More unemployed, more unemployed organizing

What did I say? The pattern is pretty clear. Every month the papers announce unemployment is not as high as expected -- then two weeks later, oh, p.s., it's actually higher.

The pundits can tell us how much better things are getting 'til they're blue in the chips -er- face. But the unemployed, and those of us close to it, are starting to figure out a few things: step one - organize!

Police policing police

The community where I live is reeling from a fatal police shooting of an unarmed 15 year old black child on Oct. 9. The young man and his friend (who now faces charges of felony "resisting arrest") had often stayed at the house they were allegedly "burglarizing." The homeowner says they were both welcome any time. According to the police, the boys saw two cops appear with weapons drawn and tried to run. But what is that, a capital offense now?

Perhaps. At recent City Council meetings, area residents revealed startling changes in local police policies that appear to allow just that. That's right. Whereas the old policy on "Use of Deadly Force" allowed police to shoot to kill only when a suspect appears about to use "deadly force" himself, or herself, the new policy adds: "... or, ..." if the suspect is about to "defeat the arrest" by resisting or escaping.

But the police say that's out of context. Another section later on says: "... and ..." the suspect may use deadly force. But if this is out of context, who took it out of context? The new language matches the state statute, except that it's broken up in such a way that a reasonable person could read it either way: A or (B and C, D, or E) - maybe, or - A or (B and C) or D or E.

Convenient, perhaps, if you're an officer who has just killed your second suspect in ten years -- this one an unarmed 15 year old kid who was doing nothing wrong until you drew on him -- and might be thinking of how to defend yourself?

But of course policies don't kill unarmed teenagers, cops do.

Now consider this extra added bonus. The Chief of Police, RT Finney, was also there and also drew on the two boys. He isn't on leave, although the shooter is.

Hm. Finney. He arrived in town in 2004, the new and more understanding chief, in the midst of an earlier crisis. The police wanted Tasers. A terrified (terrorized?) community didn't want that. They had years, at least back to 1998, of police behavior on their minds -- including suspicious deaths in police custody. So Finney said, OK, we'll work on that trust thing. Five years later the community has still has a host of grievances against the police, including some new ones against Finney himself.

Now the Champaign PD is up for accreditation for the first time, ironically enough, by a group that claims be all about trust and community policing. And, we now learn, Chief Finney is a vice president of that very accrediting group. But I'm sure their report will be entirely objective.

Just like the State Police report on the shooting. Naw, we don't need a civilian police review board. Why would we want that?

Break 'em up while we still can!

So I'm in Northeast Mississippi just for a day or two and I happen to check out the Daily Journal, and I see that unemployment in the land of my birth has dropped (the same song we're hearing all around the country) - probably because more people have just given up. Even the official rate (we know how accurate that is) in Alcorn County is now 11.3 percent, and it's worse in nearby Tippah and Benton Counties. This is recovery?

Just about a year ago we turned out in numbers all over the country to demand a bailout for Wall Street bankers and speculators, not 'Main Street' slobs like you and me... Or that's what you'd think from the response from DC. $4 trillion later, we are still losing jobs, losing homes, and the fat cats are still getting billions in bonuses - that's right, bonuses, just the bonuses.

But some of us called for more than just a bailout. We need to make sure we don't just piss on this fire and circle around to the same damn mess again. We need more than regulation, of course. After the legendary "Great Depression" (one of many - depression was cyclical before that, like El Nino), we already tried regulation, followed by deregulation, followed by economic catastrophe - surprise! What we need is "un-deregulation."

But that's not enough, either, as I've ranted before. Social Monetary Fund, etc. Part of it is Bernie Sanders's suggestions (and those of others) that if they're too big to fail, they're too big to exist. I think that has to be part of getting control of this situation. Re-regulating, or even takeovers, won't solve it alone - especially given that the public officials overseeing or managing these big boys will likely stem from the same putrid root as the deregulators and other bandits who got us into this mess in the first place.

Here's a good argument for doing both.

Organizing the Unemployed and Homeless

So there's these crazy people in Fort Wayne, actually believe people don't want to be unemployed! Who'da thunk it? I talked to this barn-burner, Tom Lewandowski. They're leafletting Michael Moore's new movie - unemployment offices and such - and talking to people about the economy! What good is that gonna do? Isn't our current system inevitable, exactly as it is?

