This article is re-posted from Political Research Associates. Editor’s Note: The National Organization for Marriage (NOM) is the reason behind a current Boycott Campaign targeted at Amway. Amway President Doug DeVos donated $500,000 to NOM in the past year.
HISTORY, LEADERSHIP, AND GOALS
Conservative activist Maggie Gallagher and Princeton professor Robert George launched the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) in 2007. NOM’s mission is to defeat same-sex marriage at the polls, in the legislature, and in the courts, from state to state and across the country. The group functions as an organized infrastructure that coordinates state and federal initiatives into a national movement to ban same-sex marriage.
For its first project, NOM worked in tandem with the Mormon Church to funnel money into California’s Proposition 8 campaign, which led to suspicions that NOM is a front group for the Mormon Church. NOM has since incurred suspicion that it is also a front for the Catholic Church, due to close ties with—and funding from—Catholic groups. Catholic conservative Brian Brown took over as president in 2010 from co-founder Maggie Gallagher, who now serves as president of the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy, a conservative anti-marriage equality think tank.
Gallagher previously worked for other antigay groups such as the Institute for American Values and the Marriage Law Foundation. In her book The Abolition of Marriage, Gallagher equates same-sex marriage with polygamy, stating that “for all its ugly defects, [polygamy] is an attempt to secure stable mother-father families for children… [and] there is no principled reason why you don’t have polygamy if you have gay marriage.” Current board chair Dr. John Eastman, a Chapman University law professor, has vocally defended the Boy Scouts’ antigay discrimination and referred to homosexuality as a form of “barbarism.”
Despite the economic recession, NOM’s revenue increased exponentially in its first few years, starting out with a modest half million dollars in 2007 and rising to $7.4 million in 2009, 14 times its 2007 income. Three-quarters of its 2009 revenue came from 14 big donors (minimum $5000) who together contributed $5.5 million, the largest donor contributing $2.5 million. Thus, a small group of extremely wealthy donors is responsible for NOM’s funding, giving this handful of privileged individuals an exaggerated influence on the same-sex marriage debate and public policy. However, in 2011, after pledging to spend $20 million, NOM’s upward trend in fundraising changed, reporting only $7.2 million in revenue (mostly from two donors), down more than $2 million from 2010.
Flouting financial disclosure laws, NOM fiercely protects the anonymity of its donors and thereby encourages them to continue giving large sums of money. The largest known donor is the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic fraternal society based in New Haven, CT, that contributed $500,000 in 2008 and $1.4 million in 2009. Many suspect that the largest donations are coming from the Mormon and Catholic Churches because of their connections to NOM founders and board members. “You’ve got this really interesting funnel of tax-free money coming from the Dioceses and the Council of Bishops and the Knights of Columbus directly to these campaigns,” noted Phil Attey, executive director of the pro-gay marriage Catholics for Equality.
NOM leaders claim they maintain this secrecy to protect donors from persecution by gay rights supporters. They even use this policy of anonymity as a fundraising tool, with Brian Brown promising prospective donors that their identities will remain secret: “And unlike in California, every dollar you give to NOM’s Northeast Action Plan today is private, with no risk of harassment from gay marriage protesters.” Furthermore, NOM defends its non-disclosure by suing states such as California and Maine, challenging their financial disclosure requirements as unconstitutional. In response to a 2010 ethics investigation from the state of Maine, NOM committed millions for litigation to delay disclosure in the courts as long as possible.
STRATEGIES
One of NOM’s chief strategies involves campaigning for antigay legislators and working to unseat legislators and judges who support marriage equality, particularly Republicans and moderate Democrats who support pro-LGBTQ legislation and court cases. In 2011, it vowed to spend $1 million on these goals in Maryland alone. The group successfully implemented this strategy in 2010 to unseat three State Supreme Court judges in Iowa who ruled in favor of legalizing same-sex marriage in the state. In 2012, the group pledged $100,000 to unseat a fourth Iowan judge who supported marriage equality.
