) No: 711,702 (63%) 225--Limiting Congressional Terms. Proposed U.S. Constitutional Amendment. Yes: 533,410 (47%) No: 597,355 (53%) 226--Political Contributions by Employees, Union Members, Foreign Entities. Yes: 479,980 (39%) No: 737,309 (61%) 227--English Language in Public Schools. Yes: 700,171 (56%) No: 546,257 (44%) Key to Election Tables An asterisk (*) denotes an incumbent candidate. Elected candidates and approved measures--or those leading with 99% of precincts reporting--are in bold type. Runoff elections may be required in nonpartisan races where no candidate receives over 50% of the vote. Results are not official and could be affected by absentee ballots. For primary races, candidates are grouped by party. 0% indicates information was unavailable at edition time or only absentee ballots had been counted. District locations are identified by county. In Los Angeles, Orange, San Diego and Ventura counties, they are identified by community. Uncontested offices and write-in candidates are not included in the tables. * * * Contributing to The Times' election coverage: Technical assistance: Victor I. Pulver, Stephen Bergens, Jane Hwa, Dony Hu and John Bryan. Compiled by: Times editorial researchers Nona Yates and Tracy Thomas. Contributing: Wendy Cota, Sheila Dixon-Howard, Christopher Foster, John Hernandez, William Holmes, Rasean Jones, Elsa Miralrio, Cecilia Rasmussen, Lilia Thompson and Tomas Torres. Sources: Election returns provided by California Secretary of State, county registrars of voters and city clerks. Copyright Los Angeles Times From meisenscher@igc.apc.org Fri Jun 5 17:11:03 1998 Fri, 5 Jun 1998 15:20:31 -0700 (PDT) Fri, 5 Jun 1998 15:13:59 -0700 (PDT) Date: Fri, 5 Jun 1998 15:13:59 -0700 (PDT) To: (Recipient list suppressed) From: Michael Eisenscher Subject: Prop 226 Victory Impressive But Times Call for Change; Gov. Wilson a Cause/Victim of Prop.226 Defeat Published Friday, June 5, 1998, in the San Jose Mercury News JOHN JORDAN Prop. 226 defeat is impressive, but leadership must change with the times Labor should heed lessons of victory BY JOHN JORDAN LABOR won an important victory Tuesday when it decisively defeated Proposition 226, the so-called Paycheck Protection Act. Unions and their allies beat back a cynical and well-coordinated attempt to deny them a strong voice in the political process. Labor did what it had to do, combining an aggressive and well-funded television ad campaign with an unprecedented effort to engage and mobilize members. But in politics, victory can be almost as dangerous as defeat. In the midst of the well-deserved excitement, hard questions and sober analysis can get shoved to the back burner. The following are some lessons labor should consider as it moves toward November: The best defense is a good offense. Labor's enemies have long understood this maxim. In a sense, even in defeat they enjoyed victory, as Proposition 226 drained energy and resources -- some $20 million -- that unions could have thrown into a proactive campaign. Putting a proposition on the ballot costs about $200,000. Defeating one costs almost 10 times as much. Labor should put at least one forward-looking proposition on the state ballot during every election cycle. Labor is and will remain a primarily political power. The ``No on 226'' effort was one of many union political victories of recent years. An increased minimum wage, the Family and Medical Leave Act and ``living wage'' laws in Oakland and other cities are just some of labor's positive political wins. At the same time, labor continues to lose power at the bargaining table. Its strikes and other efforts have been largely defensive acts to merely maintain the status quo. Even the successful strike waged against United Parcel Service by the Teamsters Union was largely defensive. And the Teamsters have yet to translate it into other bargaining or membership recruitment wins. Nowhere is labor's failure to successfully operate outside the political arena more obvious than in the AFL-CIO's high-profile and expensive efforts to recruit new members. Many Bay Area residents are familiar with the United Farm Workers' campaign to organize strawberry workers in Watsonville. After two years and millions of AFL-CIO dollars, the UFW has about 50 new members to show for its efforts. The AFL-CIO has had more success elsewhere, recruiting about 3,000 new construction workers in Las Vegas. But the heart sinks when one is reminded that the U.S. economy adds about 250,000 new jobs a month. Even in the midst of a boom, unions' share of the workforce continues its inexorable decline. Ironically, many of the AFL-CIO's membership recruiters disparage electoral politics, convinced it's a waste of time. But the results speak for themselves. Tens of millions of workers saw real and immediate benefits when, under intense union pressure, Congress raised the minimum wage. Contrast that with labor's membership recruitment program. Unions win only half the organizing campaigns they run. And only half those victories result in signed collective bargaining agreements. In business terms, labor gets its highest return on investment in the political arena. I predict that within a decade, the AFL-CIO and its member unions will re-orient themselves almost completely toward electoral politics, concentrating on mobilizing the members they have rather than spending millions to add a few thousand new ones. Members make the difference. During the decade I worked for unions in Washington, D.C., I heard one thing over and over again: ``What labor needs is new leadership.'' This was and is undoubtedly true. Unions are still dominated by men whose understanding of the workplace and the larger society was forged in the 1950s. I know from firsthand experience that few of these ``leaders'' has the slightest idea about how to send an e-mail, let alone how cutting-edge companies like those in Silicon Valley manage their operations and employees. An injection of genuinely new blood is long overdue. But leaders are nothing without followers. Union members followed union officials when they got out from behind their desks and communicated directly with members. I think even some officials were surprised at how energetic and effective members treated intelligently and respectfully can be. This shouldn't blind union officials to how much further they have to go to truly reconnect with members. It was ironic to hear union representatives speak out against Proposition 226 by saying it was redundant, that it would ``simply protect a right union members already have.'' Union officials implied that members' right to withhold dues money that goes to politics -- Beck rights -- came about as a result of internal union processes. It didn't, and union officials know it. The U.S. Supreme Court imposed this right on unions. To this day, most union officials disparage this right and those who exercise it. It is important to publicly acknowledge that just about every advance in union democracy -- from Beck to direct elections at the Teamsters, Laborers and other unions -- is the result of federal intervention in internal union affairs. It is labor's rigid governing style that gives its opponents openings to tie up unions with things like Proposition 226. If unions really are democratic, let them prove it. Let them adopt long overdue reforms before the government or their enemies force them to. Labor should be proud of what it accomplished on Tuesday. I say to my union friends: By all means, celebrate your victory. But please use this win as a chance to learn the lessons that will let you spend $20 million moving the ball forward, instead of just keeping it at your own 20-yard line. John Jordan is a labor consultant and public relations executive from Campbell. He can be contacted at jjordan737@aol.com . ================================== Published Thursday, June 4, 1998, in the San Jose Mercury News PROPOSITION 226 BY HALLYE JORDAN AND JIM PUZZANGHERA Mercury News Staff Writers SACRAMENTO -- On the door of the California Teachers Association building, handmade signs thank voters for the come-from-behind defeat of Proposition 226 on Tuesday. But the CTA, which poured $3.7 million into the campaign to trounce the once-popular union-dues proposition, should also thank Gov. Pete Wilson. The outgoing Republican governor's tireless campaign on behalf of the nationally watched measure probably contributed to its downfall -- and may have slowed momentum for similar measures pending in at least 26 other states. ``There is no doubt Pete Wilson's high profile as chairman of the 226 committee was like waving a red flag in front of a bull,'' said Dick Rosengarten, publisher of the California Political Week, a non-partisan political newsletter. ``Who cares about (226 financial backers ) J. Patrick Rooney and Grover Norquist? Everyone knows who Gov. Pete Wilson is, and that's all that it takes.'' The vote may have more impact nationally than in California. On Capitol Hill on Wednesday, lawmakers were gauging the effects the California ballot battle would have on a similar union dues provision that's been proposed as part of the federal campaign finance reform. Bills specifically addressing the issue have been defeated in the Senate and the House. But Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott and House Speaker Newt Gingrich -- both Republicans -- are strong supporters of the issue. Rep. Asa Hutchinson, R-Ark., the sponsor of a campaign reform bill being pushed by congressional freshmen, predicted Wednesday that the defeat of Proposition 226 will doom efforts to add a similar provision to their bill. The proposition received national attention, and financial backing, from conservative groups that are pushing similar measures in other states and in Congress in an attempt to curb labor's political clout. Norquist, the Washington, D.C., lobbyist who pumped $441,000 into the California initiative, said Tuesday's election results will not slow his conservative Americans for Tax Reform group from pushing for similar laws across the country. Norquist said that although it was defeated, putting Proposition 226 on the ballot in bellwether California served a bigger purpose. It sparked a national debate on whether unions should receive permission from their members before funneling a portion of their dues to political causes and candidates. Backer says issue moves forward ``People in California were getting these phone calls from people saying (if Proposition 226 passes), police are going to get killed, it's going to hurt the United Way. That kind of distraction was basically dishonest political rhetoric,'' Norquist said. ``But the rest of the nation had an honest discussion. So, win, lose or draw in California, the issue has moved forward rather well nationally.'' Proposition 226 would have cut labor's considerable political clout by requiring union leaders to obtain permission from members before putting their union dues into political campaigns. The measure had one of the highest approval ratings when first introduced, but its popularity plummeted in the wake of at least $20 million that national and state labor unions poured into TV ads and political mailers. A Field Poll in November showed 72 percent of voters supported it and 22 percent opposed it; by last week, 45 percent were in support and 47 percent opposed. ``The irony here is that that the poultry worker in South Carolina and the millworker in Maine and the teacher in Wisconsin all had money taken from their paycheck and spent on a campaign in California that they knew nothing about,'' said Sean Walsh, Wilson's press secretary. Labor leaders said Wednesday the stunning victory has unified labor unions across the nation and will motivate workers to keep using the political voice they protected by turning out en masse in November and future elections -- especially when labor rights are attacked. ``We emerge from this campaign stronger than ever,'' said Art Pulaski, executive secretary-treasurer of the California Labor Federation, AFL-CIO. ``Starting today, California unions can turn our attention back to the real work of the labor movement: decent wages and daily overtime, better health care and secure pensions, better education for all our kids.'' One business leader who asked not to be named, however, said he doubts the reinvigorated labor movement will last long. ``I do think people turned out to vote against 226, and I don't know anybody who turned out to vote just for 226,'' the business representative said. ``But I don't think that necessarily translates to bigger voting in November or any other election.'' Another try promised Mark Bucher, one of three conservative Orange County businessmen who wrote the initiative after tussling with the California Teachers Association over school vouchers, said he will try to requalify the initiative. ``I think this is a victory, even in defeat, because (opponents) threw everything they had at us and we only lost by a couple of points,'' Bucher said. But Judith Barish, spokeswoman