[Nfbk] Fw: Labor Paeans--Oct. 2010

Tue Nov 23 01:38:52 UTC 2010

----- Original Message ----- 
From: Ira Grupper 
To: Ronnie White 
Sent: Thursday, September 30, 2010 10:51 AM
Subject: FW: Labor Paeans--Oct. 2010

Labor Paeans-October 2010

            Twin horrors:  US unemployment, Mideast Occupation

                                      by Ira Grupper

         (Published by FORsooth, newspaper of Louisville F.O.R. [Fellowship of Reconciliation])

We focus in this column on the struggle to combat growing unemployment in the United States, and on the horror that is the occupation by Israel of Palestinian land in the Middle East.  

Of every one hundred people in the U.S., a little over fourteen are living in poverty.  For workers aged 18-24 it is the highest rate of impoverishment since 1965, and overall it is the highest official rate since 1994. 

 In this, the richest nation on earth, forty eight of every one hundred African-American teenagers are unemployed.  Banks and other mortgage providers foreclosed on 95,364 units, the highest number since the beginning of the housing crisis.

President Obama had maddeningly wasted a year or so trying to suck up to the stonewalling phalanx of Republican Party yahoos.  Finally, in disgust, and seeing misinformed white workers blaming him and "big government," and embracing Tea Party neo-fascists, he suggested programs to deal with this.

Meanwhile, the working class was left to figure things out for itself.  Organized labor was not organizing on a large scale, the Employee Free Choice Act became an apparition, elections for union representation dropped by 60%, and there were large losses in private sector union membership-with organized labor and progressive groups, until recently, and with some notable exceptions, seemingly catatonic.  

One positive note centers around Congressman John Conyers, and his "21st Century Full Employment and Training Act."  This act is patterned after pioneering legislation pushed by organized labor and civil rights groups in 1978, and signed into law by then-president Jimmy Carter:  The Full Employment and Balanced Growth Act (also called The Humphrey-Hawkins Act).

 If the private sector was unable to create a full-employment society through gradual economic growth after ten years, the Act would obligate the government to step in and create "last resort jobs" to fill the employment gap.  Unfortunately, and not surprisingly, a coalition of Republicans and pro-business Democrats was able to successfully weaken the bill.

Forward to the present.  Representative Conyers has introduced legislation tailored to fit our current economic realities, while also embodying the spirit of the original Humphrey-Hawkins legislation:  the "21st Century Full Employment and Training Act."  

The Act aims to create a full employment society over the next decade:  9 percent unemployment after 6 months; 8 percent unemployment after 2 years; 6 percent unemployment after 5 years; 5 percent unemployment after 8 years; and 4 percent unemployment (full employment) after 10 years (is 4% full employment?).

The Act establishes a "Full Employment and Training Trust Fund" with two separate accounts.  These two accounts will direct funding to job creation and training programs.

Meanwhile, there is hunger.  And while our domestic policies stagnate, so too do our international relations.  The Israeli-Palestinian crisis is a case in point.

Your columnist comes from parents born into Orthodox Judaism, never having any knowledge of the Palestinian people, let alone their just struggle for a homeland, until I was fully grown.

The 1960's civil rights group SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee), on whose staff I proudly served, began to take stands on international issues.  I, embarrassed at my lack of knowledge of the struggles of Palestinians and Jews in the Middle East, began to read. I support justice for the Jewish people.  I learned, to my horror, about Torquemada and the Spanish Inquisiton of the fifteenth century, about the Alhambra Decree, which expelled the Jews from Spain in 1492. 

But Palestinian Arabs did not cause this, and Palestinians in the last century did not cause the Holocaust.  The government of Israel has, in effect, extracted reparations from the Palestinians instead of the Nazis and Fascists in Europe, much like the U.S. dumping endless bombs on the people of Iraq, even when no weapons of mass destruction or Al Qaeda armies could be found in Iraq.

I was in Cairo, Egypt, last December, part of 1,400 internationals from forty three countries trying to enter the Gaza Strip in solidarity with the Palestinians walled-in by the Israeli government, slowly starving.

It was there I met Mick Napier, leader of the Scottish Palestinian Solidarity Campaign.  Mick and four compatriots had interrupted an August 2008 Edinburgh Festival concert by the Jerusalem Quartet. Tours by the classical musicians are regularly sponsored by the Israeli Government, which the campaign group claims makes them a legitimate target for protest.

 The campaigners had been charged with making "racially aggravated conduct," and "comments about Jews, Israelis, and the State of Israel", but during a three-day legal debate at Edinburgh Sheriff Court, a BBC audio recording of the event revealed that there had been no reference made to "Jews". Comments included "They are Israeli Army musicians", "End the Siege of Gaza", and more.

Sheriff James Scott ruled that "the comments were clearly directed at the State of Israel, the Israeli Army, and Israeli Army musicians", and not targeted at "citizens of Israel" per se. Although upbeat, Napier expressed concern over prosecutions still taking place elsewhere in the UK.  Space does not permit more information about the work of the Scottish Palestinian Solidarity Campaign.  We in the United States have a lot to learn about successful struggle from our sisters and brothers across the pond.

Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, has just ended: ".there shall be a sabbath for you, a remembrance with shofar (ram's horn) blasts, a holy convocation":  Leviticus 16:24.  Listen, equally, to my beloved friends in Rabbis for Human Rights, in Israel:  "This evening a group of concerned and troubled Israeli (Jews) went to recite slikhot (penitential) prayers and then stand silently in front of the Palestinian homes in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarakh that have been taken over by (Israeli Jews), and the additional homes now in the midst of court proceedings which could lead to more expulsions (of Palestinians).  

"(T)here is evidence the courts did not review when expelling the families, and that the Israeli legal system has sanctioned the expulsion based on suspect pre 1948 Jewish claims, while denying the expelled Palestinian families an equal opportunity to reclaim their pre-1948 homes.  The Jewish tradition calls that eifah v'eifah, a double standard."

I take my stand with these courageous rabbis, who see both Palestinians and Jews as human beings.  They know that either we will live together, or we will die together.  And let the congregation say "amen."

                           Contact Ira Grupper:  irag at iglou.com 

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