FORUM | AFTER TRAYVON’S MURDER: CHALLENGING INSTITUTIONAL RACISM IN THE OBAMA ERA
7:30PM TUESDAY, APRIL 3RD
@ MAYDAY BOOKS (301 CEDAR AVE S)
SPEAKERS:
* Rose Brewer, Professor of Afro-American & African Studies at the University of MN
* Mel Reeves, longtime community organizer against police brutality and racism
* Ty Moore, organizer with Socialist Alternative and on the Editorial Board of Justice newspaper
The murder of Trayvon Martin and the police attempt to protect George Zimmerman is exposing the institutional racism at the heart of U.S. capitalism. Over 5,000 marched in Minneapolis Thursday, with similar major protests erupting across the country. When Obama was elected, many hoped the horrific legacy of racism in America could be put behind us. But for most communities, nothing has changed. The mass movement to demand justice for Trayvon is already asking deeper questions. Now we need to make deeper demands for real system change. Join us for a participatory panel discussion on how to take the movement for racial justice forward.
Read our analysis and program to fight back HERE.
Obama Stops Keystone XL in Senate BUT “Welcomes” Plan to Begin Its Construction — Decoding the Democrats’ Position
On March 8, the Senate narrowly rejected an amendment to a transportation bill to force the approval of the TransCanada Corporation’s Keystone XL pipeline, a 1,700 mile pipeline that would bring heavy tar sands oil from Alberta, Canada to refineries in Texas to be exported abroad. The pipeline would be the longest oil pipeline outside of Russia and China, which would exacerbate the global climate change crisis.
The Republican Senators’ amendment attempted to eliminate the need for a federal permit for TransCanada to build a pipeline that crosses international borders. The maneuver was essentially an empty political response to the growing anger over gas prices. The construction of the Keystone XL pipeline would not be complete until at least 2014, it would not add substantially more oil to the U.S. market, and it’s projected potentially to raise gas prices for farmers in the Midwest.
Furthermore, the 56 senators that voted in favor of the amendment received 500% more donations from the gas and oil industry than those that voted against it. So rather than responding to concerns of the public, the 45 Republicans and 11 Democrats that voted in favor of the amendment were doing the bidding of the gas and oil industry.
President Obama personally called Democratic senators to urge them to reject this proposal. However, we should not be under the illusion that the Obama administration opposes the pipeline in principle. On the contrary, Obama is preparing to go forward with its construction after the 2012 elections are over.
Playing Politics with Women’s Bodies - The Battle Over Contraceptive Access Exposes Both Parties
By Kelly Bellin
With each passing week, the right-wing fundamentalists tighten their grip over the Republican Party. Their latest frenzied attempt to limit women’s access to contraception will likely backfire on Republicans electorally. Yet as Obama responds with concessions, this right-wing ideological offensive dominates the public debate.
The mess started when the Obama Administration announced early this year that religious exemptions for the health care mandate to provide contraception would be limited to houses of worship. Right-wing religious leaders objected, demanding that religiously affiliated organizations such as hospitals and universities also be exempted, even when employees covered are not primarily of the same faith.
Church and Republican leaders launched a firestorm, accusing President Obama of violating religious freedom and Republicans in the Senate narrowly lost a vote to exempt religious affiliated employers from covering any medical care deemed to violate their beliefs! Electorally, these antics play into the Democrats’ hand, yet mainstream women’s groups have praised Obama as a champion of reproductive rights.
Enter Rush Limbaugh
An all-male House Committee meeting was convened to decide if the contraceptive mandate violated religious freedom. Chairmen Rep. Derrell Issa rejected a request to hear testimony from a woman, Sandra Fluke, to the panel, saying: “the hearing is not about reproductive rights and contraception.”
Yet Rush Limbaugh, referring to Fluke, revealed the real outlook of Republican leaders when he said: “Who goes before a congressional committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex? What does that make her? It makes her a slut, right? Makes her a prostitute.” The next day he defended his statement, calling on all “Feminazis” to make sex videos in exchange for insurers covering their contraception.
The outcry against Limbaugh’s hate-speech was swift and widespread. Dozens of companies have been pressured to pull their ads from Limbaugh’s show. The entire debate has enraged millions of women, and calls for protests in all state capitols on April 28th may get a major response. If the big women’s organizations put their full resources into the protests, those millions could be brought into the streets.
Obama’s response
Even as the right-wing bigots further isolated themselves, Obama felt compelled to make concessions to them. First, Obama allotted religious employers another year to comply with the federal mandate, and then allowed nonprofit religious employers to shift the cost of coverage to the health insurance companies instead. By compromising, Obama has let the religious right take over a debate that should not even exist – whether or not women have a right to contraceptive health care!
The contraception mandate is widely regarded as an election maneuver to quell growing uproar among women at Obama’s betrayals. In December, the White House overruled the FDA’s decision to give Plan B over-the-counter status. Feeding into the right-wing stigmatization of contraception, Obama said he didn’t want young women picking up Plan B “between the bubblegum and the batteries.”
Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America replied: “As we’re looking at 2012, we have a key segment of women’s voters, and it’s our job to show them the clear difference between President Obama and the alternatives. The decision last week makes it harder for us to do that.”