for the California Labor Federation, AFL-CIO, said any future propositions will be even easier to defeat the second time around. Did the defeat of Proposition 226 hurt the presidential chances of Wilson, who has clashed with labor over everything from salary increases and minimum-wage increases to the eight-hour workday? ``You better believe it,'' Rosengarten said. ``He was counting on this to really help give him a boost.'' But Walsh, Wilson's press secretary, said the defeat won't hurt Wilson politically. ``Here is a man that stood against the odds, against a $30 million onslaught with very little outside political support, and, quite frankly, we ran a campaign that came up a few points short,'' Walsh said. ``That's fairly remarkable for the massive amount of money that was spent against it.'' From meisenscher@igc.apc.org Fri Jun 5 17:11:07 1998 Fri, 5 Jun 1998 15:21:46 -0700 (PDT) Fri, 5 Jun 1998 15:14:31 -0700 (PDT) Date: Fri, 5 Jun 1998 15:14:31 -0700 (PDT) To: (Recipient list suppressed) From: Michael Eisenscher Subject: CA Voters 2 to 1 for 227; Backlash Possible If School Flout Prop 227 Published Wednesday, June 3, 1998, in the San Jose Mercury News State's voters speak strongly against teaching in 2 languages BY MICHAEL BAZELEY Mercury News Staff Writer Voters called for an end to bilingual education in public schools Tuesday, overwhelmingly supporting a measure that makes California the first state to require all students be educated in English. In a vote being watched across the country, Proposition 227 held a strong lead from the beginning. It passed in nearly every county with the exception of San Francisco and Alameda. ``The people of California supported us because they supported the idea of teaching children in English,'' said Ron Unz, the Palo Alto software developer who wrote and funded the initiative. ``I expect the overwhelming number of school districts will be implementing this and teaching their kids in English come this fall.'' Opponents blamed their loss on a ``huge misinformation campaign'' by Unz. ``He made some very negative statements about the Latino community, and about teachers and bilingual education that were not true,' said Holli Thier, spokeswoman for Citizens for an Educated America. ``Ron Unz painted a (negative) picture very early on, before there was even organized opposition, and we spent the rest of the time having to respond to that.'' Unz had predicted that the anti-bilingual sentiment would sweep across the country, but the immediate effect of Proposition 227's victory was not clear. The initiative is supposed to take effect 60 days after it passes. But opponents were expected to announce a legal challenge today, which Unz vowed to fight. ``Tonight does not signify the end of our campaign,'' said Renee Saucedo, director of the Northern California Coalition for Immigrant Rights. ``We are going to continue to organize parents and teachers to make sure this initiative is never implemented.'' At least two school districts -- including the San Mateo-Foster City School District -- have already said they would ask the state Board of Education for waivers from the initiative. And several districts have vowed to defy the measure's English-only mandate. Bilingual education has been used in California schools for more than 25 years. It was designed to help ease non-English-speaking children into regular classrooms by teaching them in both their native language and English. But the teaching method has come under increased attacks in recent years, partly because of a persistently high Latino dropout rate and a sense that many students are not learning English quickly enough. Unz, a 36-year-old millionaire businessman, repeatedly characterized bilingual education as a ``dismal failure.'' As they left the polls Tuesday, many voters appeared to agree. ``I don't know if they're not learning English in the schools, but it's sure not happening in the community,'' said software engineer Rich Edelman, 38, as he walked out of a San Jose polling place. ``There are a lot of people running around here who do not speak English. This will force them to learn English, and that's a good thing.'' Unz's initiative would place all students with limited English skills in a yearlong intensive English class and then move them into regular classrooms. Parents who still want their children in bilingual classes could apply for waivers in some circumstances. About 30 percent of the 1.4 million students not fluent in English are now in bilingual classes, where most instruction is in their native languages. The remaining students are taught primarily in English. Unz's campaign had just a handful of formal endorsements, including Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan and famed math teacher Jaime Escalante. By contrast, virtually every major education group opposed the measure, along with dozens of school boards, two dozen state and federal politicians, the chairman of the California Republican Party, President Clinton and all four candidates for governor. Unz was also outspent nearly 3-to-1 by the opposition, which pulled in more than $2 million in the final two months of the campaign. None of that seemed to matter much, though, when it came to public opinion. The notion of English-only classrooms appealed strongly to California voters, many of whom are frustrated with public schools and an ever-growing immigrant population. Like Proposition 63, the 1986 measure that made English the state's official language, Proposition 227 staked a strong early lead in public opinion polls that it never lost. The momentum toward English-only classrooms has been building for more than a decade. The state law mandating instruction in a student's native language expired in 1987, after a bill that would have extended it was vetoed by then-Gov. George Deukmejian. State education officials continued to require schools to offer bilingual education. But many districts -- faced with a shortage of qualified teachers and questions about the effectiveness of bilingual classes -- sought waivers from the regulations. ============================================== Published Thursday, June 4, 1998, in the San Jose Mercury News JOANNE JACOBS If schools flout Prop. 227, there will be a backlash BY JOANNE JACOBS THE law says: Teach non-English-speaking students in special English immersion classes. Proposition 227, which passed with a 61 percent majority, goes into effect in 60 days. School officials say: We can't comply with Proposition 227 when school starts in the fall, but we won't have to. It will be tied up in court for years. Or we'll get a waiver from the state board of education to continue bilingual education. It's a high-risk gamble. Wednesday, a coalition of civil rights groups filed a lawsuit in federal court in San Francisco. To get an injunction, they must persuade U.S. District Judge Charles Legge, a Reagan appointee, that their lawsuit is likely to win on the merits. It's not. Ron Unz wrote his ``English for the Children'' initiative to fit federal rulings, which say schools may use a variety of methods, including English immersion, to help students with limited English skills get an education comparable to other students. Almost certainly, Proposition 227 is constitutional. The judge might be persuaded that letting the law go into effect in 60 days would cause irreparable harm. But it's not a sure thing. He might want to know why school officials made no plans to implement English immersion in the seven months Proposition 227 was leading in the polls by 2-to-1 or more. Some think the state Board of Education could nullify 227, which is now part of the education code. According to state law, the board ``shall'' waive the education code on request, unless there's reason to believe such a waiver would not meet students' needs, says attorney Celia Ruiz. She's representing San Jose Unified and several other districts that plan to seek waivers at the board's July meeting. ``We think we have a good case,'' says San Jose Unified Superintendent Linda Murray, who observes that bilingual education is part of the district's consent decree in a federal desegregation case. If the waiver is denied, San Jose Unified probably would join a lawsuit. The district has no plans to implement 227 in September. The state board's legal counsel, Rae Belisle, doesn't believe the board has the authority to waive away the will of the voters. She reasons that the education board's waiver power comes from the Legislature, which can't change 227 without a two-thirds vote. So how could the Legislature give the state board power it doesn't possess? Of course, nobody knows how the state board will see the issue. The board came out for local control in April, when it threw out the bilingual education mandate. But it's shown no suicidal tendencies. Nullifying a very popular initiative doesn't seem likely. Ideally, California law would allow a range of choices, including high-quality bilingual education programs that show results. Proposition 227 isn't ideal, but it is the law. It's time to think about how to make it work. First, local school districts need clarification on what 227 means. The state board will issue guidelines that give districts maximum flexibility, Belisle predicts. For example, the initiative says instruction must be ``overwhelmingly'' in English. Unz says teachers could use another language for 20 to 30 percent of the day. The board should adopt Unz's definition, making it possible to offer extra help in students' native language or to teach a foreign language to a class that includes students who aren't fluent in English. Opponents of 227 claim it requires students to be mainstreamed after a year of special immersion classes, with no additional help in learning English or other subjects. State guidelines should take a sensible interpretation, letting schools mainstream students when they're ready, and provide whatever extra help is needed. The state board has jurisdiction over parental waivers for children under 10 with ``special needs.'' (Waiver rules are looser for children 10 and older, but most bilingual education occurs in elementary school.) The board should make it clear that ``special needs'' doesn't mean a child must be learning disabled, letting parents choose bilingual education if that's what they want. The Legislature also could help by passing a special appropriation so districts can buy English-language books, and train teachers to teach reading, math, science and social studies to students who aren't fluent in English. All California teachers are supposed to be trained in these techniques in the next few years; 227 makes this a priority. At the local level, administrators should have been surveying parents to estimate how many will request bilingual education; they may apply for a waiver after their children have spent 30 days in English immersion. Under the law, if 20 students in the same grade at the same school request bilingual education they have a right to a class at that school; if fewer than 20 get waivers, they may transfer to another school. Switching students after 30 days will be a major headache. It would be a lot easier if parents who plan to seek a waiver were encouraged to enroll their children at the same school or schools, which could be staffed with bilingual teachers. Bilingual magnet schools -- most of them following the popular ``dual immersion'' model -- should apply for charter status, so they're exempt from the education code. In covering this issue, I've been surprised that educators don't seem to know much about the alternatives to bilingual education used in Evergreen and Cupertino elementary districts. Both districts spent years developing English-language models. Both show excellent results. Educators must be open to learning from their experiences. The same teachers and administrators who bitterly opposed 227 will be the ones who will have make English immersion work. Many sincerely believe it can't work, a belief that could become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Educators will have to put their personal feelings aside for the sake of their students. It will be very difficult, but there is no alternative. Like Proposition 13, Proposition 227 is a voters' revolt against the elites, reflecting enormous frustration with the status quo. If schools are perceived to be flouting the will of the voters, the backlash will be disastrous. Joanne Jacobs is a member of the Mercury News editorial board. Her column appears on Mondays and Thursdays. You may reach her at 750 Ridder Park Dr., San Jose, CA 95190, by fax at 408-271-3792, or e-mail to JJacobs@sjmercury.com . ================================ From meisenscher@igc.apc.org Fri Jun 5 17:11:28 1998 Fri, 5 Jun 1998 15:22:47 -0700 (PDT) Fri, 5 Jun 1998 15:15:12 -0700 (PDT) Date: Fri, 5 Jun 1998 15:15:12 -0700 (PDT) To: (Recipient list suppressed) From: Michael Eisenscher Subject: Defeat of 226 Energizes Labor; Statistical Portrait of CA Electorate Thursday, June 4, 1998 CALIFORNIA