| LIFE-NET NEWS |
| by Ret Z. |
| Covering Poverty Widely in a Net of Many Voices |
| 2005 September 7 | No Profit; No Proceeds |
| Volume 9 Number 10 | All-Volunteer |
| "Give a family a fish, and they'll eat a meal; give them a Net, and they'll have fish for Life." |
| Hotel Staff Lives Well as Lives Ebb Nearby |
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At the Royal Sonesta Hotel in the French Quarter, dinner last week consisted of grilled tilapia, bow-tie noodles with tomato basil sauce, T-bone steak, and a nice red wine to
wash it down. Two of the Bourbon Street hotel's chefs used propane grills to prepare meals for the 31 staff members who stayed behind to protect the 500-room hotel in the aftermath
of Hurricane Katrina. "We're eating like kings," said Gary Davis, the hotel's electronic technician. "We've got to eat it all before it goes bad."
Less than half a mile away, at the New Orleans Convention Center, Sadique Jabbar's first meal Thursday was a bag of Cheetos someone gave her around 11 am. "You know the only reason we've been fed?" Jabbar said. "Some men out of prison have been breaking into buildings, getting food for us and bringing it back here." The Convention Center became the symbol for the failure of authority in the city. Survivors went days with no water or food. Children cried. People passed out from the heat. A dead body sat outside in a chair for days, baking in the sun until someone finally put a bedspread over it. The Royal Sonesta lobby looked as if it could receive guests at any moment. Generators kept some of the hotel's appliances in operation, including a refrigerator, a television, and several large air circulating fans. Staff even had ice for cold drinks. Security director Joel Smith spent his nights with a gun in his hand on guard against looters, and his days taking quick dips in the hotel pool. "Yeah, we have it pretty rough," he said. "All we need is the pool bar opening up and we'll be great." At the Royal Sonesta, when they needed to use the bathroom, they used a bucketful of pool water to make the toilet flush. At the Convention Center, the stench from the bathrooms was overpowering. After five days, no one bothered using them anymore. Feces covered the floors. "I'm urinating on the street in front of people," Constance Ray said. "It's like we're animals or something." At the Royal Sonesta, the hotel employees and two German tourists still there slept on thick mattresses covered with clean sheets. At the Convention Center, Diane Lee and her family slept on the sidewalk rather than inside near the dead bodies. "We're living like dogs," Lee said. "And we're being left to die like dogs." At the Royal Sonesta, security was well taken care of. They had locked and nailed shut all the entrances except for the main one, which was covered by chains at night. During the day, two employees stood outside to discourage trespassers. There was no protective presence at the Convention Center. "Last night, two girls were being raped," Valerie Keen said. "They were screaming, 'Help, help,' but no one helped them." At the Royal Sonesta, they were able to evacuate all the guests -- except for the two German tourists who wanted to stay -- by late Tuesday night. Wandfluh said he "moved heaven and Earth" to get two buses in from Houston, and the rest left in their own cars. During the guests' last dinner at the hotel, Wandfluh made sure there was live music. "For the fun of it," said hotel general manager Hans Wandfluh, "I asked the piano player to play the theme song from Titanic." Source: Newark Star-Ledger To React: Stephanie Sonnabend (CEO & President, Sonesta International Hotels Corp.) |
| Venezuela's Salsa Revolution |
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Something is rumbling in the barrios around Caracas, causing tremors that are felt in the White House and in every poor country in the world. A Salsa revolution is spreading out
from the slums of Venezuela.