With fiery rhetoric, NOM demonizes so-called “traitors” against marriage through extensive mailings, robo-calls, and e-newsletters. Prone to fear mongering and hyperbole, NOM’s leaders rally their ultra-conservative base to vote the “traitors” out of office and donate to anti-same-sex marriage candidates. For instance, in a July 2011 newsletter, NOM president Brian Brown declared that with Senate hearings on repealing DOMA, “President Obama and the hard-left core of the Democratic Party in Washington declared war on marriage, on federalism, on democracy and on religious liberty.” NOM wields hyperbolic rhetoric to distort the pro-same-sex marriage campaign into an all-out war on traditional American principles. Framing same-sex marriage as an insidious threat to such universally accepted American values, it galvanizes its target audience and makes it difficult for supporters of equality to argue against them. With their seemingly innocuous claim that they are “protecting families,” NOM’s leaders hope to confound and silence opponents.
Another fear mongering argument that NOM employs is the notion that redefining marriage would result in religious persecution by the government. Its leaders argue that such “persecution” would include: forcing pro-gay views on children in public schools, forcing churches to perform same-sex marriages, and denying tax breaks to religious institutions that fail to recognize same-sex marriage. For instance, Maggie Gallagher has argued that she and Robert George founded NOM because “if nothing changes, state legislatures are going to begin to pass laws to redefine marriage and…our churches, charities, schools and other organizations were going to be persecuted by state governments as a result.”
In March 2012, LGBTQ advocates got a detailed look into NOM’s campaigning and messaging strategies following a lawsuit related to the group’s Maine activities. Documents from the case reveal NOM’s efforts to develop anti-LGBTQ media to directly appeal to racial minorities, using it to drive a “wedge between blacks and gays.” At the end of August 2012, NOM launched a radio ad campaign in swing state North Carolina’s Raleigh media market, home to 40 percent of the state’s African-American population. The advertisement features Dr. Patrick Wooden, a prominent African-American pastor, and urges listeners to say “no more” to President Barack Obama based on his endorsement of marriage equality. The same documents showed that NOM hoped to inflame tensions among those in the African-American community who take issue with equating LGBTQ equality with civil rights, and to target the Latino community by making support for “traditional marriage” a “key badge of Latino culture” and recruiting “glamorous” Latino spokespeople to help further the cause.
In the summer and fall of 2010, NOM sponsored two bus tours to promote its anti-LGBTQ message, which generated little publicity and small turnouts. Undeterred, the group embarked on another bus tour in August 2011, aiming to sway Iowan voters to select an anti-gay marriage presidential candidate. On the state level, NOM also promotes ballot initiatives to ban gay marriage, heavily funding referendums such as California’s Prop 8 and Maine’s Question 1. In states such as New York that lack a ballot initiative procedure, NOM focuses on lobbying legislators to oppose gay marriage through laws or constitutional amendments. The group spent $2 million to target three Republicans in the New York State Senate who voted in June of 2011 to legalize marriage rights for LGBTQ couples, helping to defeat one in a GOP primary. Another Republican who voted for the measure, Jim Alesi, opted not to seek a ninth term in the State Senate, fearing intense negative campaigning on the part of NOM and its allies.
This profile is the first in a series on key anti-LGBTQ opponents adapted from Political Research Associates’ Resisting the Rainbow report, with research from PRA’s 2012 The Right’s Marriage Message. Particular thanks also to Human Rights Campaign’s NOM Exposed project.
WZZM 13 story gives more weight to pro-fracking voices
On Tuesday, WZZM 13 ran a story that looks at the issue of horizontal hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking.
The story is entitled, Is Fracking Good or Bad for Michigan? The story begins by stating that the practice of fracking has been happening for 50 years, but that it is now happening on a larger scale.
By framing the story this way, WZZM 13 makes the issue of fracking sound ok, since it has been happening for decades and no one has made an issue out of it before. One of the news-readers does say it is happening on a larger-scale, but doesn’t qualify what is meant by larger scale. Fracking is not only happening in more places around the country, the drill is much deeper, with more pressure and the use of more chemicals, facts which are not presented by channel 13.
A WZZM 13 news-reader then says that one of their reporters went to Pennsylvania to investigate the issue there, but the video that follows is with the reporter in Barry County speaking with a member of the environmental group MLAWD.
The reporter also states, “In 2012, Michigan leased the minerals rights to the highest bidder. Most of the parcels were sold to energy companies, eager to find gas and oil reserves.” This statement is misleading, since Michigan has been auctioning off public land for years to oil & gas companies and had two major auctions in Lansing last year, as it does every year. Channel 13 showed footage of the auction, but did not mention that hundreds of people came to that DNR auction to disrupt and protest the auction.
The WZZM 13 story cites 5 sources all together, with 2 environmental voices, 1 oil & gas industry voice and 1 citizen voice. However, the story weighs heavily towards the pro-fracking side, once we look at what information and how much time each voice was given.
