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Today's
Stories
October 16
/ 17, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
The
Free Speech Movement and Howard Stern
October 15,
2004
Paul Craig
Roberts
Where
Did These "Conservatives" Come From?: The Brownshirting
of America
Laura Carlsen
Wal-Mart
vs. the Pyramids of the Sun and Moon
Greg Bates
Empire of Insanity: Kerry's Iraq Troop Numbers
Michael Donnelly
News from a Swing State: Does Anyone Here Have a Spine?
Katherine Lahey
The Venezuelan "Threat": Why Do Kerry and Bush Fear
Hugo Chavez?
Robert Jensen
/ Pat Youngblood
Election Day Fears
Leah Caldwell
From
Supermax to Abu Ghraib: the Masterminds of Torture and Abuse
Website of
the Day
An Anti-Billionaire Policy? Why That Would Be Economic Racism
October 14,
2004
Darcy Richardson
The
Other Progressive Candidate: the Lonely Crusade of Walt Brown
Willliam A.
Cook
Turning
Myths into Truth
Laura Santina
Water, Women and War
Evelyn Pringle
Free Speech Banned by Big Pharma: What You Can't Say About Drug
Importation
Alan Farago
Lessons
from Nature
Rep. Maxine Waters
A Letter to Colin Powell on Haiti
Nicole Colson
Maimed
for Oil and Empire
October 13,
2004
Bishop Thomas
Gumbleton and Bill Quigley
Aftermath
of a Coup: The Other Disaster in Haiti
Sharon Smith
Barak
O-Bomb-a?: Democrats Target Iran
Christopher Brauchli
God and the Bush Administration
Mike Whitney
The Real Meaning of the Hamdi Case
Paul de Rooij
Amnesty
International: a False Beacon?
Website of
the Day
Operation
Truth
October 12,
2004
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
"Indian
Country"
Greg Bates
The Year of Voting Dangerously: a Survey Request of Nader Voters
in Swing States
Steven Conn
Progressives as Pawns: Kerry's War on Nader
Jason Leopold
Under Cheney, Halliburton Helped Saddam Siphon Billions from
UN Oil-for-Food Program
Security Scholars
for a Sensible Foreign Policy
Time for a Change of Course
Timothy J. Freeman
Dying for a Mistake
Pierre Tristam
Deconstructing Bush
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The 2nd Debate: the Blurring of Act and Audience
Bill and Kathleen
Christison
Israel as Sideshow
Website of the Day
John Kerry's Personal Off-Shore Tax Shelters
October 11,
2004
Robert Fisk
Iraq:
Unforgivable Betrayals and Broken Promises
Kevin Pina
The
Untold Story of Aristide's Departure from Haiti
Patrick Gavin
Rethinking
Columbus Day
Chris Floyd
Tribes with Flags in the New Afghanistan
Daniel Wolff
Radioactive Money: Entergy, Political Cash and America's Most
Dangerous Nuclear Plant
Walter Brasch
The Only Ones Who Believe Saddam Had WMDs are Bush, Cheney...and
40% of All Americans
Mike Whitney
The Phony Afghan Elections: Ballot of the Disappearing Ink
Ari Shavit
"He Talks to Condi Rice Every Day": an Interview with
Sharon's Lawyer
Paul Craig
Roberts
The
Debates and the Big Lie
Website of the Day
Dylan's Greatest Recording?
October 9 /
10, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
"There
Are No Innocents"
Paul de Rooij
Northern Ireland is Still the Issue: a Conversation with Gerry
Adams
M. Shahid Alam
Making Sense of Our Times
Laura Carlsen
Protest and Populism in Latin America
Fred Gardner
Pot Shots: ASA Goes to Court
Col. Dan Smith
Bush's Credibility Gap
Paul Craig
Roberts
Faith-Based Economics
Greg Bates
What If Nader Critics Get What They Demand?