ELECTIONS, PROPOSITION 226 Defeat of Measure Energizes Labor Union leaders vow to crush similar efforts elsewhere to restrict use of dues. Initiative's backers say issue is far from dead. By ERIC BAILEY, ROBERT SHOGAN, LA Times Staff Writers If politics is akin to nature, the Proposition 226 campaign was like trying to exterminate a hornet's nest with a good, swift kick. The ballot measure offered by conservatives to weaken organized labor's campaign clout in California--by requiring annual permission for unions to use members' dues for political purposes--backfired on election day. Despite better than 2-to-1 support early in the campaign, the initiative experienced a convincing defeat under a swarm of political money and manpower from the unions it had sought to tame. And the swarm may not be going away. Leaders of organized labor said Wednesday that they will seek to use momentum from the unprecedented $23-million effort against the initiative--a proposition that has helped spark a flurry of similar measures in other states--to carry forth into California's gubernatorial contest in November. Democrats, meanwhile, were chortling that the measure's loss was a blow to the presidential aspirations of Gov. Pete Wilson, who made the fight for Proposition 226 a personal crusade. Defeat of the nationally publicized measure, which voters rejected by a margin of 53.5% to 46.5%, also could chill similar initiative efforts being waged in other states. "Republicans back in Washington figured this was their wedge issue for 1998," said Gale Kaufman, the Sacramento political consultant who led the fight against Proposition 226. "Now they've got to be sitting back scratching their heads and saying, 'Where do we go now?' " Boosters of the measure, who say they were outspent at least 10 to 1 by the unions, remained outwardly undeterred Wednesday, boldly predicting that the issue will resurface. "If I have anything to do with it, it's going to happen again in June 2000," said Mark Bucher, who crafted the measure, which backers described as seeking "paycheck protection." Wilson also said the movement would not wither, declaring to a Republican breakfast gathering Wednesday, "I have bad news for the unions--this is going to go on. This was Round 1." 'A Modern Political Miracle' In Washington on Wednesday, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney called the outcome "a modern political miracle" that sent "a clear message about the prospects" of similar efforts in other states. "This vote shows that the nationally coordinated effort by Newt Gingrich, [anti-union activist] Grover Norquist and Pete Wilson to take working families out of the political process is a clear loser." Sweeney said labor unions have "gained new strength and momentum for a pro-working family agenda heading into the fall elections." He said thousands of new union activists emerged during the campaign against Proposition 226. "These were people who had never been involved in a political campaign," Sweeney said. "There is every indication that they're going to be here for the longer haul." He also predicted that the vote on Proposition 226 could deter proponents from resurrecting the initiative. "If they bring this again or in other states, they're going to get the same response," Sweeney said. "The education that we did on this one is going to be helpful in future efforts. They should understand that this was won by the workers in California." Norquist, whose Washington-based Americans for Tax Reform is spearheading the national drive to restrict the political use of union dues, said efforts will be redoubled in states with looming ballot measures, such as Nevada, Oregon and Colorado. "It won't discourage our team," he said. "We had a conference call this morning with legislative leaders in 30 states, and everybody was gung-ho and ready to go." But others on his side of the fence thought that Norquist himself was too big a target in the debate. He and another backer of Proposition 226, Indiana insurance executive J. Patrick Rooney, were attacked by the measure's foes in TV commercials for their conservative political beliefs. Rooney, for example, is a longtime champion of school vouchers. "A lot of Republicans are scratching their heads and trying to find people who ran that thing from a 50-point lead to defeat," said Mike Murphy, a veteran Republican political consultant. "There is a lesson to be learned from this--that we needed this to be a referendum on union democracy, not on our movement activists." Susan Pinkus, director of the Times Poll, said there is evidence that the initiative stirred union members to vote. The Times exit poll found that 35% of all voters in Tuesday's election said they came from a union household, compared to 29% in the June 1994 election. And it was those additional union members who provided the margin for the proposition's defeat. "I think these union members were energized by their leaders," Pinkus said. The leaders "spent millions and millions of dollars to get out the vote and to get the public to vote no. It worked." Among voters who said they came from "union households," 64% said they voted no on the proposition. Democrats, women and minorities were more likely to vote against Proposition 226, according to results from the Times exit poll. According to the poll, 72% of Democrats said they voted no on the measure. Among Republicans, the numbers were reversed: 72% supported it. Whites were the only ethnic group likely to support the initiative, with more than half of such voters casting ballots for it. The proposition was especially unpopular among Latinos at the polls, a full 75% of whom voted against it. Mark Mellman, a Democratic pollster who did opinion surveys for the forces opposing the initiative, said the defeat would kill the national movement backing the issue. "I think this idea is dead; this vote drove a stake through its heart," he said. "After Pete Wilson's experience here, I can't imagine there is another politician in the country who would want to step out in front on this issue. And I don't think there are going to be many more fund-raisers who are going to be willing to throw money down this rat hole." Union participation in politics has been on the upswing in recent years. In 1996, a huge push by organized labor helped Democrats nearly recapture the House of Representatives. "I think this really shows a continued resurgence of the labor community," said John Perez, executive director of the United Food and Commercial Workers' Western branch. "It absolutely emboldened us, and it absolutely backfired on the Republicans." Art Pulaski, California Labor Federation executive secretary, said the labor movement "emerged from this campaign much stronger than we began. From this, we will continue to build the momentum of all of these workers in fighting for decent wages, winning back daily overtime, and working for better health care." "With this new army we're going to move to November and beyond. We'll support candidates who support working family issues." But several political consultants said they doubted that enthusiasm would last, predicting that unions would play the same role in November as they traditionally do. "226 will be a long-forgotten memory by the end of this month," said Ken Khachigian, a GOP consultant. "The teachers and other unions will be involved in November, but it will be the usual suspects. I don't see that this has really motivated anything different." Wilson Called Hero of 'This Dunkirk' Rob Stutzman, a spokesman for Republican gubernatorial nominee Dan Lungren, played down the possibility that unions will enjoy any more of a role in November than they normally do. Proposition 226 drew a historic response, he said, because unions were faced with a do-or-die situation. "It was self-preservation," Stutzman said. "You put the gun to someone's head, they'll turn out. November will be a completely different dynamic." As for Wilson, Democratic predictions of his presidential prospects' demise because of the measure's defeat may be unfounded. Republicans say that all the Proposition 226 debacle may do is strengthen Wilson's ratings with conservatives, who can appreciate his efforts to fight for the cause. "If anybody is a hero of this Dunkirk, it's Wilson," said GOP consultant Murphy. Yet if Wilson's presidential ambitions were not damaged by Proposition 226's defeat, part of the reason is that they were not too great to begin with, he added. "I think his chances make such a small target that they are hard to hit in an hurry," Murphy said. Times staff writer Davan Maharaj contributed to this story. Copyright Los Angeles Times ================================== Thursday, June 4, 1998 Profile of the Electorate The electorate that produced Tuesday's results was more Democratic than usual and reflected a somewhat higher turnout of union members and supporters than four years ago. Otherwise, the turnout fit California's classic profile, with voters tending to be older, wealthier and better educated. Governor % of all voters SEX Checchi Davis Harman Lungren 52% Male 12% 34% 10% 37% 48% Female 14% 33% 15% 33% AGE 8% 18 to 29 19% 28% 14% 27% 38% 30 to 49 13% 33% 14% 33% 30% 50 to 64 11% 34% 13% 36% 24% 65 or older 11% 39% 7% 40% RACE/ETHNICITY 69% White 9% 30% 11% 43% 14% Black 17% 53% 17% 9% 12% Latino 30% 36% 11% 17% 3% Asian 14% 36% 10% 39% EDUCATION 20% High school graduate or less 20% 35% 9% 31% 27% Some college 11% 32% 11% 39% 28% College graduate 10% 33% 12% 38% 25% Postgraduate study 9% 38% 17% 30% PARTY REGISTRATION 48% Democrats 16% 52% 18% 9% 6% Independents 13% 42% 15% 21% 40% Republicans 7% 13% 5% 70% SEX AND PARTY 25% Democratic men 14% 56% 15% 11% 26% Democratic women 18% 49% 20% 9% 25% Republican men 9% 12% 3% 70% 19% Republican women 6% 10% 6% 74% POLITICAL IDEOLOGY 20% Liberal 14% 49% 21% 7% 43% Moderate 13% 44% 15% 23% 37% Conservative 10% 15% 5% 65% PARTY AND IDEOLOGY 13% Liberal Democrat 14% 53% 23% 4% 29% Other Democrat 17% 52% 15% 12% 12% Other Republican 11% 21% 10% 53% 24% Conservative Republican 6% 6% 2% 81% ANNUAL FAMILY INCOME 10% Less than $20,000 23% 36% 9% 24% 20% $20,000 to $39,999 15% 37% 12% 32% 22% $40,000 to $59,999 12% 34% 12% 35% 16% $60,000 to $74,999 11% 33% 11% 38% 32% $75,000 or more 9% 33% 15% 37% RELIGION 50% Non-Catholic Christian 11% 29% 11% 44% 24% Roman Catholic 18% 38% 10% 30% 5% Jewish 11% 46% 19% 19% UNION MEMBERSHIP 23% Union member 13% 48% 11% 23% 12% Union member in household 10% 36% 13% 35% 65% Non-union household 13% 29% 13% 39% REGION 25% Los Angeles County 18% 36% 11% 30% 32% Rest of Southern California 13% 29% 11% 43% 14% Bay Area 12% 44% 17% 17% 29% Rest of Northern California 10% 37% 12% 35% U.S. Senator % of all voters SEX Boxer Fong Issa 52% Male 39% 26% 20% 48% Female 48% 19% 18% AGE 8% 18 to 29 48% 17% 15% 38% 30 to 49 44% 21% 19% 30% 50 to 64 44% 21% 20% 24% 65 or older 41% 27% 19% RACE/ETHNICITY 69% White 35% 26% 24% 14% Black 78% 8% 3% 12% Latino 57% 11% 11% 3% Asian 34% 50% 9% EDUCATION 20% High school graduate or less 47% 19% 15% 27% Some college 40% 21% 21% 28% College graduate 41% 24% 19% 25% Postgraduate study 48% 25% 18% PARTY REGISTRATION 48% Democrats 73% 10% 5% 6% Independents 51% 22% 13% 40% Republicans 10% 39% 36% SEX AND PARTY 25% Democratic men 71% 12% 5% 26% Democratic women 71% 9% 6% 25% Republican men 7% 43% 37% 19% Republican women 11% 36% 37% POLITICAL IDEOLOGY 20% Liberal 78% 8% 3% 43% Moderate 52% 20% 12% 37% Conservative 15% 32% 36% PARTY AND IDEOLOGY 13% Liberal Democrat 83% 5% 2% 29% Other Democrat 66% 13% 7% 12% Other Republican 19% 40% 23% 24% Conservative Republican 3% 39% 45% ANNUAL FAMILY INCOME 10% Less than $20,000 50% 16% 14% 20% $20,000 to $39,999 47% 21% 16% 22% $40,000 to $59,999 45% 18% 20% 16% $60,000 to $74,999 40% 23% 21% 32% $75,000 or more 42% 27% 19% RELIGION 50% Non-Catholic Christian 35% 26% 24% 24% Roman Catholic 47% 21% 16% 5% Jewish 69% 12% 9% UNION MEMBERSHIP 23% Union member 56% 16% 12% 12% Union member in household 43% 24% 17% 65% Non-union household 39% 24% 22% REGION 25% Los Angeles County 51% 18% 16% 32% Rest of Southern California 37% 22% 26% 14% Bay Area 59% 20% 7% 29% Rest of Northern California 39% 26% 18% Ballot Propositions % of all voters 226 227 voters SEX Yes No Yes No 52% Male 50% 50% 64% 36% 48% Female 45% 55% 57% 43% AGE 8% 18 to 29 40% 60% 50% 50% 38% 30 to 49 45% 55% 59% 41% 30% 50 to 64 49% 51% 61% 39% 24% 65 or older 55% 45% 66% 34% RACE/ETHNICITY 69% White 55% 45% 67% 33% 14% Black 31% 69% 48% 52% 12% Latino 25% 75% 37% 63% 3% Asian 48% 52% 57% 43% EDUCATION 20% High school graduate or less 39% 61% 56% 44% 27% Some college 47% 53% 65% 35% 28% College graduate 53% 47% 63% 37% 25% Postgraduate study 50% 50% 57% 43% PARTY REGISTRATION 48% Democrats 28% 72% 47% 53% 6% Independents 45% 55% 59% 41% 40% Republicans 72% 28% 77% 23% SEX AND PARTY 25% Democratic men 28% 72% 48% 52% 26% Democratic women 27% 73% 48% 52% 25% Republican men 74% 26% 81% 19% 19% Republican women 71% 29% 72% 28% POLITICAL IDEOLOGY 20% Liberal 23% 77% 