Chicago Protest Reflections
This article by Paul Street is re-posted from ZNet.
Barack Obama was right last week to move the annual rich nations’ confab called the G8 Summit from its originally scheduled venue of Chicago to a cloistered compound outside Washington DC – the president’s official retreat in Maryland’s secluded Camp David – next May. He knew that the Chicago G8 promised to be highly problematic both for his re-election campaign and for the great concentrated power structures he is sworn and predisposed to defend. Conscious that the ruling class hired his expectation-managing brand of “hope” and change” to (among other things) dazzle, dilute, dismiss, delude, divide, de-mobilize, de-fang, and otherwise destroy dissent, he grasped that his “home city” had become the perfect juicy spring protest target for the Left. As Chicago Alderman Scott Waguespack (32nd Ward) said, “Nobody can get near Camp David.”
Some Left Chicago History
Chicago holds rich historical meaning for left activists. It was the site of the 1968 Democratic Convention, when tens of thousands of protestors descended on the city to oppose the criminal Vietnam War being conducted by Democrats Lyndon Johnson and Hubert Humphrey. The antiwar movement and counter-culture met a wave of epic police brutality ordered by Chicago Mayor and Democratic Party boss Richard J. Daley, who tried to make his city’s glaring black poverty invisible to visiting delegates by erecting plywood fences on both sides of the route between downtown hotels and the convention site in the South Side stockyards district. A detailed bipartisan investigation (the bestselling Rights in Conflict) found the repression to have been a proto-fascistic “police riot.”
Then there’s Haymarket. May Day, the great international workers’ protest day, finds strong historical roots in the remarkable left-led working class struggle for an Eight Hour Day that emerged in Chicago in the spring of 1886. On May 1st of that year, 60,000 Chicago workers struck and 80,000 mostly immigrant workers, led by anarchists Albert and Lucy Parsons, marched up Chicago’s downtown Michigan Avenue. The struggle culminated in the tragic Haymarket incident (the throwing by an unknown hand of a bomb that killed one policeman and injured seven others, followed by the police firing indiscriminately and murderously into a dispersing crowd) and a wave of vicious anti-radical and anti-labor repression that included the execution of four Chicago radicals – August Spies, Albert Parsons, George Engel, and Adolph Fischer – on November 11, 1887. In the moments before they were hanged, Spies shouted, “The time will come when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you strangle today!” The condemned radicals did not die immediately when they dropped, but strangled slowly, a sight that visibly shook spectators. The Haymarket Martyrs and the social-revolutionary struggle they led are still honored by working class and peasant activists the world over.
The site of many epic labor and left struggles to come, Chicago was also home to the most widely read American socialist novel of the 20th century – Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle. Set in and around Chicago’s once giant slaughtering and meatpacking industry, The Jungle still receives mention in U.S. history texts primarily in connection with its role in exposing the unsanitary conditions of the meat industry. In fact, the novel was meant above all to be a parable on the tragic nature of working class life under the demands of capital and a plea for socialism. The original edition of the novel concluded with its proletarian protagonist attending a mass rally addressed by the American Socialist Party’s mesmerizing presidential candidate – Sinclair’s fictional representation of Eugene Debs. The candidate, Sinclair wrote:
“was a man of electric presence, tall and gaunt, with a face worn think by struggle and suffering. The fury of outraged manhood gleamed in him – and the tears of suffering. When he spoke he paced the stage restlessly; he was lithe and eager, like a panther. He leaned over, reaching out for his audience; he pointed into their souls with an insistent finger. His voice was husky from much speaking, but the hall was still as death, and everyone heard him. He spoke the language of workingmen – he pointed them the way. He showed the two political parties as ‘two wings of the same bird of prey” [emphasis added]. The people were allowed to choose between their candidates, and both of them were controlled, and all their nominations were dictated by, the same [money] power.”
City of Disparity Protest Sites
City Hall
Run by a corporate-Democratic machine that has faced no serious Republican opposition for more than half a century, Chicago is a monument to that power and control. It is home to the authoritarian mayoralty of Obama’s former chief-of-staff Rahm Emmanuel. Dubbed “Mayor 1%” by Occupy Chicago, Emmanuel is a wealthy, militaristic and left-loathing autocrat who worked relentlessly to advance corporate and imperial policies under two Democratic presidential administrations (Clinton and Obama) and during three terms in the House of Representatives (2003-2008). His service to concentrated wealth and power (including his own) continues in Chicago, where he is pushing hard to rollback teacher pay and other public sector union wages and benefits and to privatize schools and city services. Last fall, Emmanuel forcibly prevented the Occupy Movement from pitching a campsite anywhere in the city, which is blessed by a relative abundance of public parks. Last January 4and 5, more than 200 people of all ages staged a sit-in outside his office to demand that Emmanuel and his appointees on the Chicago School Board cease halt plans to close and privatize schools across the city. In May of 2010, roughly 5,000 teachers, students, and parents surrounded City Hall (121 N. LaSalle St.) to protest then Mayor Richard M. Daley’s plans to lay off more than 2500 teachers, although the event was largely ignored by the local press and meaningfully covered only in left leaning and socialist publications.
