Banks rob us again: People’s Bailout calls for protest

If it weren’t so deadly, it would read like a cheesy comedy sketch.  You know the one I’m talking about: man is confronted by incompetent crook who fumbles and drops his gun . . . man hands the gun back to the crook, who thanks him and then proceeds to hold him up.

That’s the routine that is unfolding in Connecticut and all over the country, as the same banks that receive millions or billions of dollars in the taxpayer-funded TARP bailout go about their business of foreclosing on peoples’ homes.

The first attempt to rob working people of their money didn’t entirely go off as planned.  Selling people mortgages for houses they couldn’t possibly afford at interest rates that were out of sight, these banks got so greedy that they bit off more than even they could manage to chew up.  The result was a real estate market overload, triggering a credit crisis triggering a system-wide economic crisis.

Based largely on the bankers’ desperate pleas that the world as we know it would come crashing down unless the government did something, the feds came up with TARP, the Troubled Assets Relief Program.  In other words, a bail out.  Several Connecticut banks received millions of dollars under TARP, while the major players such as Bank of America and Citigroup got tens of billions in taxpayer funds to keep them afloat after their first botched robbery.

Turns out that handing them back their gun wasn’t such a good idea.  Take a look at the lists of residential homes in the Hartford area that are in foreclosure or whose homeowners are in “preforeclosure” because they are behind on their mortgage payments.  While the bailed out banks aren’t the only ones holding a gun to homeowners’ heads, you will definitely see BoA, Citi, Webster, CB&T and other TARP’s banks on those lists.  Is this why we bailed them out?  So they could rob us again?

Foreclosures don’t just hurt the individual or family that is forced to surrender their home.  Neighborhoods with high foreclosure rates will also suffer declining property values as well as a declining quality of life as homes are left vacant, overgrown and uncared for.

And there is the additional wrinkle in many communities such as Hartford, that foreclosures on multi-family properties are leading to banks not only tossing out the homeowner, but going on to evict the tenants as well — even if they have paid their rent faithfully.  In the current economic crisis, foreclosures and evictions are especially traumatic for the victims and bad for everyone in the community.

That’s why the People’s Bailout Connecticut decided to focus its first action on Connecticut’s TARP’d banks.  On Friday, March 6 at 4pm, PBC is calling on everyone who is angry about the banks’ second round of robberies to gather at the Memorial Arch at Bushnell Park for a march and protest aimed directed against the banks.  Protesters will make their way up to CityPlace, headquarters of Webster Bank, to Statehouse Square, whose banking tenants include CB&T, and then across the street to the Bank of America for a 5pm rally.

At each stop, speakers will address the duplicity and criminality of the TARP’d banks, who are using our money to throw us out of our homes.  The corporations and the banks got bailed out – and even as you read this, plans are emerging for a second set of bank bailouts – but working class people are drowning.  Even the Obama stimulus package and the mortgage package are not going to save the homes of millions of Americans, and they will do nothing for renters facing evictions.

So what does the PBC propose?  Like the name says: a bailout for the people, not the bankers, starting with a two year moratorium on ALL residential mortgages and evictions.  If this were a hurricane, the government would take emergency action to keep people safe . . . the PBC says that in this economic emergency, Governor Rell should use her emergency powers to keep people in their homes by ordering the suspension of all foreclosure and eviction proceedings.

Those of us who are directly affected by foreclosures and evictions, and those of us who want to preserve our communities and the families in them, should turn out on Friday, March 6 to be a part of this protest.  It is the first small step in building a movement that can put the needs of working and poor people ahead of the banks and corporations.

Filed under: Community organizing, Economic crisis, Housing rights

In defense of Nadya Suleman

I have become increasingly uncomfortable with the corporate media’s treatment of the story of Nadya Suleman, the young woman who recently gave birth to octuplets even though she also has six young children at home and seemingly little ability to support them.

On a personal level, thinking about this woman’s choices as if she were a co-worker or acquaintance, most of us shake our heads in dismay. Certainly it is hard to imagine telling a friend that you thought it would be a good thing for her to take fertility treatments so she could have large numbers of children with no realistic ability to support them. On that personal level, there is no question that most of us find her choices irresponsible. That said, let’s face it: if she were a friend we’d want to be supportive of her even if she made choices we felt were bad.

