Download flier and help distribute in your community or workplace here: YoungJobsNov,09Flier

FIST Forums:

2 events!



Thursday, Nov 12th – 7pm @ NCSU in Park Shops room 200
and

Tues. Nov 17th - UNC Chapel Hill, time and place, TBA

call 919-559-5364 for more information.

By David Hoskins

NYC FIST

Former President Bill Clinton ran for president in 1992 with health care reform as a key part of his domestic platform. It seemed then that the time was right for comprehensive reform.

The number of uninsured people had already climbed to 40 million. The Democrats were in control of the White House and Congress. A large majority of the public rated health care reform as an urgent priority and voiced support for a universal insurance plan.

In 1993, shortly after taking office, Clinton set up the President’s Task Force on National Health Reform. Hillary Rodham Clinton was asked to head the task force and prepare health reform legislation for submission to Congress within the first 100 days of the administration. This was initially viewed as the administration’s signal to Congress and the media that health care was a top priority.

Yet when the task force was hastily disbanded on May 31, without having submitted a plan to Congress, this was an early warning sign that the emerging details of the reform plan had failed on two fronts. The insurance industry and right-wing Republicans, who sought to stop any health reform legislation, were not appeased by the plan’s concessions.

Union activists, progressive health care advocates and the uninsured were not energized by a weak plan chock full of industry giveaways and loopholes.

Managed competition, not working-class reform

The Clinton administration claimed that its overriding goal was quality universal health coverage. But rather than eliminate the biggest obstacle to real reform—the profit-driven private insurance industry—the administration proposed a market-oriented plan based upon the principles of managed competition.

The plan sought to develop financial incentives for consumers to choose health care plans based on price and perceived quality. Regional alliances would be established to restructure the health insurance market by serving as the group purchaser for people not receiving Medicare and would offer local residents—employed and unemployed—their choice of health plans. Large companies could act as their own corporate alliance.

A 1994 article in the Journal of the American Medical Association titled “A Better-Quality Alternative: Single-Payer National Health System Reform” provided a contemporary critique of the Clinton plan:

“A managed competition strategy, such as that proposed by the Clinton administration and debated in Congress, while designed to provide universal access, has not demonstrated an ability to contain cost and creates a complex structure with separate and unequal multitiered care. Eschewing the easily enforceable budgetary constraints of the single-payer approach necessitates relianceon potentially damaging financial incentives, wasteful micromanagement, and complicated budgetary regulation to minimize spending. … No amount of regulation and oversight can breathe quality into a system that is not based on caring professionals working for patients.”

Health care reform, the Democratic déjà vu

Despite Obama’s best efforts to avoid a repeat of the Clinton health reform debacle, the similarities between the push for health care reform in 1993 and now are striking.

Bill Clinton rode a wave of economic anxiety and dissatisfaction over former President George H.W. Bush’s first term to win the 1992 presidential election. Clinton’s general election victory was solid; he won 370 electoral votes and took states generally outside of the Democrats’ reach, such as Georgia, Louisiana and Kentucky.

Fast-forward 16 years and the resemblance is glaring. President Barack Obama rode a wave of economic anxiety and dissatisfaction over the presidency of George W. Bush, son of the defeated 1992 incumbent, to win the 2008 presidential election. Obama’s general election victory was stunning in light of his status as the first Black president of the United States. Obama was able to secure 365 electoral votes as he also took states generally outside the Democrats’ reach, such as Indiana, Virginia and North Carolina.

Health care reform was named the top domestic priority both by President Clinton during his first year in 1993 and by President Obama during his first months in 2009. Both administrations had solid Democratic Party majorities in the House and Senate at the time they made their respective efforts to push a reform bill through Congress.

Yet both Clinton and Obama backed flawed health reform plans that failed to challenge the private insurance industry, fell short of voter expectations, and ultimately would leave the lives of millions in the hands of corporate bureaucrats. The bill in 1993 went down to a stunning defeat. There are still signs of life for Obama’s proposal, although its final form and outcome are undecided.