Invisible Neighborhoods and Corporate Headquarters
The city’s glaring disparities are a fit target for protest and resistance, with or without international summits taking place downtown. Numerous predominantly black and Latino neighborhoods suffer Great Depression-like rates of unemployment in the forgotten shadows of “global Chicago’s” shining downtown corporate headquarters and its surrounding ring of gentrified residential and recreation zones. Chicago has 15 neighborhoods where more than a quarter the children are growing up at less than half the federal government’s notoriously inadequate poverty level. As the Brookings Institution reported last November, it is home to 593,000 poor people and to 124 “extreme poverty” census tracts (where more than 40 percent of the population lives below the poverty line) that together house 304,139 people including 140,574 poor. It is also home to 2,550 people identified by the global wealth intelligence firm Wealth X as “Ultra High New Worth” (UHNW) individuals – persons with at least $30 million in worth, “including shares in companies, real estate, cash, art collections, private planes and other investable assets.” As CNBC reporter Paul Toscano gushed last month in a report on “Where the ‘One Percent’ Live”:
“Chicago is a major financial center and home to major financial and futures exchanges, including the Chicago Stock Exchange, the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Major companies in Chicago include the CME Group, Boeing, Groupon, MillerCoors, United Airlines and RR Donnelley. Some of the billionaires that call Chicago home are private-equity titan Sam Zell, media mogul Oprah Winfrey, former CEO of Wrigley William Wrigley Jr., and founder of Morningstar Joe Mansueto” (CNBC, February 16, 2012) at http://finance.yahoo.com/news/where-the–one-percent–live.html)
The Boeing Corporation (100 N. Riverside), located on the western shore of the south branch of the Chicago River, is an especially good protest target. It is the maker of the B-2 Stealth Bomber, the Blackhawk Helicopter, and the Predator Drone, to mention just three deadly Boeing technologies the Pentagon has purchased and used (at massive cost-plus taxpayer expense) to murder tens of thousands of innocent civilians, including countless small children, in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Somalia, and Yemen over the last decade. Two summers ago, in July 2009:
“members and supporters of Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) participated in a silent funeral procession that drew attention to Boeing’s role in the production of drones (unmanned aerial vehicles—UAVs) that have killed over 700 civilians in Pakistan and Afghanistan.” ”To a slow, steady drumbeat, the procession of about forty mourners, dressed in black and bearing a coffin, moved through the streets of downtown Chicago from the Federal Building to Boeing during the noon lunch hour. A large model Predator Drone hovering above…caught the interest of passersby. Participants carried signs urging Boeing to divest from drones and death and distributed leaflets detailing some of the startling facts about drone warfare.” ”The procession culminated at Boeing’s world headquarters beside the Chicago River where the mock drone fired a fake missile at the mourners. At that point, four CPTers, who had entered Boeing through a side door, spread blood-stained sheets on the lobby floor and lay down to simulate those killed in the attack… Boeing security quickly brought out two dogs on leashes that barked and snarled inches away from the faces of the CPTers lying motionless on the floor. Security whisked the dogs away when another CPTer began videotaping the scene.” (http://www.cpt.org/cptnet/2009/07/31/chicago-vigil-urges-boeing-divest-predator-drones)
University of Chicago Economics Department
Another worthy protest site is the University of Chicago Economics Department (1101 E. 58th Street, third floor of Rosenwald Hall). For more than five decades, the department’s so-called free market doctrines have advanced the triumph of corporate and financial profit over the needs and rights of ordinary people and the common good at home and abroad – from harshly race- and class-divided and hyper-segregated Chicago to the sprawling mega-slums of Africa, Asia, and Latin America. “Chicago school” economists are regularly rewarded with “Nobel Prizes” honoring their role in the infection of the world with the neoliberal disease. They use abstract and ahistorical formulas and bloodless models to purport to explain why the wealthy few require grotesque fortunes and endless influence in a nation where half the population is now either officially poor (50 million) or low income (150 million) and in a world where nearly half the population – 3 billion people – live on less than $2.50 a day. Training regressive state-capitalist technocrats and ideologues from and for all corners of the world capitalist system, the University of Chicago has long deployed its own large police department to protect students and professors from black South Side residents for whom the “free market” has proved less than beneficial. From 1992 until his election to the U.S. Senate 2004, the future civil liberties executioner Barack Obama taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago’s conservative and elitist law school. The university’s faux-gothic southern skyline marks one heavily guarded boundary of a ghetto-surrounded island of class privilege. Upton Sinclair’s “bird of prey” perches comfortably atop the university’s giant, aptly named Rockefeller Chapel.