Steve Losher with Michigan Air Land Water Defense in Barry County, is cited first. Losher has some important things to say about fracking and its potential problems, even mentioning the lawsuit the group filed against. However, the story provides no details about the lawsuit. Part of the commentary from Losher is while he is protesting outside of the October 24 DNR land auction in Lansing, but the channel 13 story does say that or provide any indication this is where Losher was when they interviewed him.
The other environmental voice is in the context of the WMEAC screening of the film Promised Land, which took place last month in Grand Rapids. Here the comment that is used gives the impression that local communities have no say in state leasing issues. This is true in that local communities do not get to vote on fracking in Michigan, but it doesn’t mean that local communities can’t resist fracking by whatever means they chose.
The oil & gas person that WZZM 13 talks to, Cabot Oil & Gas, is not only provided with more time to talk, they are made to look as if they are the experts on the issue. The channel 13 reporter goes on a tour of a fracking well site in Pennsylvania, where the company spokesperson makes patently false statements. First, the Cabot Oil & Gas person says, “we have a tremendous amount that’s producing profound levels of gas that are leading us to energy security.” What does the oil & gas spokesperson mean by us? Does he mean the nation? And if, natural gas extraction is leading the US to more energy security, why is it that much of the new natural gas that is being fracked is slated for export? This is what a recent report from Food & Water Watch states, something the channel 13 reporter fails to investigate.
The second false statement that the oil & gas spokesperson makes, is when he says, “Natural gas is a clean burning fossil fuel. It’s one of the cleanest fossil fuels.” Ok, so which is it, a clean burning fossil fuel or one of the cleanest? In addition, the notion of clean is false, since burning any fossil fuel contributes to climate change, which is really the bigger issue, not just whether it creates pollution.
The other pro-fracking voice that WZZM 13 cites is a spokesperson from the DEQ. This person states that fracking is safe and, “We have never had any public health incidents ot environmental incidents related to fracking.” This is also a false statement, since Ban Fracking Michigan discovered that the Michigan DEQ was spreading contaminated fracking water on Michigan roads in the past year.
Just because a reporter talks to both sides of an issue, it doesn’t mean they don’t present a bias. In this case it is clear that the pro-fracking people are presented as the experts and provided more time to present their case in this story.
Further Evidence of a US Police State: Raytheon Video Claims Riot Software Can Track Users Via Social Networks
This article by Pratap Chatterjee is re-posted from CorpWatch.
Raytheon, a U.S. military manufacturer, is selling a new software surveillance package named “Riot” that claims to predict where individuals are expected to go next using technology that mines data from social networks like Facebook, Foursquare and Twitter.
Based just outside of Boston, Massachusetts, Raytheon sells $25 billion worth of equipment a year to military clients like the Pentagon. Some of its most famous products include Sidewinder air-to-air missiles, Maverick air-to-ground missiles, Patriot surface-to-air missiles and Tomahawk submarine-launched cruise missiles.
Raytheon’s Rapid Information Overlay Technology (Riot) software extracts location data from photos and comments posted online by individuals, and then analyzes this information to create a variety of spider diagrams to show where the individuals like to go, what they like to do and whom they communicate with.
A video demonstration of the software was recently published online by the Guardian newspaper. In it, Brian Urch of Raytheon shows how Riot can be used to track “Nick” – a company employee – to predict that the best time and place to steal his computer or put spy software on it.
“Six a.m. appears to be the most frequently visited time at the gym,” says Urch in the video, which is dated November 2010. “So if you ever did want to try to get a hold of Nick – or maybe get a hold of his laptop – you might want to visit the gym at 6:00 a.m. on Monday.”
“Riot is a big data analytics system design we are working on with industry, national labs and commercial partners to help turn massive amounts of data into useable information to help meet our nation’s rapidly changing security needs,” Jared Adams, a spokesman for Raytheon’s intelligence and information systems department, told the Guardian.
Adams says that nobody has bought the software – which is still under development – yet. However, company filings indicate that Riot is classified as an “Export Administration Regulations 99” item which allows it to be sold or exported to any client.
But it is certainly true that a number of U.S. government agencies have been eagerly pursuing surveillance software to exploit the vast quantities of data that individuals are posting online about themselves. In January 2012 the Federal Bureau of Investigation posted a request for an application that would allow it to “provide an automated search and scrape capability of social networks including Facebook and Twitter … and (i)mmediately translate foreign language tweets into English.”
