The new GreenLine TV show is finished ! "Iraq : War of Choice " can be viewed HERE.
Please remember to give it a "star rating " in the upper right hand corner and pass it on to friends & family.
It's Part 1 and it's full of history dating back 100 yrs to show why we are in Iraq today. The "real" reason that no one is talking about.
It's definitely the best one yet, but please excuse the web visual quality . Please go to www.gpomc.org for Rochester-area cable access TV listings to see an even better image.
THANK YOU to all those who contributed freely & courageously on screen, your voices will be heard. Howie Hawkins (Green Party Senate Candidate) , Aiden Delgado (from Abu Guraib) & Iraq Veterans Against the War , Kenneth Love RIT Anti War Group , Veterans for Peace, Jesse Dyen (music), Ava Lowrey (video Broken Promises@Peace Takes Courage), Rochester, NY citizens & more .
Peace , it's getting louder,
Deborah Magone
Saturday, September 30, 2006
Friday, September 29, 2006
AG Candidate Says True Environmental Justice Requires
Attorney General Candidate Says True Environmental Justice Requires
Nontoxic Methods of Production
September 25, 2006.
(Endicott, NY) Rachel Treichler, the Green Party candidate for attorney general, spoke to the press at the Environmental Justice for All Tour at Union High School in Endicott, New York on Monday afternoon, September 25, 2006. She addressed the need for better and more just enforcement of our environmental laws to ensure better and faster clean ups of groundwater and soil contamination from chemical spills across the state, but said that won't be enough to stop the damaging health effects of using toxic chemicals to produce everyday products. What we have to do, Treichler said, is use nontoxic methods of industrial production so that no one is exposed to the damaging effects of toxic chemicals. In Endicott, the tour learned about the work of local activists to get toxic spills of TCE and other chemicals at the IBM facility in Endicott cleaned up. 440 buildings in the village of Endicott have vapor intrusion remediation technologies installed to reduce exposure to volatile chemicals in the soil underneath the village.
Treichler observed that the environmental justice movement highlights a fundamental contradiction in our society. "The products we use everyday--cars, home appliances, computers, almost every item we use, even clothes--are produced by processes that release toxic chemicals into our soil, our air and our water," Treichler said. "When these products are disposed of, their waste is toxic, and the toxic chemicals in the waste leach into our soil, our air and our water. We want a clean environment, but we can't have a clean environment as long as these products continue to be produced and we continue to use them."
"We absolutely need stop locating industrial production facilities and waste disposal facilities almost exclusively in minority and low-income neighborhoods, but a more just distribution of the toxic chemicals isn't the solution. How is it fair, how is it justice for anyone to be exposed to these toxic chemicals?"
"We have learned enough about the damaging health effects of these chemicals that we have to stop using them. We have to develop new means of production that are completely nontoxic. People are working on this and companies are showing that it can be done. The Interface Carpet Company, this country's largest carpet manufacturer, produces no toxic emissions and its products degrade in a completely nontoxic manner. People call this ecological design."
"It can be done and we need to do it now," Treichler said.
For more information about Treichler's campaign, visit her website, http://www.voterachel.org. For more information about ecological design and the next industrial revolution, visit http://www.mbdc.com/c2c_home.htm. For more information about the Environmental Justice for All tour, visit http://www.ej4all.org.
Nontoxic Methods of Production
September 25, 2006.
(Endicott, NY) Rachel Treichler, the Green Party candidate for attorney general, spoke to the press at the Environmental Justice for All Tour at Union High School in Endicott, New York on Monday afternoon, September 25, 2006. She addressed the need for better and more just enforcement of our environmental laws to ensure better and faster clean ups of groundwater and soil contamination from chemical spills across the state, but said that won't be enough to stop the damaging health effects of using toxic chemicals to produce everyday products. What we have to do, Treichler said, is use nontoxic methods of industrial production so that no one is exposed to the damaging effects of toxic chemicals. In Endicott, the tour learned about the work of local activists to get toxic spills of TCE and other chemicals at the IBM facility in Endicott cleaned up. 440 buildings in the village of Endicott have vapor intrusion remediation technologies installed to reduce exposure to volatile chemicals in the soil underneath the village.
Treichler observed that the environmental justice movement highlights a fundamental contradiction in our society. "The products we use everyday--cars, home appliances, computers, almost every item we use, even clothes--are produced by processes that release toxic chemicals into our soil, our air and our water," Treichler said. "When these products are disposed of, their waste is toxic, and the toxic chemicals in the waste leach into our soil, our air and our water. We want a clean environment, but we can't have a clean environment as long as these products continue to be produced and we continue to use them."