The Obama Campaign Headquarters
An especially juicy, pulp-filled and dollar-soaked Chicago protest target is the top corporate Democrat Obama’s 2012 downtown re-election campaign headquarters
(located in the Prudential Building at 130 E. Randolph St.). Obama’s center of operations “looks more like a company than a campaign. For the last year,” the New York Times reported last week, “an office that appears nearly as long and as wide as a football field has steadily grown, with more than 300 workers now sitting bunched together….a payroll of $3 million in January suggests the staff is larger than any ever assembled for a presidential race.” The Times adds that the 300 workers are having a hard time raising money from the “small donors who gave early and often in 2008.” This is because “Some of the volunteers who went to work enlisting friends and neighbors [in 2008] have been turned off by unmet expectations” and because “they have literally lost track of many reliable Democratic voters, particularly lower-income people who have lost their homes or their jobs or both, and can no longer be reached at the addresses or phone numbers the campaign has on file” (J. Rutenberg and J. Zeleny, NYT, March 8, 2012, A1).
The corporate-like Obama headquarters is a target thanks to the administration’s relentless service to the rich and powerful.[1] That service stands in bold defiance of the hopes for progressive and democratic change that many Americans felt when President Elect Obama gave his victory speech before an estimate 1 million Chicagoans gathered in and around the city’s downtown Grant Park (where antiwar protestors faced tear gas and police batons in 1968). Many who came to hear the charismatic president-in-waiting in person that night are now among those “who have lost their homes or their jobs or both, and can no longer be reached at the addresses or phone numbers the campaign has on file.” They were used and forgotten by a president who has already attended 191 elite fundraisers – a new first-term record with 10 months still to go (F. Schouten, ”Obama Tops Recent Presidents in Fundraising Attendance,” USA Today, March 6, 2012, A1). They have been given a harsh lesson in power (who has it and who doesn’t) and in how the Democrats are one of Sinclair’s “two wings of the same bird of [capitalist political] prey.”
World City Folly and Repression
“We’re a world class city with world class potential,” declared Rahm Emanuel last January. Infused by the same civic boosterism, commercial lust, and “global city” pretension that sent the second Richard (M.) Daley (Chicago’s “pinstripe patronage” mayor from 1989 to 2011) and the president himself panting to Copenhagen for the 2016 Olympics, “Rahmbo” and the Commercial Club of Chicago thought they had scored an enviable coup. Chicago, they cheered, would host both the G8 and the annual NATO military meetings this May. Hooray!
“If you want to be a global city, you’ve got to act like a global city and do what global cities do,” said Lori Healey, head of the G8/NATO Summit Host Committee, who led Chicago’s failed bid to host the 2016 Olympics. Healy’s committee came up with a brand name for the co-joined power elite gatherings: “Global Crossroads.”
They should have thought things out more carefully. Global capitalist policy summits became sites for significant “anti-globalization” (global justice) protests in and around big rich state cities during the late 1990s. In the summer of 2001, the G8 meetings in Genoa, Italy attracted giant demonstrations, provoking ugly repression that included the killing of at least one protestor (Carlo Guliani). Following those events and the 9/11 attacks two months later, the G8 made an understandable point (from an elite perspective) of meeting in more remote, non-urban locations: Kananaskis, Alberta (Canada, 2002); Evian-les-Bains (France,2003); Sea Island, Georgia (U.S.A., 2004); Gleneagles, Scotland (UK,2005); Streina, St. Petersburg (authoritarian Russia, 2006); Heiligendman, Mecklenberg-Vorpommen (Germany, 2007); Toyaku (Lake Toya), Hokkaido (Japan, 2008); L’Aguillo, Abruzzo (Italy,2009); Huntsville, Ontario (Canada, 2010); and Deauville, Basse-Normandie (France,2011).[2] Do G8 planners really want to return to a big city environment during an age of elite-imposed capitalist austerity and in the wake of the related outbreak of the greatest wave of left urban protest to emerge in the West in many decades?
To compound their protest problem, Rahmbo sweetened the G8 target by combining it with the meetings of the rich states’ murderous U.S.-led military alliance – the North American Treaty Organization (NATO). “Despite its claims,” Chicago-based peace activist Brian Terell rightly noted on ZNet last January, “NATO was never a defensive alliance. It is structured to wage ‘out of area’ wars in Asia, the Middle East and North Africa, as well as to ‘contain’ China [and, Terell might have added, Russia].” The U.S. occupation of Afghanistan (2001-20??) – a criminal and mass-murderous action from the start – is technically a NATO operation.
