House Votes War Funding
Uphold the Sovereignty of Iraq!
All U.S.Troops Home Now!
On May 10, the House of Representatives voted 221-205 for yet another war funding bill. This bill immediately funds about $42 billion, while withholding an additional $53 billion until July. It has no requirement for troop withdrawal and allows large numbers of troops and mercenaries to remain indefinitely.
One of the bill’s main characteristics is to put into law the illegal U.S. attacks on sovereignty. It is an effort to make legal not only the crimes of U.S. occupation, but continued U.S. dictate and interference in the internal affairs of Iraq. The law includes “benchmarks” concerning actions required of the government of Iraq. The “benchmarks” involve such internal matters as how Iraq organizes its security, requirements for disarming its population, and for handing over its oil to U.S. monopolies. Congress is to review the “benchmarks” in July and then provide more funding for occupation if the Iraqis have done as they are told. Thus the U.S. government is not only going to decide what the Iraqis are to do, it is to decide if they have done it well enough!
It is no accident that it is precisely on this issue of “benchmarks” that President George W. Bush has said he will compromise, saying they “made sense.” The “benchmarks” serve both to divert from the U.S. crime of aggressive war and occupation of Iraq and to put in place laws that have as their aim eliminating the sovereignty of other countries.
The whole debate on “benchmarks” is also being used to undermine the demand of the people to end the war now by dragging people into the discussion about what the Iraqis should or should not do. It is an effort to poison the anti-war sentiment of the people with the chauvinism of the U.S. ruling circles, a chauvinism that says the U.S. “knows best” and the Iraqis should follow the “great white father” and do as they are told. The problem in Iraq, then, is not U.S. occupation, but the Iraqis. The solution is for the U.S. to dictate to the Iraqis and the role of Americans is to debate just how this dictate should be done.
Naturally, the Democrats are leading this debate, as part of their effort to appear anti-war while actually further imposing U.S. aggression and empire. Top Democratic Party Representative Rahm Emanuel, put it this way, “Our armed forces are up to 150,000 troops; we’re over $600 billion appropriated for this, lost 3,300 lives, 25,000 wounded fellow citizens. ... And the Iraqi answer? We’re taking a summer off. Goin’ fishing.” Emanual is referring to the planned summer recess by the Iraqi parliament. Imagine, the Iraqis deciding when their parliament meets or does not meet. And of course, the U.S. Congress can "go fishing" for the summer while the war rages and an occupation it is responsible for, continues. By law, it is the U.S., as an occupation force, that is responsible for the safety and security of the Iraq and its people, for the well-being of all its citizens, its civilian infrastructure, and so forth. It is also the one responsible for ending the occupation and doing it now.
The whole conception of the “benchmarks” is to blame the Iraqi government for the crimes and chaos and destruction of the U.S. occupation. As important, the bill is an effort to put in place, in law, arrangements of U.S. dictate and interference on a world scale. By law, the U.S., as an occupying power in Iraq, has responsibility to provide for the security and well being of the people of Iraq. It is responsible for paying reparations and funding rebuilding. It is responsible and obligated to end the occupation.
These laws and the whole effort to embroil the people in this debate are being rejected. Numerous actions on Mother’s Day are making clear that the demand of the people is to end the war now and bring all U.S. troops home now.
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Response to Democrat Plans for War Funding
End the War Now - Period
Instead of responding to President George “Endless War” Bush’s veto of the nearly $100 billion supplemental war funding bill with a proposal to only fund the safe and orderly withdrawal of all U.S. troops, contractors and bases from Iraq, the House of Representatives will vote Thursday or Friday on a plan to give Bush $40 billion now and force a second vote in July on the balance of the money. The second vote will be conditioned on “benchmarks” to be met by the Iraqi government.
Media reports will portray this as a crafty challenge to Bush by the congressional leadership (though early reports are the Senate will not take this approach, so a conference committee will presumably need to be called in the next week or so to reconcile the House and Senate bills).
Make no mistake, this is a vote to continue funding the war. Peace Action has never supported a dime for this war, and we’re not about to start now.
