Views in brief
Barney Frank sells the bailout
ON MONDAY, October 6, Rep. Barney Frank spoke to a forum at Brown University where he defended his lead in proposing the government's recent bailout of the major financial institutions which helped bankrupt the economy.
A fellow International Socialist Organization (ISO) member and I intended to go to the forum to protest Barney's role--but once it became clear to officials that we would unfurl a banner asking the representative to help keep people in their homes and work for his working-class constituents, we were told we "were not allowed" to go to this forum, which was supposed to be open for the public.
In the following day's Providence Journal, Barney reportedly dismissed all criticism and laid sole responsibility on the Bush White House and Republican Party for all the current economic woes of the nation.
On that same evening of October 6, five members of the Providence branch of the ISO attended a separate forum featuring Iraq war veteran Christopher Goldsmith, who laid out, in extremely graphic and disturbing detail, his role in being part of the massive war crime of the government's occupation of Iraq for well over five years now.
The other forum with Barney Frank was meant to simply restrict any opposition to his lead in the obscene government bailout. He was also there to defend "bipartisanship"--the same bipartisanship that authorized and keeps funding the occupation that Christopher Goldsmith told us about in such detail that we could almost not bear to listen, but which needs to be laid out and spoken about by the public.
"Bipartisanship" gave us both the Military Commissions Act and Patriot Act, which are responsible for massive unlawful actions used to restrict freedom of speech while mass incarcerations go hand-in-hand with torture. "Bipartisanship" obviously just gave more than $700 billion to Wall Street, while our economy is going bankrupt as the rich are saved and the working class is hanging on for dear life.
Barney and all the other deregulators in the name of "bipartisanship" need to hear from the American people. Otherwise our silence is complicity and our freedom of speech is lost.
Greg Morse, Providence, R.I.
The failure of corporate unionism
REGARDING "STERN'S dead-end model for unions": How right you are! History has already shown us the fate of corporate unionism. To make a long story short, it doesn't work, period.
Andy Stern needs to get out of his bubble and away from the circle of "yes people." This man is obviously not in touch with the real world. Why, just this last week Service Employees International Union (SEIU) has struck again. According to "SEIU Member Activists for Reform Today" (SMART):
SEIU Local 1877 bosses have locked members out of their own union, telling them this week that they would not meet with them as planned, and in fact that members were not welcome at their own offices!
After striking this spring, Silicon Valley (Santa Clara, San Mateo, Alameda and Contra Costa counties) janitors believed they had an reached an agreement, however it now seems that SEIU wants to keep negotiating behind members' backs, and push them out of the process.
SEIU is trying to literally shut Local 1877 members out of their union, and they are trying to do the same to members of many other locals by less obvious means. This is part of a destructive strategy by national SEIU bosses to create a union that is barely a union at all, totally unaccountable to members and driven by staff and appointed officers who seek growth through deals and concessions to our bosses.
I think that your article hits the nail right on the head!
Dan Mariscal, Los Angeles
Turning their backs on abortion rights
REGARDING "WHY won't they talk about abortion rights?": Reading this reminded me of being a graduate student at the University of Iowa in 2000.
There was a large Democratic rally on campus with Martin Sheen and several other celebrities coming to speak. Before the rally, the campus Democrats were passing around signs and banners and I was horrified to see that no one would hold a pro-choice sign. Not one Democrat in the front of that crowd wanted to be seen waving a pro-choice sign.
Of course, I and a couple of friends grabbed them all and made sure we were noticed--actress Christine Lahti gave a shout out to those of us willing to stand up for abortion rights.
Still to this day, I'm ashamed of everyone that was there who turned their backs on a key issue.
Fiona Young-Brown, Lexington, Ky.
Building opposition to war in Afghanistan
I APPEAL to those brothers and sisters in the movement who, despite their own opposition to the war in Afghanistan, don't feel we should explicitly and publicly unite around that opposition.
The Nation's Robert Dreyfuss reports that a McCain top aid projects the war in Afghanistan to be "a decades-long project." Decades long? Obama wants war, but this is just completely out of control. The U.S. and NATO are losing there in every way, and even their lapdog British buddies admit it. It's bloodier and bloodier every day.
There are well over half a million Afghan refugees already, tens of thousands of whom are being further oppressed, imprisoned or displaced for alleged "links to militants" (if they didn't have them before, I bet they want to now). More and more troops are being added, as U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates begs allies amid global economic disaster. NATO just agreed, at the behest of Gates, to crack down on poppy production, which is 50 percent of the already incomprehensibly miserable and downwardly spiraling Afghan economy.
The Afghan war is also sharpening the ominous rivalry between the U.S. and Russia. With a violent scramble for the scraps left by generations of being crushed by imperialism from all sides, corruption, rape, and terrible fear are rabidly spreading through the vestiges of Afghan society, which is now set, on top of everything else, for an unprecedented food crisis.
No ordinary person wants this, least of all the Afghans and soldiers deployed there whose children could be fighting the very same war, if the Washington machine has its way. Every day sheds more and more light on the urgency and absolute necessity of taking a clear, bold, broadly projected and highly political stance in opposition to the war in Afghanistan (and Pakistan).
We need to galvanize, vindicate, bolster and organize the growing millions who already question, or are disgusted by, the continuously expanding war drive--or those who easily would be, with the minutest explanation of what's happening. We should not in any way defer to those who side with Robert Gates and General David Petreus against soldiers, the working class and the poor at home and abroad.
Tom Arabia, Boston