The idea of combining the two summits in the Second City belonged to Emmanuel. “After it was determined in December 2010 that the United States would be the host of the G-8 and NATO summit meetings,” the New York Times reported last week, “the Obama administration announced within months that Chicago would be the site [for both]. The idea was less Mr. Obama’s than the brainchild of Rahm Emanuel, then the White House chief of staff….” (J. Calmes, “Camp David, Not Chicago, to Host G-8,” NYT, March 5, 2012)
Here Emmanuel unwittingly did the left he abhors something of a potential favor. The global justice movement that arose in the late 1990s and sparked repression in Seattle (1999), Washington DC (2000), and Genoa (2001) was focused on economic and environmental matters almost to the point of excluding the more-than-lingering problem of imperial militarism – U.S. imperialism (displayed in the bombing of Serbia that preceded the 1999 World Trade Organization protests in Seattle by many months).When the 2001 jetliner attacks provided “the new Pearl Harbor” that gave official justification for an epic U.S. war campaign in Afghanistan and Iraq, the global justice movement was ill-equipped to respond. This was a shame (from a radical perspective) since corporate globalization and American military imperialism were (and remain) two sides of the same world state-capitalist coin. This basic truth was expressed (in an approving way) by the leading neoliberal propagandist Thomas Friedman in a March 28, 1998, New York Times Magazine article on the need to project U.S. power. “For globalization to work,” Friedman wrote, “America can’t be afraid to act like the almighty superpower that it is. The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist. McDonald’s cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the designer of the F-15, and the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley’s technology is called the U.S. Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps.”
Besides upping the Age of Occupy protest ante by joining two summit targets in one big “global city” time and place, Emmanuel’s bid to combine the G8 and NATO’s seemed almost calculated to help the left overcome differences between its economic and global justice wing on one hand and its anti-imperialist and antiwar wing on the other. It promised to unite those angry at Obama because of his service to the permanent dictatorship of money with those angry at Obama because of his intimately related service to the permanent war party. It suggested the basic left point that corporate-financial globalization and American militarism are “two wings of the same [world-capitalist] bird of prey.”
Rahmbo and others in Chicago’s elite knew that their “Global Crossroads” dream carried what one local news station (WLS-ABC) called “the prospect of large-scale protests stealing the stage as the world watches.” But they had a plan to deal with that likelihood: repression, global city-style. The city has been “training thousands of officers in tactics for mass arrests and containment” (the Chicago Sun Times) for months now. The Mayor warned downtown businesses to expect property damage and told them to increase private security during the summits. He prepared to saturate the downtown (at massive taxpayer expense) with heavily equipped and militarized riot police (required “if you want to be a global city”) and made contact for repression assistance with surrounding city and suburban police forces, the Cook County Sheriff’s office, the state police, and the Illinois National Guard. Last January 18th, moreover, Emmanuel pushed through his obedient City Council a draconian anti-protest ordinance that
- Increased the minimum fine for violation of the City’s parade permit ordinance from $50 to $200.
- Required protest organizers to provide the City ahead of demonstrations with a list of all signs, banners, sound equipment or other “attention-getting devices” that required more than one person to carry them, creating what activists call “a license for the city to ‘ding’ organizers with absurd fines.”
- Required downtown protest marches to obtain $1 million in insurance coverage to “indemnify the city against any additional or uncovered third party claims…arising out of or caused by the parade.” Protest groups would have to “agree to reimburse the city for any damage to the public way or city property arising out of or caused by the parade.”
- Permitted the “deputizing of ‘law enforcement’ from the DEA, the FBI the Illinois State Police, and “other law enforcement agencies” (including private security firms like Blackwater) determined by the superintendent of police to be “necessary for the fulfillment of law enforcement functions.”
Most disturbing of all, the “Global Crossroads” hosting committee announced last January that the Illinois State Crime Commission was “urgently seeking Iraq-Afghanistan combat veterans” to fill security positions for the summits. “As in other ‘global cities,’” Terell noted, “these veterans will be used as private mercenaries without the legal protections and benefits of public employees…In answer to a potentially volatile situation in the streets of Chicago, the commission is not seeking workers trained in conflict resolution, but it has an urgent need for ex-soldiers trained in the violent chaos of Iraq and Afghanistan. These veterans urgently need treatment and meaningful employment, but at the ‘global crossroads,’ they are offered only temp jobs as rent-a-cops protecting the interests of their exploiters.”
The Last Thing the President Needs
Seasoned Washington observers found it odd that the White House suddenly and without explanation announced the G8’s shift to Camp David. As veteran New York Times correspondent Jackie Calmes noted last week, “the change was unusual given the months-long lead time that such events require.” Stranger still, “President Obama has boasted for months about playing host to the annual summit meeting of the Group of 8 industrialized nations this May in his hometown, Chicago” (Calmes, “Camp David, Not Chicago”).