The 1993 and 2009 Democratic Party’s reform efforts have more in common than just the failure of the Democrats to fight for meaningful health reform. Both efforts were the focus of organized attacks by the health insurance industry and an extreme right wing, eager to whip up anti-Obama racism today and sexism against Hillary Rodham Clinton earlier.

President Obama has been the focus of racist attacks, from incendiary comments by conservative radio and television talk show commentators to the appearance of hostile forces at town hall forums, some flagrantly displaying guns.

The intentions of the attacks faced by Obama are similar to those underlying the sexism targeted at Hillary Rodham Clinton when she led the Clinton administration’s campaign. The right wing’s misogynist slanders toward her, which were repeated by the media, were meant to stop passage of any health care reform legislation.

The health care reform experiences of 1993 and 2009 should serve as an important lesson to organized labor and other progressive backers of the Democrats. Democratic Party concessions do not appease the opponents of reform, nor do they provide a path to victory for universal health care.

Next: 2003 Medicare changes— corporate giveaway in the name of reform.

Black Workers For Justice Youth…

Conscious Fighters Concert

Series

hip hop & spoken word show

Fri, Oct 16^th, 8pm-11pm

$5 donation (in advance)

Fruit of Labor World Cultural Center

4200 Lake Ridge Dr. Raleigh, NC

919-876-7187

Health care now!! Jobs Now!! Living Wages Now!! End Racism!!

Come out & enjoy positive, progressive, and socially conscious live music and poetry. Speak out about community issues. All ages welcome

Picket Rally for Youth Jobs!!

Date TBA

Employment Security Commission, headquarters

corner of Wade Ave and St. Mary’s St

This is particularly urgent for young workers as highlighted by New York Times columnist Bob Herbert this week. (www.nytimes.com/2009/08/1

Fight Imperialism Stand Together sends a special message to the youth of Honduras and the United States:

Fight Imperialism Stand Together (FIST) stands in solidarity with all who were harassed, brutalized, or arrested by police forces during or around the G-20 summit in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania from September 20-25, 2009.

FIST marching in March for Jobs

Rakhee Devasthali from Feminist Students United at UNC-CH and Raleigh-Durham FIST speaks at rally at Freedom Corner in the Hill neighborhood in Pittsburgh

Sunday: March for Jobs

Monday: “Organizing the global struggle for jobs & workers rights”
workshop at the Tent City

Occupants of the Bail Out the People Movement Tent City will be marching from Freedom Corner (the intersection of Centre Avenue and Crawford Street) to the Mellon Corporation Headquarters (500 Grant Street) at 4:30 to demand a national moratorium on foreclosures and evictions. Participants in the march will include homeless and unemployed people from across the U.S., trade union activists, community organizers and local residents.

The Tent City kicked off Sunday with a spirited March for Jobs, with more than 1,000 protesters marching through the streets of Pittsburgh in the first G-20-related demonstration. Carrying hundreds of placards bearing the image of Dr. Martin Luther King, and slogans such as “Fight for the right to a job,” the long march was enthusiastically greeted on the streets of Pittsburgh by Sunday worshipers getting out of church, many of whom joined the march.

Rev. Thomas E. Smith, pastor of Monumental Baptist Church and one of the organizers of the march, told the rally, “We must tell the G-20 leaders that we reject the notion of a jobless recovery. An economic recovery that leaves unemployment in the double digits adds insult to injury to all who have lost their jobs and their homes during this terrible economic crisis, both in this country and around the world.”

Buses of protesters came from New York, Rhode Island, Detroit, Cleveland, and other places. Vans and cars and caravans came from literally every part of the country, as far away as Boston, Florida and Los Angeles. Joining the many who came from out of town were a large turnout of Pittsburgh residents, especially those who live in the historic African-American section of Pittsburgh called the Hill district, where the march was mounted from.