But the media is not Suleman’s friend and what they are doing to her has nothing to do with a public discussion about good choices, good parenting or personal responsibility. They are making her a poster child for attacks on poor women and especially women of color, whipping up hysteria about the “welfare mothers” who are supposedly bleeding us all dry.  As one writer noted, if Suleman were wealthy this story would have been a one day deal . . . an oddity that everyone would have gotten over. And if she were white and married she might at least have achieved the kind of pop star fame that has been awarded to the family featured in the reality tv show “Jon and Kate Plus Eight.”

The Nadya Suleman “story” is intended as a gross diversion about the personal irresponsibility of poor women and working class women and especially women of color at a time when corporate America has just gotten through looting billions from us in order to feed – and continue to feed – lifestyles of luxury and excess that most of us can’t even imagine. How dare the corporate media portray Suleman as irresponsible at a time while the owners of the media and their buddies on Wall Street are standing with their hands out for our tax dollars in the billions?

Sadly, there have been few critiques of the race, class and gender bias at work in these news stories.  To date, I have seen only two that I found insightful.  One is a commentary by a contributor to bitch magazine, a feminist publication. The other is an editorial, Motherhood, malice and the media published by Workers World. I think our inability too see and respond to these kinds of bias in the corporate media reflects that so many of us on the left still have not woken up to the life-and-death war that is being waged against working class people by the rich. We are in a global economic crisis that is shaking the very foundations of the capitalist system, and media campaigns like the microscopic inspection of the life of Nadya Suleman are intended as diversions from this crisis and also as tools to undermine our sense of solidarity with other members of our class. Whether her personal choices are wise or foolish, Nadya Suleman is just one person trying to live her life . . . why should we be obsessed with her choices while big business, the banks and their politicians are intent on piling the entire burden of the economic crisis on our backs?

Filed under: Economic crisis, Fighting oppression

An Open Letter to the People of Zimbabwe

Please Sign the Letter

First, let us begin by saying thank you. Thank you for demonstrating to and for African people and the world the courage and conviction that must be had to be self-determining in the face of insurmountable odds. Odds that would have crushed others with any less will to be free.

The road you chose for national liberation, which was carved through your first and second Chimurengas (armed liberation wars), cut an enduring path for us all to follow.

At this moment in time, when all the enemies of Africa have attempted to circle their wagons around you and crush your right to land and sovereignty, your leadership and the veterans of your struggle have rallied you to unite.

The words of one of Africa’s greatest patriots are so fitting to your struggle at this time:

“No brutality, mistreatment, or torture has ever forced me to ask for grace, for I prefer to die with my head high, my faith steadfast, and my confidence profound in the destiny of my country, rather than to live in submission and scorn of sacred principles. History will one day have its say, but it will not be the history that Brussels, Paris, Washington or the United Nations will teach, but that which they will teach in the countries emancipated from colonialism and its puppets. Africa will write its own history, and it will be, to the north and to the south of the Sahara, a history of glory and dignity.”

–Patrice Lumumba’s last letter, December 1960

Lift the Sanctions Now!

As anti-war, community, political, youth, trade union activists and Pan Africanists along with other people of good conscience of all nationalities inside the U.S. and worldwide, we are declaring our full solidarity with the heroic struggle in Zimbabwe to defend the right to full independence and sovereignty. At the heart of this struggle is the ongoing fight for the control of African land, illegally and brutally stolen beginning in the late 19th century by racist British colonizers led by Cecil Rhodes.

The Lancaster House Agreement–signed by the representatives of the ZANU-ZAPU guerrilla movements and the British government in 1980–promised to legally transfer ownership of the millions of acres of arable land from a handful of very privileged white farmers back to the Zimbabwean people. The British government reneged on this promise while the people of Zimbabwe patiently waited for reparations in the form of land reform to happen. When their patience ran out after waiting 20 years for legal justice, the people had no other recourse but to expropriate the land themselves by any means necessary.

As a result of taking back what is rightfully their birthright: the land, the people of Zimbabwe have had to bear the full brunt of unmitigated ire and disdain on the part of the U.S. and British governments and more recently, the European Union governments. This disdain is reflected in the political demonizing of government leaders, notably President Robert Mugabe, who has defended the Zimbabwean people’s right to the land.

Defending the people’s right to the land, the fruits of their labor and the country’s resources means recognizing the right to self-determination and sovereignty without any imperialist interference. This is President Mugabe’s “crime” in the eyes of the imperialist governments and their media. Behind this demonizing of President Mugabe lies the real crime–the economic sanctions imposed by the U.S., Britain and other Western countries that have resulted in the collective punishment of the Zimbabwean people.