Obama has cited the desire for a “more casual backdrop” and worried about traffic as the reasons for the late move to the woods of Maryland. Administration officials told reporters that “the prospect of…protests…was not a factor in the decision to change locations.” That was a bold-faced lie. The truth of the matter is captured well by 1960s veteran Danny Schechter in a recent ZNet commentary:
“The President has been playing Ronald Reagan these days, talking tough while feinting towards the center. What he most decidedly does not want to do is play Hubert Humphrey and relive the summer of 1968 in Chicago. That’s why the G8 meeting was shifted from contested ground there to safe space in the ultra-secure, well-guarded environment of Maryland’s Camp David. The last thing the President needs in the middle of his campaign is another police riot in the Second city [emphasis added]. Someone must have pointed out that the Occupy Movement was already in the process of planning another battle ala Seattle in the very heartland of the Obama Empire. Even the editor of Adbusters, who issued the call to occupy Zuccotti Park last September, now had his megaphone fixed on the Second City. The world movement that has mobilized to confront so many G8 had this one in its crosshairs for month. Sweet Home Chicago was in line to become a sweet home for a world of angry protesters, not just Americans. That has to be stopped or diverted, and it was.”
Leading Chicago activist Andy Thayer tells the Chicago Tribune that “protests will go forward” since “We believe that NATO is, frankly, the de facto military arm of G-8 and anybody who’s upset with G-8 should be upset with NATO.” He’s right. The war party and the money party are two wings of the same bird of prey. They are joined together on the back of the rapacious global vulture that is American Empire and Inequality, Inc. The city remains a fitting grassroots protest, resistance, and organizing site both within and beyond its corporate downtown and with or without international summits of the rich and powerful.
Carl Levin, the Israeli Lobby and Iran
Last week, both US President Barack Obama and Michigan Senator Carl Levin attended the annual policy conference hosted by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
Both the President and Carl Levin made sure that their allegiance to Israel was unconditional. Both Obama and Levin made it clear that they will continue to support Israel and both emphasized their commitment to demonize and punish Iran for challenging Israeli and US hegemony in the Middle East.
This is no surprise, since every US President since Richard Nixon has endorsed the State of Israel and made them the largest recipient of US foreign aid for more than three decades. As for Senator Levin’s commitment to Israel, one only has to look at the fact that he has been one of the top recipients of Pro-Israel PAC money over the past 20 years.
According to Open Secrets, Levin has received $1,656,735 from Pro-Israel groups in the US, with AIPAC being the largest contributor to the Michigan Senator. Levin has also consistently voted in for legislation that defends Israel, even when Israel commits war crimes, as they did in the 2009 assault on Gaza.
The main reason for Levin’s visit to the AIPAC conference was to make sure that the major Israel lobby would know that he supports Obama’s plan to marginalize Iran. Here is what the Senator had to say last week to those who attended the AIPAC conference:
“I worked closely with the President Obama recently, when as David said my Armed Services Committee adopted a bipartisan Kirk-Menendez Iran sanctions bill as part of our defense authorization bill. That’s where it belongs: Defending Israel as part of our defense authorization bill. And that bill is now law and has been signed by the president. The sanctions which are in our bill with the support of the president will cripple Iran’s access to international financial markets and its ability to sell oil.”
In that speech Levin continues the anti-Iran position by claiming if Iran has nuclear weapons Israel will be in great danger. Levin fails to mention that Israel has possessed nuclear weapons for more than 2 decades, an admission he begrudgingly made in a recent interview with MLive.
When an MLive reporter asked Levin if Israel possessed nuclear weapons, the Michigan Senator said, “I think they do. They’re not going to use them. But they have them. Anybody who thinks they can use nuclear weapons is mistaken. They are totally unusable. That’s not the point. The point is that nuclear weapons are not usable except to deter. I believe that Israel has nuclear weapons. I think most of the world believes Israel has nuclear weapons. They were threatened with extinction. They felt that was one way to deter attacks on them that might be aimed to actually wipe them off the face of the earth.”
Later in his AIPAC speech Senator Levin lets it be known that he supports the President’s commitment to protecting Israel from Iran at all cost and that if Iran pursues nuclear capability the US will likely declare war on Iran.
“When he (Obama) says all that options are on the table to prevent a nuclear Iran, he means it. I believe him. The world will believe him. I hope the Iranians are rational enough to believe him, because Iran ignores the president of the United States and his words at their peril.”
This hawkish and imperialistic position demonstrates once again that Senator Carl Levin and the majority of the Democratic Party that supports this policy towards Iran, are just as committed to war as any Republican administrations in the past.
GRIID Spring 2012 Classes
The newest round of GRIID classes are now posted, with one new class and a class we have offered several times in the past.
The new class we are offering is A Brief History of Revolutionary and Resistance Movements, which will explore the rich history of revolution and resistance over the past century from the Paris Commune to the Zapatista Uprising.
The intent of this 8 – week class is to not only familiarize participants with rich examples of revolution and resistance in recent human history, but to learn from previous movements and to recognize what it might take for contemporary resistance and revolution to occur.
A Brief History of Revolutionary and Resistance Movements class will take place from 6 – 8pm on Mondays, beginning April 2nd.
The second class we will be offering is the very first class we began with in early 2008, Making Sense of US Foreign Policy. This class is designed to discuss US foreign policy since WWII, politically, economically and militarily.
We will discuss issues such as US intervention, torture, sanctions, use of proxy forces, war crimes, trade policies, the US relationship to the United Nations and other international agencies like the IMF and World Bank, with the last few session examining the foreign policy of the Obama administration.