There will be many more rounds in this legislative saga this summer, and we will keep track of and work to impact the to-ing and fro-ing between Bush and Congress. But we need to remain clear and consistent in our demands to Congress, and right now, today, is an opportunity to tell your representative you want this war to end - period.
Call your representative today (you can reach him or her through the Capitol switchboard at 202-224-3121) and urge a vote against the supplemental appropriations bill that continues funding the wars and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. While you are at it, call back two more times and tell your Senators to bring our troops home for the holidays. After calling, visit http://peaceblog.wordpress.com to tell us how your call went.[TOP]
May 14, DC
Mother of a March
The time for being polite to our war-mongering politicians and organizations which support them is over.
We mothers have to stand up and put our bodies on the line for peace and humanity. We must look into the best parts of ourselves that make us mothers willing to care for and protect all children of the world, not just our own. We need to access our hearts and souls to lead from a place of compassion and love not from war/fear mongering, hatred and disgraceful threats and use of bullying force.
I am calling on Mothers of the world to join us in Washington DC for a “10,000 Mother of a March” on the day after Mother’s Day, Monday, May 14th, 2007. Marches on the weekends are not effective, we need to shut the city of DC down! We will surround Congress and demand an end to this evil occupation and refuse to leave until the Congressional Leadership agrees with us, or throws us in jail!
Meet at Layfayette Park at noon. We will rally then march to Congress
I am calling on Mothers of the world to descend on U.S. embassies all over the world that day. Imagine 10,000 Iraqi women marching on the Green Zone: marching in solidarity with us to end the slaughter of their children. I believe millions of mothers around the world are tired of their children being used as cannon fodder and political tools in the games of war and killer sanctions. Together we will stop the war machine.
Mothers united will never be defeated!
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Julia Ward Howe
Mother’s Day Proclamation - 1870
Arise then...women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
“We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country,
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.”
From the bosom of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says: “Disarm! Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice.”
Blood does not wipe out dishonor,
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
At the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace...
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar, But of God -
In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality,
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.
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Today We March, Tomorrow We Resist Even More
Alberto Ledesma, of Queens, NY, and other immigrant marchers literally put their bodies on the line in the tug of immigration war on Tuesday, May 1. “Give him back!” they yelled. “Let him go!”
They yanked the arm of the NYPD officer clutching a fellow marcher named Romano. They leaned and pushed against the officer until they freed their friend from a chokehold. But Ledesma and the other marchers were tackled by a dozen or more officers who proceeded to re-arrest Romano and dragged him into a parking garage on Broadway Street, the site of the massive May Day immigration march in New York May 1.
Within minutes, hundreds of marchers surrounded the police who put up a wall of blue uniforms as they retreated into the parking lot while they awaited reinforcements. Riled by the arrest, Ledesma looked past the baton-wielding wall and yelled to his friend, “Don’t say anything! We will get you out!” As police cars drove away with Romano after several tense minutes of a standoff, the hundreds of marchers cheered after him, “You are not alone! You are not alone!”
They then flowed back into one of the many marches in which the central message was as much about defending the 12 million undocumented immigrants from increased raids, arrests and imprisonment as it was about legalizing them.
One year after the historic marches announced “Today we march, tomorrow we vote!” and only months after a dozen anti-immigrant legislators were removed from Congress in a historic political shift, Tuesday’s more somber, but still spirited marches seemed to mark a new strategy. It advocates legalization while more aggressively defending against increased raids and what marchers consider the punitive policy proposals of even the most liberal legislation.
“We are adamantly opposed to the STRIVE Act,” said Daniel Vila, member of the May 1 Coalition that organized the New York mobilization. Introduced by Congressman Luis Gutierrez, the “Security Through Regularized Immigration and a Vibrant Economy (STRIVE) Act,” contains most of the enforcement and legalization provisions of last year’s McCain-Kennedy immigration bill. It also includes additional “triggers” that will hold up any legalization until Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff certifies that sufficient “border security” measures are in place. The STRIVE Act also includes a “touchback” provision that requires undocumented immigrants to leave the country and re-enter before adjusting their legal status.