These cruel sanctions for almost a decade have caused massive unemployment, malnourishment, hyperinflation, deeper poverty, lack of health care and fuel, the deterioration of the infrastructure and much more. A recent cholera epidemic that has claimed the lives of thousands could have been prevented if water purification chemicals had not been banned under the sanctions.

These genocidal attacks on the human rights of the people of Zimbabwe are very reminiscent of the sanctions imposed on the Palestinian population in Gaza by the U.S.-backed Zionist state of Israel. Let’s be clear–President Mugabe is not to blame for the economic crisis in Zimbabwe; it is the sanctions.

These economic sanctions along with other austerity measures imposed by the IMF and the World Bank are acts of aggression against the people of Zimbabwe with a goal of igniting political instability and regime change. We unequivocally denounce these sanctions as war crimes and the officials who initiated them as war criminals. Even as a national unity government has been implemented, the sanctions remain in place.

The people of Zimbabwe, like the people of Gaza, Iraq, Somalia and elsewhere, are inspiring examples of resisting all forms of imperialist war and occupation. Millions of people around the world are facing an unprecedented economic crisis, including the U.S., where foreclosures, evictions, layoffs, utility shut-offs, lack of health care, tuition hikes and much more are skyrocketing at an alarming rate.

We face the same enemies at home as do the people of Zimbabwe–the worldwide clique of bankers and bosses who put their greed for profits before meeting people’s needs. Our solidarity with the people of Zimbabwe is not just moral in character but also material in character. Their victory is also our victory.

It is in this spirit of international solidarity that we will continue to work hand in hand with our sisters and brothers in Zimbabwe to demand from the U.S., British and other imperialist governments:

End the Economic Sanctions Now!

Full Land Reform for the Indigenous Zimbabweans!

Respect the Democratically Elected Leadership!

Stop the Demonizing!

Hands Off Zimbabwe!

Sign the Open Letter at http://www.iacenter.org/africa/zimbabweopenletter

Initial Signers:
Africans Helping Africans
December 12th Movement
Fight Imperialism, Stand Together (FIST)
Friends of Zimbabwe
International Action Center (IAC)
Peoples Video Network
Dr. Molefi Asante, Pan-Africanist professor and author
Abayomi Azikiwe, editor, Pan-African News Wire
Amiri Baraka, playwright & poet
Sharon Black, All-Peoples Congress, Baltimore
Omowale Clay, December 12th Movement
Hillel Cohen, Doctor of Public Health, NY
Heather Cottin, Long Island Troops Out Now Coalition, NY
Chaka Cousins, All African People’s Revolutionary Party
Susan E. Davis, National Writers Union, UAW Local 1981*
Ellie Dorritie, ret., APWU*, WNY
Rachel Duell, prof., NJ
Andrea Egypt, organizer, Michigan Emergency Committee Against War and Injustice (MECAWI)*
Sharon Eolis, nurse-practitioner, ret., NY
Leslie Feinberg, Co-founder, Rainbow Flags for Mumia, NY
Sherry Finkelman, UFT L. 2*, NY
Sara Flounders, co-director, IAC
Julie Fry, V-P., Assn. of Legal Aid Attorneys*, NY
Michael Gimbel, del., NYC Central Labor Council*
Jerome D. Goldberg, attorney, Detroit, MI
Fred Goldstein, author, “Colossus Feet with Clay: Low Wage Capitalism”
Deirdre Griswold, editor, Workers World
Teresa Gutierrez, coordinator, May 1st Coalition for Worker and Immigrant Rights*, NYC
Dr. Sue Harris, co-director, Peoples Video Network
Imani Henry, Playwright/Performer
Larry Holmes, national organizer, Bail Out the People Movement*
Debbie Johnson, co-founder, Detroit Action Network For Reproductive Rights*
Prof. Dr. Leonard Jefferies, City College CUNY
Stevan Kirschbaum, chair, Grievance Comm., USW L. 8751*, MA
Michael Kramer, I.D.F. veteran, Veterans for Peace, Chap. 021*, NJ
Donna Lazarus, UFT*, NJ
Janet Mayes, Ph.D., NY
Dr. James McIntosh, Committee to Eliminate Media Offensive to African People
Monica Moorehead, Millions For Mumia; editor, “Marxism, Reparations and the Black Freedom Struggle”
Milt Neidenberg, ret., Teamsters L. 840*, NJ
Frank Neisser, CWA L. 1701, ret.*, MA
John Parker, coordinator, IAC, Los Angeles
Viola Plummer, December 12th Movement
Susan Schnur, Transit Union L. 268*, OH
Atty. Malik Zulu Shabazz, New Black Panther Party
David Sole, Pres., UAW L. 2334*, MI
Paul Teitelbaum, IAC, AZ
Jill White, EdD, IL
* For identification purposes only