They're negotiating with development boards in Fort Wayne - like a union - trying to get some money for job creation. They act like they think we ought to have some say in how that money gets spent, just because it came from our taxes.

Next they'll be saying that if Walmart wants us to build a parking lot for them, or otherwise subsidize them, they have to do something for the community. Pay a living wage? Provide employee health benefits (note: a "benefit" is something you get because you work there, not something you can buy if you work there)? ACCEPT A UNION? Where will it end?

The rabble could fall out of line and even think beyond jobs per se. They might even start to think the work ought to do more than just go to poor people. They could decide it also should serve poor communities.

What if big businesses that move into our communities and need a little help with zoning - not like those damn homeless neighbors of ours who expect local governments to bankrupt themselves so they can put up six or even seven tents like they think they own the place - OK, so they have permission from the property owner, but still! - you know, lovely big businesses, had to contribute to the public schools or something instead of taking tax money away from them? Where would be then?

What are they going to do when they realize they don't have enough left over for a nice big new clock tower like ours in Champaign-Urbana?

Tomato pickers victory!

The Coalition of Immokalee Workers show once again the power and the value of self-organization. Reports of their demise or imminent demise have been greatly exaggerated - repeatedly.

But these mostly immigrant, low-paid, tough organizers extraordinaire keep coming back with more victories against all the odds. I admit that when I first began my own association with these folks, as a supporter - I signed up to receive a giant puppet that was traveling the nation during the Taco Bell campaign, and to organize a local demo within a day or so of the puppet's arrival - I secretly thought to myself, "What chance do they really have?" After all, in the real world, when David goes up against Goliath, he often gets his proverbial ass handed back to him tied up with a nice frilly ribbon.

Not this time.

And maybe even more amazing, the five years to the Taco Bell win was followed by two years to another unexpected win at McDonald's - of all places! we were all already on the way to corporate headquarters, thousands of us, when we got the word: the protest would now be a celebration! - another year to victory at Burger King ... and along the way picked up Subway and others.

In 2008, Whole Foods became the first supermarket chain to settle with CIW, and a year later growers who sell to Whole Foods had begun signing up to participate.

A strident growers' lobby called the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange had held up progress for some time, threatening to fine any of its member growers who agreed to pay the penny-a-pound extra demanded by the CIW, tangling them all in court, etc. But eventually, like water dripping persistently against a rock, CIW wore them down.

Stung by criticism that they won't deal with the CIW despite their claims to serve "Food with Integrity", Chipotle Mexican Grill then began claiming they were "working with" the CIW - even as CIW was still asking to negotiate. Now a really big grower, East Coast Growers and Packers, has broken ranks with FTGE - or joined ranks with CIW. Chipotle then apparently announced they would buy from East Coast, but still has no deal with CIW to my knowledge. Trying to have it both ways, Chipotle?

What would a real racist be like?

You really just cannot make this stuff up, even remotely. First white cops arrest African American Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates for breaking into his own house (OK, for getting annoyed when they accused him breaking into his own house). Then reporters ask Obama, who is trying to have a press conference about a little thing like health care at the time, what he thinks. Well, duh. What does any sane person think?

"Now, I don't know, not having been there and not seeing all the facts, what role race played in that ... But I think it's fair to say, number one, any of us would be pretty angry. Number two, that the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home. And, number three, what I think we know separate and apart from this incident is that there's a long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately. That's just a fact."

But you know how sensitive some cops are, and some white people who wish they were cops: Is this what it's like in America with a black president? You can't arrest black people anymore ... blah, blah, blah!

The president decides to be big about it, and a little wacky, and invites Gates and the hair-trigger cop, but not the 911 caller, to the White House for a brew. A little schmarmy, but ok.

Now another white Boston cop sends an email - not just to his cop buddies (who really should be insulted that he thinks they'd think it was cool) but also to the BOSTON GLOBE - calling Gates a "banana-eating jungle monkey" ... and he can't understand why everybody thinks he's a racist!

