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4A EDITORIALS/The Charlotte Post Thursday, May 25, 2000-7 Cfjarlotte ^osit The Voice of the Black Community A subsidiary of Consolidated Media Group 1531 Camden Road Charlotte, N.C. 28203 Gerald O. Johnson CEO/PUBLISHER Robert L. Johnson CO-PUBLISHER/ GENERAL MANAGER Herbert L. White EDITOR IN CHIEF Building an alternative vision for the futnre Working women’s agenda By Bill Lucy NATIONAL NEWSPAPER PUBLISHERS ASSOCIATION Over the years, I have witnessed the development of many econom ic and social trends in the United States. One cirrrent trend: the range of issues women identify as priorities is driving the campaign agenda of the 2000 elections. This development is a direct result of women’s increased employ ment outside the home in recent decades: they now comprise roughly half of the American workforce, and that phenomenon is reflected in the new political agenda. What makes this exciting for imions and other groups that repre sent working families and what should come as no surprise to anyone who ever listens to women, is that the issues women identify as prior ities strongly benefit working famflies. It’s simple: the women’s agenda is a working families’ agenda, and that makes it a union agenda. But it has not always been this way. When unions were emerging as powerful entities earlier this century, our issues stopped at the work place door. We concentrated on the number of hoins worked, wages received and safety conditions. And through our dedicated focus, we were able to achieve such vic tories as a 40-hour workweek, the first federal minimum wage and the establishment of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). While still addressing these core workplace issues, unions have realized the concerns of v/orking families do not stop at the facto ry door. For that, we have our union sisters to thank. Women have always identified a broad range of issues as vital to themselves and their famflies - from access to health care and quality education to retirement programs. If unions are to meet the needs of our women members, we must address these issues in a comprehen sive fi'amework, rather than as isolated areas of interest. In talking to working women, it always strikes me that they see issues in a very interconnected manner. I also find that working women generally relate their poUtical positions to real-Ufe experiences, and this in turn strengthens their commitment. After aU, if you’re not getting fair pay, how can you afibrd the quali ty childcare that allows you peace of mind at work? And what about women who are caught in the so-called “sandwich generation” — caring for an aging parent while they stiU have a school- aged child at home? You better beheve they have strong views on Social Security/Medicare, education and flexible time at work to accommo date family demands. It is this broad spectrum of issues that ■wfll decide this year’s presi dential election. There are clear differences in the candidates’ positions and records. Here are two: • Education - Vice President Al Gore, a Democrat, supports invest ing $115 billion to decrease class size, hire new teachers and make preschool available to aU. Repubhcan George W. Bush has ridiculed plans to hire new teachers while under his tenure as governor, Tfexas ranks 47th in reading skflls. • Health care - Gore fought for a “Patient’s Bfll of Rights” with an OB/GYN primary-physician option and the right to sue HMOs. Bush merely supported a weak Patient’s Bfll of Rights without an OB/GYN primary physician option and without the right to sue HMOs, The changing profile of women in the workforce is also flluminating new frontiers for activism. In 1997, for example, 12.8 mUlion famflies were headed by women, up from 5.6 million in 1970. Clearly, we must work to expand the Family and Medical Leave Act to include paid leave. Women currently comprise 55 percent of workers paid by temporary agencies and 77 percent of part-time workers. We therefore need to extend health benefits to part-time and contingent workers. Even as women point the way to where we need to go, it is the activism of working women, particularly union women, that wfll help get ITS there. So I can declare wholeheartedly: if it’s a working women’s issue, it’s a winrring political issue too. BILL LUCY is international secretary-treasurer of the American Federation of State. County and Municipal Employees, the largest union in the AFL-CIO. He is also the President of the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists. Manning Marable The last major public demon stration in the United States in the 20th century, the massive demonstrations against the World Trade Organization in Seattle, and the new century’s first major protest, in Washington, D.C. against the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank this April, fllustrate both the possibilities and problems inherent in build ing a progressive alternative to globalization. On