"We absolutely need stop locating industrial production facilities and waste disposal facilities almost exclusively in minority and low-income neighborhoods, but a more just distribution of the toxic chemicals isn't the solution. How is it fair, how is it justice for anyone to be exposed to these toxic chemicals?"
"We have learned enough about the damaging health effects of these chemicals that we have to stop using them. We have to develop new means of production that are completely nontoxic. People are working on this and companies are showing that it can be done. The Interface Carpet Company, this country's largest carpet manufacturer, produces no toxic emissions and its products degrade in a completely nontoxic manner. People call this ecological design."
"It can be done and we need to do it now," Treichler said.
For more information about Treichler's campaign, visit her website, http://www.voterachel.org. For more information about ecological design and the next industrial revolution, visit http://www.mbdc.com/c2c_home.htm. For more information about the Environmental Justice for All tour, visit http://www.ej4all.org.
Sunday, September 24, 2006
Take Action! Green Candidate Not Allowed to Debate!
Fellow Greens,
It's time to take action. Time Warner is sponsoring a debate between
US Senatorial candidates in Rochester on October 28th and the Green
Party candidate, Howie Hawkins is not being allowed to participate.
Read the D&C article.
Contact Time Warner and DEMAND that all candidates on the ballot be
allowed to debate. Here are the ways you can contact Terence
Rafferty, President of Time Warner Rochester:
These are the customer service lines. You'll have to weave through
the automated system, but just keep pressing for a customer service rep.
585-756-5000
1-800-756-7956
585-756-1685 (tty)
You can send them a message online. Go to
http://twc.twrochester.com/feedback.cfm
We gathered over 30,000 signatures to put our candidates on the ballot
and they need to be heard! Contact Time Warner's Terence Rafferty today!
It's time to take action. Time Warner is sponsoring a debate between
US Senatorial candidates in Rochester on October 28th and the Green
Party candidate, Howie Hawkins is not being allowed to participate.
Read the D&C article.
Contact Time Warner and DEMAND that all candidates on the ballot be
allowed to debate. Here are the ways you can contact Terence
Rafferty, President of Time Warner Rochester:
These are the customer service lines. You'll have to weave through
the automated system, but just keep pressing for a customer service rep.
585-756-5000
1-800-756-7956
585-756-1685 (tty)
You can send them a message online. Go to
http://twc.twrochester.com/feedback.cfm
We gathered over 30,000 signatures to put our candidates on the ballot
and they need to be heard! Contact Time Warner's Terence Rafferty today!
Wednesday, September 20, 2006
It's Time to Vote for What You Believe In
It's full-steam ahead in our quest to get 50,000 votes for Governor. For those who are not familiar with why that is so important here is a brief explanation:
In New York State, 50,000 votes for Governor gives your party "ballot status". Why is that so important? It makes life much easier for your party to run candidates - fewer petition signatures are required and the signatures are only of party members. People can register for that party based directly from Voter Registration cards (that whole writing green under "other" nonsense will be over).
Both of these factors make running candidates for local office immensely easier, which means more greens in office.
So, our goal for this election is 50,000 votes for Malachy McCourt. How can you help?
*First of all, vote for Malachy on Election Day!
*Talk to friends, family and collegues about the Green Party's candidate. To read up on Malachy, the Green Party's Peace Slate and more, visit the Malachy McCourt campaign website at http://www.votemalachymccourt.org/
*Get a lawn sign. (details below)
*Make a financial contribution. Visit http://www.votemalachymccourt.org/donate.html for details.
*Help other local Greens campaign for Malachy and the rest of the Peace Slate. (details below)
In the next few weeks, we should be receieving lawn signs. If you're interested, contact local campaign coordinator - Dave Atias at greenpmc34@yahoo.com or call (585) 234-6470. You should also contact Dave if you're interested in helping in other ways with the campaign. We will be going door-to-door, making phone calls, and getting ready for a spectacular visit from Malachy & Lt. Gov candidate, Allison Duncan in late October. More details on the visit will be coming.
It's time to vote for what you believe in.
In New York State, 50,000 votes for Governor gives your party "ballot status". Why is that so important? It makes life much easier for your party to run candidates - fewer petition signatures are required and the signatures are only of party members. People can register for that party based directly from Voter Registration cards (that whole writing green under "other" nonsense will be over).
Both of these factors make running candidates for local office immensely easier, which means more greens in office.