Vila was among those who marched against the STRIVE Act, which they see as a more friendly version of the Sensenbrenner immigration bill. That bill, which would have made anyone who aided an illegal immigrant a felon, helped spark last year’s massive response.
The STRIVE Act will lead to a Faustian exchange of legalization for increased jailing of and raids on immigrants, they said. “Under the best conditions, we will only get a problematic legalization process and lots of the more repressive parts of (the) Sensenbrenner (bill): biometric identification, building the wall, increased border surveillance and dozens of new ways to turn immigrants into criminals. In the long term, it’s not worth it,” said Vila, who cited new strategic priorities in response to the spate of immigration raids since last year. Vila added, “We will be asking for legalization; we will be voting; but we will also be showing more resistance. In coming months you will see some of us organizing rapid response groups that will begin to intervene and stop ICE from arresting, terrorizing and deporting immigrants. The community needs to see that immigrants are willing to defend themselves.”
In Chicago – where estimates of the marchers ranged between 150,000 to 500,000 – mobilization leader Roberto Lopez of the nonprofit Sin Fronteras agreed with Vila’s strategic assessment of the mobilizations. “We can’t just let them get away with these raids under the cover of darkness,” said Lopez.
Lopez witnessed M-16-wielding “rapid response” ICE agents shut off entrances into and out of a shopping mall in Chicago’s Little Village section last week. ICE agents then detained more than 200 people including dozens of young children. That “fired up the community,” said Lopez. “We drew some of the leadership for today’s march from the hundreds immigrant community members that surrounded the ICE and the mall for over eight hours.” Most of those detained in the mall were later released.
Leaders in Milwaukee, where the police estimated more than 80,000 marched, and in Los Angeles, said that the immigration raids inspired, as much as they scared, many into joining the marches. In Los Angeles, dozens from among the tens of thousands who marched were injured when shotgun-wielding police shot them with rubber bullets.
Maria Flores and her three daughters witnessed the commotion of the parking lot arrest of Romano in Manhattan. Asked if she would continue to march despite having just witnessed police dragging the young immigrant into custody, Flores, a Brooklyn resident and undocumented supermarket clerk who had never marched or been politically active before yesterday, said, “I don’t want fear to be all my daughters remember. I’m here because I need to show them that they have to keep struggling; that I will fight to be legal so that we don’t get separated; that they shouldn’t be intimidated by anything.”
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Mississippi Ship Manufacturer Holding Indian Workers Against their Will
Workers Resist Inhuman Conditions
and Defend Rights
Hundreds of workers, immigrants from India, are opposing inhuman conditions by monopoly Signal International, with operations in Mississippi and Texas. Signal builds offshore oil rigs and also has contracts with the Navy.
More than three hundred workers in Pascagoula, Mississippi, working as welders and fitters, reported that Signal is holding many of them in company camps against their will. Following the government organized disaster after hurricane Katrina, many skilled workers were forced out of the Gulf Coast and have been blocked from returning. Signal has organized to recruit workers from India, promising permanent residency and forcing them to pay huge fees of $15,000 to $20,000 for temporary “H2B” visas that allow them to work in the U.S. These visas are issued to the company by the government at no cost.
The workers opposing Signal’s exploitation explained that they are living in substandard conditions in the camps where Signal has housed them. They live in isolation with twenty-four men in each cramped “container” unit, with only two bathrooms for all of them and have to pay for this housing! Visitors are not allowed in the camps and workers are forbidden from making complaints to the company. They are frequently threatened with wage cuts or termination for simply raising objections. Termination would make the visas invalid and likely mean detention and deportation — commonly without wages due and without refunding the $20,000 paid to work.