Now, I have to wonder, what would a real racist write? ... Don't answer that!
(Also says in answer to the question of why he chose those particular words if he isn't racist: "I have no idea." Clever.)

Black = criminal

Check it out!

(OK, in case you haven't heard the actual story, here it is. [p.s. Read the comments, too - they're fracking nuts!])

Honduras and Obama: Change versus No-Change

The latest crackpot take on Honduras is that Zelaya was "properly impeached" - after the army removed him in his pajamas at gunpoint and declared martial law, of course, suspending all that free speech stuff, etc. (They had learned, I guess, from previous outbreaks of anti-American riots over far lesser offenses.)

But all the serious commentary agrees that the media-christened "interim government" that resulted is not precisely constitutional or democratic. What follows that is mostly hand-wringing and little else.

Meanwhile there have been some interesting connection made. The shocking and of course completely unexpected presence of US-trained thugs among the coup perps are just one - as if the School of the Americas phenom hadn't lurked behind the scenes of most right-wing coups in the Americas since, well, forever.

Another is the degree of influence that Honduran business has a big slimy foot in the Beltway door (in the person of Lanny Davis) and maybe another (in the person of our old friend Otto Reich):

"Otto Reich has [...] been investing his energy during the last couple of years in a campaign against President Zelaya. [...] Reich also co-founded an organization in Washington named Arcadia Foundation together with a Venezuelan, Robert Carmona-Borjas, a lawyer specialized in military law who is linked to the April 2002 coup d'etat in Venezuela, per his own resumé. [...]Since last year, Reich and Carmona-Borjas have been conducting a campaign against President Zelaya, accusing him of corruption and limiting private property rights. Through the Arcadia Foundation, they created a series of video clips that have been shown in different media, attempted to portray Zelaya as a corrupt president who violates the basic rights of the Honduran people.

[...] Carmona-Borjas has traveled frequently to Honduras during the last few months and even held public meetings where the coup against Zelaya was discussed openly. At one encounter where Carmona-Borjas was present, the Honduran Public Defender, Ramón Custodia, who was involved in the coup d'etat, declared to the press that "Coups are a possibility and can occur in any political environment." After the coup took place, Robert Carmona-Borjas appeared at a rally in support of the de facto regime, on July 3rd, and received the honors and applause from the coup leaders who declared him "an important actor" that "helped make possible" the removal from power of President Zelaya and the installment of the dictator Roberto Micheletti as de facto president."


US tentacles run deeper, of course, down to a USAID-funded opposition coalition ...

"The "Democratic Civil Union of Honduras" is composed of organizations including the National Anticorruption Council, the Archbishop of Tegucigalpa, the Honduran Council of Private Enterprise (COHEP), the Council of University Deans, the Workers Federation of Honduras (CTH), the National Convergence Forum, the National Federation of Commerce and Industry of Honduras (FEDECAMARA), the Association of Communication Media (AMC), the Group Peace & Democracy, and the student group Generation for Change."

... and through one of those tangled web-thingies involving ex-Contra czar Negroponte, who's back pulling strings again ...

"In his new role, John Negroponte presently works as Advisor to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Remember, the current US Ambassador to Honduras, Hugo Llorens [who has been working with the coup since it started], has worked closely under Negroponte during the majority of his career. So it would not be a far jump to consider that John Negroponte, expert in crushing leftist movements in Central America, has played a role in the current coup against President Zelaya in Honduras."

... and even to discussions with "our partners" involved in the coup in the days just prior, although naturally as regards "precise knowledge of military actions" of course we had no idea!

Although the Obama Administration did withdraw some (not all) aid, its response to the coup has been perhaps the most telling example of what it's Doctrine of Change actually means: mostly not.

GM, the new Conrail

Here's a shock: the media are reporting this story all wrong. "GM files for bankruptcy protection," "...a low point in the carmaker's 100-year history...," "... a powerful reminder of how far GM has fallen ...," blah, blah, blah.

The closest they come to the real story is generally on the jump page: "To achieve the lower break-even point, GM will have to shed thousands of employees, several car brands, hundreds of dealerships, health care and pension benefits, and a mountain of debt."

Whoa, rewind there: " ... GM will have to shed thousands of employees, ... health care and pension obligations ..."