Making Sense of US Foreign Policy will be held from 6 – 8pm on Wednesday nights beginning April 4. For this class we will be using the book Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower.
Both Spring 2012 classes will be 8 – weeks and will be held at the Steepletown Center located at 671 Davis NW, in Grand Rapids. The cost of each class is $20, but anyone is welcomed to sign up even if you can’t pay.
If you have questions about either class or would like to sign up, contact us at jsmith@griid.org.
Dump Rush Campaign continues with Protest this Friday (3/16)
To continue to keep up the pressure on WOOD Radio to pull Rush Limbaugh from its lineup, NOW Grand Rapids and GRIID are calling for another protest this Friday, March 16 at 1:00pm.
People are encouraged to bring signs and written letters to the protest, letters that can be delivered to the WOOD Radio Station Manager Tim Feagan. These letters will go in the station’s public file, which will be checked regularly to see how many letters/e-mails the station is receiving in opposition to their broadcasting of the Rush Limbaugh show.
This public protest is also part of a larger campaign to pressure WOOD Radio, which involves the letter writing and the targeting of local advertisers. We noted yesterday that the first local advertiser, Maple Creek, a senior housing facility, pulled their ad dollars from the station.
According to Radio-Info.com as of yesterday, at least 98 companies had pulled their ads from the nationally syndicated Rush Limbaugh show. Also, to be clear, the Grand Rapids campaign is calling for all local advertisers to pull their funding no matter when their ads are airing on WOOD Radio.
Dump Rush Protest
Friday, March 16
1:00PM
77 Monroe Center – downtown Grand Rapids
Afghani massacre at the hands of US military despicable, seen primarily as PR problem by US media
On Sunday, it was reported that a US soldier killed 16 Afghan civilians in Southern Afghanistan.
The massacre has resulted in more Afghan protests against the US/NATO occupation, despite the lack of attention to this critical issue in the US.
US government responses are framing the massacre as an anomaly and that the US military does not commit these kinds of atrocities as a matter of policy. However, Kathy Kelly, interviewed this morning on Democracy Now!, stated:
“I think that the United States and military officials would like to characterize the massacre as exceptional, sort of one bad apple. But I think it actually encapsulates what the United States presence in Afghanistan has been all about. Unprovoked and uncaused attacks have been waged by the United States against Afghan civilians. It isn’t as though this was one deplorable act. This soldier was assigned to a Joint Special Operations Force base, and the Joint Special Operations Forces have been engaging in the night raids on an average of 10 per night, sometimes as many as 40 per night, all across Afghanistan and killing civilians steadily. And combine that with the drone surveillance and the helicopter—combat helicopter attacks that have killed civilians. Just in Kapisa three days earlier, four civilians were killed. This, of course, has fueled a long-simmering rage across Afghanistan, where 400 people are displaced every single day by the war and the fighting.”
Public Relations Problem not human rights issue
Despite the horrendous act of violence by the US military against Afghani civilians on Sunday, the major US news media is not reporting this incident as a war crime, but as a public relations disaster.
The national media watchdog group Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting posted an excellent media analysis today that once again demonstrates how the major news media in this country has essentially taken a favorable position on the decade long US occupation of Afghanistan. Here is part of that analysis:
The front-page headline at USA Today (3/12/12) read, “Killings Threaten Afghan Mission.” The story warned that the allegations “threaten to test U.S. strategy to end the conflict.” In the New York Times (3/12/12), the massacre was seen as “igniting fears of a new wave of anti-American hostility.” The paper went on to portray occupation forces as victims:
The possibility of a violent reaction to the killings added to a feeling of siege here among Western personnel. Officials described growing concern over a cascade of missteps and offenses that has cast doubt on the ability of NATO personnel to carry out their mission and has left troops and trainers increasingly vulnerable to violence by Afghans seeking revenge.
The fact that the massacres occurred two days after a NATO helicopter strike killed four civilians was “adding to the sense of concern.”
Another Times piece (3/12/12) began with this:
The outrage from the back-to-back episodes of the Koran burning and the killing on Sunday of at least 16 Afghan civilians imperils what the Obama administration once saw as an orderly plan for 2012.
That sounds as if “outrage” is the most serious problem–the reaction to the actions, not the actions themselves.
Treating the killing of civilians as chiefly a PR problem is not a new phenomenon. As FAIR noted (“The Bad PR of Dead Civilians,” 5/11/09), the news that dozens were killed in NATO airstrikes brought headlines like “Civilian Deaths Imperil Support for Afghan War” (New York Times, 5/7/09), “Claim of Afghan Civilian Deaths Clouds U.S. Talks” (Wall Street Journal, 5/7/09) and “Afghan Civilian Deaths Present U.S. With Strategic Problem” (Washington Post, 5/8/09).