The end of the march was Freedom Corner, near downtown Pittsburgh, where there is a monument to Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders and activists. Amongst the many speakers at Sunday’s rally were: Pam Africa, International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal; Nellie Bailey, Harlem Tenants Council; Rakhee Devastali, Feminist Students United, UNC-Chapel Hill; Oscar Hernandez, participant in the 11-month Stella D’Oro bakery strike in New York City;Sandra Hines, Mich. Moratorium NOW! Coalition to Stop Foreclosures and Evictions; Larry Holmes, Bail Out the People Movement; John Parker, Bail Out the People Movement activist, who brought a van of people from Los Angeles to Pittsburgh; Fred Redmond, vice-president, United Steelworkers; Lynne Stewart, civil rights attorney, target of government repression; Brenda Stokely and Jennifer Jones, NYC Coalition in Solidarity with Katrina/Rita Survivors; Clarence Thomas, ILWU Local 10, San Francisco and Million Worker March Movement; Victor Toro, an immigrant facing deportation with the May 1st Coalition for Immigrant and Workers Rights; Rosemary Williams, homeowner fighting foreclosure in Minnesota; and Rev. Bruce Wright, Poor Peoples Economic Human Rights Campaign.

After the march and rally, hundreds of protesters returned to the rally’s beginning point, Monumental Baptist Church in the Hill district, and began to prepare their tents to prepare to live in a tent city dedicated to the unemployed of the world that will stand next to the church for the entire week of the G-20 summit.

The tent city is full of tents and hundreds of residents. Organizers expect the population of the tent city to grow as the opening of the G-20summit grows closer.  Throughout all three days of the Tent City, local Pittsburgh residents have been coming by to donate food and water and to express their support for the demand for a real jobs program.

A full schedule of the various forums and teach-ins that will take place at the tent city each day is available online at bailoutpeople.org.

Support the March for Jobs & Tent City in Pittsburgh – Donate at http://bailoutpeople.org/donate.shtml


Videos of the Tent City and March for Jobs:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-fCmmxZd6Y

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sx-n2DrLrJw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkUxvX5JNJg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCnBqnB7j-o

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIVoFbILRIE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoNtah2Fkcs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjg-FtB5xEY

http://kdka.com/local/g20/tent.city.protest.2.1196577.html

Slideshow

http://www.examiner.com/x-23318-Pittsburgh-Photojournalist-Examiner~y2009m9d21-G20-protests-begin-in-earnest-with-march-in-Hill-District

Media Coverage

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125348613742626219.html

http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSTRE58J1MR20090920

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09264/999586-482.stm

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/pittsburgh/s_644179.html

By Julie Fry

NYC FIST

Students returning to school this fall face a devastating new reality. Along with the usual back-to-school jitters, students must cope with the massive budget cuts, higher tuition rates, and decreased financial aid affecting campuses across the country. On top of all of this, those students who manage to scrape together the extra funds necessary to graduate face a terribly bleak job market when they leave their campuses.

Faced with tens of billions of dollars in budget deficits for this fiscal year, most states have cut deep into their education spending to cover their costs. Thirty-five states have already cut higher education spending and/or increased tuition. The cuts have been particularly hard on students of color, who disproportionately rely on state universities and community colleges for access to higher education.

The effects of these cuts are startling. For example, in California, a state that almost went bankrupt this year from its huge budget deficits, state funding to all levels of education has been cut by billions of dollars. The cuts mean fewer teachers, bigger classrooms and school closings all over the state. For many college students, the cuts put higher education practically out of reach. Once considered a national model for publicly funded higher education, the University of California and California State University systems are raising tuition and student fees, cutting classes, furloughing professors and enrolling thousands fewer students to compensate for the state-imposed cuts.

The California State University system—the largest four-year university system in the country—plans to cut enrollment by 40,000 students over the next two years and raise student fees by 32 percent. The California Community college system is raising fees by 30 percent and slashing course offerings. The Los Angeles County Community College District canceled its entire summer session this year and other colleges are cutting hundreds of courses.