Filed under: International solidarity

Chavez wins referendum, Wall Street groans

You can almost hear the groans and sighs of disappointment rising from Wall Street this morning.

No, it’s not the renewed predictions that the economy is continuing to crumble and that we have not yet gotten to the “bottom” of the recession yet.  It’s the news from Venezuela that the people have voted in favor of Hugo Chavez’s referendum lifting term limits.

The corporations were hoping for a little shadow of good news, which really had relatively little to do with how long President Chavez can continue to stand for democratic election.  They were hoping for a setback, a sign that all of the money and resources poured into opposing Chavez as a dictator or as a madman were paying off.  Given the mood on Wall Street, they were prepared to cheer even at a very close call that might show that Chavez’s “21st century socialism” had stumbled.  After all, the prospect of a successful alternative to their reign of greed, corruption and violence (I’m not just talking about pre-Chavez Venezuela . . . it’s equally true today, here) in these times is dangerous.  How long before more of us begin to consider the benefits of a government by and in the interests of the people?  So any tidbit that could demonstrate that the people of Venezuela were rejecting or even questioning the Bolivarian Revolution would have emboldened the bankers and CEO’s here in the U.S.

Sorry, Charlie.  The MarketWatch headline put it succinctly, “Chavez easily wins vote to abolish term limits.”  Yes, easily. With at least 54% of the vote even before all of the tallies are in.

Filed under: International solidarity

Connecticut’s youth have a right to higher education: No UConn tuition/fee increases!

The UConn Board of Trustees has announced that it wants a 6.9% increase in tuition and fees for attending the state-funded school, but at the request of Gov. Rell has agreed to postpone action on the increase until its meeting on March 10.

This poses some interesting questions. UConn is a state university. It was created and is maintained by working class taxpayers. It’s student body is largely working class young people from Connecticut and the rest of New England. It’s definitely not where the Wall Street elite send their children. So why are working class families being punished with increases, and why in an economic crisis should it be harder for us to send our kids to the schools that we fund?

Which leads to an even more interesting question . . . What would happen if a couple of thousand fired-up UConn students, future UConn students and parents of UConn students turned up at the March 10 Board of Trustees meeting and demanded that there be NO tuition increases and fee increases for the next two years? Clearly that’s the only kind of action that the UConn trustees or the governor or any of the rest of the politicians and bureaucrats are going to listen to. It’s important for people to turn out to testify at the legislature and to call and write their elected officials . . . but it doesn’t focus attention on the problem and it doesn’t create the political heat necessary to solve the problem.

Access to higher education is critical for young people to have any hope of making a decent living, and all the more so in the midst of this economic crisis. Our kids have as much right to an education as the children of the greedy Wall Street bankers who caused the crisis in the first place. If we want state colleges to be accessible to working class youth we’re going to have to fight for it.

Filed under: Economic crisis

How deep and how long a recession?

Nothing like a visual aid for those of us who struggle with numbers.  This chart shows the relative severity of job losses in the last two recessions and the job losses to date in the current recession.  Kinda makes you wonder when they will start admitting that it’s a depression, don’t it?

Meanwhile, if you were listening to the questions and the answers at the president’s press conference last night you heard something being hinted at that reinforces this point.  One reporter asked about the possibility of a “permanent recession.”  Obama responded by repeating what many capitalist economists are now saying: that there is a risk that government action will not be sufficient to change the direction of the economy and that there could be a spiraling descent into a decade-long recession.  He described it as a crisis turning into a catastrophe.

Certainly if you look at how Connecticut politicians are handling the crisis it’s easy to imagine catastrophe.  Oh yes, the general consensus is that Gov. Rell’s budget is ridiculous, but where is the alternative?  No, not the one where the government cuts somewhat less spending and there are fewer layoffs so that the wealthy don’t have to pay higher taxes . . . where is the real alternative?