The old Venezuela is collapsing. Not just metaphorically but literally. Barrios sag down the hills; homes disappear in landslides every other month. And, as a result of the slow-burn social revolution, the communities are (at last) being relocated or rebuilt as part of what Venezuelans call "the process." To understand how The Process began, you have to go back about a decade and a half. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) demanded that the elected government of Carlos Perez cut the tiny thread of government support provided to barrios. As ever, they put their own neoliberal ideology -- small government, low taxes, make everyone pay for public services -- above democracy. Even though Perez had campaigned on precisely the opposite platform, he gave in. The price of food quadrupled, unemployment soared, and the meager scraps of public services available to the poor were cut. The barrios erupted. The government's response? A massacre of over 500 people. But from this IMF-ed up chaos, an alternative emerged. A left-wing Venezuelan general, Hugo Chávez, began to articulate an alternative to the neoliberalism that had been imposed on Latin America for over two decades causing the slowest economic growth and the highest inequality in living memory. In 1998 he was elected President. Since then, he has been approved -- in free, open elections and referenda -- no less than seven times. The Chávez government doubled education spending and established tens of thousands of educational 'missions'. Now the barrios have new schools, not just for children but also for the adult majority who were failed by the education system. In the old Venezuela, most people left school at the age of 12. Millions of Venezuelans, in the midst of spurting oil wealth, were left illiterate and innumerate. Among the other jewels of the new Venezuela: medical missions. Freshly minted clinics, acquired with the country's oil wealth, enable the poor to see doctors, often for the first time in their lives. Thousands troop through for medicine every week. Many say they'd be dead without the missions. Despite all this, the democratizing process in Venezuela has been subject to torrential demonization and even a (briefly successful) coup. Why these assaults on Venezuela's elected government? Oil wealth is supposed to trickle (no, cascade) upwards to multinational corporations, not downwards towards the poor. The President sitting on the largest pot of oil outside the Middle East is not supposed to listen to his people and spend his country's petrodollars on education and health. He is not supposed to increase taxes on the likes of Halliburton from a negligible 1% to 30% in order to pay for schools and hospitals. Source: Johann Hari |
| The Rats Next Door |
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It's hard enough for former welfare recipients to make ends meet in Camden. But that those working to rebound, such as Milagros Mendez and her children, must do it in a rodent-
infested rental home is more than any family should have to bear.
Mendez recently ran out of eligibility for welfare. She hit the federal five-year limit. She finished a program to help her adapt to life without public assistance. That shouldn't mean learning to live with vermin. She and her three children rent a home on South 4th Street, where the house next door and several others on the block are boarded up and need to be demolished. Apparently, the outside walls of her home contain holes: Rats, spiders and other bugs freely move from the abandoned structure to her home. She huddles with her children in a bedroom where a window air conditioner can keep them cool -- and where she can keep an eye out for rats that might try to bite her children. The city apparently doesn't have the funds to demolish the buildings on 4th Street, although it has plans to do so. The city received $175 million from state taxpayers for redevelopment, so why wouldn't it have enough money to demolish abandoned housing in neighborhoods where children are living with rats? Isn't protecting the health and safety of residents at least as important as giving incentives to developers? The city requires landlords to have their properties inspected before renting them. The city's housing bureau also is required to perform routine inspections of rental properties, according to its mandate. The housing bureau said the city usually acts on complaints or referrals about substandard housing. But it is obvious that Mendez's rental home has problems that are decades in the making. How did the landlord receive a certificate of occupancy for a home where rats come and go as freely as the paying tenants? Being poor should not require a family to settle for a home that doesn't meet health and safety codes. Too often in New Jersey, however, that's what families do, say housing advocates. The families often fear that if they demand more, their rent will go up beyond their means. City officials must ensure every rental property meets housing standards. They also should ensure tenants know they have the right to demand decent housing. For now, it's up to tenants in substandard housing units to report rodent-infested homes themselves. Source: Courier-Post |
| A Country Better Prepared for Hurricanes |
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Last September, a Category 5 hurricane battered the small island of Cuba with 160-mile-per-hour winds. More than 1.5 million Cubans were evacuated to higher ground ahead of the storm. Although the hurricane destroyed 20,000 houses, no one died.