As Chris Morales, a Cal State University student who is the first in his family to go to college, told the Associated Press, “The fee increase is going to be tough for me and other students because it’s hard for students to get jobs. … My mother doesn’t make enough money to pay for my college education. She has three other children.” (Aug. 5)

Morales faces the same reality as millions of others starting this school year with an increasingly unaffordable and inaccessible system of higher education, and little hope of finding a job to make up the difference in an economy where the official unemployment rate is in double digits in many areas, including California. For youth aged 16-19 years old who are seeking work, the official unemployment rate is more than 20 percent.

Even financial aid and student loans, often relied on by students to overcome the astronomical cost of a college education in the U.S., are becoming scarce. Since March of 2008, more than 100 lenders have suspended their participation in federally backed fixed-rate student loan programs—programs that typically provide low-interest loans to students. Many states have drastically cut or completely shut down their student loan and grant programs, taking away billions of dollars in aid for higher education.

What can students do?

Many students are wondering whether these drastic cuts in public education funding are really as necessary and inevitable as many politicians claim. How is it, for example, that the federal government was able to come up with trillions of dollars to bail out failed banks, while at the same time refusing to offer just the few billion dollars it would take to shore up the country’s needy higher education institutions? As students return to their more expensive, less functional campuses, they are wondering why they are being forced to pay the price for the economic crisis caused by the world’s largest banks.

Students at some campuses have already begun to create fight-back strategies. At the City University of New York—a school that endured millions of dollars in cuts in this year’s state budget—students joined with professors to protest the attacks against their school last spring. Hundreds of CUNY students participated in demonstrations and walk-outs against the proposed state budget, and more actions are planned for this school year. Fight Imperialism-Stand Together (FIST) is an active participant in the CUNY Campaign to Defend Education, a coalition that fights for an immediate rollback of all tuition hikes and for open admission and free tuition at all CUNY campuses.

All over the country, students are beginning to come together and strategize about how to push back against these cuts and win the right to a free education instead. Students will be joining with workers in Pittsburgh during the week of Sept. 20 to protest the G-20 summit—a gathering of the leaders of the world’s wealthiest nations who are meeting to decide how to further protect banks and corporations during the economic crisis, with no discussion of how to protects students or workers.

Organizers of the protest against the G-20 are planning a March for Jobs on Sunday, Sept. 20 to demand a jobs program at a living wage. This is a critical demand for students who more and more face increased debt and diminished job prospects upon graduation. The Bail Out the People Movement (of which FIST is a member) is planning an entire week of activities during the G-20, all in support of a people’s agenda that would prioritize demands such as cancelling student debt, rolling back tuition hikes and cut-backs, a national jobs program, and other important needs.

Organizers of the demonstrations see the G-20 protests as the start of a national struggle to unite workers and students and demand that the bailout money for the banks be used for a people’s agenda that will make jobs and education a priority.

Why Young People Need Jobs:

Official national unemployment rate—9.7% (14.5 million people)

Total unemployment (unemployed, underemployed and people who have not looked for work in 4 weeks)—16.8% (26 million people)

National Black unemployment rate—15.1%

National Latina/o unemployment rate—13%

Jobs lost since December 2007—7 million

According to Bureau of Labor Statistics:

The official unemployment rate for youth 16-24 years of age as of July 2009—18.5%

Black youth unemployment rate July 2009—31.2%

Latina/o youth unemployment rate July 2009—21.7%

Pittsburgh unemployment rate—8.5%

According to Pittsburgh Post Gazette, June 2007

46% of Black children in Pittsburgh live in poverty

70% of Black families earn less than $25,000/year

Black unemployment is three times the rate of white unemployment

Young people face an uncertain future in the U.S. but which has greatly increased with the current economic crisis. Many of the jobs lost will not return and a recovery that we are told is coming will be a jobless one. Many youth who are able to attend college are saddled with mounting debt in the thousands of dollars but have no promise of employment. It is expected that the official unemployment rate will stay in the double digits until 2012 or 2014.

What should you do?

Fight for a job or an income now.

Join us on September 20^th in Pittsburgh, before the G20. The march will start at 2pm in the historic Hill District, in front of Monumental Baptist Church on Soho and Wylie Streets.