So, our goal for this election is 50,000 votes for Malachy McCourt. How can you help?
*First of all, vote for Malachy on Election Day!
*Talk to friends, family and collegues about the Green Party's candidate. To read up on Malachy, the Green Party's Peace Slate and more, visit the Malachy McCourt campaign website at http://www.votemalachymccourt.org/
*Get a lawn sign. (details below)
*Make a financial contribution. Visit http://www.votemalachymccourt.org/donate.html for details.
*Help other local Greens campaign for Malachy and the rest of the Peace Slate. (details below)
In the next few weeks, we should be receieving lawn signs. If you're interested, contact local campaign coordinator - Dave Atias at greenpmc34@yahoo.com or call (585) 234-6470. You should also contact Dave if you're interested in helping in other ways with the campaign. We will be going door-to-door, making phone calls, and getting ready for a spectacular visit from Malachy & Lt. Gov candidate, Allison Duncan in late October. More details on the visit will be coming.
It's time to vote for what you believe in.
Saturday, September 16, 2006
Walk Don't Destroy 2
This is an update from a fellow Green in Brooklyn on the second "Walk Don't Destroy" campaign to help fight eminent domain abuse. Brooklyn has been one of the primary battle grounds for this fight. Land developers are looking to replace neighborhoods with skyscrapers. -jason
Walk Don't Destroy 2 is an opportunity to raise money and awareness for the Develop Don't Destroy Legal Fund -- won't you please help me?
Please help our important Green Party allies.,
On October 21st, I'm walking with Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn to end eminent domain abuse, massive over-development and the destruction of the Brooklyn we know and love. Help me stop Bruce Ratner's Atlantic Yards' land grab and ensure a better future for our neighborhoods by raising money for the Develop Don't Destroy Legal Fund.
DDDb's legal team is preparing for court battles over eminent domain, environmental degradation and the misappropriation of publicly owned property. These legal challenges may be our only chance to stop or significantly alter this project. Won't you please contribute to the effort by sponsoring my walk to raise money and awareness?
Follow This Link to visit my personal web page and help me in my efforts to support Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn
B. Colby Hamilton
Walk Don't Destroy 2 is an opportunity to raise money and awareness for the Develop Don't Destroy Legal Fund -- won't you please help me?
Please help our important Green Party allies.,
On October 21st, I'm walking with Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn to end eminent domain abuse, massive over-development and the destruction of the Brooklyn we know and love. Help me stop Bruce Ratner's Atlantic Yards' land grab and ensure a better future for our neighborhoods by raising money for the Develop Don't Destroy Legal Fund.
DDDb's legal team is preparing for court battles over eminent domain, environmental degradation and the misappropriation of publicly owned property. These legal challenges may be our only chance to stop or significantly alter this project. Won't you please contribute to the effort by sponsoring my walk to raise money and awareness?
Follow This Link to visit my personal web page and help me in my efforts to support Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn
B. Colby Hamilton
Friday, September 08, 2006
Greens Help Stop Bus Fare Increase!
Congratulations goes out to the community coalition that has been
putting pressure on the Rochester Genesee Regional Transportation
Agency to stop them from bus fare increases in October. RGRTA has
recently announced that they will not be increasing fares. A great
victory for grassroots organizing in town - and the Green Party is
part of this coalition.
But the fight is not over. From research done on the RGRTA during the
struggle, we've discovered that the board of directors of this agency
is NOT very representative of the people who USE public transportation
in Rochester. Yes, not a big surprise {cough, cough, water authority,
cough cough}. So the next step in this is to work on the make up of
the RGRTA board. There is a public forum on Thursday, September 14th
at 4:30pm at the Gleason Auditorium at the Downtown Public Library.
We even have T-shirts you can buy online to show that you are a Green
and demand a true representation for RGRTA. Check it out at :
http://www.cafepress.com/gpomc.11925952
There's also other GPoMC gear at the CafePress store. The address is
simply http://www.cafepress.com/gpomc
putting pressure on the Rochester Genesee Regional Transportation
Agency to stop them from bus fare increases in October. RGRTA has
recently announced that they will not be increasing fares. A great
victory for grassroots organizing in town - and the Green Party is
part of this coalition.
But the fight is not over. From research done on the RGRTA during the
struggle, we've discovered that the board of directors of this agency
is NOT very representative of the people who USE public transportation
in Rochester. Yes, not a big surprise {cough, cough, water authority,
cough cough}. So the next step in this is to work on the make up of
the RGRTA board. There is a public forum on Thursday, September 14th
at 4:30pm at the Gleason Auditorium at the Downtown Public Library.