This same kind of reaction was reported on MLive today, with the reporter taking attention away from the 16 civilian deaths and giving voice to a GVSU professor and Michigan Senator Carl Levin, both of whom support the US occupation in Afghanistan. Levin, even went as far as to say the killing of 16 Afghani civilians by the US military will put US soldiers at risk.
This Saturday, (March 17) there will be a Michigan Inter-Occupational Summit, where people from various Occupy groups throughout the state will converge in Grand Rapids to share information, experiences and skills with anyone who wished to attend.
The summit will take place on the GVSU downtown campus in the Loosemore Auditorium from 11:00AM til 11:00PM, with workshops and educational sessions offered throughout the day. A breakdown of the day can be viewed on the Grand Rapids Activist Calendar.
Part of the day will be spent both learning about the destructive practices of the multinational corporation Monsanto, plus a public protest against the company from 2:30PM – 4:00PM at Monument Park on the corner of Division and Fulton in downtown Grand Rapids.
According to Occupy GR’s blog:
Since it’s founding in 1901, Monsanto has had a sordid history riddled with outbreaks of dioxins, some of the most dangerous of chemical substances like agent orange, and constant controversy over their business methods.
There will be information sessions about Monsanto at the 10th Michigan Inter-Occupational Summit that will talk about the company and their connection to:
- an estimated 25,000 suicides in India
- “Terminator Seeds”
- their aggressive patent strategies that are putting many organic and non-Monsanto farmers out of business
- their corruption of our government through executives and corporate lawyers being given positions in the EPA, the FDA, the court system.
You can also access information about the 10th Michigan Inter-Occupational Summit and the Monsanto protest this Saturday at this link.
Last Tuesday we posted a list of local entities that advertise on WOOD Radio as part of the campaign to get Rush Limbaugh’s syndicated show off the air in West Michigan.
A few days ago we received notice that one of those advertisers, Maple Creek, has since pulled their funding from the station, according to a spokesperson from the senior housing center, which is run by Lutheran Social Services.
This is certainly a step in the right direction, but this is just the beginning and we need to keep the pressure up. The national campaign continues to target big advertisers and our campaign is focusing on local businesses that are advertising on WOOD Radio. To be clear, we are targeting any West Michigan entity advertising on WOOD Radio, not just those that run ads during the Limbaugh show. If we are going to be effective, we need to target any and all local advertising on the local Clear Channel station, WOOD Radio.
- At the bottom, we are re-posting the local advertisers that need to be contacted. Please share this list with as many people as possible and re-post on Facebook and any other social media venues as possible.
- Continue to send e-mails to WOOD Radio Station Manager Tim Feagan TimFeagan@clearchannel.com. All e-mails that call for Limbaugh’s removal from the air must go in the station’s public file, which could be useful since WOOD Radio is renewing their license with the FCC this year.
- Send written letters to WOOD Radio/Time Feagan, 77 Monroe Center, Grand Rapids, MI 49503. These letters will also go into the station’s public file.
- We need people to contact organizations and ask them to sign on to this campaign to pressure WOOD Radio. We need women’s organization, unions, student groups and any and all organizations that believe hateful speech has no place in West Michigan.
West MI Advertisers on WOOD Radio:
Grand Rapids Lighting
616-949-4931
Kyper College
kcapisciolto@kuyper.edu 616-988-3676
Kent Equipment
(616) 675-5368 http://www.kentequipment.com/contact.htm
River City Reproductions
616.464.1220 info@rivercityreproductions.com
Life EMS
1-888-543-3367 info@lifeems.com
Mercantile Bank of Michigan
616.406.3604 https://www.mercbank.com/contact.asp
Silver Bullet Firearms
(616) 249-1911 silverbulletfirearms@gmail.com
West Michigan Office Interiors
(800) 964.0201 sales@wmoi.com
Granite Transformations
(866) 400-1594
http://grandrapids-granitetransformations.aiprx.com/grandrapids/contact-us/
AMR-West Mi
(616) 459-8228
http://www.ems-education.com/page5/
AAA Turf
616-669-7715
West Michigan Glass Block
616.243.3700
http://www.wmgb.com/contact.asp
Bartlett Tree Experts
616-245-9449
Spectrum Health
(616) 391-1382
http://www.spectrumhealth.org/body.cfm?id=57
Family Fare
616-878-8350
Occupy Grand Rapids announces their willingness to be in solidarity with those facing foreclosure
On Friday, Occupy Grand Rapids announced that they were ready to work with people who were facing home foreclosures.
In a Media Release, the group states:
“Occupy Our Homes is ready to resist foreclosures with homeowners and families who are ready to fight back. This is a national movement of people like you and me, who support homeowners and families who stand up to the banks and fight for their homes. We stand in solidarity with Occupy Wall St.
If you are facing foreclosure or eviction, and you are ready to fight… We want to work with you. Maybe you’re looking to negotiate with the bank, maybe you just need more time before you move out, maybe you need to get a loan modification. Maybe you’re the victim of foreclosure fraud. We are here to work with you and to help you save your home.