Joshua Frank
Cobb, the Greens and the Collapse of the Left
Felice Pace
Wilderness, Politics and the Oligarchy: How the Pew Charitable
Trust is Smothering the Grassroots Environmental Movement
Walter A. Davis
Of Pynchon, Thanatos and Depleted Uranium
William A.
Cook
The Agony of Colin Powell
Phyllis Pollack
Twas No Crank Call Love Affair: London Calling, 25 Years Later
Poets' Basement
Klipschutz, Albert, Ford
Website of the Weekend
Abu Ghraib: the Taguba Annexes
October 8,
2004
Jennifer Loewenstein
The
Israeli Invasion of Gaza
Moshe Adler
Edwards' Gambit: He Hoped No One Would Notice the Similarities
David Swanson
Media Blackout: Press Continues to Ignore Labor's Opposition
to Iraq War
Dave Zirin
CounterPunch Contest: Let's Name the New DC Baseball Team!
Rep. Ron Paul
The Draft is a Form of Slavery
William S. Lind
Keeping Our SA Up
Samar Assad
Kerry v. Bush: No Difference When It Comes to Israel / Palestine
Jim Ingalls
and Sonali Kolhatkar
The Elections in Afghanistan
October 7,
2004
Dave Lindorff
All
Out of Volunteers: A Draft is in the Air
Masha Hamilton
Fear in Kandahar
Christopher
Brauchli
Master of Corruption: the Ripening Scandals of Tom Delay
Jason Leopold
Is There Still Time to Impeach Bush?
Bruce K. Gagnon
Bombing the Panhandle: Fighting the Pentagon in Rural Florida
Meredith Kolodner
Where
is the Urgency?: The Anti-War Movement's Election Year Challenge
October 6,
2004
Jeffrey St.
Clair
"Please,
Dude, Can I Take Them Out?": Targeting Civilians in Fallujah
Ron Jacobs
Going
Nuclear: the Ghost of Edward Teller Lives
Michael Colby
The National Flip-Flop: Suddenly Bush is Unfit to Lead?
Tarif Abboushi
More of the Same: Israel Wins the Debates
Matthew Behrens
Canadian Firms Profit from Iraqi Blood
Mike Whitney
Rethinking WMDs
John Pilger
Stealing Diego Garcia
Ben Tripp
Kerry's "Triumph"
Kevin McKiernan
Cheney's Poison Lab: Wrong Time, Wrong Target
Patrick Cockburn
Elections
Will Not End the Fighting in Iraq
Website of the Day
Is There an Islamic Problem?
October 5,
2004
Anthony Loewenstein
Rupert
Murdoch and the Marginals: "Personally Creating Outcomes"
Mark Clinton
and Tony Udell
The
Suicide of an Iraq War Veteran
Greg Bates
Trading
Idiots: an Open Letter to Eric Alterman
Dave Lindorff
What's
the Frequency, Karl?
Norm Dixon
Why Washington Won't Save Darfur Villagers
Larry Kearney
God Talk and Burning Children
Bill Linville
Dirty Politics in the Land of "Clean" Government
Gary Leupp
What
Edwards Should Ask Cheney
Website of
the Day
A Guide to Halliburton for Tonight's Debate
October 4,
2004
Diane Christian
The
Gates of Hell
Joshua Frank
An Interview with David Cobb
Doug Giebel
Incurious George: What If Bush Didn't Lie?
John Chuckman
Strange Victory: Sen. Obvious and the Pathetic Lump
Ramzy Baroud
Reverse the Picture: Anatomy of a Palestinian Outrage
Julia Stein
Remembering Mario Savio and the FSM
Sean Donahue
Outsourcing
Terror: Kerry and Special Forces
Website of
the Day
Mapping
Mt. St. Helens as She Rocks
October 2 /
3. 2004
Paul Wright
John
Kerry on Criminal Justice
Kathleen and Bill Christison
An Exchange with Israeli Historian Bennie Morris
Kathie Helmkamp
My Son Trent: a Marine Who Doesn't Want to Kill
Phillip Cryan
Indigenous Mobilization in Colombia
Lenni Brenner
The First Ex-Catholic Saint: Memories of Mario Savio
Fred Gardner
Pot Shots: In Case You Missed "Montel"
Ron Jacobs
It Did Happen Here: When Neo-Nazis Terrorized Olympia
Ben Tripp
Sticker Shock
William S.