We even have T-shirts you can buy online to show that you are a Green
and demand a true representation for RGRTA. Check it out at :
http://www.cafepress.com/gpomc.11925952
There's also other GPoMC gear at the CafePress store. The address is
simply http://www.cafepress.com/gpomc
Rachel Treichler Campaign Update
Dear Green Friends,
Thanks to your outstanding petitioning efforts, my name and the names of our other statewide candidates are on the ballot for November 7! I had a strong feeling of our strength and camaraderie as I stood with Malachy and other Greens in the BOE office filing the 27 volumes of petitions and thinking how many hundreds of Greens and our friends had worked together to collect the signatures. I look forward to working with each of you over the next two months to get out the vote and win back ballot status for the Green Party in New York.
Here's what I am doing. It would be great to have your help.
Debates and other Speaking Engagements
I have sent a letter to the League of Women Voters asking to be included in their debates for the general election. Their board is meeting tomorrow to consider the requests of candidates who filed independent nominating petitions. Let the League know that you would like the Green Party candidates included. Many thanks to those of you who have already contacted them about this. I have also prepared a letter to send after the Democratic primary to all the attorney general candidates inviting them to participate in debates. Several Greens in various parts of the state have notified me about local civic groups and media outlets that may be interested in sponsoring
debates that include third party candidates. Do you know of such organizations in your area? I attended a very successful third party presidential candidate debate at Cornell University in 2004. About 300 people turned out to hear the Green Party, Libertarian Party, Socialist Party and Constitution Party presidential candidates debate the issues. The event was sponsored by a student political club. We are likely to get good turnouts for third party debates this year. Polls consistently show that people are interested in hearing what third party candidates have to say and in having third party candidates on the ballot.
Press Releases
Getting media coverage is our best way of reaching voters and the more of us working on this, the better. Howie has been doing an great job and sets an inspiring example. I sent out press releases over the summer on a number of issues, including same sex marriage, undemocratic development in Brooklyn, oil spills in Brooklyn and our
petitioning efforts, held press conferences, and did radio interviews. I have developed position papers on a number of additional issues and am ready to send out a steady stream of press releases over the next two months highlighting those issues as they become topical. Many thanks to the various Greens who have given me local press contacts for their regional media. It is clear from the responses that your contacts are more up-to-date than other contacts I have been able to obtain. It would be great to have more getting local media contacts and sending out press releases to local media.
Website and E-Newsletter
My website, http://www.voterachel.org, and my blog, http://buildgreens.blogspot.com, are receiving hundreds of hits each week. The number of hits increase every time I get a new link to thepage, so please link voterachel.org and buildgreens. blogspot. com to your local Green Party websites and blogs. Many thanks to those who have already done so! My website features my campaign issues, a campaign calendar and forms to volunteer and donate. I am getting volunteers, campaign contributions, candidate questionnaires and feedback on issues through the website. Please let Greens in your local groups know about my e-newsletter with regular updates about my
campaign. To subscribe, email enews@voterachel.org or fill out the form at http://www.voterachel.org/enews.html. Send me news of campaign developments in your region.
Candidate Questionnaires and Position Statements
I have received and responded to questionnaires from the Sierra Club, the National Organization of Women, the Better Ballots Campaign, the Organic Consumers Fund, the Tick Tock Campaign for Affordable Housing and the Cortland Women's Coalition. I am responding to the questionnaire for the League of Women Voters 2006 Voter Guide and the Progressive. My responses to candidate questionnaires are posted on my webpage at http://www.voterachel.org/questionnaires.html. I am updating and expanding my position papers. Several Greens have given me draft statement of positions of concern to them and this has been very helpful. My position on Bringing our National Guard Home Now, http://www.voterachel.org/issues/nationalguard.html,
is based on an excellent paper by John David Baldwin.
Fundraising
I have been fundraising through my website and through personal telephone calls and emails. Several local Green groups have approached me about doing events with them to raise funds for local media campaigns they design. I am looking forward to working with them on this. I am also seeking funds to cover travel expenses (gasoline has been getting more and more expensive) and for lawn signs, bumper stickers, buttons and brochures. Contributions between $5 and $99 are gratefully accepted. Please make your check out to Friends for Rachel and mail it to Friends for Rachel, PO Box 363,
Hammondsport, NY 14840. Political contributions are not tax deductible. I am not accepting donations from corporations or PACs, or any contribution over $99.
