StraightWords E-Zine

Playground project shows the other side of Englewood

 

Teressa Jones, 12, and classmate Carmen Emanuel, 11, are excited about a new playground across from a school in the Englewood neighborhood. Photo: Richard Muhammad

By Richard Muhammad

CHICAGO – Sixth grader Teressa Jones, 12, and classmate Carmen Emanuel, 11, huddled together in a heated tent a couple blocks from Walter ReedElementary School, in the city’s Englewood neighborhood, as squeals and laughter filled the air. Youngsters dipped small sponges into plastic containers and painted hearts onto stones to help decorate a new park built across the street from their school.

“This park will be inspiration to all kids because it should help students take care of their community. If people see more people take care of their community maybe they will want to do it too,” said Teressa.

The playground project at 6400 S. Sangamon showed another side of Englewood, and the determination of residents and organizations to improve their neighborhood as it struggles with urban ills like poverty, unemployment and recent deadly violence that captured the attention of a senator, congressmen, the mayor, the governor, pastors, civil rights leaders, and people across the city. Many residents are hopeful and helping themselves, amid new and plentiful promises of outside assistance.

“This project has been an ongoing project for like the last six months, and we’ve unified various community-based organizations and non-profits to make this happen,” explained William Birch, of the Chicago Family Foundation and Englewood-based Black Youth in Action, who oversaw the construction.

By this being a project that has been in the works and then we had the recent tragedies in the past couple weeks. This may be a wake-up call to say, ‘We need more of these kinds of events throughout our community, we need more working-togetherness in the community among organizations,” said Birch.

The tragedies were the deaths of Starkesia Reed, 14, and Sherita White, 10, killed in March by stray bullets from assault weapons, according to police. The playground construction also came a day after an anti-violence rally that drew people from across the city.

The new park – complete with slides, benches, small trees, jungle gym and other equipment – was built March 21 through a joint effort by Teamwork Englewood, the Chicago Family Foundation, Black Youth in Action and the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons. The groups worked with KaBoom!, a national non-profit that specializes in creating play spaces in underserved areas. Volunteers from Kennedy King College and Dawson Technical School also helped complete the playground in one day. St. Bernard Hospital provided a warm trailer on the chilly second day of spring.

“This is a wonderful,” said Vera Jones, a school community rep with Walter Reed Elementary School. She was impressed that children had an actual hand in building the playground. “Any time you are part of building something, it means something,” she said.
“You have a sense of ownership and it means a little more. They are very good kids all we need are more things for them.”

Englewood has changed a lot, said Yemiymah Yisra’el, an AmeriCorps volunteer and former resident. “Just doing this will help out and keep people doing more projects like this to help out the community,” said the 23-year-old.

Gloria Abernathy, a 54-year-old Englewood resident, hustled from one side of the playground to another shuttling rakes and shovels. “Basically I’m kind of a loner. This has helped me personally get out and meet and see what’s actually going on and kind of dispel some of this negative talk about our community. I think it’s a good neighborhood,” said Abernathy, who is active with Team Englewood, a joint effort by community groups, residents, businesses, and pastors. She has lived in the neighborhood for 20 years and runs a 14-year-old program that helps substance abusers conquer their addictions.

Black Life Has Value rally brings calls for unity, responsibility, resources

By Richard Muhammad

Sen. Barack Obama pledged to fight for more resources for poor neighborhoods, but added that Blacks would have to save themselves.  Photos: Richard Muhammad

CHICAGO -- The sanctuary, basement and overflow rooms at  Fellowship Missionary Baptist Church were packed with people and others clutched babies tight against the cold, trying to squeeze their way inside.

The “Chicago Stand Up Because Black Life Has Value” rally, sponsored by Clear Channel radio stations WVAZ-FM, WGCI-FM and WGRB-AM was sparked by the recent deaths of two Englewood girls, but dealt with the problem of violence and its toll on the Black community.

The overarching message the evening of March 20 was that it was time for action – collective action and individual action – to end violence in Chicago. A combination of more resources, more jobs and programs, better policing, better parenting, greater spirituality, greater unity and responsibility as a community was needed, speakers said.

“I am in an elite club, something that I have never wanted to be in, but I’m a mother that has lost her child to violence in the streets,” said Denise Reed, whose daughter Starkesia Reed, 14, was killed in early March. A stray bullet from an AK-47 crashed through her window, killing the honor student as she dressed for school.

Reed said her daughter was now an intercessor and praying for her family and for the city to understand that Black life is precious. She was one of several parents that lost children who spoke. All expressed gratitude for the lives of their children and shared the pain at their losses. But underneath the pain was a call for more involvement in the lives of youth and anti-violence efforts.

Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. (D-Ill.) spoke passionately and offered a somewhat different message from his father, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who urged the audience to take to the polls the next day and exercise the ballot as a tool for change. The younger Jackson called for Blacks to police themselves, and not look for scapegoats. “It may be a constitutional rights violation, if (police) do a stop and search,” he said. “But not if you do it,” Jackson added, saying it was time for men to “man up” and take control of out of control boys in the streets.

Rev. Charles Jenkins, pastor of Fellowship Baptist Church, called for more resources. Job training, small business loans and union apprenticeships are needed to create more opportunity and less desperation, he said.