What is Cuba's secret? According to Dr. Nelson Valdes, a sociology professor at the University of New Mexico, and specialist in Latin America, "the whole civil defense is embedded in the community to begin with. People know ahead of time where they are to go." "Merely sticking people in a stadium is unthinkable" in Cuba, Valdes said. "Shelters all have medical personnel, from the neighborhood. They have family doctors in Cuba, who evacuate together with the neighborhood, and already know, for example, who needs insulin." They also evacuate animals and veterinarians, TV sets and refrigerators, said Valdes, "so that people aren't reluctant to leave because people might steal their stuff." After Hurricane Ivan, the UN International Secretariat for Disaster Reduction cited Cuba as a model for hurricane preparation. ISDR director Salvano Briceno said, "The Cuban way could easily be applied to other countries with similar economic conditions and even in countries with greater resources that do not manage to protect their population as well as Cuba does." Our federal and local governments had more than ample warning that hurricanes, which are growing in intensity thanks to global warming, could destroy New Orleans. Yet, instead of heeding those warnings, Bush set about to prevent states from controlling global warming, weaken FEMA, and cut the Army Corps of Engineers' budget for levee construction in New Orleans by $71.2 million, a 44% reduction. Source: Truthout |
| Religious Leaders Walk Deadly Border |
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An interfaith coalition of Christian and Jewish leaders in Nogales AZ staged a walk at the Arizona-Mexico border to call for immigration reform to save the lives of hundreds of
would-be immigrants. The walk started on the Mexican side and proceeded through the Port of Entry to the US side.
Here's their message: The US border with Mexico has become a line of death as hundreds of men, women and children become stranded and die trying to cross into our country. While we recognize that the US must maintain a secure border and regulate immigration, the events of the past months cause us to join to protect life and human dignity. Christian and Jewish leaders representing many Churches, national Jewish organizations and religious humanitarian organizations from around the country have gathered on the Arizona-Mexico border as communities of faith deeply troubled by the suffering and death that is taking place daily. As we walk on this border which has brought death to hundreds this year alone, we remind our government that Americans are dedicated to a culture of life. We protest allowing vigilantes to patrol our border who threaten the heart of the commitment of the US to justice and responsible government. We join to express our passion for protecting life as we speak out for humanitarian care for those migrants whose lives are endangered. We also raise a religious call in support of the efforts of our president and the Congress to pass a fair and compassionate immigration policy. We will call on all communities of faith to join us this coming year in a concerted effort to protect human life so that our border is one of friendship and humanity rather than fear and death. We call upon our elected officials to enact legislation that includes the following:
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| AIDS Causes 'Big Fall' in Farming |
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Farming in Africa has declined at an alarming rate since the start of the AIDS epidemic, scientists say. The virus is ravaging agriculture, with the areas of cultivated land
dropping in parts of Kenya, for example, by 68%. The land used is being planted with less nutritious and less profitable crops, they said at the British Association of Science Festival.
Some 80% of Africans derive their livelihood from farming. It's vital to the continent's economic growth. Southern Africa has some of the world's highest rates of HIV infection, with between 30% and 40% of the adult population HIV-positive. AIDS disables people from working in the fields. Such underworked fields are adversely affected by even a slight lack of rain, according to Oxfam's Malawi program manager Nellie Nyangwa. In Rwanda, there has been a 60-80% fall in farm labor. In Burkina Faso, 20% of rural families reduced their farm work or even abandoned their farms because of AIDS. The new report by the System-Wide Initiative for HIV/AIDS and Agriculture, based at the Africa Rice Centre, found farmers switching from cash crops such as coffee to less labor-intensive ones such as maize or cassava. Source: BBC |
| # LNN # Small # Hauls # |
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| Life-Net News Extras |
| Day Care Workers Consider Unionizing |
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The state pays Ingrid Baker about $500 a week to care for five infants and toddlers in her East Orange home, but the 55-year-old grandmother says she can't afford to buy health insurance and could really use a raise. A union local being started by the Communications Workers of America would bargain for wages and benefits on behalf of Baker and thousands of other day-care providers who care for some 75,000 low-income New Jersey children while their parents are working or trying to get off welfare.