Endorsements
My campaign is being considered for endorsement in the General Election by the Sierra Club Atlantic Chapter and by the Progressive Information Center. I have been approaching a number of groups requesting their endorsement. If you are a member of a group that might be willing to endorse my candidacy, please let me know.
I look forward to hearing from you, working with you and meeting those of you I have not met before.
Sincerely,
Rachel Treichler
Green Party for Attorney General
http://www.voterachel.org
607-569-2114
Friends for Rachel
PO Box 363
Hammondsport, NY 14840
Thanks to your outstanding petitioning efforts, my name and the names of our other statewide candidates are on the ballot for November 7! I had a strong feeling of our strength and camaraderie as I stood with Malachy and other Greens in the BOE office filing the 27 volumes of petitions and thinking how many hundreds of Greens and our friends had worked together to collect the signatures. I look forward to working with each of you over the next two months to get out the vote and win back ballot status for the Green Party in New York.
Here's what I am doing. It would be great to have your help.
Debates and other Speaking Engagements
I have sent a letter to the League of Women Voters asking to be included in their debates for the general election. Their board is meeting tomorrow to consider the requests of candidates who filed independent nominating petitions. Let the League know that you would like the Green Party candidates included. Many thanks to those of you who have already contacted them about this. I have also prepared a letter to send after the Democratic primary to all the attorney general candidates inviting them to participate in debates. Several Greens in various parts of the state have notified me about local civic groups and media outlets that may be interested in sponsoring
debates that include third party candidates. Do you know of such organizations in your area? I attended a very successful third party presidential candidate debate at Cornell University in 2004. About 300 people turned out to hear the Green Party, Libertarian Party, Socialist Party and Constitution Party presidential candidates debate the issues. The event was sponsored by a student political club. We are likely to get good turnouts for third party debates this year. Polls consistently show that people are interested in hearing what third party candidates have to say and in having third party candidates on the ballot.
Press Releases
Getting media coverage is our best way of reaching voters and the more of us working on this, the better. Howie has been doing an great job and sets an inspiring example. I sent out press releases over the summer on a number of issues, including same sex marriage, undemocratic development in Brooklyn, oil spills in Brooklyn and our
petitioning efforts, held press conferences, and did radio interviews. I have developed position papers on a number of additional issues and am ready to send out a steady stream of press releases over the next two months highlighting those issues as they become topical. Many thanks to the various Greens who have given me local press contacts for their regional media. It is clear from the responses that your contacts are more up-to-date than other contacts I have been able to obtain. It would be great to have more getting local media contacts and sending out press releases to local media.
Website and E-Newsletter
My website, http://www.voterachel.org, and my blog, http://buildgreens.blogspot.com, are receiving hundreds of hits each week. The number of hits increase every time I get a new link to thepage, so please link voterachel.org and buildgreens. blogspot. com to your local Green Party websites and blogs. Many thanks to those who have already done so! My website features my campaign issues, a campaign calendar and forms to volunteer and donate. I am getting volunteers, campaign contributions, candidate questionnaires and feedback on issues through the website. Please let Greens in your local groups know about my e-newsletter with regular updates about my
campaign. To subscribe, email enews@voterachel.org or fill out the form at http://www.voterachel.org/enews.html. Send me news of campaign developments in your region.
Candidate Questionnaires and Position Statements
I have received and responded to questionnaires from the Sierra Club, the National Organization of Women, the Better Ballots Campaign, the Organic Consumers Fund, the Tick Tock Campaign for Affordable Housing and the Cortland Women's Coalition. I am responding to the questionnaire for the League of Women Voters 2006 Voter Guide and the Progressive. My responses to candidate questionnaires are posted on my webpage at http://www.voterachel.org/questionnaires.html. I am updating and expanding my position papers. Several Greens have given me draft statement of positions of concern to them and this has been very helpful. My position on Bringing our National Guard Home Now, http://www.voterachel.org/issues/nationalguard.html,
is based on an excellent paper by John David Baldwin.
Fundraising
I have been fundraising through my website and through personal telephone calls and emails. Several local Green groups have approached me about doing events with them to raise funds for local media campaigns they design. I am looking forward to working with them on this. I am also seeking funds to cover travel expenses (gasoline has been getting more and more expensive) and for lawn signs, bumper stickers, buttons and brochures. Contributions between $5 and $99 are gratefully accepted. Please make your check out to Friends for Rachel and mail it to Friends for Rachel, PO Box 363,
Hammondsport, NY 14840. Political contributions are not tax deductible. I am not accepting donations from corporations or PACs, or any contribution over $99.