Rep. Bobby Rush agreed additional resources were needed. He noted how his efforts have brought development projects and dollars into Englewood. But said Rep. Rush, whose son was killed seven-years-ago on a city street, “We’ve got to work to establish a neighborhood. If you’ve been blessed, it’s your responsibility to bless somebody else.”

Siretha Woods talks about the death of her daughter and the need to stop gun violence.

Siretha Woods told the audience about going from the burial of her daughter Seritha White, 10, killed by a stray bullet at a surprise birthday party, to the hospital where her ailing husband passed away the same day as her daughter’s funeral. “We need to stop this violence. I would have never believed I would be standing her in a predicament like this never. We got a fight, we got a battle and we are going to win. We are going to win.” She also announced a new campaign and logo, “Tell For Seritha and Starkesia,” to help combat guns and violence.

“When the marches stop and the signs come down, and the politicians go home and the cameras are turned away, what will we be doing tomorrow?” asked Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.).

Obama, who vowed to fight for more money and programs, stressed Blacks must make individual and collective changes.

“If we don’t change how we raise our children, then it doesn’t matter how many more programs come in here. It doesn’t matter how much more money comes in here, it doesn’t matter how many politicians make speeches. There’s a reason they shot each other, because they don’t love themselves. And the reason they don’t love themselves is because we are not loving them. We’ve got work to do people,” he said.

Tragic shootings fuel call for assault weapons ban in Illinois

Gov. Blagojevich renews call for assault weapon ban in Illinois prior to march after the deaths of two young girls, killed by stray bullets from assault-syle or automatic weapons. 

Photo: Richard Muhammad

By Richard Muhammad

CHICAGO -- As a second mother prepared to bury a daughter hit by a stray bullet in the Englewood neighborhood, the mayor and governor repeated demands that assault weapons be banned in the state.

          Seritha White (left), Starkesia Reed

But, for some, the outpouring of concern, the marches, vigils and promises led to a question: What interest will remain once media coverage subsides?

“It is difficult to explain, explicable to understand, how two young children going about their lives -- one at a birthday party, the other about to go to school -- in their homes safe, presumably, and then both be victims of gun violence,” said Gov. Rod Blagojevich, speaking March 18 at a podium in the parking lot of Liberty Christian Church, before a march through the streets where Starkesia Reed, 14, and Siretha White, 10, died a few blocks from one another.

Reed was killed March 3 when a bullet fired from an assault rifle missed its target, but struck her as she dressed for school in her bedroom. Days later, White was bubbling over excitement before shots rang out, apparently aimed at men sitting on the steps of the home where she was to celebrate her birthday. Reports have said the weapon used was an assault rifle or automatic weapon. Police said first shooting was likely from a personal dispute and the other gang-related violence.

It will be an uphill battle to pass a “commonsense” law that would make assault weapons illegal, the governor complained. “These are weapons of mass destruction,” said Gov. Blagojevich, who blasted lawmakers that would “rather do the bidding of the gun lobby than protect neighborhoods like Englewood. No law abiding citizen needs a semi-automatic assault weapon.”

The General Assembly failed to pass an assault weapons ban by two votes in the last legislative session, the governor said. Pro-gun legislators need to visit Englewood and see the devastation wrought by military-style guns, he said.

“There is no excuse, no excuse, for anyone to sell dope to any child in any community. There is no excuse for anyone to take a gun and point it at a child or at a home in any community,” said Mayor Richard M. Daley. He was flanked by Rep. Bobby L. Rush (D-Ill.), Alderwoman Latasha Thomas, state lawmakers Jackie Collins and Mary Flowers, other political, religious leaders and community leaders with reporters, TV cameras and residents from across the city in front of him.

Mayor Daley said the federal government must increase its fight against drug and gun trafficking. Neither the guns, nor the drugs originate in Englewood, they cross international borders and end in the neighborhood, he said. Mayor Daley urged support for legislation that would limit gun purchases to one a month and ban assault weapons.

“We want to see all of you two months from now. We want to hear from you two months from now in Englewood,” said Alderman Thomas, one of five aldermen that represent parts of the Englewood neighborhood, to the crowd and dignitaries at the press conference.

After the media statements, marchers wound down several streets, passing the block where White’s family was preparing for her funeral, which attracted hundreds of people, and ended up on the steps of the home of Denise Reed, Starkesia’s mother. Anti-drug chants and calls for residents to come out of their homes echoed in the streets along the way.

Finding solutions to problems

Clergy and local politicians must go to the state capitol to lobby for passage of an assault weapons ban, said the Rev. Walter Johnson, of Wayman A.M.E. Church, who grew up in Englewood. “These AK-47’s were never made for anything other than killing innocent people,” he said.

“It’s really important for us to unite across the city to get involved to make sure that every community and every neighborhood is safe,” added the Rev. Johnson, whose church is located in Cabrini Green.

Others welcomed the statements by the governor and mayor, but noted that Englewood residents have worked for over a year to craft “The Making A Difference In Quality of Life Plan In Englewood.”