Lind
The Grand Illusion: Iraqi Security Forces
Dave Zirin
The Swindle of the Century: Baseball Comes to DC
Dave Lindorff
Lies from the Great Debate
Luscon Pierre-Charles
Haiti's Elections: a High-Tech Sham is Underway
Zoe Moskovitz
& Sasha Kramer
Separating Lies from Truth About Haiti
Nelson P. Valdes
Habana Night vs. Latin American Scholars in Vegas: 61 Banned
Cuban Academics
Alan Farago
The "Ownership Society" and the End of the Everglades
Nancy Haley
What is the Historical Jesus Trying to Tell Us?
Alex Billet
Long Live The Clash: London Still Calling After 25 Years
Steve Fesenmaier
Save and Burn: The War on Libraries
Poets' Basement
Smith, Holt, Albert
October 1,
2004
Steve Breyman
Kerry's
Missed Opportunities
Rose Gentle
My
Son Died for a Lie
Lee Sustar
Iran
in the Crosshairs
Ralph Nader
What
We Didn't Hear at the Debate: Where's the Exit Strategy?
Walter Andrews
We Are Less Secure Now Than Ever
Mike Whitney
Pandora's
Government
Mickey Z.
Debate
This
Saul Landau
The
Iraq Invasion: Lessons from the Pinochet Cases
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante
Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click
Here for More Stories.
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Weekend Edition
October 16 / 17, 2004
Blacks Didn't
Get the Vote by Voting
An
Interview with the ILWU's Clarence Thomas on the Million Worker
March
By
DEREK TYNER
Q: The initiative behind this
march came out of your union, ILWU (International Longshore and
Warehouse Union) Local 10, which has a long history of militancy,
an institutional memory of struggle, and a passed-down tradition
of rank-and-file organization. Could you say a few words about
that?
A: For the sake of background,
the ILWU Local 10 is the local of Harry Bridges, and that's important
for people to understand because of who Harry Bridges was and
what he represented. He was a visionary and a person with a Marxist
worldview who understood the nature of the class struggle. He
was also greatly respected by the black community because he
was upfront on the issue of discrimination at a time when labor
leaders had very racist views. Harry, on the other hand, understood
that discrimination was a tool of the bosses and he supported
and advocated the hiring of black people and their membership
in ILWU as early as the 1930s when blacks were still used as
scabs.
The ILWU, and in particular
Local 10, has been in the vanguard of many important struggles.
In the early 1980s, a group of rank-and-filers took action in
San Francisco when a ship called Nedlloyd Kimberly came in from
South Africa. It was boycotted for some ten days, while at that
time the international, the ILWU, was taking the position, as
illegitimate as it was, of the Reagan administration, the position
of so-called constructive engagement. People need to be reminded
today that the work of the ILWU in building up the kind of support
in the labor movement for South African liberation was not just
a matter of supporting African people's struggles against apartheid.
We also had a direct stake in that fight, since South Africa
was being used as a point of production for many sectors of the
American industry that were once here in the United States. American
companies were investing in South Africa as they were divesting
from the United States. We're seeing today the culmination of
policies that have been in effect for several decades, that have
now reached the disaster level, and we can trace their implementation
and expansion from the Reagan years through today. Of course
the ILWU also has a long history of opposing war, from the Korean
war to the war in Vietnam to Desert Storm, and of course the
recent invasion of Iraq and its subsequent occupation.