Last month the U.S. Transportation Security Administration asked contractors to propose applications “to generate an assessment of the risk to the aviation transportation system that may be posed by a specific individual” using “specific sources of current, accurate, and complete non-governmental data.” The initial plan is to use it to screen volunteer flyers who will be offered the benefits of “expedited screening lanes … leave on their shoes, light outerwear and belts, as well as leave laptops and … compliant liquids in carry-on bags.”
Privacy activists say that the Riot package is troubling. “This sort of software allows the government to surveil everyone,” Ginger McCall, the director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center’s Open Government program, told NBC News. “It scoops up a bunch of information about totally innocent people. There seems to be no legitimate reason to get this.”
“(T)he government has no business rooting around people’s social network postings—even those that are voluntarily publicly posted—unless it has specific, individualized suspicion that a person is involved in wrongdoing,” writes Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst at the Speech, Privacy and Technology Project of the American Civil Liberties Union. “Among the many problems with government “large-scale analytics” of social network information is the prospect that government agencies will blunderingly use these techniques to tag, target and watchlist people coughed up by programs such as Riot, or to target them for further invasions of privacy based on incorrect inferences.”
Indeed, it would also be possible for a tech-savvy malcontent to lead security officials on a wild goose chase, or even deliberately frame anyone they wanted.
This article is re-posted from Common Dreams. Editor’s Note: There is an event in Grand Rapids tonight, just go to the link.
Across the globe today women are dancing, striking, and in other ways “rising” to call attention to the plight of violence against women and girls across the many cultures of the planet.
Long celebrated as Valentine’s Day in many cultures and leveraged for the last fifteen years by women’s rights activists in the “V-Day movement,” today’s actions are a culmination of the “One Billion Rising” campaign spearheaded by author, playwright and activist Eve Ensler and champions equal rights and an end to violence against women and young girls.
“February 14, 2013 will change the world not because it is a day of magic, although there are indeed mystical elements surrounding this campaign. It will change the world because the preparation for it and organizing for it has already created an energetic wind or wave igniting existing efforts to end violence against women and create new ones,” said Ensler in a statement.
Ensler says the campaign has brought together broad and unexpected coalitions of groups and individuals that have never worked together before, including young people and men previously unaware of how deep the problem of violence against women has been.
“We are rising together because it is in our connectedness, in our stomping feet and uncontrollable hips that the path and energy will be created to bring in a new world,” Ensler said, referring to the campaign’s focus on dance and public protest. “We will galvanize the will and the passion of everyone rising around the world to create change.”
According to the group, planned actions for the day include:
In Paris, the Women’s Coalition of the French Parliament is rising. The Minister of Women’s rights and hundreds of groups in India, students, teachers, and thousands of people are speaking out, and new laws and prevention education are being introduced. Over 100 events are taking place in Italy. In Germany, more than 100 events are planned around the country including a flash mob at the Brandenburg Gate. In Bosnia, a network of organizations and individuals in Sarajevo plan a dancing parade along the riverside, public squares and busy places. From the north of Europe to the south, thousands of activists have planned events large and small. In Bangladesh, over 25 million are expected to rise and will form human dancing chains across the country. The One Billion Rising anthem “Break the Chain” has been translated into Spanish, Farsi, Hindu, and many more languages. In Cape Town, Soweto, and Johannesburg, teen girls are touring schools and teaching the flash mob dance, and all over Africa local TV stations are showing the “Break the Chain” video leading up to the rising.
The ‘Break the Chain’ anthem, which is has been learned by millions and will be performed at many of the events today can be viewed here:
Immigration Reform Groups hold Press Conference to kick-off Campaign for a Just Immigration Policy
Earlier today, several immigration groups hosted a Press Conference at the downtown campus of GVSU.
Members of the West Michigan Immigration Reform Coalition, the Micah Center, the Latino Community Coalition and AIR-MOP each had speakers to address the importance of have comprehensive immigration reform at the federal level.
The Press Conference is on the heels of President’s State of the Union address, wherein the President stated that immigration reform was on the table.
Jordon Bruxvoort, with the Micah Center, also spoke from a faith perspective and addressed the realities of why most of the people who immigrate the US. He spoke about the violence, the poverty and the desire to provide for their families.