Johnnie Muhammad, an organizer with Teamwork Englewood, explained the plan seeks to analyze the underlying causes of violence and other problems. The Englewood plan outlines programmatic responses, with multi-year financial commitments from the McArthur Foundation, he said. It includes 46 different projects, with 10 strategies for redevelopment, in the areas of economics and jobs, housing, public safety health and recreation, community life and arts and culture. Community residents co-chair working groups and evaluate project progress, he explained.

The mayor, governor and others said positive things about what generally needs to occur in a community like Englewood, said Muhammad. But, he added, all violence is not gang and drug-related. If the diagnosis is off, money may be spent on areas that don’t address the real causes, Muhammad observed. Some resources may be needed to generally show youth ways to resolve conflict without violence, he said.

‘We struggle around here every day’

“These mothers’ pain, I feel it. I live it every day. Every little bit helps, things like this help,” said Latonya McClendon, standing in front of the Reed family home. The Roseland neighborhood resident marched to show support for the Englewood mothers who lost their children. Her son was beaten to death on his 17^th birthday.

“It’s not about all the cameras and the newspapers, it’s about the mothers. If nobody else can do this, us mothers can because a mother’s love is indescribable,” said McClendon, who does grief counseling and turned her pain into a ministry. The deaths of young Black males often get less attention because of stereotypes, she added.

There was tension outside the Reed home as counter demonstrators with bullhorns blasted the mayor, police and pastors for neglecting the Englewood community, which has its more than its share of poverty, unemployment and failing schools.

Joseph Watkins, of V.O.T.E. (Voice of the EX-Offender), was one of those critical voices. Besides crooked cops involved in drug and gun dealing and efforts to push Blacks out as gentrification sweeps across the city, Black politicians, pastors, businessmen and other prominent people have failed to do anything for poor people, ex-offenders and youth, he said.

Millions are going to be spent in Black neighborhoods and people could have been trained for jobs, but the city didn’t do it, Watkins said. Out-of-touch politicians need to give resources to groups doing real grassroots work, Watkins advised.

“They’re targeting the wrong things. These kids are not the problem, it’s the administrators, the ones that oversee and bring these things into our community. That’s what the problem is,” he said.

“We struggle around here every day and don’t nobody come over here and help us. They don’t know what’s going on. Get one of these drug dealers, ask one of these drug dealers why they out here selling drugs. They want to eat, they need somebody to help them!” said Latricia Lee, a-22-year-old Englewood resident, fed up with the neglect.

“I’m scared my baby is going to die,” she said, pointing to a toddler nearby. “This ain’t just started, it’s the whole Black community, it’s not just Englewood. Don’t just help one, help everybody,” she sobbed.

END

Airing Uncle Sam’s dirty laundry

By Richard Muhammad

(KIN) – Uncle Sam may want to spread democracy around the globe, but human rights violations suffered by Blacks, immigrants and the poor, during and after Hurricane Katrina, are haunting him.

“The actual television images that people saw around the world shocked so many people,” said Chandra Bhatnagar, of the ACLU Human Rights Working Group. “Activists from developing countries, poor countries, contacted me or said things to me about, ‘We can’t believe this happened in your country. We can’t believe this is how the U.S. government treats its own citizens or its own residents.’ ”

Bhatnagar was one of several human rights activists at a March 16 forum at the United Nations Plaza in New York where the U.S. government was accused of violating a UN treaty on human rights in its responses or lack of responses in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. The session coincided with a two-week meeting of the UN Human Rights Committee.

It featured presentations from the People’s Hurricane Relief Fund, the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Economic and Social Rights Initiative and the United States Human Rights Network.

The United States is a signatory on the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Bhatnagar noted. Since the U.S. signed the treaty, one of few accords the Bush administration is bound to, the UN Human Rights Committee will review U.S. compliance at a July hearing in Geneva, Switzerland, he explained. The U.S. has already submitted it a report, the first in a decade, lauding its success, said the attorney.

But, Bhatnagar added, the review process allows groups outside government to raise concerns, give the UN committee questions to ask the U.S. representative and offer “shadow reports” showing where governments fail to meet treaty obligations. The UN Human Rights Committee can then tell the respective government where it needs to improve. If the U.S. was found in violation of the treaty or international law, it would be a powerful organizing and communication tool as well as support other legal action, he said.

The people languishing on rooftops, crowded into the Superdome with no food, medicine or water, evacuees herded onto planes bound for God knows where, the lives lost, and blunder after blunder by the Federal Emergency Management Agency weren’t just tragic episodes, the groups said.

“The biggest problem in New Orleans was the failure of the levee system, which was supposed to be maintained by the government,” said Malcolm Suber, an organizer with the People’s Hurricane Relief Fund, displaced by the flooding. The failure to maintain the levees resulted in the violation of peoples’ basic right to live, he said. With no levee repair, no grocery stores, no electricity in Black neighborhoods, schools still closed and whites plotting to grab political power with Black residents scattered in over 40 states, the result is “gentrification by neglect,” he said. Without government support, Blacks are finding it difficult, if not impossible, to come back to New Orleans, he said.

“Hurricane Katrina only highlighted existing human rights violations that had been happening all along. Any time that along the Mississippi Gulf Coast people are still living in tents because they can’t get their homes rebuilt or there is no housing for them, it’s just really shameful. It’s like we are living in a Third World country in the south,” said Nsombi Lambright, executive director of the ACLU of Mississippi.