the positive side, these major demonstrations brought together a spectrum of groups and interests, including many of whom rmtfl very recently had lit tle to do with each other. Much has been written about the “new alliance” between representa tives of the labor movement and environmentalists, which appeared to come together in Seattle. Both demonstrations have been criticized in many quarters as being overwhelming ly white, and discormected from the struggles of people of color, especially here in the U.S. Although this criticism is largely justified, as scholar/activist Elizabeth Martinez has observed, in Independent Pohtics News, black. Latino, Asian and American Indian progressives prominently participated. At Seattle, for example, there were African American trade unionists from SEIU, ILWU, and the Teamsters; Latino farm workers; the Indigenous Environmental Network, an international coali tion of Native Americans; Bay Area formations of color such as the hip-hop Company of Prophets and STORM (Standing Ibgether to Organize a Revolutionary Movement); and student activist groups such as MECHA (Movimento Estudiantfl Chicano de Aztlan). The key organizers of both mobilizations attempted to make the connections between the actions of the IMF, World Bank and WTO, with the expanding global exploitation of Third World nations’ economies and environ ments. The A.prfl 9 demonstration on the Washington Mall v.'as specifically focused on the demand to cancel the debts of Third World countries. Yet this effort, however laudable, did not successfully reach the masses of working class, poor and unem ployed African Americans and Latinos who live in the District of Columbia. There were perhaps more African Americans among the police and security forces at the Washington, D.C., demonstra tion than among the protesters. Not a few white progressives have explained the relatively small numbers of black. Latino and Asian working class and poor people by the assertion that they are “uninformed” or “unaware” of how the globalized economy impacts their neighborhoods. 'The immediate and obvious response from the people of color is that this “argument” is condescend ing and borderline racist. In Seattle, for example, in the local media bhtz leading up to the WTO demonstrations there were “only white faces in the news,” according to Roberto Maestas, director of Seattle’s Centro de la Raza. “The pubhcity was a real deterrent to people of color.” Another difficulty that progres sives must urgently address is how a shared vision of radical democratic social change can be constructed between the various constituencies and divergent interests who came to Seattle and Washington, D.C. Ironically, this problem was, most clearly framed by author David Frum, a fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute, in a recent New York Times editorial. Frum argued that throughout most of the twentieth century, “the left had something positive to offer: a coherent and compelling vision of an alternative society.” Then, with the collapse of Communism and the crisis of self-doubt among socialists, the ideal of socialism as a realistic alterna tive to corporate capitalism was discredited. “And the death of socialism,” Frum gloats enthusi astically, “has simply cut the intellectual guts out of the kind of radicahsm espoused by the people who tried to shut the World Bank down.” Thus the protesters are motivated oifly by their “hatred” of’big corpora tions,” “technology,” “electoral politics” and even “Gap khakis.” ’ The highly pubhcized and celeb’ brated “demise of sociahsm” is, toj^ paraphrase Mark Twain, highly exaggerated. But progressives should take Frum’s point serf- ' ously. A social vision has to have ) the capacity to win the hearts and minds of mfllions of people, ’ for them finally to take collective actions to achieve their objective., interests. ■ * Building a successful political* alternative to globalized capital ism wfll take even more than that. It wfll mean the construc tion of a new political language and methods of organization to reach constituencies fragmented by gender, class, race, nationality and language. It wfll demand that well-meaning white liberals and environmentalists will have to learn from and acknowledge:! central roles of leadership to*' black people and other people of' color. It requires building close-, cooperation with black churches -. and other faith-based institu, - . tions, women’s organizations and low-income groups, as well as., with trade unionists and youth of., color. Radicals sometimes think that- as conditions worsen, oppressed-- people wfll become desperate; and will begin to demand basic change. This -viewpoint is com,*, pletely wrong. History shows ) that the capacity for resistance ik* always enhanced by the winning ■ of small -victories. MANNING MARABLE is professor.e of history and political science ate Columbia University. Racial profiling bill the cops could love Earl Ofari Huthchinson It