Richard Kessler, a local immigration attorney, said that even if the President spoke on immigration reform and Congress is making proposals, the policy reform needs to be pushed from the grassroots and by people who are suffering from a broken immigration policy and their allies.
Our job as immigrants and immigrant rights supporters need to force the government to make comprehensive reform a priority. Many members of Congress, according to Kessler, are saying that they don’t want to change much until they “can get the border security under control.”
Such a statement is not only misleading, but reflects the lack of understanding amongst those in power. Border agencies and those involved have virtually unlimited budgets and have been deporting undocumented immigrants at unprecedented numbers. The position of many members of Congress also ignores what people must endure to get in the US and the climate of fear they live in on a daily basis from both law enforcement and the hateful anti-immigration rhetoric of many media pundits.
Kessler said that the goal should be to make a clear pathway to citizenship easy and attainable. People are willing to take the necessary steps, but unless the government is willing to treat the 11 million undocumented immigrants as possible US citizens, it will not solve the immigration crisis we currently face.
Susan Im, another immigration lawyer also spoke at the Press Conference. She emphasized that the US can no longer afford to not pass immigration reform. She stressed that many businesses are suffering and will continue to suffer since the current restrictions they face in who they can hire limits them in employ workers who currently lack documentation.
Local labor activist and author of a recent book on labor activism, Greg Shotwell, also addressed the audience at the Press Conference. Greg made the point that work and workers should never be illegal and that immigrants are labor rights and labor rights are human rights. Shotwell made it clear that if workers were treated fairly in their own countries that they would be happy to stay in their own communities. Immigration reform needs to involve, and is connected to, global worker solidarity.
There were also several immigrants who addressed the audience and spoke about their own experience of coming to the US. Emmanuel Joshua, who is a Muslim from Pakistan, spoke about his own story and how his family has been separated for years because of the repressive immigration policies of the US. Emmanuel came primarily to flee religious persecution, but when he fled he could not come with all his family members.
Another immigrant who shared his story was Sigifredo Pizana, a young man from Mexico. His father was deported in 2011 for not having a driver’s license and one of his brothers also has been deported since then. Sigifredo talked about the difficulties of not being able to drive to work, since he cannot obtain a driver’s license under the current laws. Often he would have to walk 2 hours each way to get to work, even in the middle of the winter. Sigifredo has been involved in the campaign to get the driver’s license policy for DACA youth in Michigan, a campaign that has been successful.
One last speaker was Jose Jimenez, who was part of the Puerto Rican youth movement in the 60’s, known as the Young Lords. Jose spoke about the connection between those who struggled for justice in the 60s and those struggling for justice now. He identified what the President and Congress mean by comprehensive immigration reform, which is more border security, fines, that people need to learn English and get to the back of the line. “We want self-determination, but we have to fight for it, because they are not going to give it to us.”
Indeed, it was clear from the various speakers at today’s Press Conference, that a just immigration policy, will only come about if we organize to make it so.
What Obama Didn’t Say on Immigration at the State of the Union
This article by Aura Bogado is re-posted from The Nation.
President Obama mentioned immigration several times during his State of the Union address this evening—perhaps most poignantly when he altered the citizenship narrative that closed his remarks to include a definition “that doesn’t just describe our nationality or legal status.” 
But we didn’t hear anything new in terms of comprehensive immigration reform.
Obama touted increased border security, but failed to mention the record number of deportations that continue to occur under his watch. The president did reiterate his call for a pathway to citizenship, but only when followed by a background check, fees and fines, and English language acquisition. Some of those restrictions might stand in the way of undocumented immigrant workers who labor long days with little pay, and little access to time or the educational opportunities that would allow them to learn English.
Tonight’s audience included at least five young undocumented immigrants, most of whom qualify for Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals plan, or DACA. These “dacamented” students included current college students and recent graduates. Julieta Garibay, who founded United We Dream, could have been one of them. The activists has organized around the DREAM Act for years, but at 32 years old, she just missed the age cut off. Garibay represents the toll that the arbitrary nature of a broken immigration system takes.
Obama’s remarks didn’t sit well with Miguel Guerra. The 37-year-old construction worker and father of three was arrested last summer for protesting against Sheriff Joe Arpaio in an action organized by Puente. His oldest daughter also just became “dacamented” under Obama’s plan—and two of his other children are US citizens, both born in Arizona.