Six months after Katrina, Blacks who lived on the Gulf Coast are locked out of the decision making process when it comes to rebuilding and New Orleans survivors are being denied jobs, housing, services and seeing their children criminalized in the public school system, according to Lambright.

“It’s getting pretty bad right now and I’m really worried about the students that are in Mississippi and who just have left one traumatic situation and who are in a really unfamiliar, unfriendly territory in the school systems and the communities that they are living in now,” she said.

The UN treaty obligated the United States to take specific action to protect Katrina evacuees, said Ajamu Baraka, executive director of the Atlanta-based U.S. Human Rights Network. His organization is running the Katrina Internally Displaced Persons Human Rights Project, which includes a petition and educational campaign.

The evacuees fit the definition of internally displaced persons and the government had a responsibility to avoid displacement, he said. Since it failed, the displaced persons must be given compensation, and material support throughout their ordeal, not just short term humanitarian assistance, he said. They also have a right to housing, special programs for women and children, protection from discrimination, medical care, and the right to return, Baraka said.

Just as internally displaced persons hit by the Asian tsunami are due continued support for years, Hurricane Katrina survivors must be seen in the same light, he said.

“This is the first example of a displaced population in any northern country. There is no other example like this in any advanced capitalist country,” Baraka observed.

One reason for dispersing people was to avoid the imagery of massive displacement seen in places like Sudan or Liberia, he added. The human rights efforts aren’t just symbolic, but begin to but things in a different context that allow for different solutions and pressure points, said Baraka.

“If the U.S. administration wasn’t concerned about international public opinion that would not expend the level of resources that they expend. The fact of the matter is they do care because part of their process of being able to exercise power is being able to persuade, to be able to project a certain kind of image.

“While we understand the UN is not going to solve our problems we recognize we have to utilize every instrument open to us. We have to confront the U.S. in every arena and every level of government,” said Baraka, whose group was formed to deal specifically with human rights abuses in the United States.

UN creates new watchdog over U.S. opposition

By Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, March 15 (IPS) - A running gag at the United Nations is that whenever the United States takes a defiant stand against an overwhelming majority of the 191 member states, there are only three countries that predictably vote with Washington most of the time -- whether it is right or dead wrong.

As expected, this incongruous voting pattern was repeated when the three loyal U.S. allies -- Israel and the two tiny Pacific Island nations of Palau and the Marshall Islands-- were the only member states to stand in unison with the United States when it rejected a resolution calling for the creation of a new Human Rights Council.The vote in the General Assembly was 170 in favor and four against (United States, Israel, Marshall Islands, Palau), with three abstentions (Venezuela, Iran and Belarus). Seven member states -- Chad, Cote d'Ivoire, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Eritrea, Papua New Guinea, and Seychelles -- were deprived of their votes because they had not paid their dues to the world body.

Since the United States has no veto in the General Assembly, the resolution was adopted by an overwhelming majority. The U.S. opposition couldn't block the establishment of the new Human Rights Council.

"With the exception of the usual additions of two tiny dependent island-states, the United States and Israel stand alone in defying virtually the entire world's support for the new Human Rights Council," says Phyllis Bennis, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Institute for Policy Studies.

As the work of selecting the first group of members for the new Council begins, each candidate state must agree to being vetted before membership as well as being examined fully at some point during its three-year term, she said.

"The United States, despite its opposition to the Council, has claimed it will 'work with' the Council, and we can anticipate it will expect to win a seat in the first term," Bennis told IPS.

But such an effort should be rejected, she said, as countries evaluating human rights records keep in mind the continuing patterns of U.S. human rights violations both within the United States itself and internationally, where U.S. military or political officials are in power.

"No country with such a record of torture, secret detentions, 'extraordinary renditions,' rejection of the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC), denial of due process and generations of capital punishment, even for minors and the mentally disabled -- all as a matter of official policy -- should be allowed to serve on the new Human Rights Council," said Bennis, author of "Challenging Empire: How People, Governments and the UN Defy U.S."

If the General Assembly does indeed allow the United States a seat, she argued, special care should be taken to insure that the mandatory human rights evaluation carried out of all members be taken very seriously when it comes to the U.S., so that the claim that the so-called "indispensable nation" should be somehow exempt from human rights scrutiny will be rejected.

The proposed new Council will have 47 members compared with 53 in the outgoing Human Rights Commission, which has been criticized for accommodating "habitual human rights abusers" as some of its members.

The membership in the new Council shall be based on equitable geographic distribution and seats shall be distributed among regional groups: 13 for the African Group; 13 for the Asian Group; eight for the Latin American and Caribbean group; six for the Eastern European Group; and seven for the Western European and Other States Group.

All members, who will have term limits, will serve for three years but will not be eligible for immediate re-election after two consecutive terms. The General Assembly, by a two-thirds majority of the members present and voting, may suspend the rights of membership in the Council of a member of the Human Rights Council that commits gross and systematic violations of human rights.

Since a two-thirds majority for membership was opposed by an overwhelming majority of states, General Assembly President Jan Eliasson, who crafted the draft resolution, opted for a compromise: an "absolute majority" -- meaning 96 votes in a 191-member General Assembly.