Endorsements
My campaign is being considered for endorsement in the General Election by the Sierra Club Atlantic Chapter and by the Progressive Information Center. I have been approaching a number of groups requesting their endorsement. If you are a member of a group that might be willing to endorse my candidacy, please let me know.
I look forward to hearing from you, working with you and meeting those of you I have not met before.
Sincerely,
Rachel Treichler
Green Party for Attorney General
http://www.voterachel.org
607-569-2114
Friends for Rachel
PO Box 363
Hammondsport, NY 14840
Saturday, September 02, 2006
Rebuilding the Labor Movement in the United States
By Howie Hawkins, Green Party candidate for US Senate
Howie Hawkins is a member of Teamsters Local 317 and active in the national Teamster rank-and-file reform caucus, Teamsters for a Democratic Union. Howie presently works unloading trucks and rail cars at UPS. He is the former Director of CommonWorks, a federation of cooperatives working for an economy that is cooperatively owned, democratically controlled, and ecologically sustainable.
Unions need to offer a vision of how a just society should be organized. We need to organize for real solutions like fair trade, national health insurance, labor law reform, internal union democratic reforms to re-engage the rank and file, and a multi-year, multi-trillion dollar public works program to create millions of new jobs building an ecologically sustainable infrastructure for our future.
Between the lack of room to grow for the old-line, high-wage construction and manufacturing unions of the AFL-CIO and the lack of power of the new, low-wage service unions of Change To Win to help their members, union membership is falling. From the high point 35 percent of American workers organized at the time of the merger of the American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations in 1953, we are now down to 12.5 percent (and less than 8 percent in the private sector). The business unionism of today has the culture of an insurance company, where the workers are clients and the officers are managers taking in our payments and doling out our benefits.
The recent split nationally among the labor union movement avoids the real issues confronting us as workers: declining real wages, jobs lost to outsourcing, the erosion of pension security and health benefits, legal barriers to union organizing, top-down union bureaucracies, and the mounting environmental and energy crises.
We know from talking to our parents and grandparents and from reading history that labor once was a spirited social movement with high ideals. The emancipation of labor was to be founded on a tripod: the union, the cooperative, and the independent labor party. I believe these are still causes worth fighting for.
The purpose of the union was to advance workers' wages and working conditions in their jobs in the existing society by direct action. But unions have become very hard to organize over the last 25 years when employers have been able to break labor laws with impunity and fire tens of thousands of workers for trying to organize because the National Labor Relations Board acts too slowly and with too much bias in favor of the bosses.
And nonviolent direct action by workers in many of its forms was outlawed by the 1947 Taft-Hartley amendments to the National Labor Relations Act. For example, Taft-Harley outlawed sympathy and solidarity strikes and "secondary boycotts" where workers refuse to cross picket lines when they were not directly party to a labor dispute or refuse to handle "hot cargo" coming from or going to a struck enterprise. The major result of the Taft-Hartley restrictions on labor action has been to divert unions from direct action to cautious administrators of contracts with no-strike clauses so the company cannot sue the union for violating the contract. Unions now devote most of their resources to handling grievances through "proper channels" and defending themselves from lawsuits by corporations with far more resources to go to court.
The purpose of the cooperative was to organize economic enterprises that did not exploit workers. Workers would jointly and democratically own and manage their businesses without parasitic absentee owners. Each member of the cooperative would have one vote and would receive a patronage dividend: a refund of net earnings in proportion to purchases in a consumer cooperative and a share of the net earnings in proportion to labor contributed in a worker cooperative.
The purpose of the independent labor party was to organize the working class majority to take political power and exercise it for the benefit of the working class majority. If we are ever going repeal the Taft-Hartley amendments and have public policies that favor cooperatives instead of corporate welfare for absentee owners, it is going to come from a new political party.
The Democrats had repeal of Taft-Hartley in their national platform between 1948 and 1992, but never moved to repeal it when they had congressional majorities under Truman, Johnson, Carter, and Clinton. Instead, the Democrats worked with the Republicans to limit labor's ability to organize. The turning point was the busting of PATCO, the air traffic controllers union, which was planned under the Carter administration and executed under the Reagan administration. The Clinton administration pushed through anti-labor polices such as NAFTA and WTO and the repeal of federal welfare guarantees after the Bush and Reagan administrations failed to do so. Robert Reich, Clinton's Labor Secretary and his cabinet’s most liberal member,
pushed job training instead of labor law reform to help unions organize.
