Written by Socialist Appeal
Wednesday, 12 August 2009
On Thursday, August 6th, following a town hall meeting staged by Representative Russ Carnahan (D-MO) in St. Louis, MO to tout President Obama's health reform plan, violence was instigated by right-wing "protesters" against members of the Service Employees International Union. The SEIU members, three organizers and a shop steward, had turned out to demand health care for all. Among the SEIU members was recent St. Louis Mayoral candidate Rev. Elston McCowan, who ran an independent campaign on the Green Party ticket, fighting for single-payer health care and concrete measures to create jobs and defend public education. McCowan was assaulted by "tea party" protesters and his shoulder was dislocated. He was also arrested along with other SEIU members, for the "crime" of defending themselves against the right-wingers. The town hall meeting itself was disrupted inside by right-wing hecklers, who created a charged atmosphere.
This incident has been seized upon by right-wing media outlets such as Fox News and the O'Reilly Factor, who are falsely laying blame on "SEIU thugs" (according to the O'Reilly Factor) for the violence. In the days following Thursday's town hall meeting, the "tea party" organizations staged a protest outside the union's offices. To add insult to injury, Rep. Carnahan appeared on television this past weekend to condemn the right-wingers and the SEIU! Another town hall meeting on health care reform scheduled for Saturday, August 8th was canceled due to fears of disruption and violence.
These "tea party" groups, funded by the Republican Party and the big health insurance corporations, are shills for big business. Made up mostly of middle class and wealthy people, these "grass roots organizations" are being whipped into a frenzy of fear fed by misinformation and have been let loose in order to disrupt public discussions on health care in St. Louis, MO, Tampa, FL, and Orlando, FL so far, even meetings organized by the big-business backed Democratic Party to discuss Obama's health plan.
Let's be clear: Obama's plan in no way represents a single-payer, socialized health care system. Obama's plan in fact will continue to make room for the multi-billion dollar HMO and pharmaceutical companies, who are literally sucking the life blood of working people in the name of big profits for the wealthy. The Democratic plan is more of the same. Republican news outlets and commentators are attempting to confuse the public by making Obama's plan synonymous with a single payer health system. This kind of misinformation is feeding the "tea party" mobs.
These people are encouraged to use goon tactics to shut down, disrupt and even force the cancellation of meetings and to intimidate and attack union members and who attend these public meetings to discuss the all-important issue of health care. Enough is enough - the Labor Movement needs to mobilize its forces to defend democratic rights and place genuine reform - single-payer health care - on the agenda!
The SEIU union has now committed itself to standing up to the "tea party" groups. The union released a statement, saying:
"Let's be clear: These groups, backed by insurance companies and corporate front groups, want nothing more than to preserve the status quo system of rationing, where HMOs choose doctors, and insurance companies deny us the care we need. Their dearest hope is that by resorting to outrageous charges of Nazism and euthanasia, they can make the American public too afraid to support real reform.
"But SEIU and hardworking women and men all over this country are standing up to their bullying tactics. We deserve a national conversation about how we will fix our failing healthcare system and help make this an economy that works for everyone."
This call to stand up to goon tactics and for a genuine national discussion on health care reform should be supported by the whole Labor Movement and all working people, students and activists. If the unions were to mobilize the membership and working people generally to attend such public discussions, and to organize stewards and members to protect such meetings from violence and disruption, this would be a big step forward and ensure a place for working people to participate. The unions should also reach out to the millions of unemployed workers, who are without health care of any kind, and get them to join this fight. The right to democratic expression must be defended and maintained absolutely. Beyond that, if the unions were to mobilize nationally to demand single-payer health care reform, in every town and city and in every state across the nation, it would show the real balance of forces. Without the working class' kind permission, not a wheel turns nor a lightbulb shines. Such mobilizations would show the "tea party" protests for what they are: an insignificant whimper of a marginal section of the population.
The Workers International League extends its support and solidarity to the SEIU membership and to the Rev. Elston McCowan, who have been made the targets of the right-wingers. We also believe that the only fundamental health care reform is one that takes the giant HMOs and pharmaceutical companies out of the equation: a single-payer, socialized national health care system which would guarantee full access for all to the latest treatment, research and discoveries. Abolish the HMOs and nationalize the pharmaceutical giants that squeeze their profits from the health of working people! A lead towards mobilizing to fight for single-payer health care has already been given by many unions across the U.S., organized through the Labor Campaign for Single-Payer Health Care conference. We believe that if this demand were to be taken up by and fought for by the whole of the Labor Movement, it would be the best route towards real, fundamental reform of the country's health care system and in the best interests of the vast majority of the population - working people.