After the voting in the Assembly, U.S. Ambassador John Bolton said that too many countries sought membership in the outgoing Commission primarily "to protect themselves against criticism, or to criticize others."

He agreed with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who had initially proposed that the new Council be elected by a two-thirds majority.

"That would have made it harder for countries not committed to human rights, to win seats on the new body. The United States had also proposed exclusive criteria to keep gross human rights abusers off the Council, to exclude the worst violators," he added.

Sadly, Bolton said, those suggestions had not been included in the text. The resolution merely required member states "to take into account" a country's human rights record when voting.

"And suspension of a member required a two-thirds vote, a standard higher than that required when electing new members," he added.

Bolton also said the real test would be the quality of membership that emerged on the Council -- "and whether that would include countries like the Sudan, Cuba, Iran, Belarus and Burma to name a few”

In a statement released, Annan said: "This is only the first step in a process of change." In the coming weeks, he said, states wishing to be elected to the new Council will put forward their pledges and commitments to protect and promote human rights.

"It will be up to their fellow member states to evaluate these promises, and to hold the successful candidates to them. The General Assembly will vote on all candidates, and thereafter will have the responsibility to suspend any of the Council's members that commit gross and systematic violations of human rights," Annan said.

He also said that the universal review mechanism will allow the Council to hold all member states to their human rights obligations fairly and equally, without selectivity or double standards.

The Council will meet regularly throughout the year, and can hold special sessions when needed. This should enable it to deal with human rights crises immediately, whenever they arise, Annan added.

The creation of the new Council was also hailed by virtually all human rights organizations.

Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, said the new council should be a great improvement over the old Commission on Human Rights.

"Today's resolution marks an historic step towards enhanced human rights protection within the U.N. system," he added.

"The challenge now is to make the Human Rights Council function effectively, so human rights victims around the world will gain the forum they urgently need to seek relief from abuses," Roth said, in a statement released Wednesday.

Yvonne Terlingen, U.N. representative for Amnesty International, said her organization welcomes "the overwhelming vote" by the General Assembly in favor of establishing a new Human Rights Council.

She said the U.S. government's decision to vote against the resolution was "regrettable". However the result, 170 in favor, four opposed and three abstaining, demonstrates unambiguous international support for the Council.

Although the hard work is only just beginning, she said, it is encouraging to hear that, despite voting against the resolution, the U.S. government will cooperate with the Council and support it.

END

It’s time to bring Katrina failures before the world

By Richard Muhammad

COMMENTARY

From people desperately clinging to rooftops surrounded by water, to survivors pushed onto planes with no idea of their final destination, the horror of Hurricane Katrina survivors wasn’t simple bureaucratic bungling. It was a series of human rights violations that are drawing world attention in mid-March as the United Nations reconvenes on New York.

According to Rev. Daniel Buford, a co-founder of the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond and vice president of the Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Institute, the United States violated human rights pacts in at least 17 different areas.

Major violations were seen in the U.S. failure to protect life, in threats against people fleeing for their lives who were shot at and in the way families were ripped apart, said Rev. Buford.

The mountain of evidence of immoral ineptitude and corruption also continues to mount some six months after the storm. Video footage from a teleconference the day before Hurricane Katrina blasted past New Orleans shows President Bush, Director of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff and others being warned that water churned by the super storm could top the levees.

Nothing was done. In the 180-plus days since Hurricane Katrina, nearly nothing has been done to help poor Blacks and people of color hurt most by Katrina’s aftermath.

Fifty-three percent of Black survivors that participated in a recent CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll said they lost everything to flooding. One-third of Black survivors polled said they were still separated from loved ones.

“The disaster response – both public and private – was a disaster for Latinos and other communities of color,” noted Janet Murguía, president and CEO of the National Council of La Raza. An NCLA report documented the failures to serve Latinos and Asian Americans, who had a difficult time accessing services because of language barriers. The same groups were even missing from reports that assessed what went wrong.

In the face of neglect by the federal government, communities are continuing to create solutions through nationwide organizing of evacuees, a call for international scrutiny, and novel congressional legislation to make our government "honest." The pending congressional legislation would curb wartime profiteering and vulturous post-Katrina contracts. Blacks aren’t being hired to rebuild and Latino immigrants who do get work aren’t guaranteed to get paid: More than 1,000 workers, mainly Latino immigrants, were allegedly cheated out of overtime as they rebuilt a court house, a hospital and university buildings for the Belfor USA Group, Inc.

Folks most hurt by deals cut based on connections and influence have been fighting to get things right all along. They have fought in the courts, in the streets, on Capitol Hill and on the airwaves. They have marched, shouted, cried, wrote, protested, and organized together as survivors, in cities from New York to Chicago, and refused to be swept aside.

Those who survived flooding must not be washed away under waves of neglect, profiteering and politics. The world is watching, and its time for our nation’s leadership to take responsibility and provide the vital relief and recovery it never did.

(Richard Muhammad is head of Chicago-based Straight Words Communications and a contributor to the Katrina Information Network.)