After his arrest, Guerra was taken to a local jail before an immigration hold placed him in detention an additional day. He was released on bond, and is fighting his deportation, with a court date for December. In the meantime, he has a worker’s permit and driver’s license—but his future remains uncertain. His wife, a domestic worker, currently has no documentation. Their family represents so many that remain split by a jumbled collection of rules, directives and legislation that may stand to tear them apart: a father with permission to be in the country until at least the end of the year, an undocumented mother, a daughter with authorization for at least two years and two US citizen children.
Guerra said he was disappointed with Obama—he was hoping the president would announce a halt to deportations that could split families like his apart at any moment. “This isn’t just for me, but for all families, for the whole country,” he explained from Washington, DC, where he traveled with a delegation of more than 250 workers who will attend tomorrow’s Senate hearing on immigration.
The hearing will include remarks from a range of panelists, including Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist turned undocumented activist Jose Antonio Vargas.
Grand Rapids DDA plan to give DeVos owned RDV Corp $317,000 tax abatement to redevelop Morton House put on hold
At this morning’s Downtown Development Authority (DDA) meeting, the members of the committee were scheduled to approve the recommendation that the DeVos/Rockford Construction redevelopment project of the old Morton House move forward.
I talked with DDA member Jim Talen who didn’t know why the RDV Corp redevelopment proposal was pulled from the agenda and City Staffer Eric Pratt said he couldn’t say why it was no longer on the agenda. When asked about if the matter would be on next month’s DDA agenda, Pratt said he didn’t know and that it might depend on Rockford Construction, which released a statement today, which we could not find on their website or online anywhere.
The Morton House used to provide housing for low-income residents in a federally subsidized program that served roughly 200 people for several decades.
The DDA staff recommendation was to offer the RDV Corp a 10-year tax abatement under what is know as OPRE, Obsolete Property Rehabilitation Exemption. Under such a plan, RDV Corp would not have to pay the estimated $31,700 property taxes per year or $317,000 over ten years.
The RDV Corp proposal is to redevelop the property to create what they referred to as 100 “market value residential units.” The reduction from 200 previous units would suggest that the housing units would be much bigger and target urban professionals. Indeed, the DDA estimates that said resident in the new RDV Corp facility would spend $2 million in the downtown area.
On this matter the DDA document states:
The addition of 100 new market-rate residential units on Monroe Center will infuse approximately $2 M in annual consumer spending potential into the core of Downtown, which will grow the demand side of retail feasibility, again consistent with the goals Framework Plan.
Such comments reflect the trickle down theory of economics, that as long as people are spending money, some of it will trickle down to the rest of the community. However, we know that such notions don’t actually work and what is really happening in this case, the DeVos/Rockford Construction project to redevelop the old Morton House, is that the spending will benefit the downtown business owners, which is a small group of people, many of which have close ties to the DeVos family businesses – hotels, restaurant/bar, sports teams and of course ArtPrize.
Free Market for everyone else, not for us
Equally important in this story is the fact that despite the DeVos family commitment to the idea of the “free market,” they don’t often practice it themselves. Why would a corporation that promotes business solutions to social problems, meaning everyone should be an entrepreneur, accept massive tax subsidies from the City of Grand Rapids, when they in principle don’t want the government to interfere with the “free market?”
The truth is that the DeVos owned businesses have always welcomed massive tax breaks and subsidies for their business ventures, thus welcoming the Nanny state when it benefits them. When can working class people take advantage of the same kinds of tax breaks and subsidies for their contributions to society?
Some might argue that working class people already have “entitlements” in the form of Social Security and Medicaid, but those pale in comparison to corporate subsidies. In addition, the social benefits such as social security and Medicaid are constantly under attack by reactionary Think Tanks like the Mackinac Center for Public Policy and the Heritage Foundation, both of which have been recipients of DeVos funding.
The reality is that the free market is really something that the likes of DeVos want imposed on the general public, but not themselves. If most major corporations did not benefit from tax breaks, government subsidies and taxpayer funded services such as roads, most of them wouldn’t last in the real free market.
Virginia Bill Allowing Campus Groups to Ban LGBTQ Students Await Governor’s Signature
This article is re-posted from Political Research Associates.
The Virginia state legislature passed a bill yesterday that would allow religious and political student groups on college campuses to discriminate and still receive public funding. The bill, which would prevent universities from implementing wide-ranging non-discrimination policies, follows a scattered and heated debate across colleges nationwide on what constitutes religious discrimination.