What is Foreclosure Defense? What is Eviction Resistance?
These are a range of tactics that can be used to defend your home, everything from contacting the bank and suing for fraud to inviting us to occupy your yard and physically blocking an eviction attempt. Occupy Our Homes – GR can help with foreclosure defense and eviction resistance. We work together with you to come up with a plan of action. We can stand up, with you, against eviction. Everyone’s situation is different, so the strategy we come up with has to fit your needs.
Housing is a right, not a privilege.
Everyone deserves to have a roof over their head and a place to call home. Millions of Americans have worked hard for years for the opportunity to own their own home; for others, it remains a distant goal. For all of us, having a decent place to live for ourselves and our families is the most fundamental part of the American dream, a source of security and pride.
In 2008, we discovered bankers had been gambling with our most valuable asset, our homes… betting against us and destroying trillions of dollars of our wealth. Now, because of the foreclosure crisis Wall Street banks created with their lies and greed, millions of Americans have lost their homes, and one in four homeowners are currently underwater on their mortgage.
The Occupy Wall Street movement and brave homeowners around the country are coming together to say, “Enough is enough.” We, the 99%, are standing up to Wall Street banks and demanding they negotiate with homeowners instead of evicting them.”
Occupy Grand Rapids is open to working with anyone who genuinely wants to fight housing foreclosures and the financial system at the root of this economic and housing crisis. The group can be reached by phone (616) 805-9023, e-mail homes@occupygr.org or occupygr.org/homes.
A Putrid Misogyny
This article by Gail Dines is re-posted from Counter Punch.
Ever since Rush let out his true feelings about women as “sluts” and “prostitutes” – and inadvertently revealed his porn use – the media and blogosphere has been alive with discussions about the Republican “war on women”. You have to hand it to these Republican fools, they do seem to be getting themselves into trouble a lot lately with their inability to mask their putrid misogyny. Yes, there is a war on women, but is it is not just the Republicans who have been waging this.
What gets less air-time is the never-ending war that both Democrats and Republicans have been waging against women with policies that create an economic climate that makes women and children’s lives intolerable. Cutting education, healthcare, and welfare programs always hurts women and children the most. And while we are at it, we may as well admit that most men aren’t having such a wonderful time either, as they struggle to survive in a society where the rich seem to have limitless greed and a blood lust for destroying the lives of those of us who don’t have a country club membership.
Yes, I am enraged when the ridiculous right come out with new and improved statements about women being wanton whores and all, but I can’t help having a grudging admiration for the Republicans because what they are doing makes good political sense. Creating media distractions is not a new strategy. In the past, the demonization of African Americans has been an excellent way to get the white working class to vote against their class interests. Who can forget Ronald Reagan’s “welfare queen” speeches, or George H. W. Bush’s Willy Horton rampage? Those in power will do whatever it takes to get the working class to take their eyes off the rich, and if this means holding up an entire race as the cause of America’s problems, then so be it.
And now it is women’s turn. With our insatiable sexual appetites, our fondness for aborting “unborn children”, and our love of reproducing outside of state sanctioned marriage, we are, it seems, slowly but surely destroying everything that made this country great. The social conservatives are doing their buddies, the fiscal conservatives, a great service here because the latter get to carry on stealthily dismantling this country piece by piece, while the media spend time talking about whether women are indeed sluts!
My solution is that all women should admit that we are indeed wanton for having a vagina, and then insist that the media move on to discuss the way the elite, who control both the Democratic and Republican parties, are destroying this country. We should refuse to play their game by defending ourselves against stupid, adolescent slurs, and instead redefine the problem. And the problem is that women have to live in a male dominated society that systematically and willfully denies them a life of economic, political and sexual equality. Things may get a bit worse under the Republicans, but let’s not forgot that is was Bill Clinton who spearheaded the assault on welfare mothers, while of course, busy spilling his semen into the lap of a woman young enough to be his daughter.
I am so happy that Rush seems to be the straw that broke the camel’s back, but please don’t let us squander this moment by focusing just on his sex-baiting slurs. We need to think bigger and bolder than this, and push for a more politically ambitious goal of redistributing wealth and power. We should never, ever have to beg men for our rights, and the only way to put an end to this, is to dismantle the racist, sexist, capitalist structures that still dominate America.
Interview with Grand Rapids Author Greg Shotwell on his new book, Autoworkers Under the Gun
Earlier this week we had an opportunity to sit down and talk with long time UAW activist Greg Shotwell.
The occasion for the interview was the release of Shotwell’s new book published by Haymarket books, Autoworkers Under the Gun: A Shop-floor view of the end of the American Dream.
We talked about his years with the UAW, his involvement with the Soldiers of Solidarity, the importance of writing from a shop floor perspective and the state of unions in the US today.
In addition, Shotwell addressed the potential of workplace democracy and the problem of big labor’s attachment to the Democratic Party.
Grand Rapids Institute for Information Democracy 