Old divide resurfaces as Bush sinks

By Jim Lobe
NEWS ANALYSIS

WASHINGTON, March 7 (IPS) - As U.S. President George W. Bush's standing in public opinion polls plumbs new depths, his fellow Republicans are finding it ever more difficult to maintain their unity on key hot-button issues, such as foreign policy, immigration and civil liberties.

Intra-party differences that were successfully muted by the party's rallying behind the president and his image as a strong, decisive leader after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and the Pentagon, have re-emerged -- some, such as those between “Wall Street” and “Main Street Republicans” over port security, with considerable fireworks -- since Congress reconvened early last month.

The imminence of next November's midterm congressional elections is contributing to the party's growing incoherence.

With Democrats recruiting an unusually large number of viable candidates to contest competitive seats, many incumbent Republicans must decide whether to remain tied to the mast of Bush's seemingly sinking ship, or to break loose in order to reassure increasingly pessimistic voters that they, too, have grave reservations about where Bush has been sailing.

A Democratic takeover of either house of Congress, let alone both, is still considered a long shot. But the prospect is being taken increasingly seriously by political analysts here, particularly amid recent polls that show an unexpected erosion of support for Bush -- due in major part to the growing perception that he is incompetent -- among bedrock Republicans, as well as independents.

“Competence is not a partisan issue,” wrote Alan Abramowitz, a political scientist at Emory University in Atlanta, in Sunday's Washington Post. “(T)here is growing concern among Republicans that they could lose their grip on both chambers if the midterm election turns into a referendum on a president with approval ratings in the thirties or worse.”

Like Democrats, who also suffer from serious internal divisions, Republicans have long consisted of different ideological factions that represent different interests.

Wall Street Republicans, who generally represent the interests -- such as “free trade” -- of large multinational corporations, for example, often find themselves at odds with Main Street Republicans who have generally favored a more populist and nationalist agenda.

Similarly, the Christian Right, which in recent years has become the single most important Republican constituency, has clashed with “moderate” and libertarian Republicans who are both secular and abhor the former's attempts to legislate or otherwise impose its morality on the nation.

As in the proverb, “Nothing succeeds like success,” Bush's extraordinary post-9/11 popularity -- and his ability to translate it into legislative and electoral victories -- generally kept all major factions satisfied.

Still, some, like the Wall Street crowd, fretted about the impact of his foreign policy unilateralism on a multilateral system from which multinational corporations derived substantial benefits, and others about the impact of his huge tax cuts on the federal deficit.

With his 2004 re-election campaign out of the way, however, that unity began to fade, largely due to the steadily growing impression that, despite the administration's repeated assurances, the Iraq war was not going well at all and that Bush had no viable “exit strategy.”

As that impression took hold, Bush's ratings slipped steadily south, reaching their previous nadir shortly after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, exposing a level of incompetence and lack of preparation on the part of the administration that few had imagined.

It was at this point that older Republican ideological divides began to re-emerge -- first, in the debate over Bush's calls for a “Marshall Plan” to rebuild the city. Deficit hawks and anti-tax groups, who had remained faithfully by his side despite the steady accumulation of unprecedented federal deficits, accused the president of FDR-like profligacy that threatened to drive the country to ruin.

Bush's economic policies have since become a major source of contention within the party, especially since the publication last month by a heavyweight Republican economist, Bruce Bartlett, of a blistering and already best-selling critique entitled “Imposter: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy.”

One month later, a second breach -- this time with the Christian Right -- opened up with Bush's nomination of White House Counsel Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court. Lacking assurances that she was a trusted follower of their creed on the bench, the movement assailed Bush for picking a “crony” with dubious credentials and eventually forced her to withdraw her name, to the unease of the moderate wing of the party.

In the last two months, however, internal tensions have become clearer than ever.

The growing pessimism about the Iraq war has driven a growing number of influential conservatives, such as the outgoing chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on International Relations, Henry Hyde, to publicly question the wisdom of Bush's efforts to “transform” the Middle East, particularly in the wake of Islamist victories in elections in Iraq, Egypt, and the Palestinian territories.

Republican “realists,” such as former National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft, and “paleo-conservatives,” such as Patrick Buchanan, have long spoken out against the Iraq war and the administration's efforts to “democratize” the region.

However, Hyde's attack last month, echoed by former neo-conservative Francis Fukuyama and National Review founder William F. Buckley, on the administration's ambitions as unrealistic and potentially dangerous marked a major defection that offers political cover for other discontented Republicans in the run-up to the November elections.

Even more spectacularly, controversy over the proposed takeover by Dubai's DP World of U.S. port terminals -- and Bush's threat to veto legislation that would prevent the takeover from taking place -- has created a deep split between Main Street Republicans who believe that the sale threatens national security and Wall Street Republicans who argue that banning it would jeopardize critical sources of foreign investment in the U.S. and undermine the global trade and investment regime.

Even neo-conservatives, who have historically supported free trade, are deeply divided on the ports issue, which, according to the latest polls, has done serious damage to Bush's standing.

A similar split is also taking place over immigration, which some analysts believe will rise to the top of the political agenda in the November elections.

While the populist and paleo-conservative wings of the party favor tough legislation designed to bolster border security and punish illegal immigrants, including those who have lived here for many years, the business wing, backed by Bush, has repeatedly called for a liberal guest-worker program.