The Change To Win coalition has criticized the AFL-CIO for "throwing money at Democrats" who then take them for granted. Change To Win has a point. Since 1980 when the anti-union offensive began in earnest, unions have spent $8-12 billion supporting Democrats through direct contributions to candidates, the Democratic Party, and pro-Democratic political action committees and internal mobilization of the union vote, according to Jonathon Tasini, president emeritus of the National Writers Union and the Democratic primary challenger to incumbent US Senator Hillary Clinton.
But rather than building an independent labor party, Change To Win unions like the Teamsters and SEIU are throwing money at Republicans, too. The Teamsters gave 11 percent of their federal contributions to Republicans in the 2004 elections cycle. SEIU spent 15 percent in 2004 on Republicans, from a $500,000 contribution to the Republican Governors Association to a $7500 contribution to my local Republican congressman in Syracuse, James Walsh. Worse, SEIU spent considerable resources to stymie Ralph Nader's pro-labor independent candidacy in 2004, from sending SEIU staffers to counter-leaflet and heckle Nader speeches in New York to hiring lawyers in Oregon who threatened Nader petitioners in house visits with prosecution for fraud for any mistakes they made on petitions they witnessed.
Imagine if labor had responded to the anti-union offensive over the last 25 years by spending $8-12 billion building an independent labor party and movement, as the labor movement has done in every other industrial nation. We would have scores of labor party organizers in every state supporting a broadly based, grassroots democratic party of working people. We would have blocks of independent labor representatives in municipal, county, state, and the national legislatures. We would have a national labor daily newspaper and a labor news network on radio and cable presenting the public with an alternative to the corporate media's slant. The two corporate financed
parties, the Democrats and Republicans, would no longer monopolize US politics. Public policy would undoubtedly be more pro-labor and the majority of working people would not have seen their real wages and living standards decline over the last 25 years.
The Green Party is best known for its environmental and peace advocacy. But in the absence of a labor party, the Green Party has also taken on the role of an independent labor party and taken up the labor demands the Democrats won't, from fair trade to labor law reform. We are trying to bring the old emancipatory program of labor as a social movement back into the public debate: the union, the cooperative, and the independent labor party.
Thus, I support project labor agreements on public projects and oppose contracts, tax breaks, and corporate welfare for companies with a record of union busting and labor law violations. I support targeting public economic incentives to cooperatives and other forms of democratic local ownership so public investments are anchored to our community by ownership structures for the long-term benefit of the community. And I believe it is time for working people to break away from the corporate-dominated Democrats and start electing their own representatives to public office.
-Howie Hawkins, Green Party candidate for US Senate
Join the Green Party in Rochester's Labor Day Parade!
Howie Hawkins is a member of Teamsters Local 317 and active in the national Teamster rank-and-file reform caucus, Teamsters for a Democratic Union. Howie presently works unloading trucks and rail cars at UPS. He is the former Director of CommonWorks, a federation of cooperatives working for an economy that is cooperatively owned, democratically controlled, and ecologically sustainable.
Unions need to offer a vision of how a just society should be organized. We need to organize for real solutions like fair trade, national health insurance, labor law reform, internal union democratic reforms to re-engage the rank and file, and a multi-year, multi-trillion dollar public works program to create millions of new jobs building an ecologically sustainable infrastructure for our future.
Between the lack of room to grow for the old-line, high-wage construction and manufacturing unions of the AFL-CIO and the lack of power of the new, low-wage service unions of Change To Win to help their members, union membership is falling. From the high point 35 percent of American workers organized at the time of the merger of the American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations in 1953, we are now down to 12.5 percent (and less than 8 percent in the private sector). The business unionism of today has the culture of an insurance company, where the workers are clients and the officers are managers taking in our payments and doling out our benefits.
The recent split nationally among the labor union movement avoids the real issues confronting us as workers: declining real wages, jobs lost to outsourcing, the erosion of pension security and health benefits, legal barriers to union organizing, top-down union bureaucracies, and the mounting environmental and energy crises.
We know from talking to our parents and grandparents and from reading history that labor once was a spirited social movement with high ideals. The emancipation of labor was to be founded on a tripod: the union, the cooperative, and the independent labor party. I believe these are still causes worth fighting for.
The purpose of the union was to advance workers' wages and working conditions in their jobs in the existing society by direct action. But unions have become very hard to organize over the last 25 years when employers have been able to break labor laws with impunity and fire tens of thousands of workers for trying to organize because the National Labor Relations Board acts too slowly and with too much bias in favor of the bosses.