was a bizarre scene recently in front of the CaUfomia’s State Capitol building in Sacramento. Hundreds of student, black and Latino community activists, and police reform advocates were holding a spirited rally to support a bfll by Kevin Murray, a Black Democrat state senator from Los Angeles, to compel the state to compile figures on the race, age and gender of motorists stopped by the California Highway Patrol. The CHP makes more traffic stops than any other police agency in the nation. The bfll also wopld’ve required the CHP to teU why motorists were stopped, and whether a search and arrest was made as a result of the stop. But midway through the rally, the mood of the crowd changed from exuberance to shock and then anger. Their fury was not directed at Gov. Gray Da-vis, who vetoed an identical bfll Murray introduced last fall, but at Murray himself The crowd turned on him when they got word that he had gutted the bfll of the data collec tion pro-vision to get Da-vis’s signa ture. The amended bfll required only that police hand a business card to drivers and undergo more diversity training. The toothless bfll was immedi- atelj' hailed by the Los Angeles County Sheriffs office and LAPD Chief Bernard Parks. They have waged a personal crusade to tor pedo legislation requiring their departments to keep racial stats on traffic stops. But if Minray’s original bill requiring data collection had become law it would’ve been a big step toward proving or dispro-ving whether poUce departments use racial profiles to harass and intimidate blacks and Latinos on the highways. Since laws passed in Cahfomia are closely watched and frequently emulated by offi cials in other states, Murray’s bfll might have spurred reluctant and timid officials in those states to pass a similar law. This woifld have been a crucial breakthrough for another reason. Many blacks and Latinos have long screamed that poHce target them for shakedo-wns on the highways and streets. According to a Justice Department study, blacks comprise about 14 percent of the population, yet account for more than 70 percent of all rou tine traffic stops. Murray himself took up the fight against racial profiling because of a scrape he had with police. On election night in June 1998, he and his wife were returning home from his cam paign headquarters when they were pulled over by a poUce offi cer in Beverly Hills. Miuray was not speeding, or driving unsafely. He immediately identified him self to the officer as a state official and explained where he was com ing from and going. This meant nothing to the officer who ran a complete check on him. Murrays title, position, and prestige as an incumbent state senator counted for nothing. He publicly protested that he was a victim of “driving while black and brown,” filed a lawsuit against the pohee, and introduced his bfll. Beverly Hills police officials responded to Murrays complaint the same way most pohee agen cies do to thousands of others who say they are -victims of racial pro ffling. They say that it’s illegal and they don’t do it. But that’s easy for them to say since other than anecdotal horror tales by black and Latino motorists of pohee mistreatment on the high ways, there is no real smoking- gun proof that the practice exists, lb get that kind of proof requires state law enforcement agencies to keep hard numbers on the race of aU motorists they stop on the roads. A few pohee departments and at last count two states, North Carohna and Connecticut, have passed legislation requiring police agencies to keep racial stats on traffic stops. A dozen or so other states have proposed‘7' similar bflls but they have either died in committee or been voted ‘ down. ''7 A bill by U.S. Rep. John'-" Conyers (D-Mich.), called the'*-'^ Traffic Stops Statistics Study Act, requires law enforcement :( agencies to compile figures by-'J race on highway traffic stops.-**^- The bill has languished in Congress for the past several years. Police unions, police'*- benevolent associations, and cor-' rectional groups adamantly ~ oppose these bflls. They don’t want to be told they must identi- . fy by race those they stop and*'I why they stopped them. They * have the money and the political’’ muscle to get their way. Davis is a good case in point. The Peace Officers Research'’'" Association of Cahfomia, which'• represents more than 600 police unions statewide, operfly con” ^ demned Murrays original bflll' ( The group dumped nearly aj ‘ quarter-million dollars into ^ Da-vis’s campaign in 1998. Their ' money was well spent. The back-" room deal making between Murray and Davis handed pohee ' officials everywhere a near-fool-”'" proof pubhc relations tool to duck' ’ * and dodge the volatile issue of racial profiling. ", , EARL OFARI HUTCHINSON author of “The Disappearance of Black Leadership. ”
The Charlotte Post (Charlotte, N.C.)
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May 25, 2000, edition 1
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