In March, in an effort to block resistance Signal conducted a raid on one of their camps. Armed security guards came in and took six workers. The company locked the workers in a room and told them they would be sent back to India. In a statement to local immigrants rights advocates, representatives of the workers said, “We paid money to a U.S. lawyer working on behalf of the company and to Indian recruiters. We have proof of this payment. For some of us, this is a lifetime of earnings in India. We all sold our property and our houses to come and work for Signal. In India we were promised that we would get green cards and permanent residency. This was not true. We were given temporary H2B visas that expire on July 31, 2007. We have been treated like animals here.”
Despite opposition from Signal, the workers have continued to organize and formed a committee to defend their rights. Members of the committee say that workers are still being confined by the company against their will. Two hundred workers organized a vigil outside the room where their fellow workers were locked up to monitor the situation and prevent the workers from being sent back to India against their will, without compensation and without cause.
The committee has collected more than one hundred-fifty signatures on a statement of support. They demand that Signal International:
• Release imprisoned workers
• Return the money the workers paid to the company to come to the United States.
• Ensure basic human rights and standards for food and accommodation.
• Assure that workers are paid the wage they were promised.
• Stop firing workers taken during the raid and reinstate all of them
For More Information: Bill Chandler, Mississippi Immigrant Rights Alliance, (601) 594-3564. Vicky Cintra, Mississippi Immigrant Rights Alliance, (228) 234-1697 or 1698. Saket Soni, Alliance of Guestworkers for Dignity, (504) 881-6610
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Parents, Teachers, Administrators
Reject Vengeance Against the Youth
One of the difficulties facing youth in society today is that as soon as they stand up for their rights and organize to defend themselves, they are branded as “troublemakers” and vengeance is taken against them. Punishments like suspensions and detention are used, as are expulsion and jail. The organizing efforts at McKinley High School, in Buffalo, New York, are a clear example (see update for April 27 for more).
Youth at McKinley took up the work to identify their concerns and to present them to their fellow youth, teachers and administrators, producing a “Declaration of Student Rights.” In their declaration, a stand is taken against impunity and demands made to end arbitrary and unjust punishment. Demands are also made to take education seriously and for the youth to have a decision-making role in their schools. The youth organizers involved hundreds of youth in their school through getting signatures in support of their Declaration and distributing armbands as an expression of the support and concern of all the youth.
All of these are actions to be applauded, as they represent a stand by the youth to organize to solve problems by defending their right to education. They are justly demanding that the conditions for learning and teaching be provided and themselves contributing to creating those conditions. But instead of applauding, the administration immediately acted to repress the youth, threatening suspension, sending youth home for the day for wearing armbands, and more. Their main logic was that of vengeance, that the youth had to be made to pay for standing up to the administration. This was directly said to one of the youth who, when told to remove his armband, explained that it is legal to wear armbands. “Not in my school,” the administration responded. And they continued to do so even after the youth provided information on the Supreme Court ruling in the Tinker case, which specifically defends the right of youth to express themselves using armbands. Thus the administration openly says it will act against the law and seek vengeance against any who challenge their dictate.
The spirit of vengeance has become very strong in society, as the government increasingly abandons any social responsibility to meet the needs of the youth and all of society. Youth, teachers and administrators are faced with the wrecking of their schools, with a demand for more and more submission to federal government dictate, “or else,” they will lose funding, “or else” they will be closed or taken over, etc. Our whole society also has the example of the vengeance being exacted against the people of Afghanistan and Iraq. In each instance, those in authority are acting to block solutions, to block progress, which serves to engender this spirit that “someone” has to pay for the problems that get worse and worse. It is this block to progress that fuels the fire of vengeance and it is opening the path to progress that opens the way for its elimination. It is the youth who are on this path to progress and every effort must be made to defend and support them by joining in the fight to defend their rights and the rights of all.
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Letter from a Buffalo Parent
Administrators Should Uphold Rights
I participated in the recent demonstration at McKinley High School, in Buffalo, New York, on May Day and was very inspired by the stand of the youth and glad to stand with them. As a parent with children in the Buffalo schools, I was happy to see the youth expressing their concerns and organizing together. We could use more of this in every school, I thought. But no sooner did the thought cross my mind then the school administrators sent people over to denounce and threaten the youth. They claimed the youth had no right to demonstrate, that they would be suspended, that the administration had pictures, etc. Then they threatened that 75 people were coming to end the demonstration. We ignored these threats and continued with our demonstration, which was after school and not on school property.