And nonviolent direct action by workers in many of its forms was outlawed by the 1947 Taft-Hartley amendments to the National Labor Relations Act. For example, Taft-Harley outlawed sympathy and solidarity strikes and "secondary boycotts" where workers refuse to cross picket lines when they were not directly party to a labor dispute or refuse to handle "hot cargo" coming from or going to a struck enterprise. The major result of the Taft-Hartley restrictions on labor action has been to divert unions from direct action to cautious administrators of contracts with no-strike clauses so the company cannot sue the union for violating the contract. Unions now devote most of their resources to handling grievances through "proper channels" and defending themselves from lawsuits by corporations with far more resources to go to court.
The purpose of the cooperative was to organize economic enterprises that did not exploit workers. Workers would jointly and democratically own and manage their businesses without parasitic absentee owners. Each member of the cooperative would have one vote and would receive a patronage dividend: a refund of net earnings in proportion to purchases in a consumer cooperative and a share of the net earnings in proportion to labor contributed in a worker cooperative.
The purpose of the independent labor party was to organize the working class majority to take political power and exercise it for the benefit of the working class majority. If we are ever going repeal the Taft-Hartley amendments and have public policies that favor cooperatives instead of corporate welfare for absentee owners, it is going to come from a new political party.
The Democrats had repeal of Taft-Hartley in their national platform between 1948 and 1992, but never moved to repeal it when they had congressional majorities under Truman, Johnson, Carter, and Clinton. Instead, the Democrats worked with the Republicans to limit labor's ability to organize. The turning point was the busting of PATCO, the air traffic controllers union, which was planned under the Carter administration and executed under the Reagan administration. The Clinton administration pushed through anti-labor polices such as NAFTA and WTO and the repeal of federal welfare guarantees after the Bush and Reagan administrations failed to do so. Robert Reich, Clinton's Labor Secretary and his cabinet’s most liberal member,
pushed job training instead of labor law reform to help unions organize.
The Change To Win coalition has criticized the AFL-CIO for "throwing money at Democrats" who then take them for granted. Change To Win has a point. Since 1980 when the anti-union offensive began in earnest, unions have spent $8-12 billion supporting Democrats through direct contributions to candidates, the Democratic Party, and pro-Democratic political action committees and internal mobilization of the union vote, according to Jonathon Tasini, president emeritus of the National Writers Union and the Democratic primary challenger to incumbent US Senator Hillary Clinton.
But rather than building an independent labor party, Change To Win unions like the Teamsters and SEIU are throwing money at Republicans, too. The Teamsters gave 11 percent of their federal contributions to Republicans in the 2004 elections cycle. SEIU spent 15 percent in 2004 on Republicans, from a $500,000 contribution to the Republican Governors Association to a $7500 contribution to my local Republican congressman in Syracuse, James Walsh. Worse, SEIU spent considerable resources to stymie Ralph Nader's pro-labor independent candidacy in 2004, from sending SEIU staffers to counter-leaflet and heckle Nader speeches in New York to hiring lawyers in Oregon who threatened Nader petitioners in house visits with prosecution for fraud for any mistakes they made on petitions they witnessed.
Imagine if labor had responded to the anti-union offensive over the last 25 years by spending $8-12 billion building an independent labor party and movement, as the labor movement has done in every other industrial nation. We would have scores of labor party organizers in every state supporting a broadly based, grassroots democratic party of working people. We would have blocks of independent labor representatives in municipal, county, state, and the national legislatures. We would have a national labor daily newspaper and a labor news network on radio and cable presenting the public with an alternative to the corporate media's slant. The two corporate financed
parties, the Democrats and Republicans, would no longer monopolize US politics. Public policy would undoubtedly be more pro-labor and the majority of working people would not have seen their real wages and living standards decline over the last 25 years.
The Green Party is best known for its environmental and peace advocacy. But in the absence of a labor party, the Green Party has also taken on the role of an independent labor party and taken up the labor demands the Democrats won't, from fair trade to labor law reform. We are trying to bring the old emancipatory program of labor as a social movement back into the public debate: the union, the cooperative, and the independent labor party.
Thus, I support project labor agreements on public projects and oppose contracts, tax breaks, and corporate welfare for companies with a record of union busting and labor law violations. I support targeting public economic incentives to cooperatives and other forms of democratic local ownership so public investments are anchored to our community by ownership structures for the long-term benefit of the community. And I believe it is time for working people to break away from the corporate-dominated Democrats and start electing their own representatives to public office.
-Howie Hawkins, Green Party candidate for US Senate
Join the Green Party in Rochester's Labor Day Parade!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)