When Local 10 passed the resolution
proposing the march we were basically responding to the attacks
on working families in America, especially to the fact that millions
of jobs were lost during the Bush administration with the complicity
of Congress. This march is about working people putting forward
their own agenda, independent of the Republican and the Democratic
parties, two parties controlled by big money, with more similarities
than dissimilarities. It's important for people to understand
that the working class has not suffered such hardships since
the Great Depression and that many of the so-called New Deal
programs implemented in the 30s are being dismantled or undermined
or eroded, while the Bush administration is placing the acquisition
of capital and the quest for profits above the needs of working
people.
Q: What's so impressive and
coherent about the call for organizing this march is precisely
the indictment of the Democratic Party as collaborators in this
project.
A: It is absolutely critical
for working people to understand that the only time we gain any
kind of concessions from the system is when we organize independently
of the two parties, and, as an African-American, I can tell you
that the civil rights movement is such an example. Black people
did not get the vote by voting; Black people got the right to
vote through organizing, through putting their lives on the line,
through their commitment to making change. And I think that when
we look at the debacle in Florida--the disenfranchisement of
black people at the polls--the response from the Democratic Party
speaks volumes about what they think of us. If people want to
vote for John Kerry"fine, but they need to do it with their
eyes wide open, understanding what they're gonna get. To think
that this man is going to make any kind of concessions to us
without a demand is absolutely ridiculous.
Q: I think what you're saying
about independent organization is crucial and of course one of
the crimes of the Democratic Party has been not only its mystification
of the political process but its rewriting of history, so that's
it's Lyndon Johnson who gives us civil rights legislation and
not thousands of people organizing over several decades to force
his hand. The promise of the march seems to be the re-building
of independent organizations and the re-vitalization of the labor
movement. What has your experience of taking that message all
over the country been like?
A: Our experience has been
to learn that rank-and-filers want this march; resistance to
it has come primarily from the leadership of unions, people who
in fact would be best described as "business-unionists and
who have become so estranged and alienated from their rank-and-file
that they feel more comfortable with their employers that they
do with their own members. They don't trust their rank-and-file.
The only time they want to engage them is for the purpose of
phone banking, voter registration, and voter education. Why would
you put all of your money, all of your resources behind this
candidate, when the recent history of the Democratic Party shows
that they didn't even get anti-scab legislation passed when they
had control of both the House and the Senate during the Clinton
years?
Let's just look at some recent
history. In 1976, we saw Carter increase the military budget,
cut programs for social services, cut the capital gains tax for
the rich, increase the social security tax on working people,
provide Chrysler with the bailout (which therefore set in motion
concessionary bargaining in labor unions all over the country),
and invoke the Taft-Hartley Act against the miners. And when
Bill Clinton came into office in ,93, a lot of promises were
made"outlawing the use of scabs during strikes, the Freedom
of Choice Act to protect abortion rights, but most prominently
a national health care plan. What happened? First of all, we
were told by union leaders and other folks, "Let's give
Clinton time. He got time, but what happened? He took the time
that he needed and bargained away the promise of health care
in the interest of the HMOs and drug companies that have funded
his campaign. He abandoned the Freedom of Choice Act and stood
by as abortion rights were eroded. There was very little response
to invigorate any kind of activism. And then he turned around
and did something that the Republicans could not have done: welfare
reform. How can we forget this? This is recent.
So this march is a rank-and-file,
bottom-up, grassroots democracy mobilization in every sense of
the word. Meanwhile, the AFL-CIO has sent out a memo saying that
while it agrees with many of the aims and objectives of the march,
it's discouraging people from supporting the march and endorsing
it and giving money to it. What does that mean? They do not want
to see any manifestation of worker empowerment before the election.
We're hoping this march gets
workers engaged. We are not discouraging workers from voting.
But our position is that no matter what your expectations are
for the election outcome, elected officials must be held accountable.