36% 64% 43% Moderate 40% 60% 59% 41% 37% Conservative 71% 29% 77% 28% PARTY AND IDEOLOGY 13% Liberal Democrat 19% 81% 35% 65% 29% Other Democrat 32% 68% 55% 45% 12% Other Republican 59% 41% 68% 32% 24% Conservative Republican 80% 20% 82% 18% ANNUAL FAMILY INCOME 10% Less than $20,000 41% 59% 49% 51% 20% $20,000 to $39,999 42% 58% 56% 44% 22% $40,000 to $59,999 48% 52% 61% 39% 16% $60,000 to $74,999 50% 50% 65% 35% 32% $75,000 or more 51% 49% 64% 36% RELIGION 50% Non-Catholic Christian 56% 44% 66% 34% 24% Roman Catholic 41% 59% 54% 46% 5% Jewish 37% 63% 55% 45% UNION MEMBERSHIP 23% Union member 33% 67% 51% 49% 12% Union member in household 41% 59% 57% 43% 65% Non-union household 55% 45% 65% 35% REGION 25% Los Angeles County 47% 53% 57% 43% 32% Rest of Southern California 53% 47% 68% 32% 14% Bay Area 37% 63% 49% 51% 29% Rest of Northern California 48% 52% 59% 41% Note: Numbers may not add up to 100% where some voter groups or candidates are not shown. Source: Los Angeles Times / CNN exit poll conducted Tuesday How the Poll Was Conducted The Times Poll/CNN interviewed 5,143 voters as they left 100 polling places across California during voting hours. Precincts were chosen based on the pattern of turnout in past statewide elections. The survey was by confidential questionnaire. The margin of sampling error for percentages based on the entire sample is plus or minus 2 percentage points; for some subgroups the error margin may be somewhat higher. Because the survey does not include absentee voters or those who declined to participate when approached, actual returns and demographic estimates by the interviewers were used to adjust the sample slightly. Interviews at the precinct level were conducted by Davis Research of Calabasas. Times Poll results are also available at http://www.latimes.com/HOME/NEWS/POLLS or http://www.allpolitics.com. Copyright Los Angeles Times From christopher.rhomberg@yale.edu Mon Jun 8 12:37:06 1998 Date: Mon, 08 Jun 1998 14:37:10 -0400 To: LABOR-RAP@csf.colorado.edu From: Christopher Rhomberg Subject: UC System-Wide Fall '98 Strike Authorized news from the graduate student employees at the University of California. >Date: Thu, 4 Jun 1998 22:28:59 -0700 (PDT) >From: rochoa@uclink4.berkeley.edu (Jennifer Colamonico) >Subject: UC System-Wide Fall '98 Strike Authorized > >For immediate release > >Academic Student Employees Turn out in Massive Numbers to Authorize >System-wide Strike at UC > >June 4, 1998 -- In balloting that ended Wednesday, members of academic >student employee unions throughout the University of California voted by an >87% landslide to authorize a system-wide strike next fall if the >administration does not recognize the unions and agree to begin collective >bargaining with teaching assistants, readers and tutors. > >More than twice as many academic student employees (ASEs) took part in the >balloting as in any previous strike authorization. Some 4,221 members of >academic student employee unions affiliated with the United Auto Workers >(UAW) took part in the vote. There are a total of about 7,500 academic >student employees on the seven UC campuses where balloting took place. > >Votes were held at the Berkeley, Santa Cruz, Santa Barbara, Los Angeles, >Riverside, Irvine and San Diego campuses of the UC. AGSE/UAW members at UC >Davis expect to hold a strike authorization vote in the coming months. > >Union activists emphasized the strength demonstrated by the large strike >vote. "This strike will be much larger and significantly more disruptive >than any action we have taken before," said Ted Levine, of the Coalition of >Academic Student Employees (CASE/UAW - Riverside). "But our demand is the >same: recognition of our collective bargaining rights." > >The vote authorizes the leadership of each campus union to call a strike >next fall, if the university administration does not recognize the >unions, but it does not make a strike inevitable. > >"We have exercised great restraint," said Ricardo Ochoa, President of the >Association of Graduate Student Employees (AGSE/UAW - Berkeley). "We have >tried to meet with campus chancellors; over 5000 of our members sent >letters to state and federal legislatures; we have employed short rolling >strikes in order to avoid a serious disruption of undergraduate education. >But the university has so far refused to budge." > >The California Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) has verified that a >majority of the 9,000 ASEs on all UC campuses have selected UAW-affiliated >unions to represent them in collective bargaining. And PERB has said that >the University administration may grant recognition to the unions at any >time. The UC's denial of collective bargaining rights led to 25 days of >strikes on 5 UC campuses during the 1996-97 school year. The University >administration has engaged in 14 years of litigation at PERB, costing >millions of taxpayer dollars. > >The ASE unions have been winning on the legal front, despite the UC's >extravagant use of lawyers and public money. The PERB board, the final >level of appeal, on April 24 upheld an earlier ruling that teaching >associates, readers and tutors at UC San Diego are employees and are >entitled to collective bargaining rights under the Higher Education >Employer-Employee Relations Act (HEERA). > >As a result, PERB ordered an election to take place June 3 and 4 at UC San >Diego to determine whether the Association of Student Employees (ASE/UAW - >San Diego) will be certified as the workers' collective bargaining agent. > >"The PERB decision was great news," said Anthony Navarette, spokesperson >for ASE/UAW - San Diego. "But we have never relied entirely on the legal >system to guarantee our rights. We have always concentrated on winning >recognition by building on the power of our membership with protests, >letter-writing campaigns, and strikes." > >The university administration vindicated the unions' strategy of not >relying on judicial avenues alone when it announced in a legal filing last >month that it would refuse to abide by the legally-mandated election if >ASE/UAW is certified. The UC San Diego administration said that even if >academic student employees voted in favor of representation by ASE/UAW, it >would refuse to bargain collectively, as it would be required to do under >HEERA. > >"The University administration has announced that they will break the law >in order to keep academic student employees from exercising our rights," >said David Kamper, an activist with the Student Association of Graduate >Employees (SAGE/UAW - Los Angeles). "But, the University of California >works because we do. If the administration continues to refuse to >recognize us, we'll have to show them what that means." From culturex@vcn.bc.ca Wed Jun 10 12:22:35 1998 Wed, 10 Jun 1998 11:21:17 -0700 (PDT) Date: Wed, 10 Jun 1998 11:21:15 -0700 (PDT) From: Franklin Wayne Poley Subject: More than one way to skin a cat...or set up a Gulag! ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Wed, 10 Jun 1998 10:49:14 -0700 (PDT) From: Franklin Wayne Poley To: John Drury Subject: Second Reply to John Drury. On Mon, 8 Jun 1998, John Drury wrote: > Against this, critics such as our local campaign group (the activities of which > I have detailed in a previous mailing to this list) argued: > 1, The ten pounds is so pathetic that it made no difference - this was > still work-for-dole. Moreover, many of the victims had to travel to work and > lost most of the ten pounds through the expenses they incurred. > 2, Some of the work would, indeed, receive a wage in other circumstances, > and certain organizations seemed to be saving money by employing > dole-slaves to tidy their premises etc. rather than paying someone to do it. In > Edinburgh, claimants on 'Project Work' were working in rest homes and > hospitals! Moreover we also argued, that even if the work was not normally > one that people would receive a wage for, forced labour set bad precedent > for employment practice and was the slippery slope to job substitution. > I break up long essays like this because short postings are more likely to be read and long periods of concentrating on this screen are stressful, too. I think that phrase has to be repeated over and over in all postings on all lists concerning all forms of forced work-for-welfare. It is FORCED labour. And it is illegal (in international law) and immoral. It can also be fairly called proto-fascist or an inroad into reinstitutionalizing slavery. Th rhetoric, well used can help the cause. There are two major forms of work-for-welfare that I am aware of. Does anyone else know of any others? (1) People forced into "work gangs". This is usually called workfare. (2) People forced into what is called welfare-to-work. This forces people into existing jobs in the work world which may be set up as minimum wage, make-work projects masquerading as free-enterprise, free-market jobs. I think this is Clinton's clever plan via his welfare-to-work. Give the pogy to the big businesses who will set up make-work projects, ie workfare, under another name! Isn't capitalism grand? FWP. From aikya@ix.netcom.com Thu Jun 11 12:19:08 1998 by dfw-ix14.ix.netcom.com (8.8.4/8.8.4) id rma015661; Thu Jun 11 13:18:46 1998 From: "Ms. Aikya Param" To: "'Labor Research and Action Project'" Subject: Women and Money Publication Date: Thu, 11 Jun 1998 10:56:36 -0700 Dear friends at Labor-RAP, This is a sad message. Women and Money has stopped publication. The publication lost money every month but one and it is not well funded enough to continue further. I also have been too ill to work on it for the last 6 weeks. I am proud that Women and Money supported the "I am big labor" campaign to raise money for Detroit newspaper strikers; that it encouraged reader activism for all those under legal seige because of a legal picket to support Liverpool dock workers in the Neptune Jade incident that encouraged reader support of Professor Kate Bronfenbrenner (recently victorious) that it promotee reader opposition to sweatshop working conditions and child labor in the U.S. and elsewhere. From our first issue we always had a labor union section. It included human interest articles like "Mothers, Daughters: Both Union Members" and essays like Maia Penfold's "Those SO Bad Old Days," analysis like "Teamsters, Labor and PATCO: Hard-Earned Lessons, Hard Won Gains" by ProfessorArt Shostak (Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA), reports from research like Professor Robert S.J. Ross's (Clark University, Worcester MA) "Sweatshops in the U.S.A." I will be submitting some of our past articles elsewhere. We have one reprint (rather thoroughly rewritten) in Whole Earth Quarterly's current issue. Another will appear in a publication about unions and child care published by the Institute for Industrial Relations at the University of California, Berkely. I will also be doing some research, writing and submitting elsewhere. The network of friends I have made over the last year has been a delight. Some of you helped in article development, fact checking, and heartfelt support. Thank you so much. Aikya Param, Publisher, Women and Money Economic Justice and Empowerment Report From culturex@vcn.bc.ca Fri Jun 12 11:13:07 1998 Fri, 12 Jun 1998 10:11:01 -0700 (PDT) Date: Fri, 12 Jun 1998 10:10:59 -0700 (PDT) From: Franklin Wayne Poley Subject: Proto-Fascism in Ontario: From Workfare to Slavery. (fwd) ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, 12 Jun 1998 10:03:13 -0700 (PDT) From: Franklin Wayne Poley To: Workfare-Discuss@icomm.ca Subject: Proto-Fascism in Ontario: From Workfare to Slavery. With Diane's permission I am posting this correspondence to Workfare-Discuss. I have knowingly used some very harsh and stark terminology. From the standpoint of rhetoric it can be used to benefit if the application is done well. I have seen the expression "forced labour" repeatedly on other lists and it goes over well. I have also seen "slavery" used elsewhere but I think the public needs more education as to what slavery really means before they will be ready to accept this as a valid statement and not overblown rhetoric. Much more important than the rhetoric though is the analysis. When these words or concepts are defined well and then put into our thinking and analyzing do we come to these conclusions? It seems to me the Ontario/Harris workfare situation combined with the recently passed anti-unionization bill makes Ontario workfare a SLAVE LABOUR situation. It is as stark as this: IF YOU DON'T DO EXACTLY AS WE TELL YOU THEN YOU DON'T EAT (unless private charities pick up the slack). Now we know the trends-that welfare payments for workfare people or otherwise have declined against cost of living in recent decades to such an extent that there is an epidemic of malnourishment in this country (covered up by a psychopathology epidemic of media lies). The malnourishment epidemic was highlighted by Toronto area mayors Prue, Nunziata and others a few years ago when they got tv coverage for their "walk a week in my shoes" campaign. After just one week of a typical welfare/workfare diet they showed marked signs of malnourishment. I had these confirmed in a letter from Mayor Prue which I quoted earlier on this list. Now what about the additional caloric requirements for the manual labour which is typically required in workfare? Here we have a situation of forced labour with wages being too low even to sustain good health by an adequate diet and legislation (the anti-unionization bill) which forbids unionizing to protest that! So what is your definition of slavery and when does Ontario form its first Association of Slaves (under the Society Act)? FWP. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Thu, 11 Jun 1998 19:51:54 -0700 (PDT) From: Franklin Wayne Poley To: DIANE.SICOTTE@ASU.Edu Subject: Re: Second Reply to John Drury. (fwd) Hello Diane: These are very interesting observations and with your permission I would like to post them to Workfare-Discuss. The same correlation has started happening in Canada. Sometimes people are incredulous about my warnings re slavery, gulags and forced labor gangs of civilians bereft of ALL human rights, people who have committed no crime even. But I see the trend line. The entire system is moving in that direction. So I'd rather give the warning and be wrong than have it all come to pass. On Thu, 11 Jun 1998 DIANE.SICOTTE@ASU.Edu wrote: > I can't say much about the system in the UK, as I know next to nothing about > the similarities of Welfare "Reform" there to our system. However, I think > it's very interesting that the rise of workfare concurs with the rise in > prison labor. It's especially interesting now that the U.S. incarcerates > such a high percentage of its population (maybe even more now than any > country). If I were a Machievellian Investor from Wall Street I might very well invest in the futures market for slave labor-with the whole program "made in USA". I would advise the President to bring it in in an articulated, step-by-step manner while keeping public awareness as low as possible to block awareness and counter-action. By "articulated" I mean that each state or urban jurisdiction would start implementing a part and if one is held back, then others will go "forward" (which is really backward into slavery). As such a Machievellian Investor I would anticipate desensitization of the public consciousness, step-by-step (successive approximations) and as close to sub-threshold as possible, in keeping with my well worn methods of subliminal advertising. > Both workfare and prison labor are schemes whereby large corporations (in > partnership with federal and state governments) can force huge numbers of > unskilled people to perform cheap labor, and get out of minimum wage and > health and safety regulations. Our constitution provides an exception to the > 13th Amendment (which outlawed slavery), which says it is OK for convicts to > perform forced, unpaid labor. No such exemption exists for those on the > public dole (mostly the mothers of small children), and there are legal > battles going on now over how many hours recipients can work (sometimes the > amount of the welfare check divided by # of hours means that recipients are > working for less than mimimum wage). Also, health and safety battles (in New > York City, recipients were put to work picking up garbage by busy roadsides > without safety vests, gloves, or any other type of protective clothing). See > the Archives of this list serve to see how totally disabled recipients are > being forced to work. Yes and where it all leads is toward desensitization of the public conscience so that I can even list my Gulags Inc. on the NYSE. (Under a more clever name of course) with those deemed "not fit" allowed to "disappear" and perish. This is happening now though it is rare that poor people perish on the streets of Canada for lack of amenities-but it does happen during cold spells and it happens step-by-step through a slow form of genocide every day using poor nutrition, poor health care etc. We have proved that there is an epidemic of malnourishment in Canada now effecting millions with a massive media cover-up. About 60% of Canada's daily newspapers in Canada are owned by just one of the billionaire families so you can start to see how the cover-up happens. > If one accepts the premise that there are not enough jobs available that pay > a living wage to people without a college degree, three conclusions about > U.S. Welfare "Reform" are possible: > > 1. The people who made these absurd policies are in denial and/or > ignorant about the number of jobs available, and the ability of women to > support themselves and their children on minimum wage. > > 2. The large corporations who benefit twice from workfare requirements (once > when they get cheap workers, and once when the U.S. taxpayer pays for the > medical benefits and food stamps that allow these employees to survive) are > calling the political shots. Lower corporate taxes, more cheap workers. > > 3. Our politicians have decided (with the complicity of the public) that poor > people are expendable, and we no longer want to pay to feed them or house > them. They will be forced off the dole, to "sink or swim". The increases in > homelessness, child illnesses and deaths, prostitution and drug selling, > violent crime and abuse that result are not important. > > The one thing that is clear is that this is NOT a good faith effort to put > people to work. Training is de-emphasized; getting any job quickly is pushed. > No childcare is provided, nor any transportation. > > The velvet glove is coming off, probably for good. > I have proposed an alternative which is the diverting of millions to pre-planned cities in the far north of Canada. Canada-USA increase by almost 3,000,000/year, mostly to cities. The entire standard of living for people has to be factored in for this to really work. Even minimum wage can provide a decent standard of living if the entire community is designed acordingly. Sincerely-FWP. See http://www.vcn.bc.ca/fc and http://users.uniserve.com/~culturex. > ---------- Forwarded message ---------- > Date: Thu, 11 Jun 1998 10:49:27 -0700 > From: Franklin Wayne Poley > Reply-To: welfare reform research > To: WELFAREM-L@AMERICAN.EDU > Subject: Second Reply to John Drury. (fwd) > > Dear Welfare Reform Research: Do you think I am correct on this? That > welfare-to-work will become, more and more, just a clever repackaging of > workfare, especially as workfare becomes highly unpopular? In other words > it will just be a matter of having companies issue the workfare cheques > for the same forced labor program instead of government offices? > FWP. > > ---------- Forwarded message ---------- > Date: Wed, 10 Jun 1998 10:49:14 -0700 (PDT) > From: Franklin Wayne Poley > To: John Drury > Cc: workfare-discuss@icomm.ca > Subject: Second Reply to John Drury. > > On Mon, 8 Jun 1998, John Drury wrote: > > > Against this, critics such as our local campaign group (the activities of which > > I have detailed in a previous mailing to this list) argued: > > 1, The ten pounds is so pathetic that it made no difference - this was > > still work-for-dole. Moreover, many of the victims had to travel to work and > > lost most of the ten pounds through the expenses they incurred. > > 2, Some of the work would, indeed, receive a wage in other circumstances, > > and certain organizations seemed to be saving money by employing > > dole-slaves to tidy their premises etc. rather than paying someone to do it. In > > Edinburgh, claimants on 'Project Work' were working in rest homes and > > hospitals! Moreover we also argued, that even if the work was not normally > > one that people would receive a wage for, forced labour set bad precedent > > for employment practice and was the slippery slope to job substitution. > > > I break up long essays like this because short postings are more likely > to be read and long periods of concentrating on this screen are > stressful, too. > I think that phrase has to be repeated over and over in all postings > on all lists concerning all forms of forced work-for-welfare. It is > FORCED labour. And it is illegal (in international law) and immoral. It > can also be fairly called proto-fascist or an inroad into > reinstitutionalizing slavery. Th rhetoric, well used can help the cause. > There are two major forms of work-for-welfare that I am aware of. Does > anyone else know of any others? > (1) People forced into "work gangs". This is usually called workfare. > (2) People forced into what is called welfare-to-work. This forces people > into existing jobs in the work world which may be set up as minimum wage, > make-work projects masquerading as free-enterprise, free-market jobs. > I think this is Clinton's clever plan via his welfare-to-work. Give the > pogy to the big businesses who will set up make-work projects, ie > workfare, under another name! Isn't capitalism grand? > FWP. From meisenscher@igc.apc.org Fri Jun 12 12:53:00 1998 Fri, 12 Jun 1998 11:40:23 -0700 (PDT) Date: Fri, 12 Jun 1998 11:40:23 -0700 (PDT) To: Labor-Rap@csf.colorado.edu, Labor Research and Action Project From: Michael Eisenscher Subject: Re: Women and Money Publication Aikya, This is sad news. You put your heart, soul, money, and much time into this endeavor. I think it was throughout worth every bit of that investment, even though in the end you had to give it up. Perhaps it will lay a foundation or set an example for something that can follow later, building on this experience. You have every right to feel proud of the what you were able to do with so little support and so few resources. Keep up the good fight. In solidarity, Michael From culturex@vcn.bc.ca Sun Jun 14 15:16:30 1998 Sun, 14 Jun 1998 14:16:02 -0700 (PDT) Date: Sun, 14 Jun 1998 14:16:01 -0700 (PDT) From: Franklin Wayne Poley Subject: Workfare as Literal Slavery, and a Debate with the Senate. (fwd) ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sun, 14 Jun 1998 14:06:30 -0700 (PDT) From: Franklin Wayne Poley To: Workfare-Discuss@icomm.ca nunzij@parl.gc.ca, trembs@parl.gc.ca, mctead@parl.gc.ca, thompm@parl.gc.ca, waynee@parl.gc.ca, national@cbc.ca Subject: Workfare as Literal Slavery, and a Debate with the Senate. On Sat, 13 Jun 1998, Bill Bartlett wrote: > WesBurt@aol.com wrote: > > >Perhaps we should re-consider if Greece and Rome were slave societies: Re: > >Ontario's FutureWorld: Societies of Slaves? Or, did the ruling class simply > >regard the people as their most valuable productive assets and act as if > >they owned the people as well as the capital plant, and invest adequately > >in both? > > I note that Franklin has now come to the conclusion that "slavery" is not > acceptable language to describe workfare, and that "forced labour" is more > appropriate. > > I agree with his reasoning, ie. that politically "forced labour" is a > charge that is easier to make stick. But further, slavery describes an > economic system under which humans are chattels. This is probably why the > public cannot accept slavery as the proper description of workfare. > > So yes, "slavery" is probably also somewhat too flattering. I take it that > is what you are driving at? If so, I agree. But please, you must try to be > a little more direct in making your point. Deft allusion is a style of > writing quite alien to us Australians. Or at least to me. As you have > noticed, I usually tend to entirely miss your point. > At some point this workfare-antiworkfare movement will have to come to grips with the definition of slavery though we are getting a bit ahead of things now. Again we have erroneous public streotypes to deal with. The vile conditions of the Hollywood movie slave were not likely the norm and there were I am sure many different laws applicable to the treatment of slaves. However, I think the common defining characteristic would be found in this statement, the Slavery Contract if you will: Do exactly as we tell you to do or we may discontinue your necessities of life by active or passive means. Passive means can be as deadly as active means. A slave turned looose in the Sahara or Sinai doesn't have much of a chance of survival. In Ontario a rebellious or uppity workfarer who tries to form a union can have the barest necessities of life (welfare) discontinued. If the private sector doesn't take up the slack in the social safety net, the likelihood of rebellious workfare slaves perishing is certain. With the middle class being squeezed by the unprecedented greed of the 30 or so billionaire clans who own the political system the prospect of a future genocide of the poor in Canada (and USA) is very real. In Canada, Senators are political appointees (not elected) who do little or no work for their $50 m./yr. cost and represent the blue bloods of the country. I challenge Senator Prud'homme therefore to compare the fair market value of the work done by senatorial welfare recipients with the fair market value of work done by poor welfare recipients. I also challenge him to justify his pay check