Baker was among more than 50 home day-care providers who attended a meeting last week in Newark to learn more about the CWA Local 1028, and she likes what she's heard so far. The grassroots union organizing effort is a collaboration between CWA and ACORN, a community-based organization that advocates for low-income people across a wide range of issues, including health care and affordable housing. "I most definitely need health insurance, which I had to drop four years ago when the premiums went up from $400 to almost $700 a month," Baker said. "When I go to the doctor, I panic. What if they find something seriously wrong with me? Will I have to sell my house?" New Jersey pays home day-care providers $122 a week to care for infants and $95 a week for preschool children, according to Ed Rogan, spokesman for the state Department of Human Services. "As far as the unionization issue goes, obviously we are aware that it is going on and it is certainly an employee's right to seek to be unionized," said Rogan, "but we cannot comment on it." While the CWA estimates there are about 9,000 potential members of its new local, Rogan said the state is aware of only 4,500 registered family day-care providers. Rogan said the state pays for day care for 75,000 children in 50,000 families, which includes low-income working families and parents who are still receiving public assistance and need day care in order to make the transition from welfare to work. "We provide day care for parents who are engaged in work activities, which includes training." Although home day-care providers are outside contractors, not state employees, they can unionize and engage in collective bargaining with the state, according to Tim Dubnau of the CWA. While its roots are in the telecommunications industry, the CWA represents thousands of state and county government workers in New Jersey. The model for the day-care union, Dubnau said, is the CWA's successful home day-care unionization drive earlier this year in Illinois. After eight years of lobbying, the governor of Illinois authorized the union via an executive order in February, and in April a majority of that state's 48,000 home day-care contractors voted for representation by the union, which is now negotiating its first contract with the state, Dubnau said. Source: Newark Star-Ledger |
| Estate Tax May Soon Be Axed |
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When US Sens. Russ Feingold and Herb Kohl returned to Washington in September, one of the first items on their agenda was to consider a Bush administration proposal to permanently eliminate the estate tax even for the wealthiest Americans. At a point when the federal deficit is approaching record levels, when the fiscal demands of the Iraq occupation are expanding exponentially, when the Bush administration is telling Americans that little or nothing can be done to address the nation's health care crisis or fully fund the No Child Left Behind Act's education spending requirements, this would seem by any logical measure to be precisely the wrong time to enact legislation that it is generally agreed would cost the United States $1 trillion in tax revenues over the next decade.
Feingold has been a steady foe of attempts to eliminate the estate tax for the wealthiest Americans. Kohl has been less consistent -- he backed the Bush administration's broad make-the-rich-richer tax restructuring agenda in 2001 -- but has generally opposed specific moves to repeal the estate tax itself. Still, as the vote approaches, and as the wheeling and dealing on Capitol Hill begin anew, it is important to send a message that Wisconsinites oppose the fiscally irresponsible scheming to repeal the estate tax. Indeed, the senators need to be told that, in addition to opposing the trillion-dollar tax break for multimillionaires and billionaires that would result from passage of the estate tax elimination, they should be taking the lead in backing proposals to reform the estate tax system in a manner that protects family farmers and small-business owners while ensuring that the Forbes 400 Richest Americans pay their fair share. Feingold, Kohl and their fellow senators need to be reminded of the wise sentiments of some of the country's most successful business people and philanthropists, who argue that some form of estate tax must be maintained in order to avoid robbing the nation's treasury to benefit the super rich. In 2002, when the estate tax debate began, William H. Gates Sr., Steven C. Rockefeller, David Rockefeller Jr., George Soros, Paul Newman, Ted Turner, Norman Lear, Ben Cohen and more than 900 other wealthy Americans who care more about the good of the country than lining their own pockets -- or those of their heirs -- signed a letter to Congress that began: "We believe that permanent repeal of the estate tax would be bad for our democracy, our economy and our society. Repealing the estate tax, a constructive part of our tax structure for 85 years, would leave an unfortunate legacy for America's future generations. "Only the richest 2% of our nation's families currently pay any estate tax at all. Repealing the estate tax would enrich the heirs of America's millionaires and billionaires while hurting families who struggle to make ends meet," the letter continued. "The billions of dollars in state and federal revenues lost will inevitably be made up either by increasing taxes on those less able to pay or by cutting Social Security, Medicare, environmental protection, and many other government programs so important to our nation's continued well-being." Source: Capital Times (Madison WI) |
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