As with the ports, the issue has also divided the ranks of neo-conservatives, traditionally strong supporters of liberal immigration measures, and the Christian Right.

END

Farrakhan: Blacks must pursue 'divine' self interest

By Richard Muhammad

CHICAGO -- Speaking to a packed United Center audience, the leader of the Nation of Islam recently warned Black America against a pre-occupation with pleasing whites versus pursuit of divine self interest.

“When you look at the condition of Black people lost in America, deep in the mire of a decadent situation, we wonder what can raise the Black man from the condition enemy has put him in. The son of man talked about in the bible is anointed with the power and wisdom of God to deliver a nation of people from their oppressor,” said Min. Louis Farrakhan, speaking Feb. 26 during the Nation’s annual Saviours’ Day celebration at the huge sports arena.

The event commemorates the founding of the Nation of Islam by Master Fard Muhammad, a prophetic figure that Min. Farrakhan said fulfils biblical descriptions of a powerful figure known as the messiah and the Quranic figure called the Great Mahdi. Likewise, the Minister continued, Blacks in America fit the prophetic picture of Abraham’s descendents that would serve 400 years of bondage in a strange land among a strange people. America’s injustice and moral decadence have earned the judgment of God, but Blacks can escape that fate by giving up lifestyles that are contrary to God’s will, he said.

And, he added, the prophecy found in the divine word is connected to real events. Min. Farrakhan said America’s loss of friendship in Latin America and Europe bear witness to the teachings of his mentor, Nation of Islam patriarch Elijah Muhammad. Injustices the U.S. has heaped on the darker nations of the earth are coming back to haunt her, he said. Even whites that want to see justice done are powerless to make America do what is right, Min. Farrakhan pointed out. It is not wrong to love other people, but loving others at the expense of your own interests is sick, the Minister continued. “There are some white folk that are going to be offended by your liberation,” he declared. The Bush administration is pursuing a doomed policy in its war in Iraq and by putting Israel at the center of its Middle Eastern policy, Min. Farrakhan said.

“These neo-cons and Zionists have manipulated Bush and the American government and our boys and girls are dying in Iraq and Afghanistan for the cause of Israel, not for the cause of America,” he said. Min. Farrakhan warned Black youth not to join the armed forces and participate in the unjust wars. The synagogue of Satan spoken of in the bible is not a religious house for Jews, but a gathering place for people of like minds, he continued. That includes the Christian right, some influential White House advisors, Zionists and others poisoned by the doctrine of white supremacy and committed to U.S. imperialism, he said.

The Bush administration and the religious right see the modern state of Israel as vital, but it is the spiritual Israel, represented by Blacks in America, that God wants protected, he said. A Jew is one engaged in a covenant relationship with God, not a nationality, just as Christians are bound to the example and teachings of Jesus and Muslims bound to the way and word of Muhammad, the Minister said. Obedience to God determines whether one who takes the name of faith is a true believer, he said. White Christians used the bible to justify slavery and murdering Blacks that had nothing to do with the teachings of Jesus and the prophets, Min. Farrakhan noted.

Black America must make a decision, Min. Farrakhan said. The choice is to separate from wickedness and pursue righteousness, or integrate into a rebellious, wicked nation, he said. “It’s not about Black and white it’s about wrong and right,” said the Minister. “God is going to fight a battle over you. You are a prey but God is going to take you from them. In spite of your love for your former slave master, you shall be delivered, a mighty God has come.”

“If you love God and are with God, what does God want? Does God want us integrating into a house that is under divine judgment?” Min. Farrakhan asked. “Katrina should tell you they don’t care nothing about you. But God loves you.”

Mutagulizi Sanyinka, a New Orleans resident and activist, also focused on Hurricane Katrina in remarks before the Minister’s keynote address. Sanyinka appealed to Black America to stay focused on the need to obtain justice for their brothers and sisters evacuated from the Big Easy.

“Don’t let Katrina fatigue set in to your soul,” he said. Sanyinka urged support for Katrina evacuees by passage of city resolutions backing their right to return to the city; by helping evacuees participate in upcoming April elections; by keeping hearts open to their needs; by forming citizen disaster and survival committees and by joining a national movement to reclaim New Orleans and its African American presence.

END

Poll of U.S. troops in Iraq underlines growing pressure to withdraw

By Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON Feb. 28 (IPS) -- The findings of an unprecedented poll of U.S. troops in Iraq are certain to add to steadily growing pressures on the administration of President George W. Bush to accelerate Washington's withdrawal from a country that is increasingly seen as being on the verge of civil war.

Along with signs of disaffection and confusion in military ranks, recent surveys of public opinion at home have shown growing pessimism about the war, while even some of Bush's staunchest right-wing supporters, such as National Review founder William F. Buckley, are calling the president's Iraq adventure a failure.

The military survey, carried out between mid-January and mid-February by Le Moyne College's Center for Peace and Global Studies and the Zogby International polling firm, found that more than half of U.S. troops in Iraq (51 percent) favor a full withdrawal either “immediately” (29 percent) or within six months (22 percent).