Everyone must have their feet held to the fire. We need to have
our own independent worker agenda. We don't have our own political
party. Yet. Yet. It takes time for people to wean themselves
away from the Democratic Party. But my point is that we have
to act in our own interest. We have to. Look at the efforts of
Jesse Jackson when he ran for President: there was some great
organizing but what was so disappointing was the outcome. The
Democratic Party destroyed all of those progressive initiatives
and sentiments.
Q: The organizers of the march
have stressed repeatedly that this is the right moment for it,
precisely because of the severity of attacks on working people
and the lengthy period of inactivity we're only beginning to
reverse.
A: I got an opportunity to
address workers at several conventions"the American Federation
of Teachers, the AFSCME convention"and one of the questions
we posed was, "What would Dr. Martin Luther King say to
those in the labor movement who say that this is not the time
for workers to mobilize, that the focus has to be on dumping
Bush? What would he say to that? I think his response would be:
we don't need the permission of the labor movement in order to
have a march; how dare they think that they are the arbiters
of when workers can come together and organize in their own name?
It also goes to show how compliant labor has become to the wishes
of the Democratic Party.
Q: Very often when large mobilizations
gain enough momentum, respectability, visibility, they are co-opted
by Democratic Party officials or labor officials. We saw this
happen recently with the women's march.
A: That turned out to be a
disaster, because as you well know, it became a cheerleading
rally for Kerry, as opposed to an opportunity for independent
action in defense of reproductive rights. There were over a million
people there but it turned into a "Vote for Kerry event.
The Million Worker March is not going to be a one-time feel-good
session. We are going to put forward a platform of demands for
people to take away from the march. It's important that we be
able to organize people and move them from where they are to
where we want them to go. There're not going to be any politicians
up on that stage. That's critical. This is not about them, and
not about Bush or Kerry. It is about the system and it is about
working people. The voices at our march are going to be diverse
and they will be speaking to the class nature of the struggle,
to the things binding us together, as workers, no matter what
our backgrounds.
I've been reminded recently
that the people running for president and vice-president of both
parties are probably some of the richest candidates ever and
it's important for people to understand the similarities between
Kerry and Bush in terms of their backgrounds. They both come
from elite families, both of them were educated at so-called
prestigious schools and because of their net worth they don't
have to worry about the issues workers have to deal with. They
are going to be responsible, first and foremost, to their class.
Let's imagine for the moment
that Kerry does win. If workers are to continue in this mode
of acquiescing to Kerry, then Kerry will assume he has the license
to take many more right-wing positions, continuing the policies
of the neoconservatives. I think that it is important for working
people to not allow him that political space. That is absolutely
critical.
Derek Tyner is a writer and activist. He can be
reached at derektyner@hotmail.com.
More information about the
Million Worker March is available at www.millionworkermarch.org.
Weekend
Edition Features for September 18 / 19, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Forgeries,
Fingerprints and Forensic Fakery
Jeffrey St. Clair
High Plains Grifter: Bush's Mask of Anarchy
Patrick Cockburn
Into the Abyss: the Week Iraq's Dream of Peace Fell Apart
Fred Gardner
Pot Shots: Financial Torture (Asset Forfeiture)
Joe Allen
The Comrades Kerry Abandoned: the Real Story of Vietnam Vets
Against the War
George Corsetti
Poletown Revisited: Finally, Some Vindication
Scott Handleman
The Knock-Knock of a Sledgehammer: Sequestered in Nablus
Richard Ward
Two Weeks in Beit Arabiya
Conn Hallinan
Ashcroft and Indonesia
Lori Smith
Health Care in America: And Then I Got Sick...
Dave Zirin
Hold the Booyah!: SportsCenter Out of the Middle East
John L. Hess
Rather Will Take the Heat, As Bush's War Deteriorates
Brian J. Foley
W is for Wimp: So Why do Manly Men Love Him?
Mickey Z.
Pat Tillman and Osama bin Laden: Odd Juxtapositions
Poets' Basement
Vest, Landau & Albert
Website of the Weekend
Eye on the NYTs
/
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