Lemme get this straight. The US Government now has controlling interest in GM. The same US Government that has been telling us we have to pump millions of our dollars into GM, et al., because if por exemplo the Big Three go down we could lose jobs big time. The same US Government has also been talking about creating jobs, public works, etc., etc. Now they own GM (mostly), and the jobs go down the toilet anyway? On their watch? On their orders?

Admittedly we're now talking 40,000 jobs instead of 2 million, but the game ain't over yet. We still have more bankruptcy tickets.

This is the wrong kind of restructuring, folks! This is the (now discredited?) IMF all over again, just the opposite of what we need, what we need being what we might call a Social Monetary Fund - that would fund job creation, not "job shedding"; expanded health care that would cover more people, not fewer; likewise pensions.

Instead we seem to be getting, as Greg Palast puts it, "Grand Theft Auto:" nevermind ERISA, nevermind the fact that the pension money isn't theirs to take, and how DO you walk into to the doctor's office and pay with a bankrupt car company's stock?

That's clearly what we should be pissed about. But I'd like to add one more little observation, while we're on the subject (or I am). A little history, just a sort of after dinner mint to tip us right over the edge. It concerns Conrail, pretty well named in retrospect.

You see, this has all happened before. Before 1975 there were a number of old private, for-profit railroad lines running in the Northeastern US. Only they went bankrupt. So the Government bought them, and restructured them, downsized them, "shed" some of their operations and the attendant workers, etc. At the same time, with the same Act, the Government began a program of "regulatory reform" - i.e. deregulation. Several such "reforms" followed, but that's another story.

The long and the short is, by 1980 Conrail turned a profit (NB: as a government run enterprise it became profitable). So the Government took the next logical step - claro. It re-privatized the company, the largest sale of public stock in US history!

Get it? Private enterprise not working - government/taxpayers assume debt, invest billions to rebuild and repair - then hand it back to the profiteers, this time with far fewer regulations, like, for example, secret contracts, etc., etc.

They call this 'socialism'? The smart guys have a better way to describe it: "Socialized risk, privatized profit." What it means is, socialism for the rich, while the rest of us get to take our chances with wild west capitalism.

The much-touted 'pace' of bleeding out

Let's say I'm bleeding. Badly. I have about 15 pints of blood in me. I drop a half pint and I don't like that exactly, but it's really no sweat. Then I lose another pint. I feel a little dizzy, starting to get concerned. Then a pint and a half. Weak, feeling sick. Another pint. Really worried now...

Then the 'pace slows'' to half a pint. Do I feel better? Not much. I'm in deep doo-doo, as a certain former President would say. I'm losing less blood than I was before per minute, sure, but my problem is still getting worse. Much worse - fast. Why? You don't have to be a surgeon of any stripe to figure this one out. Because the first drops of blood lost are not the same as the later drops. The more blood I lose, the more precious each drop becomes - the less able I am to weather the loss, not to mention recover from it.

So it is with the slower pace of job loss announced this week for April (only 539,000 losses - nonfarm). The more jobs the economy hemorrhages, the harder it is for laid-off workers to find work - and the harder it is for families to support one another as charities and social services become overwhelmed.

Of course, these are probably not the final figures anyway. (March figures were just "revised upward" to 699,000 people kicked out of work. 650,000 had been predicted.)

And once again, these official figures use "unemployment" as a technical term, which does not mean how many people are out of work. That number would be about twice as much, even centrist economists admit. Official unemployment rates - 8.9 percent this month - do not count the workers who have "become discouraged and stopped looking for work," workers who are failing to find adequate work - maybe a couple days a week when they need a full-time job, and many others. The under-employment rate could be 15-20 percent, according to some.

Of course, even that is not distributed equally. (What is?) For some age groups of black men, for example, the employment rate is barely about 50 percent now - for others, less than 15 percent.

But the economy "may be finally starting to find its footing," writes Brian Blackstone in the Wall Street Journal - even though " a good deal of the improvement came from government hiring in advance of next year's Census." Now all we have to do is convince the government to hire the 5.7 million people who hav been thrown out of work since December 2007 to count every living thing on the planet Earth ... hmmm ...