But I could not help but ask myself, what kind of administration supports such activity? Clearly it is one that follows in the footsteps of President Bush and other government officials who respond to the struggle for rights with force and punishment, whether it is war, torture, or detention and jail. The example set is that simply demonstrating or wearing armbands is illegal. It is an example that says the role of the schools is to teach our youth to submit to unjust punishment and the wrecking of their education. And we parents, like teachers, are supposed to do the same. More than that, we are to help enforce the punishment, by telling our youth not to “get in trouble.”
I for one support all the youth who “get in trouble” for defending their rights and plan to “get in trouble” with them. We have a role to play as parents and teachers and that is to defend our youth and reject every effort to criminalize them. I plan to challenge the administration at McKinley and demand an apology for their actions and urge every -Buffalo parent to do the same.
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A Society Taking Revenge and Committing Crimes Against the Youth
Thousands of Youth Sentenced to
Life without Parole
There are more than 2,225 children serving sentences of life without parole (LWOP) in U.S. prisons. They were generally tried as adults for crimes committed before the age of 18. The. About 16 percent were 13 to 15 years old at the time they committed their crimes, with the youngest youth jailed, for life, at 13. An estimated 59 percent were sentenced to life without parole for their first-ever criminal conviction. Others have known mental illnesses yet were left to fend for themselves.
An estimated 93 percent of youth offenders serving life without parole were convicted of murder. Studies also found that about 26 percent of these young people were convicted of “felony murder,” which holds that anyone involved in the commission of a serious crime during which someone is killed is also guilty of murder, even if he or she did not personally or directly cause the death. The youth may have been driving the car involved, for example.
As with statistics concerning the death penalty, there is no correlation between the severity of the sentencing and crime rates. For the youth, fewer youth are committing serious crimes like murder, while more are being sentenced to life without parole. In 1990, for example, 2,234 children were convicted of murder and 2.9 percent sentenced to life without parole. By 2000, the conviction rate had dropped by nearly 55 percent (1,006), yet the percentage of children receiving life sentences rose by 216 percent (to nine percent).
Forty-two states have laws allowing youth to be sentenced to life at any age, with 26 states requiring such sentences for anyone convicted of murder, no matter how young. The sentencing requirements also stand even if the judge feels the sentence is inappropriate. A main result of these mandatory sentencing laws, is one of the largest and youngest prison populations in the world. So while the U.S. has more than 2,225 youth in jail for life, the whole rest of the world has only 12, with most of those either in Israel or South Africa.
Nationwide, the racism of the U.S. state can be seen in the fact that African American youth receive life without parole sentences at a rate that is ten times greater than that of white youth (6.6 versus 0.6). In some states the ratio is far greater: in California, for example, black youth are 22.5 times more likely to receive a life without parole sentence than white youth. In Pennsylvania, Hispanic youth are ten times more likely to receive the sentence than whites.
The Convention on the Rights of the Child, ratified by every country in the world except the U.S. and Somalia, forbids sentencing young people to life, and at least 132 countries have rejected the sentence altogether. Most people also such sentences at such a young age to be cruel and unusual punishment, outlawed by the Constitution.
Many of those active defending the youth see the sentencing as part of the culture of revenge, embodied by President George W. Bush on a worldscale alongside the broad criminalization of youth by police agencies and schools. Sentencing such young people for life also expresses the false claim of the ruling circles that change is not possible and use of force and repression are the only answers. As one of the organizations involved in studying the matter brought out, what is necessary is for society to take up its social responsibility for providing the conditions necessary for all the youth to grow and flourish. The organizations specifically called on the United States to end the practice of sentencing child offenders to life without parole. For those already serving life sentences, they called for procedures to immediately grant them parole and to assist them after leaving
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