Labor Mobilize to Defend Democratic Rights and Demand Single-Payer Health Care!
This week's edition of the Weekly Pulse is shorter than usual. Our team is getting ready for the fourth annual Netroots Nation blogger conference in Pittsburgh, PA. Esther Kaplan, editor of the Nation Investigative Fund, and I are conducting an investigative reporting workshop on Saturday from 1:30-4:15 p.m. Join us and help expose the corporate roots of the Teabagger/Town hall mob movement.
Here's the latest news on the healthcare front: Republicans and their allies are pressuring Democratic healthcare reformers at townhall meetings around the country. Addie Stan has a blockbuster piece in AlterNet that exposes the network of corporate funders and lobbyists behind the mobs.
The Progressive's Ruth Conniff explains the mobs' marching orders, as spelled out in a memo by Bob MacGuffie, a volunteer for the Tea Party Patriots, an anti-reform group with ties to former Republican Rep. Dick Armey's pressure group Freedom Works. MacGuffie instructs town hall protesters to shout at lawmakers and attempt to throw them off their game as they try to make the case for health care reform. So much for reasoned discussion.
As I reported in In These Times, the teabaggers are trying to scapegoat organized labor as the instigators of confrontations at town hall meetings. On August 6, a scuffle broke out in front of a town hall meeting in St. Louis. This video clip shows the last 10 seconds of a scuffle in which a man in an SEIU t-shirt lies prostrate on the ground. A 38-year-old conservative activist claims to have been severely beaten, but the video shows him apparently uninjured, darting around to different cops and trying to convince them that he was attacked. The man's lawyer claims that he saw his client get punched in the face and kicked in the head by SEIU members.
A spokesman for the St. Louis County police told me that the police hadn't reviewed the video because nobody had submitted it to them, despite a call to the public to turn over evidence for the investigation. The fact that the videographer hasn't turned over the video kind of makes you wonder if the teabaggers really take the "evidence" as seriously as they claim.
How's this for irony? According to Talking Points Memo, the activist was asking for money to pay his hospital bills because he's uninsured.
Finally, Jodi Jacobson of RH Reality Check reports that Kansas Now is calling upon AG Eric Holder to restore the Federal Marshall security detail of prominent late-term abortion provider Dr. Leroy Carhart, a friend and colleague of the late Dr. George Tiller. Carhart was placed under protection after Tiller was shot. But the feds didn't even wait for the trial of Tiller's alleged assassin to wrap before pulling Carhart's detail. Now he's on his own, just as the alleged killer's links to a broader coalition of violent anti-choicers are coming to light.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about healthcare and is free to reprint. Visit Healthcare.newsladder.net for a complete list of articles on healthcare affordability, healthcare laws, and healthcare controversy. For the best progressive reporting on the Economy, and Immigration, check out Economy.Newsladder.net and Immigration.Newsladder.net. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of 50 leading independent media outlets, and created by NewsLadder.
Wells Fargo is a roadblock to economic recovery. That's what members of the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers (UE) are claiming, as they literally blocked a busy Rock Island, Illinois intersection late last week to protest Wells Fargo's decision to cut off credit to the Quad City Die Casting factory.
100 Quad City factory employees risk losing their jobs if Wells Fargo doesn't extend tens of thousands of dollars in credit to continue day-to-day operating costs. So why won't Wells Fargo use some of its $25 billion in bailout funds to keep this factory afloat, particularly when the Illinois-Iowa Quad Cities region is losing $6.1 million in wages and tax revenue annually? According to UE organizer Leah Fried, "[Wells Fargo] want[s] to get out from under the TARP money because they want to get out from the scrutiny. They're hoarding." Wells Fargo has even gone so far as to prevent the company from paying the wages and benefits owed to its employees, which prompted UE to file charges with the National Labor Relations Board last week.