HB1617, now awaiting Gov. Bob McDonnell’s (R) signature, asserts: “A religious or political student organization may determine that ordering the organization’s internal affairs … are in furtherance of the organization’s religious or political mission and that only persons committed to that mission should conduct such activities.” It further bars higher education institutions from discriminating against student groups who exercise this right to discriminate. A similar bill was introduced by Republican State Rep. Mark Pody in Tennessee earlier this week.
“Our concern with the bill is it allows discrimination with publicly accessible funds,” said Kevin Clay, a spokesman for Equality Virginia, to Metroweekly, expressing concern about the impact on LGBTQ students. “This protects the student organizations, not the individual students.”
In recent years, Christian student groups have repeatedly clashed with campuses’ non-discrimination or “all comers” policies, often involving the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship (IVCF), a national evangelical campus ministry. Challenges have been brought against IVCF chapters on 41 college campuses, often due to the strict adherence to a “Basis of Faith” clause required for group leaders. In the past year alone, the University of Michigan, the State University of New York at Buffalo, and Tufts University all saw conflicts when this clause was found in violation of the university’s “all comers” policy for student groups. Many public colleges in Virginia, including James Madison University and the College of William & Mary, have similar non-discrimination policies that would be jeopardized if the governor signs this bill.
In 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court took on a constitutional challenge by the Christian Legal Society–a student organization that required subscription to a “Statement of Beliefs” preventing LGBTQ students from becoming members–against a school non-discrimination policy. The American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) filed an amicus brief, along with IVCF, supporting the group’s “religious freedom.” The majority opinion on Christian Legal Society v. Martinez, however, authored by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, ruled that university’s “all comers” policies were “reasonable, viewpoint-neutral condition on access to the forum,” and therefore not in violation of the First Amendment.
While that case awaited review by the Supreme Court, in Virginia, state Attorney General Kenneth Cuccinelli sent a letter to colleges advising that only the state legislature can ban discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. (Cuccinelli’s actions as attorney general that line up with the Christian Right agenda include targeting abortion clinics and unsuccessfully challenging the federal health care law in 2011, with the ACLJ’s support.) The Virginia state constitution does not include sexual orientation in its non-discrimination clause and legislation to remedy this has repeatedly failed. This hostile history makes this bill additionally worrisome to the state LGBTQ community.
The Center for Science in the Public Interest has created a new campaign to expose and challenge the soda industry’s impact on public health.
The campaign features great online resources as part of their “Truth” campaign, where they juxtapose solid scientific and public health information with statements and claims from companies like Coca Cola.
The group has also created a new video that pokes fun at Coke’s iconic marketing characters, the Polar Bears.
In this video, the Polar Bears consume Coke and are faced with the myriad of health issues that many Americans are faced with. The video presents the unhappy reality of soda consumption.
This Day in Resistance History: WWI & WWII vets burn their draft cards
On February 12, 1947, an estimated 500 US military veterans who were involved in World War I and World War II and Conscientious Objectors burned their draft cards in both New York City and Washington, DC.
Those in DC, burned their draft cards in front of the White House because of a proposed universal conscription law. The law was defeated that year, but reinstated in 1948 with the signing of the Selective Service Act.
Remembering this act of resistance is important for a variety of reasons. First, it dispels the notion that prior to the Vietnam war, US soldiers were compliant with draft laws and happy to serve in the military.
An estimated 72,000 men register as Conscientious Objectors during World War II, a number, which flies in the face of the so-called “Greatest Generation.” People opposed the war for a variety of reasons, some because of their faith, while others objected to the imperialist nature of US wars.
In the powerful film, The Good War and Those Who Refused to Fight It, we hear from dozens of US men who were Cos during WWII and their motivations for such resistance. These were men who still went to war as clerks or medics, these were men who stayed in the US and did some other form of service in the Conservation Corp.
This act of resistance in 1947 also is important, since it demonstrates that there has been a long history of domestic opposition to forced military conscription in the US. In his book Desertion And the American Soldier: 1776-2006, Robert Fantina documents how tens of thousands of US soldiers have resisted conscription and went AWOL while in the US military. Such documentation smashes this myth about US soldier obedience in this country’s history and shows that in every US war there have been men (and some women) who have refused to engage in brutal acts of violence against enemy soldiers and civilians.
There are men and women who have also refused to participate in the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, despite the almost complete absence of media coverage of such refusal.
Today, we honor the courage of men and women who refuse to participate in war and publicly defy US militarism and Imperialism.