That would be the one where the State of Connecticut recognizes that we are in an emergency with dire consequences for hundreds of thousands of working class people, and not only maintains the budget but increases spending.  That would be the budget where there is increased aid to renters, a moratorium on home foreclosures, increased funding to ensure that food pantries, soup kitchens and homeless shelters can serve people who need it, and more money for cities and towns so that they don’t have to lay off workers.

Why isn’t there a budget like that?  Perhaps because keeping the working class from drowning isn’t on the corporations’ agenda this year (or any year).  Perhaps because politicians like  Rell can already see the way that the deepening recession can open up “opportunities” to reconfigure state government so that people are more and more dependent on big business for hand-to-mouth survival.

Filed under: Uncategorized

This Saturday, February 7: Hartford City Hall

Filed under: Uncategorized

CT News Junkie: Adding up some of the cuts

As always, my thanks to the enterprising journalists at CT News Junkie (yes, there are some real journalists still out there) for this recitation of the state commissions that Gov. Rell wants to dump:

Adding Up Some Of The Cuts

by CTNewsjunkie Staff | February 5, 2009 8:53 AM
Posted to State Capitol

State agencies Rell would eliminate in her budget proposal:
1. Asian Pacific American Affairs Commission.$0
2. African-American Affairs Commission $442,659
3. Commission on Children $1.1 million
4. Commission on Aging $518,142
5. Permanent Commission on the Status of Women $1.1 million
6. Latino and Puerto Rican Affairs Commission $655,781
7. Office of Consumer Counsel $3.11 million
8. Office of Health Care Advocate $1.05 million
9. Property Rights Ombudsman $214,667
10. Department of Corrections Ombudsman $334,000

Total savings based on the elimination of these positions is $8.525 million in fiscal year 2010.

Though I would also say that cutting two of the four regional offices of the Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities and laying off 21 CHRO employees, Gov. Rell might as well put the state’s employment discrimination efforts into the coffin too.

Filed under: Economic crisis

Laughing at Rell’s budget, ’cause it’s either that or your head will blow up

For a humorous  take on the Rell budget – god knows we need it – please visit iBlog West Hartford’s fan letter to M. Jodi.  But I’m going to steal from him his list of some of the “highlights” of the governor’s proposed budget . . . you know, those items that reflect her deep and abiding concern for the people of the state of Connecticut:

> Reduce funding to Community Health Centers by $2,035,762.

> Reduce funding to School Based Health Center by $1.4 million.

> Reduce funding to various AIDS service accounts for a total of $477,225, including Services for Children Affected by HIV/AIDS, Needle & Syringe Exchange, Services For persons with AIDS, Children’s Health initiative.

> Eliminate non-emergency dental services for adults.

> Reduce inmate medical services by $5 million.

> Remove funding for the Juvenile Justice Urban Cities Pilot in the amount of $764,000.

> Remove diversionary bed funding of $1.68 million.

> Eliminate The Children’s Trust Fund, with its prevention programs transferred to the Department of Children in. This means eliminating funding for literacy programs ($100,000), legal services for children ($150,000), and Safe Harbor Respite ($190,000).

> Reduce DCF support to individuals age 21 and over.

> Reduce funds for Supportive Housing for Recovering Families by $2 million.

> Close High Meadows – 44 beds – with children being sent to community services or CT Children’s Place.

> Eliminate funds for Safe Harbor Respite ($750,000); Juvenile Justice Group Homes ($1.2 million); uncommitted wrap around services ($2.2 million); SWET program ($711,341).

> Eliminate funding for Non-Core Service Grants – Neighborhood Centers ($261,000), Community Emergency Services ($67,598), Behavioral Health Partnership evaluation ($100,000), Diaper Bank ($150,000), Safe Haven media campaign ($50,000).

> Eliminate Fair Housing funding for cut of $332,500.

> Reduce the number of Elderly Housing Counselors by $150,000.

> Eliminate Medical Interpreters under Medicaid.

> Impose cost sharing/co-pays for individuals receiving Medicaid.

> Remove cost- of-living adjustments for persons on Public Assistance.

> Cut nursing homes of over $160 million in SFY 10 and even greater in SFY11.

Filed under: Economic crisis

The truth about unemployment rates, a graphic guide

Filed under: Economic crisis