Across the country, we're seeing more and more protests this one. As journalist/labor activist Mike Elk recently noted, these public demonstrations are highly effective ways of bringing national attention to the bailed out banks that are cutting off credit and have done pathetically little to jump-start our ailing economy. We saw this last December, when laid-off UE workers held sit-ins at Republic Windows and Doors in Chicago because Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase wouldn't fork over credit for the company to pay severance.
One of our spies snuck into a meeting of the evil right-wing group HAARM (Healthy Americans Against Reforming Medicine) last week and uncovered a nasty plot to undermine efforts toward healthcare reform. Prepare to be shocked, disgusted and amused:
If this all sounds a bit unlikely to you, you're half-right: the video is the first in a series that Laughing Liberally, our national comedy tour at Living Liberally, has been working on with SEIU. The video is (we hope!) funny, but the situation it depicts couldn't be more serious - there are real efforts by moneyed interests, meeting as we speak, to make universal healthcare sound like a bad thing.
Every once in a while, a moment comes along where you get pleasantly surprised by the nice things people do and say on your behalf, and this is when one of those times. When Chris first mentioned the idea of doing a fundraiser for OpenLeft, it seemed like a good idea, because on a very practical level with ad revenue down, we really needed the money. I figured we would make the goal after begging and pleading a bit, especially because I knew how important many folks realize Chris is to the blogosphere, and because I know people appreciate the range and depth of our other writers here. I had no idea, though, how much I would be moved by the response. Not just the overall numbers, because of so many different people helping out, but the kind of generosity and comments made by all kinds of great people in progressive politics. SEIU's incredible gesture, part generosity and part great organizing strategy; Debra Cooper's awesome matching gift, so quickly acted upon; all the great people, so many of you progressive heroes and leaders yourselves, who have helped out; and especially for all the incredibly kind and supportive comments. It has made me very proud and thrilled.
Go to this webpage and sign up for SEIU's health care fight. It is a rare win-win-win: you get to join the fight for the public option, support Open Left, and support SEIU, with one easy, 30 second action. This is a real chance to build the progressive movement, and it is free.
The Open Left fundraising has gone better than my wildest dreams, and I feel very humbled as a result. Let's continue to support Open Left, but to do so in a way that also supports a cause that is winnable and of paramount importance: public health care. Sign up to join SEIU's health care fight now!
This week, the White House teamed up with healthcare industry giants for a two-day PR blitz on health reform. A coalition of industry leaders sent a letter to president Obama over the weekend, pledging to help contain healthcare costs. The signatories include PhRMA (drug makers), Advamed (device manufacturers), the AMA (doctors), the AHA (hospitals), AHIP (health insurance), and SEIU's Health Care project. The corporate signatories are the very same interest groups that have fought U.S. healthcare reform for generations. AHIP, America's Health Insurance Plans, helped torpedo the Clinton plan in the 1990s with the infamous "Harry and Louise" TV spots.
There's some great news on the labor front coming out of newly announced labor appointments. There are a whole host of positions to be appointed in both the Department of Labor and the National Labor Relations Board. Progressive appointments here give us a chance to re-shape labor policy through administrative processes and help expand the power of workers in the 21st century.
Follow me over the fold and we'll meet some of these appointees.
This diary is mostly derivative of the SEIU blog, but I felt this was a blog post worth sharing among many people and a cause worth supporting:
I have a story for you.
Two CEOs lead two large public companies that start sinking, putting thousands out of work and toppling the American economy. Both CEOs accepted billions in taxpayer dollars to sustain their companies, but both failed to stop their companies' downward spirals.
One CEO -- GM's Rick Wagoner -- got his pink slip from President Obama this morning. The other -- Bank of America's Ken Lewis -- accepted bailout funds while continuing to fleece consumers and taxpayers.
It's time for the Obama Administration to show the door to CEO Ken Lewis in order for real reform to take hold at Bank of America.
My name is Lisa Tomasian and I'd like to tell you the story behind a letter I wrote to the trustees of SEIU-UHW.
Having worked at Kaiser Hospital as a Radiology Technologist as well as having served as an elected union shop steward for the past 18 years, I believe that workers' rights are human rights. I've come to believe that labor unions are the vehicle and voice for workers to advocate for social justice.
As Registered Nurses, we know all too well that working in a hospital these days means engaging in a daily struggle to provide care in an industry more concerned about it’s bottom-line than about providing patient care.
