Social Justice Blog

Gary Kamiya at Salon explains why the American public has yet to decisively turn against Bush:

"The Bush presidency is a lot of things. It's a secretive cabal, a cavalcade of incompetence, a blood-stained Church Militant, a bad rerun of The Godfather in which scary men in suits pay ominous visits to hospital rooms. But seen from the point of view of the American people, what it increasingly resembles is a bad marriage. America finds itself married to a guy who has turned out to be a complete dud. Divorce -- which in our nonparliamentary system means impeachment -- is the logical solution. But even though Bush cheated on us, lied, besmirched our family's name and spent all our money, we the people, not to mention our elected representatives and the media, seem content to stick it out to the bitter end."

Read more.
posted by Matt Borondy at 5/31/2007 02:46:00 PM

Norman Solomon, author of War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death, weighs in on the currently flaccid antiwar movement:

"This week's cave-in on Capitol Hill - supplying a huge new jolt of funds for the horrific war effort in Iraq - is surprising only to those who haven't grasped our current circumstances.

"Public opinion polls aren't the same as political leverage. The Vietnam War went on for years after polling showed that most Americans opposed the war and even saw it as immoral.

"Slick phrases about the need to bring our troops home can easily become little more than platitudes on wallpaper in media echo chambers.

"No matter how many Democrats are in Congress, they won't end this war unless an antiwar movement develops enough grassroots strength to compel them to do so."

Read more at Truthout.

posted by Matt Borondy at 5/29/2007 01:56:00 PM

"You probably had to pee in a cup to get your job in the first place, which constitutes a very intimate chemical invasion of privacy. In most states, your purse or backpack can be searched by the employer at any time; your emails and web activity can be monitored.

"Right of assembly? Sorry, you don't have that either. In my experience, most managers see a group of three or more employees talking together as an insurrection in the making. Shut up and get back to work!"

-Barbara Ehrenreich, "Challenging the Workplace Dictatorship"
posted by Matt Borondy at 5/24/2007 09:35:00 AM

"Even if you were okay with your tax dollars being sent to an outfit called 'Christian Newswire,' which bills itself as 'the nation's leading distributor of religious news releases,' you might have a few issues with your tax dollars going into the pocket of a trusted aid to domestic terrorists, which is precisely what Gary McCullough, CEO of Christian Newswire's parent company, the Christian Communication Network, is."
-Adele M. Stan-

In her article, "The Christian Right's PR Service," Adele Stan discovers that Christian Newswire, headed up by Gary McCullough, has a long list of clients, including Operation Rescue, Feminists for Life, and Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays (P-FOX)...and the White House.
posted by Alexandra at 5/22/2007 09:20:00 AM

"The chaos that derives from the so-called international order can be painful if you are on the receiving end of the power that determines that order's structure. Even tortillas come into play in the ungrand scheme of things. Recently, in many regions of Mexico, tortilla prices jumped by more than 50 per cent...

"In part the price-hike threat to the food staple for Mexican workers and the poor is what we might call the ethanol effect -- a consequence of the US stampede to corn-based ethanol as an energy substitute for oil, whose major wellsprings, of course, are in regions that even more grievously defy international order."

Read more on the ethanol effect at Common Dreams.
posted by Matt Borondy at 5/22/2007 08:57:00 AM

Gore Vidal Interview at Truthdig

The iconic author and historian speaks with Truthdig Editor Robert Scheer about his recent tour of Cuba, why he thinks the island has a bright future and why the United States, the world's only superpower, has an inferiority complex.

posted by Matt Borondy at 5/16/2007 07:05:00 PM

"...it's of little use allowing people to challenge their executive detention in court, if the government can hold you for good reason, little reason, or almost no reason."
-Aziz Huq, Brennan Center for Justice-

Aziz Huq's article "Habeas Corpus Evaporating" explores the troubled state of this legal protection, from the United States' inheritance of the idea from the British legal system to its current derogation by the Bush administration (memorialized in President Bush's statement regarding Guantanamo). After reading Huq's article, check out The Guantanamobile Project, a fantastic site devoted to collecting documentation as part of a documentary project on this human rights nightmare.
posted by Alexandra at 5/15/2007 09:07:00 AM

"What I saw when I was in Afgooye was a desperate humanitarian situation. Many of the people I met had been on the street for more than a month without any assistance. They were scared and anxious and the atmosphere was very tense. When I asked people where they had been sleeping and what they had been eating, they just pointed to makeshift shelters and told me, 'There's nothing here'."
-Dr. Gustavo Fernandez,
Head of Mission of Medecins Sans Frontieres in Somalia-

Read more of Dr. Fernandez's account here.

To find out more about United Nations efforts in the region, visit that organization's country-specific site here. ReliefWeb is another great site to visit to learn more about humanitarian crises around the globe, news, and efforts to alleviate those crises.
posted by Alexandra at 5/11/2007 03:30:00 PM

"It has meant parents having to forgo a child's high school or college graduation or a PTA meeting because twenty percent of America's workers do not have any vacation or personal days. It has meant parents tag teaming their shifts to provide their children supervision leading to increased divorce rates because they can't afford child care. It has meant families who are more stressed out as jobs become more and more insecure. And it has meant more families just struggling to get by with one out of every three workers making less than what it takes to have basic self-sufficiency. All this has been dumped on the already sagging shoulders of working families while government has stood on the sidelines."
-Beth Shulman-

Read Shulman's article "Conservative Assault On America's Families" for an analysis on how conservative public policy is limiting the choices of everyday Americans. You should also check out her book, "The Betrayal of Work: How Low-Wage Jobs Fail 30 Million Americans".
posted by Alexandra at 5/09/2007 04:07:00 PM

"It is very difficult and arduous to create and sustain a democracy, but history shows that closing one down is much simpler. You simply have to be willing to take the 10 steps. As difficult as this is to contemplate, it is clear, if you are willing to look, that each of these 10 steps has already been initiated in the United States by the Bush administration."

-Naomi Wolf, adapted from her new book The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot.
posted by Matt Borondy at 5/04/2007 03:21:00 PM

"While many American companies use weak U.S. laws to stop workers from organizing, the retail giant stands out for the sheer magnitude and aggressiveness of its anti-union apparatus."
-Human Rights Watch-

Using security cameras to spy on union sympathizers, planting supervisors alongside pro-union workers to monitor activity -- these are just two of the charges that Human Rights Watch makes in its 210-page report on Wal-Mart. According to labor professors, it's the most comprehensive analysis to date of the company's actions during union organizing drives, examining organizing drives at U.S. Wal-Mart stores between 2000 and 2005 (it also cites the 15 decisions by the National Labor Relations Board that found Wal-Mart violated labor laws during those drives). Consider also that Wal-Mart counts more than 1.3 million workers on its payroll at nearly 4,000 stores in the United States -- none belong to a union.

Read the report "Discounting Rights: Wal-Mart's Violation of US Workers' Right to Freedom of Association". You can also check out the International Herald Tribune article for some quick facts on the report.
posted by Alexandra at 5/01/2007 09:21:00 AM