by spending a week in a "Walk a week in my shoes" campaign as Mayors Prue, Nunziata and others did a few years ago and find out how well a welfare check keeps body and soul together. Then when he discovers that marked symptoms of malnourishment accompany just one week of welfare I want him to stand up on national tv and tell everyone how just it is that the workfare slaves of Ontario are denied even the right to form a union to bargain for enough of a pay check to meet Canada Food Guide requirements for adequate nutrition. Then I want him to tell the world by internet that the Canada Food Guide is not meant for the poor. "Let them eat cake". This man is ignorant and a coward. Otherwise prove me wrong Senator Prud'homme. YOU said you wanted the national debate on MP's Nystrom and Gallaway Petition to Abolish the Senate. Here it is, stupid coward that you are. The whole world is waiting for your reply on the world wide web. FWP. From culturex@vcn.bc.ca Wed Jun 17 12:48:32 1998 Wed, 17 Jun 1998 11:47:33 -0700 (PDT) Date: Wed, 17 Jun 1998 11:47:31 -0700 (PDT) From: Franklin Wayne Poley Subject: Re: [CTRL] Guiliani + Workfare Slavery = UNCONSTITUTIONAL (fwd) ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Wed, 17 Jun 1998 11:42:04 -0700 From: Franklin Wayne Poley To: CTRL@LISTSERV.AOL.COM Subject: Re: [CTRL] Guiliani + Workfare Slavery = UNCONSTITUTIONAL Caveat Lector! On Wed, 17 Jun 1998, Robert Tatman wrote: > Caveat Lector! > > ---Das GOAT wrote: > > > I agree with your interpretation here. The same groups that shout > the loudest > > about making welfare recipients (even disabled mothers) "earn" the > meagre > > pittance granted by the State are ALSO the ones who, if you notice, > scream > > bloody murder when it's proposed that "work-farers" get minimum wage > or have > > other BASIC worker's rights. > > Why do I hear the "clink!" of the cash register when these types > preach > > "morality"? > > > > Cheap labor from prisoners behind bars. Cheap labor from welfare > recipients. > > Cheap labor from undocumented immigrants. Cheap labor in the armed > services. > > And in the white-collar cult, cheap labor through mandatory but unpaid > > "internship" positions and "volunteerism." Now, just try asking > for a FAIR > > wage ... Do you see a pattern here? > > > > This is always the Oligarchy's mantra...which became actually > fashionable for the first time in this century during the Reagan-Bush > years, when greed emerged as the bottom line and efforts began to > repeal the last hundred years. > > BTW, you forgot cheap *part-time and temporary* labor with no > benefits. (My wife just went permanent after three years in a series > of temp jobs; I'm a consultant, making good money but without > benefits--a high-priced temp. This is something we are intimately > familiar with.) > > A few questions: If the economy is in such great shape, with such low > unemployment, why are so many people forced to stretch themselves to > the limit just to survive? Why is the Oligarchy trying to eliminate > personal bankruptcy as an option for the individual? Why are benefits > under attack at every turn? > > Bob The answer is that "We the people" to the oligarchs or plutocrats has a rather narrow meaning-It means "We the plutocrats". I can't PROVE a conspiracy against the US people and the Constitution in what Guiliani and others are doing but I have to suspect something. At least I am learning to suspect something. A few years ago I was at a human rights conference in the US and I told a lawyer from Congressman Dellum's office that we don't think in conspiratorial terms here in Canada. I'll never forget the reply. She didn't hesitate a minute-looked at me very sternly and said, You HAVE to think that way. FWP. DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL(Conspiracy Theory Research List) is a public list. There are various subjects discussed that may be objectionable to some, these are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory', itself, is used politically many ways by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought with many social and cultural consequences. 'Suspension of belief' in 'conventional' histories allow for the acceptance of many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds. That being said, CTRL gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. ========== ======================================================================== To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] LISTSERV@LISTSERV.AOL.COM To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] LISTSERV@LISTSERV.AOL.COM Om From christopher.rhomberg@yale.edu Thu Jun 18 10:21:59 1998 Date: Thu, 18 Jun 1998 12:22:08 -0400 To: LABOR-RAP@csf.colorado.edu From: Christopher Rhomberg Subject: ASA and Detroit Free Press Dear Labor-Rappers, I am a new subscriber to Labor-Rap, and I hope you will permit me this somewhat lengthy post to raise an issue here of concern especially but not only for sociologists. I invite readers to circulate this message to any other persons they think appropriate. Below is a copy of an email letter I posted on June 10 to the American Sociological Association, regarding the Mass Media Science and Engineering Fellows Program jointly sponsored by the ASA and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The program selects advanced graduate students for an AAAS-led training and orientation in Washington, D.C. followed by a summer internship in a major media organization. According to a story in the April 1998 issue of the ASA newsletter Footnotes, this year's graduate student fellow from sociology will do her field placement at the Detroit Free Press. Many of you are no doubt familiar with the long and bitter labor dispute at the Free Press, the Detroit News and their joint operating agency; I mention a few of the details in my letter [see below]. The newspaper workers' struggle is still going on, and I believe it is important for supporters to continue to show our solidarity with them. I was disappointed to see the ASA involved with an employer widely condemned for its unfair labor practices. Right now I have no personal knowledge of the circumstances of the placement. According to the description on the ASA web page, the AAAS has sponsored the media fellows program for over twenty years; 1998 is the second year of the ASA's participation, through its Spivack Program on Applied Social Research and Social Policy. The summer placement dates are set by AAAS, and while applicants do have input on preferred sites and opportunities, the "final decision is made by AAAS for the mentorship and experiences they provide, Fellows cannot find or choose their own placement." After discussing this informally with a few people, I sent the letter to inquire how the placement came about, and to ask several questions regarding ASA policies and principles, including what means are available for members to express their concern and affect decision-making on this matter. As of today, I have not received any reply from the ASA. So let me put these questions to the readers of this list, and ask what following steps, if any, we may collectively think are best. Thanks for your attention, Chris Rhomberg Dept. of Sociology Yale University Sources: ASA Footnotes, 26/4, April 1998, p. 4 http://www.asanet.org/Funding/massmed.html http://www.rust.net/~workers/news/strike810.html ********************************************************************* Felice J. Levine Executive Officer American Sociological Association Dear Ms. Levine, I am a member of the American Sociological Association, and I write to you on a matter that is of concern to me, and, I am sure, to many other sociologists. I noticed a story in the April 1998 issue of Footnotes on the graduate student media fellowship program jointly sponsored by the ASA and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The story reported that the ASA participates in the fellowship through its Spivack Program on Applied Social Research and Social Policy. This year, it was announced, the graduate student fellow will do her field placement at the Detroit Free Press. The Detroit Free Press, together with the Detroit News and their joint operating Detroit Newspaper Agency, has been involved for almost three years in an on-going and bitter labor dispute with six unions representing some 2,000 editorial, production and delivery workers. The employees initially went on strike in July 1995, but the newspapers refused to settle and continued to operate with replacements. In February 1997, the unions made unconditional offers to return to work, but since then the newspapers have locked out all but a few hundred of the strikers. In June 1997, Federal Administrative Law Judge Thomas Wilks found the Detroit newspapers guilty on ten charges of unfair labor practices, including bad faith bargaining and illegal threats to strikers, which had 'caused and prolonged' the 19-month strike. The newspaper workers have been supported in their struggle by U.S. Congressional Representatives John Conyers and David Bonior and former Representative Pat Schroeder, Detroit City Council President Mary Ann Mahaffey, former Detroit Mayor Coleman Young, Methodist Bishop Jesse De Witt, Episcopal Bishop R. Stewart Wood, and Catholic Auxiliary Bishop Thomas Gumbleton, among others. Last June, tens of thousands of union members and supporters from across the country rallied at a national AFL-CIO sponsored event in Detroit. As of yet there is still no settlement, and the now locked-out workers are continuing their advertising and circulation boycotts as they seek ways to get their jobs back and win justice in the three-year dispute. I was very disappointed to see the ASA involved with an organization widely condemned for its unfair and illegal violations of its workers' rights, and I am wondering how this particular placement came about. Did the ASA, or the persons involved in the program, know of the situation at the Free Press, and if so did that play a role in the placement?=20 Even if the decision was made without knowledge of the labor dispute, it does seem to me to raise a number of legitimate questions. For example, is it appropriate for the ASA to associate its featured Spivack Program on Social Research and Social Policy with an unfair employer, and does its association signal acceptance or approval of the Detroit newspapers' labor relations policies? Would the ASA be equally willing to assign an ASA Fellow to work for an organization recently found guilty of racial, sex or other discrimination, and that is continuing its discriminatory practices? Will the ASA Fellow be required to advise, assist or otherwise engage in activities in support of the unfair labor practices of the newspaper? If ASA members believe that their organization has implicitly endorsed and condoned illegal union busting, what means are available and appropriate to express our concern? What means are available to see that this does not become a pattern? Please respond as soon as possible to my questions on this matter. I appreciate your attention, and I look forward to your reply, sincerely, Chris Rhomberg Assistant Professor =20 Department of Sociology =20 Yale University 203-432-3346 New Haven, CT 06520-8265 FAX: 203-432-6976 From clawson@sadri.umass.edu Thu Jun 18 12:21:48 1998 Labor-Rap@csf.colorado.edu; Thu, 18 Jun 1998 14:21:42 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 18 Jun 1998 14:23:23 -0400 From: Dan Clawson Subject: ASA and union busting To: Labor Research and Action Project boundary="----=_NextPart_000_0020_01BD9AC4.A6507480" This is a multi-part message in MIME format. ------=_NextPart_000_0020_01BD9AC4.A6507480 charset="iso-8859-1" Chris Romberg's letter is exactly to the point. I can't imagine that = the ASA would place an ASA fellow to advise the South African government = of a decade ago, or to work for an employer known to engage in sexual = harassment and/or racial discrimination, an employer that admitted doing = so and was proud of it. Clearly the ASA has a long ways to go in learning about, and being = sensitive to, labor issues. This is a sad reflection of the current = situation in academia, the left, and sociology. We should take this as = an opportunity for education, but not just for education, also for a = change of policy. Dan Clawson ------=_NextPart_000_0020_01BD9AC4.A6507480 charset="iso-8859-1"
Chris Romberg's letter is exactly to = the=20 point.  I can't imagine that the ASA would place an ASA fellow to = advise=20 the South African government of a decade ago, or to work for an employer = known=20 to engage in sexual harassment and/or racial discrimination, an employer = that=20 admitted doing so and was proud of it.
 
Clearly the ASA has a long ways to = go in=20 learning about, and being sensitive to, labor issues.  This is a = sad=20 reflection of the current situation in academia, the left, and = sociology. =20 We should take this as an opportunity for education, but not just for = education,=20 also for a change of policy.
