News and Notes
May 2, 2012 - Three targeted Americans: A career government intelligence official, a filmmaker and a hacker. None of these U.S. citizens was charged with a crime, but they have been tracked, surveilled, detained—sometimes at gunpoint—and interrogated, with no access to a lawyer. Each remains resolute in standing up to the increasing government crackdown on dissent.
February 14, 2012 - Significant anniversaries are solemnly commemorated -- Japan’s attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, for example. Others are ignored, and we can often learn valuable lessons from them about what is likely to lie ahead. Right now, in fact.
February 12, 2012 - Didn’t we learn our lesson? There’s this strange rationale swooping around that if funding were reallocated and controlled by local government that would solve the problem. I’m no economist but a redistribution of a $26 billion deficit still equates to a $26 billion deficit, doesn’t it? I recently caught up with a couple of state workers to ask them what they thought about the furloughs and their effect on the economy.
February 12, 2012 - The state’s public employment relations board called the workforce that runs public transportation in New York City the most efficient and productive urban mass transit workforce in the U.S. Labor costs are low as a percentage of operating costs, yet management demands more sacrifice from transit workers because tight budgets are a permanent and advancing dynamic for the public sector everywhere. Experience shows that when public employees sacrifice to meet budget requirements, they get only demands for more sacrifice.
February 9, 2012 - With the passage of AB 361 on October 9th, 2011, California became the sixth state to adopt legislation allowing the formation of “benefit corporations”—corporations whose purpose is not just to make money but to make the world a better place.
January 15, 2012 - Michelle Alexander, whose book "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness" is newly released in paperback, argues that "[n]othing less than a major social movement has any hope of ending mass incarceration in America or inspiring a recommitment to [Martin Luther] King's dream... My view is that this has got to be a human rights movement. It’s got to be a movement for education, not incarceration; for jobs, not jails; a movement that acknowledges the basic humanity and dignity of all people, no matter who you are or what you have done."
January 10, 2012 - The 2008 presidential election was the most expensive on record, with candidates, parties, and outside groups dropping $5.3 billion. This year's contest promises to break that record, due in part to the new rules of political fundraising: Donors can pour unlimited cash into outside-spending groups that can freely boost or attack the candidates of their choice.
"We, the poor, jobless, downsized, uninsured victims of welfare reform and others abused by the institutions of domination are no longer silent. We are moving forward with the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Fannie Lou Hamer, and so many freedom fighters to improve the lives of Americans."
-Portia Anderson, WEAP
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