An additional 21 percent told interviewers that U.S. troops should leave Iraq between six and 12 months from now, while only 23 percent -- or less than one in four -- agreed with official Bush policy that the troops should stay “as long as they are needed.”

The face-to-face survey of 944 military respondents, whose names and specific locations were withheld for security reasons, is the latest in a series of polls showing a continued erosion of support for the Iraq war, as well as for Bush himself.

According to a recent New York Times-CBS poll, Bush's public-approval ratings have fallen to an all-time low of 34 percent -- down eight points from January, and lower even than the 35 percent he held in a CBS poll last October in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

Iraq, along with the controversy over the administration's approval of a Dubai company to take over the management of terminals in six major U.S. ports, appears to be a major part of the latest decline. Only 30 percent of respondents said they approved of his management of the situation there, compared to 65 percent who said they disapproved.

That result echoes a recent Gallup poll that found the public more pessimistic than ever about progress in the Iraq war: only 31 percent -- almost all of them self-identified Republicans -- said they thought Washington and its allies were winning there.

The rising tide of popular discontent with the Iraq war -- particularly amid growing signs that the country is moving toward civil war and steadily accumulating evidence that the administration failed totally to prepare for the aftermath of the 2003 invasion -- has also prompted a growing number of defections from the war party's ranks.

“One can't doubt that the American objective in Iraq has failed,” Buckley, a right-wing heavyweight for decades, wrote after a surge of sectarian violence sparked by the bombing of an important Shia shrine swept through key Iraqi cities. “(T)he kernel here is the acknowledgement of defeat.”

Several days later, another prominent right-winger, Bruce Fein, wrote in the Washington Times that the violence was “sufficient proof that post-Saddam nation-building has failed. President Bush should immediately begin an orderly withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq."

In anticipation of these desertions, as well as declining public support for the war, neo-conservative activists who led the campaign to invade Iraq have been trying hard to rally the public with a series of columns -- a remarkable number of them from Iraq “with the troops” -- extolling their grit, goodness and determination and warning against defeatism at home.

“Can-do Americans courageously go about their duty in Iraq -- mostly unafraid that a culture of 2,000 years, the reality of geography, the sheer forces of language and religion, the propaganda of state-run Arab media, and the cynicism of the liberal West are all stacked against them,” wrote California classicist Victor Davis Hanson, a favorite of Vice President Dick Cheney, in the National Review Online. “Iraq may not have started out as the pivotal front in the war between democracy and fascism, but it has surely evolved into that,” he declared, stressing that Washington 's current strategy should carry the day.

The new LeMoyne/Zogby poll, however, tells a somewhat different story, at least from the point of view of its military respondents, nearly 75 percent of whom were serving their second, third, or fourth six-month tour in Iraq at the time of their interview. No less than 72 percent said U.S. troops should stay no longer than one year in Iraq. What is particularly remarkable is the 51 percent majority who favor withdrawal within six months. That corresponds precisely to the position of Democratic Rep. John Murtha, a highly decorated Marine veteran with long-standing ties to the military brass, whose impassioned appeals for a swift redeployment have been denounced by Hanson and other right-wing hawks in and outside the administration as surrender and a betrayal of the troops.

The respondents -- 41 percent regular Army; 25 percent Marines; and the rest National Guard and Reserves -- also showed uncertainty about their mission in Iraq. While some 27 percent said they were “very clear” about the mission, nearly one third said they were “somewhat clear,” 20 percent “somewhat unclear;” and nearly 25 percent either “very unclear,” “not sure,” or had “no understanding.”

Asked to assess the relative importance of the different justifications for the war articulated by Bush over the last several years, three in four soldiers said “establish(ing) a democracy that could be a model for the Arab world” -- the justification most recently cited by Bush -- was neither the “main” nor even a “major reason” for the U.S. intervention.

More than 90 percent also did not accept the justification most cited by the administration before the war -- to enforce U.N. resolutions requiring the destruction or removal of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) from Iraq. Less than five percent of respondents cited that as the “main” or a “major reason.” Remarkably, the two justifications most frequently mentioned by the troops were those that were discredited after the invasion. Forty-one percent said stopping “Saddam from protecting al Qaeda in Iraq ”was the “main reason,” while another 36 percent said it was a “major reason.” At the same time, 35 percent said “retaliat(ing) for Saddam's role in the 9/11 attacks” was the “main reason,” and 50 percent called it a “major reason.”

Contrary to the administration's view, most troops also believe that controlling the insurgency -- which they see as overwhelmingly indigenous -- would require doubling the number of ground troops and bombing missions.

“The sense is that they're not necessarily really seeing themselves in this war fighting against al Qaeda, but more so fighting in the midst of what's turning out to be a civil war,” said Zogby, who noted ominous parallels in soldiers' attitudes with the Vietnam War.

“These are the sorts of sentiments you started to hear and see impressionistically from troops coming home towards the end of Vietnam, the sense that why were we there in the first place, confusion, and what do we accomplish by staying there?”

Zogby said he was confident that the survey was representative of the troops serving in Iraq. “We chose good locations; we used random sampling; the methodology was tight,” he said. “We stand by the results.”

The Pentagon, which neither authorized nor cooperated with the survey, had no comment.

END