 
Dan Clawson
 
------=_NextPart_000_0020_01BD9AC4.A6507480-- From shostaka@dunx1.ocs.drexel.edu Fri Jun 19 08:44:36 1998 Fri, 19 Jun 1998 10:44:02 -0400 (EDT) Fri, 19 Jun 1998 10:35:13 -0400 (EDT) Date: Fri, 19 Jun 1998 10:35:13 -0400 (EDT) To: cherylm@photon.soltec.net From: Art Shostak Subject: Request for Translation Help from the Japanese Brothers and Sisters: Can anyone help me get a translation from the Japanese of the page cited below? Date: Tue, 16 Jun 1998 19:23:35 +0200 From: Masaru Ishida Reply-To: ict-jobs@tristram.edc.org To: ict-jobs@tristram.edc.org Subject: (ICT-JOBS): Re: Telework: Boon or Bane? Regarding the impact of teleworking on collective bargaining, even the form of trade unions is likely to change in the future. One such indicative example is the recent development of the 'virtual union' in Japan. Mr. Matusi, President of National Union of General Workers (Zenkoku-Ippan in Japanese), which is a national centre of small and medium sized enterprises' trade unions, has launched a virtual union since April,1997. Over the first year one thousand members have joined. Every day he receives from those members 20 to 30 enquiries and grievances on employment and working conditions from different parts of the country. Mr. Matsui and his secretariat give their members professional information and advice to them on what and how to negotiate with their own SME employers. SME workers are not usually organized, and work more like teleworkers. Sometimes they achieve great success in their own individual bargaining, and receive a letter of thanks. So teleworking might be combined with tele-bargaining in the future? Please access their home page on Virtual Unions (in Japanese) on the Web: Masaru Ishida Arthur B. Shostak, Ph.D., Professor of Sociology, Department of Psych/Soc/Anthro; Director, Center for Employment Futures, Drexel University, Phila., PA, 19104; 215-895-2466; fax 610-668-2727. email: SHOSTAKA@duvm.ocs.drexel.edu http://httpsrv.ocs.drexel.edu/faculty/shostaka/ "This time, like all times, is a very good one if we but know what to do with it." Ralph Waldo Emerson From ejd@cwsl.edu Fri Jun 19 14:56:04 1998 From: "Ellen Dannin" To: , "laborrap" Subject: Beverly Enterprises Sues Dr. Bronfenbrenner Again Date: Fri, 19 Jun 1998 13:55:35 -0700 charset="iso-8859-1" Although Judge Gary Lancaster dismissed Beverley Enterprises' lawsuit against Kate Bronfenbrenner on May 26, that does not end the company's litigation against her. Not only has Beverly announced that they are going to appeal their decision, but on June 9, they filed a motion to amend its complaint against Dr. Bronfenbrenner and for Judge Lancaster to reconsider his May 26 decision dismissing the case. The motion seeks to amend the complaint to add statements made during a story broadcast by National Public Radio on May 28, 1998. The reason they want to add the NPR comments is that Judge Lancaster had dismissed Beverly's suit on the grounds that Bronfenbrenner gave priviledged testimony to members of Congress. Beverly now claims that Bronfenbrenner slandered them again, but in an unprivileged forum, when she said on "Morning Edition" that she "told the truth" when she gave the testimony. Beverly's motion to amend states: "Bronfenbrenner's statement to NPR that `they knew I spoke the truth' clearly refers to and incorporates her statements at the town hall meeting which Plaintiff claims to be false and defamatory. Some of Bronfenbrenner's statemetns from the town hall meeting were paraphrased during the radio broadcast by the NPR reporter. While Bronfenbrenner's original utterances at the town hall meeting may qualify for an absolute privilege as legislative testimony, there is no absolute privilege for the repetition of the false and defamatory statements to a news reporter, outside the context of the legislative proceeding, for future broadcast on a national news program." [citations omitted] The proposed amendment states in part: "39. In introducing the story, the NPR reporter summarized Defendant's statements at the `town hall' meeting as follows: "In her 10-minute speech, Bronfenbrenner accused Beverly of being one of the nation's most notorious labor law violators, consistently harassing and intimidating workers who try to unionize. She says management videotaped union meetings and fired labor leaders. "The story also included excerpts of a previously recorded interview with Defendant Bronfenbrenner, including the following statement by Defendant: "Beverly knew that they couldn't win on the facts. They knew that I spoke the truth." Beverly's proposed amendments contend that the above-quoted statements in the interview reincorporated and restated all the original statements made at the original town hall meeting -- even though Dr. Bronfenbrenner did not make them again in the interview. On this theory, Beverly contends that the news story covering this case led those who heard it to understood the story was "of and concerning Beverly and to incorporate and reiterate" her statements at the Legislative Town Hall meeting, even though Dr. Bronfenbrenner did not repeat them. Beverly alleges that the news story thus removes the legislative privilege and allows it to sue her as of the statements had actually been made during the news story. Hugh Reilly, Beverly's in-house counsel, may be reached at: Hugh_Reilly@BeverlyCorp.com. Ellen J. Dannin California Western School of Law 225 Cedar Street San Diego, CA 92101 (619) 525-1449 fax: (619) 696-9999 From culturex@vcn.bc.ca Sun Jun 21 14:36:59 1998 Sun, 21 Jun 1998 13:36:30 -0700 (PDT) Date: Sun, 21 Jun 1998 13:36:30 -0700 (PDT) From: Franklin Wayne Poley Subject: OW-WATCH-L copy, first submission to council on workfare 1/2. Hmmm-nursing assistants being replaced by workfarers at 1/2 the wages? Just the beginning; if it goes to its logical conclusion IT IS THE END FOR ORGANIZED LABOR. FWP. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sat, 20 Jun 1998 19:53:17 -0400 (EDT) From: MANSFIELD MATHIAS To: ow-watch-l@netserver.web.net Subject: OW-WATCH-L copy, first submission to council on workfare How about this? WORKFARE OR JOBS! Mansfield Mathias, retired Ford worker, active member of the Coalition for Social Justice and born in Wales, a nation which supplied slaves to King John long before the "Black Market" was discovered in Africa. These slaves were not the only victims of "Eminent Domain". The nobility forced John to sign Magna Charta, which questioned the "Divine Right of Kings" and eventually allowed the capitalists to challenge feudalism. Capitalism converted armies of surplus workers en masse into beggars, robbers and vagabonds. They were treated as "voluntary" criminals, for refusing to go on working under the old conditions which no longer existed -- much like today. Those unable to work and the old would receive a beggars licence. The sturdy were whipped and imprisoned and then forced to labour. Laws were strengthened so that on second arrest the whipping is repeated and half an ear is sliced off; but for the third relapse the offender is the be executed as a hardened criminal and enemy of the common weal. -- circa 1530 The mentality of Harris's denizens of Jurassic park is similar, but the penal code prevents such sentencing today. Now the punishment will be 17 hours of community work called "WORKFARE" -- like a common thief given outside work because our jails are full. The federal government Green Paper on social security claimed that most people become "addicted" to welfare and that part of the cure is to provide disincentives such as less welfare benefits and "workfare" with the thought that this will push down the price of labour bringing the labour market supply and demand into balance, indicating that the main thrust of the paper was to compress wages rather than improve social security. In Alberta the Red Deer Regional Hospital cut back $12/hr nursing assistants and replaced them with $6/hr workfarers, with no new jobs created! Lloyd Axworthy said the Green Paper was a discussion paper, that "Canadians" should be consulted. 25,000 Canadians responded, with considerably more than two thirds opposed to tampering with eligibility and benefit levels. The commons committee received 600 presentations and another 1,200 written or taped submissions. To the committee's credit, it adopted recommendations to retain and improve the safety net. It opposed "workfare". This democratic consultation was ignored by Ottawa and Toronto. It interfered with their agendas. This Council, however, should go on record validating the committee's report which reflected views from all across Canada. WORKFARE, which the Axworthy committee rejected, provides slave labour to willing exploiters at taxpayer expense. We have too much of this in Windsor already. A janitor, supporting a wife and two children, works 4 hours a day at Ford for minimum wage. This family collects welfare. Part time temporary help in the Ford office is also subsidized. In addition, over 600 of the 1650 single adults on the welfare rolls work full or part time for wages that are topped up by welfare! Taxpayers are subsidizing Ford and these other leaches! This reflects badly on the community and the unions which allowed it to happen. Do we really need more of this convoluted "workfare" in Windsor? We are "in hawk up to our eyeballs"; We're broke! And yet, if we were to declare war on some belligerent today, there would be money and jobs for everybody tomorrow! How Come? Our mess is "man made" not an act of God beyond our control. Those responsible? Right wing think tanks like the C.D.Howe Institute and those in Government who heed their advice. In 1980 Carl Beigie, then President of the Howe Institute pointed out that Canada's anti-inflationary strategy is geared toward creating enough unemployment to bring about lower nominal pay demands and prices... They found that forced high unemployment was not reducing wages as anticipated; that regulating the money supply was not going far enough, so they upped the anti with high interest rates. Surprise, Surprise -- we're in a mess!!?? These men, and those in government who obeyed them, slowed the economy; increased unemployment and grew the debt with their ill conceived fight against inflation. They throw hundreds of thousands out on the street and then complain about the high cost of unemployment and welfare! These are the people who should be called to account, not the victims of their destructive policies. We have an attempted suicide who may require a liver transplant due to a self inflicted overdose. Wouldn't it be better to provide conditions that brighten the future for these people instead of cutting welfare? Perhaps some would prefer to hire Kevorkian to get rid of these unwanted liabilities. We may find money for a liver transplant in this case -- but wouldn't it be cheaper to feed the victim? Our recent problems developed in Ottawa. Massive transfer cuts filled soup kitchens in Windsor and communities across Canada and hospital beds with attempted suicides. Paul Martin has the tools to solve the problem. He cannot use them, however, because the IMF, to World Bank, the Bank of International Settlements and private banks would object. We used the Bank of Canada to finance World War II, and out Bank would be used again if we found ourselves in another war. However, our banking friends won't let us use this tool now because it would cut off that multi-billion dollar flow of interest payments into their avaricious coffers. "Workfare" is a lousy substitute for full employment and a stable economy. If jobs are available for "workfare", they should be converted into employment opportunities with decent wages and benefits so welfare victims can apply for gainful employment. Isn't that better than "workfare"? Some may rail at those who stay home and collect welfare cheques. If we had agreed eleven months ago to pay Mike Harris and his Jurassic Park denizens to stay home and do nothing, we wouldn't be in this mess today. Members of Council should pressure Martin and his Government to abandon the banking fraternity and support the people of Canada. The first step must be an out and out condemnation of the transfer cuts which impoverish the vulnerable, and to stamp out "workfare" which punishes the victims. We need a new "Magna Charta" to challenge the divine right of bankers; a "Magna Charta" to break the chains which bind the government to the Bank of International Settlements; a "Magna Charta" that will challenge the capitalist system and secure a government that will guarantee public supremacy. Lets find decent jobs to get people off welfare and save workfare for unemployed Torys after the next election. All of which is respectfully submitted, Thank you. M. Mathias May 21, 1996 manse From culturex@vcn.bc.ca Sun Jun 21 14:38:42 1998 Sun, 21 Jun 1998 13:38:09 -0700 (PDT) Date: Sun, 21 Jun 1998 13:38:08 -0700 (PDT) From: Franklin Wayne Poley Subject: OW-WATCH-L wake up (fwd) 2/2. (fwd) ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sun, 21 Jun 1998 02:26:07 -0400 (EDT) From: MANSFIELD MATHIAS To: ow-watch-l@netserver.web.net Subject: OW-WATCH-L wake up Thomas: The anger you sense in my piece to city council is born of frustration with the lack of organized support from the labour movement — a movement which contains armies of foot soldiers needed for the trench warfare ahead of us. Your answer is thelast adjective in your question, "Are we too soft, too compliant, too trusting, too comfortable? The industrial working class in the mass production industries, over the years, have been bought off with high wages, pension programs, fringe benefit contracts based on length of service, and favourable working conditions — and are now too COMFORTABLE to involve themselves in other peoples struggles, unmindful that, down the road, their turn is coming!! The fact that corporate strategy includes the infiltration of the labour movement, and particularly union leadership, with industrial spies. (Ford example: 35 years ago a plant manager at Ford expressed to me his full support for the union. He said, "We would never be able to handle the discipline of such a large number of workers without the support of the union")and further (at the time of my retirement, we had a plant committee of ten, with the president making it eleven. Out of this group, two were giving regular reports to the labour relations activity at Ford. The industrial Relations manager for the Essex Engine Plant had a file for each of these -- whatever -- informers -- spies -- what you will) This appears to be the rule rather than the exception. We are in no position to fight, at the moment, because we have lost a major portion of our army to the enemy!! One wonders, always, where Harris gets his support. Certainly a handful of bank presidents and industrial CEO's don't have enough votes to elect his party. These votes come from working people — quite possibly from the higher paid industrial workers who hate seeing their tax dollars going to pay teachers' salaries, union wages for garbage collectors and in particular, welfare for those in need. I speak with some authority about the situation in the auto industry, from which I retired. Many of the arguments I had before leaving revolved around these questions. And yet, the union leadership in the CAW readily spout militant rhetoric but are unable to rally the troops. Therefore, as of now, the province wide strike is in limbo. You state, "I want an effective political opposition and a ruling party that does not tyranize ..." etc. Franklin Wayne Pole interjected a reference to Diane Francis who described our system such that it is a revolving dictatorship. She said they, "run dictatorships in shifts". Most of my working life had included participation in partisan politics, which I thought was a valid activity in a democratic society — until Harris. The short period of the "common sense" revolution has proved the Francis dictatorship. So, back to the drawing board, and a new study of this electoral system we call a "representative democracy" It appears that the old Family Compact put together a political system called a constitutional monarchy and designed it in such a way that the ordinary people would never be able to excersise political control. A partisan system of political parties was designed precisely to keep the Canadian people fighting among themselves over political ideology while to power structure continue to rule the roost in perpetuity. During the pendency of such rule, we are allowed, from time to time, to vote to elect a representative who will have no accountability to his constituency but only to his party. And we call this democratic. Five minutes of democracy every five years!!! We are, perhaps, the only country in the world governed by a constitution which is, in fact and act of parliament of another country -- Great Britain. Isn't it about time we drafted our own constitution, like all other countries have done — and evolve a political system that does not include political parties. We should devise a parliamentary system in which delegates are elected from their constituency and will be obliged to be accountable only to that constituency, not to any political party or lobby group etc. Laws and acts of parliament would then be acted upon in much the same way as resolutions are dealt with at conventions, with individual members voting according to the requirements of their constituency, and majority vote in the house prevails. Party line votes would be non- existent. Well Thomas, I hope that I, also am on the right side of that line with you. Franklin: I am familiar with the Ben Swankey you refer to and I must read "Brother can you spare a Billion" (dimes). Ben has come a long way since his stint in "F" battery in the Army camp at Shilo, Manitoba during the war. (1942, I believe, but his political activity preceded that stint.) Linda McQuaig is a terrific writer and also animates her presentations quite effectively. I enjoy her performances immensely. I appreciate your discussion about the meaning of slavery. I oppose compulsion, call it what you like. I can actually chuckle at your reference to the "anti-unionization bill". Such legislation will not be the death knell to organized labour. On the contrary, it will actually strengthen the labour movement. What will happen is simple. Those in the labour movement leadership today who are unable to organize workplaces without the aid of the establishment's labour board will have to be replaced by people who can. Its as simple as that. We will have to get rid of the dead wood in our union leadership who want the labour department to do their work for them, and install people in their place who can fill the bill. Corporate intimidation is not something new. I joined the steelworkers union in Hamilton in the 40's while working at Dofasco, a company that is still unorganized to this day. Even back then, if my real name had been inscribed on the membership list, I would have been fired the next day! The steelworkers' organizing committee were aware at that time that a spy or spies were active in the organizing drive. The mass production industries were organized back then without the existence of the labour board in Ontario. It is the responsibility of the union to defend workers interests, not the department of labour. The state apparatus is designed solely to protect the interest of the establishment from the working class. Manse From johnston@mail.cruzio.com Wed Jun 24 11:03:54 1998 From: "Paul Johnston" To: Subject: Questions Re: GM Strike Date: Wed, 24 Jun 1998 10:00:11 -0700 boundary="----=_NextPart_000_0060_01BD9F56.E00575E0" This is a multi-part message in MIME format. ------=_NextPart_000_0060_01BD9F56.E00575E0 charset="iso-8859-1" Questions re: Outsource Organizing and Labor-Management Strategies at GM What can observers close to the scene tell us about union's recent track record on organizing outsourced sites, domestic and international? also, about its recent track record on addressing productivity & related management issues? The strike is a fluid & open situation, and there's a lot of room in = this contingency for success or failure. But the basic possibilities in this watershed strike were certainly defined long ago by union strategies in these two critical areas. Paul johnston@cruzio.com ------=_NextPart_000_0060_01BD9F56.E00575E0 charset="iso-8859-1"
Questions re: Outsource Organizing and Labor-Management Strategies = at=20 GM

What can observers close to the scene tell us about union's = recent=20 track
record on organizing outsourced sites, domestic and = international?=20 also,
about its recent track record on addressing productivity &=20 related
management issues?