Registered Nurses struggle day in and day out to provide care without adequate staffing and resources. Non-RN hospital staff are struggling to fulfill essential hospital functions with ever decreasing numbers of staff, while worrying that they’ll be the next to be laid off.
Our patients, left to wonder if a nurse will be available to help if they ring their call-lights and whether their hospital bills will bankrupt their families are likely the most affected.
Under the pact, SEIU and CNA/NNOC, the largest unions in the nation representing healthcare workers and registered nurses, respectively, will work together to bring union representation to all non-union RNs and other healthcare employees and step up efforts to enact Employee Free Choice Act.
The resulting massive increase in unionization will improve the experience of providing and receiving care in US hospitals—and the resulting movement will change the whole nature of how health care is provided in the US.
In the words of Rose Ann DeMoro, the Executive Director of CNA/NNOC, the nation's largest organization of direct care RNs with 85,000 members in all 50 states:
"This is an exciting new day for nurses and patients across the nation. This agreement provides a huge spark for the emergence of a more powerful, unified national movement that is needed to more effectively challenge healthcare industry layoffs and attacks on RN economic and professional standards and patient care conditions. It will also strengthen the ability of all direct-care RNs to fight for real healthcare reform and advocate for improved patient care conditions and stronger patient safety legislation from coast to coast."
In the words of Andy Stern, President of SEIU, the nation’s largest healthcare union:
"This marks the beginning of a new future for nurses and other healthcare workers and their patients throughout this nation. We are lining up to make sweeping changes to this country’s broken healthcare system, and as we wait for the starting gun it is imperative that we put the past behind us and move forward by putting all healthcare workers in the strongest possible position to define reform, move legislation, and make the new healthcare system operational. Is this accord surprising? Perhaps, but those who recognize our shared value of making sure registered nurses and other healthcare workers have not only a say but a critical role in helping reshape a failed system into something that actually helps people know that this is the right step to help us meet the challenge and the call of this moment.”
Among key elements of the pact:
• The two unions will work together to organize non-union hospital workers throughout the country, with CNA/NNOC as the leading voice for RNs, and SEIU as the leading voice for all other hospital workers.
• The unions will launch an intensive national organizing campaign with an initial focus on the nation’s largest hospital systems.
• In addition to organizing, SEIU and CNA/NNOC will coordinate on a broad range of other issues from bargaining with common employers to the campaign to enact the Employee Free Choice Act.
• SEIU and CNA/NNOC publicly endorse measures that allow states to adopt single-payer health care systems.
• Both parties will refrain from "raiding," seeking to displace the existing members of the other's organization, or from interference in the other's internal affairs.
• The two unions will create a new joint RN organization in Florida to represent current and future RNs of both unions. In all other states, SEIU will continue to represent their current RN members in collective bargaining.
In my previous posts, United Healthcare Workers Holding our Ground and We are the Union. SEIU who are you? I shared my experience of the trusteeship SEIU International imposed on SEIU-UHW and the birth of our new union, NUHW. What I'd like to do today is share with you why this experience has been a defining moment for me and my sisters and brothers building NUHW...
This week, President Obama made headlines by reversing George W. Bush's executive order barring researchers who receive federal funds from researching all but a handful of stem cell lines created before 2001.
"Promoting science isn't just about providing resources, it is also about protecting free and open inquiry," Obama wrote. "It is about letting scientists like those here today do their jobs, free from manipulation or coercion, and listening to what they tell us, even when it's inconvenient especially when it's inconvenient. It is about ensuring that scientific data is never distorted or concealed to serve a political agenda and that we make scientific decisions based on facts, not ideology."
I hear the chants in my head. When I need them, they come to me.
This line is especially true right now for the former members of United Healthcare Workers-West. We are the union. A week and a half ago, many of my sisters and brothers and I slept in our union hall, before the hostile takeover by our International, SEIU. As we held our hall, my sisters and I worked to maintain our union. We fended off anyone SEIU sent to weasel their way in without warrants. We planned how we'd move forward during an imminent occupation: how we'd communicate with each other; how we would reach deep into our membership to take our union back.
It occurred to me that night hunched over the bare desks in the communication department office, the union solidarity posters hanging behind me, that though we had been member leaders up to that point, stewards and activists for union democracy, something had changed. This was a sort of matriculation, graduation day.