It turns out Nancy Keenan is easily appeased. Obama’s ruling to tighten religious exemptions “makes it clear that President Obama is firmly committed to protecting women’s health,” Keenan told NARAL supporters in January. Such statements cover up the cynical calculations really behind Obama’s decision.
Playing politics
In 2008, women turned out in record numbers to vote, and a large majority voted for Obama, leading many to hail him as the first “feminist president.” However, women have been impacted hardest by Obama’s trail of broken promises and pro-corporate policies. In 2010, many women stayed home, and half the women who voted cast ballots for Republicans.
Obama’s recent legislation to satisfy women is a political necessity for his 2012 campaign. The most recent Washington Post poll reports 50% of women outright disapprove of Obama’s presidency. As a tight election looms, one of Obama’s campaign officials promised that targeted marketing will focus on women, with woman-to-woman phone banking to inform once-supporters of the gains Obama has made for them (ABC News, 11/9/11).
Women don’t need to be told what their situation is under the Obama administration. Last year, states passed a record 92 restrictions on access to reproductive health services. In September the Census Bureau reported more than 40% of single mothers are now in poverty, and a record number of women live in “extreme poverty” – earning less than half the poverty line. One in five women have no form of health insurance. Stepping back, Obama’s stand on the contraception issue, itself lackluster, is a fragile twig to hold onto amid the flood of bipartisan budget cuts and right-wing attacks.
Obama, like the Republicans, is playing politics with women’s reproductive rights. Rather than going onto the offensive, boldly campaigning on why all women have the right to access contraception, he has remained purely defensive and tried to duck the issue. President Obama supports women’s rights as a wedge issue, only granting limited reforms under pressure or fear losing votes.
2011 was a year of unprecedented attack on women, but it was not a year of unprecedented fight back. Mainstream feminist groups promote the Democratic Party as our progressive option, but the Democrats are not the way forward for women. As history demonstrates, it is through mass struggle, organized resistance and political independence that working class women have forced politicians to concede.
Sh*t Obama Says
….but clearly didn’t mean.
Video by Nick Shillingford
Obama Overrules FDA, Restricts Birth Control for Teens
By Andrea Perry
Obama recently defended the decision of his Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, to continue limiting the over-counter availability of Plan B, the morning after pill, to women under 17. The Federal Drug Administration approved the over-counter use of the drug for women of all ages last February and says this is the first time the Secretary of Health has overruled an approval of the FDA.
Plan B significantly reduces the chances of conception if taken up to 72 hours after unprotected sex. Women under 17 will continue to need a doctor’s prescription to obtain Plan B, increasing the rate of unwanted teen pregnancies, particularly for those without health insurance or access to abortion clinics.
Obama’s decision was a shock to NARAL Pro-Choice and other organizations who gave full support to Obama during the 2008 election. This was political, an attempt to win centrist votes, not made to further the interests of the majority of women. This shows the need for political independence for the women’s movement, rather than continuing to apologize for politicians prepared to trade away our rights for petty political gain.
We need a mass resurgence of the women’s movement that fights in the interests of the working class women and demands full access to all forms of birth control and family planning.
Obama’s New Jobs Proposal: Can it Turn the Economy Around?
Under pressure from the growing fear of a double-dip recession, and spurred by the need to boost his image, on September 8 President Obama made his much-anticipated jobs speech. He urged Congress to pass, without delay, a jobs bills that he argued would at the same time create much-needed jobs and provide a framework for debt reduction. This plan has been described as Obama’s chance to appear strong, to score a win on the economy, and to influence the upcoming presidential elections. The jobs bill comes as a blend of Obama-style bipartisanship, “free market” economic doctrine, and electoral positioning.
On Septmber 19, Obama went a step further with his pre-election fake populism, calling for - meager - taxes on the super-wealthy and an end to talk of attacks on Social Security. This is a smokescreen for historic attacks on New Deal programs as the economy goes from bad to worse. Like the jobs speech and all the “hope and change” before that, we are dealing with inadequate and mostly empty rhetoric. Socialist Alternative will provide a response to the more recent speech in the coming days.
Debt Deal "Compromise": Is Obama Weak or Complicit?
Republicans emerged from the debt deal as the apparent victors, achieving bipartisan agreement on massive cuts with zero tax increases. The dominant narrative of liberal commentators echoed Republican chest-pounding, painting Obama and Congressional Democrats as weak negotiators who caved to the Republican right wing. Commentator Paul Krugman’s July 31 column was titled “The President Surrenders.” Matthew Rothschild titled his article “Obama Just Got Run Over,” and Robert Reich lamented, “Ransom Paid.”
However, the narrative of Democratic Party “weakness” is dangerously one-sided because it implies that Obama, left to his own devices, would perhaps chart a course away from austerity.
In fact, Obama came into the White House wanting to enact fiscal austerity, as he himself explained in a 2008 speech: “Our economy is trapped in a vicious cycle: the turmoil on Wall Street means a new round of belt-tightening for families and businesses on Main Street … we’ll have to scour our federal budget, line-by-line, and make meaningful cuts and sacrifices as well.”