The strike is a fluid & open = situation,=20 and there's a lot of room in this
contingency for success or = failure. =20 But the basic possibilities in this
watershed strike were certainly = defined=20 long ago by union strategies in
these two critical areas.

Paul = johnston@cruzio.com


 
------=_NextPart_000_0060_01BD9F56.E00575E0-- From clawson@sadri.umass.edu Thu Jun 25 09:35:04 1998 Labor-Rap@csf.colorado.edu; Thu, 25 Jun 1998 11:34:58 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 25 Jun 1998 11:34:54 -0400 (EDT) From: Dan Clawson Subject: Bay Area SAWSJ In-reply-to: <01bd9f91$8c644de0$0b00a8c0@wave102.cruzio.com> To: Labor-Rap@csf.colorado.edu From: Dan Clawson (clawson@sadri.umass.edu) To: Paul Johnston (johnston@cruzio.com) Ellen Starbird (aanz@sirius.com) Ted Stolze (Ted1968@aol.com) re: Bay Area SAWSJ All three of you, acting separately, are working on building SAWSJ in the greater Bay Area, and a first step is clearly to communicate with each other. I think Paul and Ted are in some sense just getting started; Ellen communicated with a bunch of people and had a quasi-core group, I believe. What you are doing is great, and just what needs to happen everywhere; sorry we haven't been more help. Andor's message, just posted to the list of 1200, may have already superceded the folowing, but (belatedly) I'm sending the limited information available to me. Apologies for the administrative limitations of the current SAWSJ. We will, for the first time, have a real office and staff person in about 10 days, and will then begin to be efficient in responding. The following is the only list available to me of Bay Area members, but it omits anyone who joined in the last three months (a serious problem, obviously) and I suspect that some of this info might be out of date. Marty Bennett Santa Rosa Jr. College Santa Rosa, CA home: 7079398933 work: e-mail: mbennett@floyd.santarosa.edu Michael Eisenscher National Writers' Union Local 3, UAW University of Massachusetts--Boston Oakland, CA home: 5108938382 work: e-mail: meisenscher@igc.apc.org Keith Gallagher University of California Berkeley, CA home: 5108488836 work: e-mail: kbgall@aol.com Jack Kurzweil San Jose State University Berkeley, CA home: 5105487645 work: 4089243913 e-mail: jkurz@igc.apc.org Albert Vetere Lannon Laney College Oakland, CA home: work: 5104643210 e-mail: avlannon@sfsu.edu Sarah Laslett University of Minnesota Oakland, CA home: 5102720330 work: e-mail: lasle002@tc.umn.edu Jay R. Mandle Colgate University Oakland, CA home: 5103829787 work: e-mail: jaymandle@aol.com Thomas Meisenhelder California State University--San Bernardino San Bernardino, CA home: work: 9098805545 e-mail: Debra Satz Stanford University Stanford, CA home: 4156486588 work: 4157232133 e-mail: dsatz@turing.stanford.edu Karen Sawislak Stanford University San Francisco, CA home: work: 4158211174 e-mail: sawislak@leland.stanford.edu Alan Snitow Snitow/Kaufman Productions Berkeley, CA home: work: 5108411068 e-mail: amsnitow@igc.org -- 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 culturex@vcn.bc.ca Thu Jun 25 13:31:41 1998 Thu, 25 Jun 1998 12:24:42 -0700 (PDT) Date: Thu, 25 Jun 1998 12:24:41 -0700 (PDT) From: Franklin Wayne Poley Subject: Caloric and Nutritional Requirements of Workfare. (fwd) ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Thu, 25 Jun 1998 12:05:09 -0700 (PDT) From: Franklin Wayne Poley To: Lori_Anderson@hc-sc.gc.ca trembs@parl.gc.ca, thompm@parl.gc.ca, mctead@parl.gc.ca, info@ofl-fto.on.ca, councillor_prue@city.toronto.on.ca, councillor_nunziata@city.toronto.on.ca, councillor_chow@city.toronto.on.ca, councillor_layton@city.toronto.on.ca, national@cbc.ca, news@ctv.ca, !l , aan , aab , letters@globeandmail.ca, letters@finpost.com, lettertoed@thestar.ca, coc@web.apc.org Subject: Caloric and Nutritional Requirements of Workfare. On Tue, 19 May 1998 Lori_Anderson@hc-sc.gc.ca wrote: > Lori Anderson > 05/19/98 04:04 PM > > Dear Mr. Poley: > > Please remove my name from your electronic cc: distribution list. > > Thank you, > > Lori Anderson To Lori Anderson Editor "Chronic Diseases in Canada" (Health Canada Journal). Dear Lori: I did as requested remove you from the mailing list. I am sorry that you find this truth so disturbing-that there is an epidemic of malnourishment underway in Canada/USA and that it is systematically planned to be that way by the current political powers who cover it up using willing media accomplices. Diseases do not exist in social-political isolation. However, this email is a submission under the category "Letters to the Editor" for your journal. That is explicitly listed as a category for consideration. Title: Caloric and Nutritional Requirements for Workfare. Letter: It is common knowledge that jobs requiring much manual labor demand several times the total caloric intake as very sedentary jobs. Premier Harris has instituted workfare in Ontario whereby increasing numbers of welfare recipients will be put in work-for-welfare positions. However, in conjunction with workfare policy, anti-unionization legislation has been passed to prevent collective action for better working conditions or compensation by workfare recipients. If the workfare job requires manual labour there is no question that current caloric and nutritional value of the workfare-welfare diet is not sufficient to meet Canada Food Guide standards and sustain good health. Indeed it is doubful that the workfare-welfare diet will suffice for any workfare job. In 1995, Mayors Prue and Nunziata and Councillors Chow and Layton participated in the "Walk a week in my shoes" program sponsored by the Daily Bread Food Bank. With these politicians there were medical and media people. These participants lived on the money which welfare (now workfare-welfare) budgeting would allocate for food. National television coverage explained the shocking result that they were suffering from symptoms of malnourishment after just one week of this regimen so I followed this up with a letter of confirmation. Here is what Mayor Prue wrote back on Dec. 28/95, concerning the result of the welfare diet: " During the course of the week I lost 4 pounds. Physiological symptoms of hunger, loss of concentration and irritability were apparent. More importantly I was isolated from social functions since there was no money for 'frills'". The new workfare-welfare program must provide its workers with healthy living standards to sustain the level of work which is required. Even in the area of basic nutrition is is inadequate to do so. Further study of the adequacy of this program to compensate workers enough for healthy living quarters should also be investigated by political, media and health authorities. Sincerely-FWP. From fgardner@aflcio.org Mon Jun 29 16:13:41 1998 Date: Mon, 29 Jun 1998 18:03:00 -0500 From: Florence Gardner Sender: Florence Gardner To: rescampaign@igc.apc.org (ACORN - Research), aehcdc@pacbell.net, lande@mit.edu ("'Ajose, Lande'"), allphds@haas.berkeley.edu, acomelo@ucla.edu (Anibel Comelo), awesthue@indiana.edu (Anita Kay Westhues), 73642.1340@compuserve.com (Anthony Thigpenn), anthrograd@uclink2.berkeley.edu, parum@nea.org ("'Arum, Peter'"), autumn1@uclink.berkeley.edu, michael.barnes@ucop.edu ("'Barnes, Michael'"), cafe@igc.org, campres@aflcio.org (Campaign Researchers), cbenner@socrates.berkeley.edu (Chris Benner), cwhea001@umaryland.edu (Chris and/or Michelle Wheatcroft), croessler@igc.apc.org (Christina Roessler), chungyd@server.sasw.ncsu.edu (Chung Yong-Dal), dcroteau@saturn.vcu.edu (david croteau), david.gartner@yale.edu, dpateriya@igc.apc.org (Deepak Pateriya), demajewski@aol.com, dfaber@nu.edu, dkobata@csulb.edu, selena@siu.edu (Eliza Guzman-Vela), elizabeth.harper@lcra.org (Elizabeth Harper), Subject: JOBS: Please Post and Pass On STRATEGIC RESEARCH POSITIONS for Union Organizing Campaigns 6/29/98 Ambitious and exciting union organizing campaigns are seeking strategic researchers in New Orleans and Washington DC. Labor, environmental, and community activists/researchers looking for a career change, investigative reporters with an interest in labor, graduates of business or MBA programs with labor sensibilities, progressive academics, recent college graduates interested in a career in organized labor, lawyers with a public interest background, and other progressive activists are all encouraged to apply. QUALIFICATIONS Work experience with labor unions, public interest organizations, or community-based groups. Educational background in economics, law, business, labor studies, urban planning and geography, public administration, environmental and community health studies, history, or journalism. Experience with quantitative and qualitative research, including financial analysis, industry research, corporate research, and/or issue research; ability to plan, research, write and edit quality research projects. Experience and desire to thrive in challenging campaign atmosphere; ability to work on numerous assignments at once and to successfully meet tight deadlines. Excellent computer and analytical skills, including facility with database design and management and on-line databases. Strong commitment to the labor movement and desire fight for social justice. To apply send resume and writing sample to: AFL-CIO Department of Corporate Affairs OI-SR-WD Search Committee 815 16th Street, NW, Suite 405 Washington, D.C. 20006. Or email same to: corpaff@aflcio.org (attached files should be in Word Perfect for the PC or in ascii) No phone calls please. Women and people of color are strongly encouraged to apply.