Fight Imperialism Stand Together

By Vidya Sankar, Raleigh FIST

The Sept. 24-25 G-20 Summit is a meeting of delegates from 20 countries, including some of the world’s richest economies. Although Asia, Latin America, Africa, and Eastern Europe are the areas most harshly affected by neocolonialism, these regions are drastically underrepresented; the billions of working class, poor, homeless, hungry and unemployed are not represented at all.

The Bail Out the People Movement, along with other organizations and coalitions, has called for a Tent City from Sept. 20-25. The week of actions will kick off with a national March for Jobs on Sunday, Sept. 20.

FIST chapters across the country are organizing caravans of youth, unemployed and generally disenfranchised to march for a jobs program at a living wage. The tent city will also raise the issues of healthcare, education and an end to imperialist wars and occupations. The caravans are symbols of mass solidarity with the plight of billions across the globe.

August 22 block party builds community support

The Hill district is a historically Black neighborhood that overlooks downtown Pittsburgh. Real estate developers are pushing gentrification of the neighborhood at the expense of current community residents. Only 37 percent of Hill residents over the age of 16 are employed, according to 2000 Census figures compiled by the Pittsburgh Department of City Planning. The city of Pittsburgh’s African American community comprises nearly one-third of the total population.

The corporate media, including local Pittsburgh outlets, have attempted to paint the jobs march and tent city as a disruptive and unnecessary nuisance to community residents. Bail Out the People activists used this attack as an opportunity to reach out to the Hill community.

The first step to building community support was an Aug. 22 block party. Building for the event primarily consisted of mass leafleting of neighborhoods and community hotspots along with face-to-face outreach and genuine partnership with community leaders on the Hill.

Another key goal of the block party was to demonstrate that G-20 resistance was in the community’s interest. As national FIST organizer Larry Hales stated from Pittsburgh, “Part of our job is explaining to people what the G-20 is, and how the summit and the policies that come out of it will affect them and the rest of the world.”

The G-20 Summit and racism

An underlying theme of the capitalist economic crisis has always been racism and the capitalist’s attempt to divide the multinational working class along racial lines. The appearance of violent right-wing provocateurs at health care forums from Arizona to New Hampshire exposed the racist attempts to divide workers.

FIST has built events to connect anti-racist actions with G-20 issues. New York FIST held a public film showing of “In Prison My Whole Life,” a documentary on the life of death-row journalist and political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal, in Bushwick, N.Y. A solidarity event in Boston centered on the wrongful arrest of Professor Henry Louis Gates was also held. Both events helped produce interest in fighting racism at the G-20.

Local economic struggles provide bridge to G-20

Various events in solidarity with the poor, unemployed, and disenfranchised have provided a bridge between local economic struggles and the G-20 resistance. Despite ruling class claims that unemployment has stagnated or dropped, the unemployed and underemployed are increasing in record numbers.

It is estimated that only 65 out of any 100 males aged 20-24 and only 28 out of any 100 males aged 16-19 will be working on any given day, and those numbers are even lower for women and youth of color. (source: NYT)

A Cleveland Poor Peoples’ March held on Aug. 22 mobilized workers and oppressed people in Cleveland to fight against exploitation and poverty. Cleveland FIST participated in this march and filmed the demonstration. A Bail Out the People speaker motivated marchers for the G20 jobs march.

Union, community, labor and student support has poured in for the Sept. 20 March for Jobs and the tent city to protest the G20 Summit.

Caravans will be leaving out of Raleigh/Durham area to attend various events in Pittsburgh to protest the G20. One ride will leave Sat. Sept 19 and attend March for Jobs on Sun, Sept 20 and return late Sunday. Another caravan will attend events all week long. The third caravan will be leaving Wednesday evening, Sept 23 to participate in days of resistance will the G20 meets on Thurs, Sept 24 and Fri, Sept 25th and will return Sat, Sept 26.   TICKETS ON SALE NOW!  Contact Raleigh@FISTyouth.org or call 919-794-1429