{Amy Thigpen and members of UHW are sleeping in their union halls across California tonight due the threat of imminent seizure of those buildings by SEIU International, which instituted a takeover of UHW West today.}
Last night I slept on the kind of carpet you don't really want to examine too closely. It's splotched with decades of coffee stains and salsa and too many conversations still seem to hang in the stale air, but there I was, curled up on my air mattresses in the union hall in downtown Oakland, the home of United Healthcare Workers West, my union. On my right my sister the Medical Assistant slept peacefully, on my left my sister the Call Center Representative, across my sister the Ultrasound Technician, and my sister the Optical Technician. All of them healthcare workers, member leaders and officers in our union. I realized that I loved this stale, stained room, with carpets held together by duct tape, I love the room because it holds the waking dreams of my sister and brothers in UHW-W. The place may be held together by duct tape but we as a union are held together by something stronger.
SEIU President Andy Stern has received authority from his international executive board of toadies and flunkies to impose a trusteeship on the 150,000 members United Healthcare Workers West (UHW). This is a punitive trusteeship imposed to silence dissent from Stern's policies of centralizing power in Washington DC and doing secret backroom deals with corporate CEOs against the interests of members. Stern is sending hundreds of union-busting scabs to California (selected SEIU international union staffers) to attack and destroy UHW, despite months of massive rank and file protests by union members.
UHW is calling for massive resistance in the workplaces to Stern's scabs.
All real trade unionists everywhere should solidarize with UHW and defend the principle of union democracy.
Stern's crackdown comes at a horrible time - by identifying union leadership with authoritarian tactics suppressing democracy, it makes it much harder for other unions to win much needed labor law reforms in Congress. Progressives should protest to SEIU and tell them "Respect the Right of Dissent - Hands Off UHW!"
Widely-respected progressive columnist Juan Gonzalez nails SEIU's megalomaniac would-be dictator Andy Stern to the wall in a column in today's New York Daily News.
SEIU President Andy Stern is a threat to labor soul
SEIU President Andy Stern is pushing ahead with a plan despite several scandals.
Andy Stern, head of the nation's fastest-growing union and a chief proponent of labor reform, is about to reveal himself as a colossal scam artist.
Stern, president of the 2million-member Service Employees International Union, plans to kick off the new year with a stunning assault on democracy within his union.
Another article about the ongoing fight for union democracy against the corrupt authoritarian cultist dictatorship of Andy Stern in SEIU.
UHW is United Healthcare Workers West, a 150,000 strong California SEIU local. UHW has been a leader in organizing and in winning good contracts. SEIU international president Andy Stern declared war against UHW when UHW leaders sspoke out against Stern's sell-out pro-corporate deals that hurt workers in the health care industry. Since then there has been escalating attack on all forms of dissent within SEIU, and several close Stern cronies have been forced to resign due to corruption scandals involving the theft of millions of dollars from members.
More info at
www.seiuvoice.org
-Jimmy Higgins
Progressive Outpouring for Roselli, SEIU-UHW
by Randy Shaw‚ Nov. 19‚ 2008
A Who's Who of progressive San Francisco came out to honor SEIU-UHW last night, striking a defiant stance against efforts by SEIU International to change the local's leadership. Hosted by Dolores Huerta, John Burton, Clint Reilly and Aaron Peskin, it was attended by a long roster of labor and political leaders including Mark Leno, Tom Ammiano, Ross Mirkarimi, Sophie Maxwell and Eric Mar. Billed as a "Salute to Union Democracy," it raised $240,000 for SEIU-UHW's fight to maintain its local control. The party followed the end of the latest round of SEIU hearings into UHW's alleged malfeasance, a process that could put the local into international trusteeship. But last night confirmed that SEIU-UHW is prepared for a lengthy fight. John Burton, who raised $40,000 for the local, captured the crowd's mood, sending a public message to SEIU International leader Andy Stern that "if you strike the king (Sal Roselli), you better kill him."
This morning, SEIU President Andy Stern testified before the Senate Committee on Finance. At 2:30 pm EST, President Stern will hold an availability with the Progressive Netroots to discuss his testimony on the impact of health care and the economic crisis on working families and take questions
