Recent events have shown that things in Israel/Palestine are worse than ever. It can be argued that Ariel Sharon deliberately precipitated these events, and that Arrafat has done little or nothing to rein Palestinians in (whether he had the power to do that is another story). It is interesting to note that a veteran's group recently came out supporting peace and the dismantling of the Jewish settlements in the occupied territoriies, and that some reservists are beginning to circulate petitions saying that they will defend Israel to the death, but the they feel it immoral to serve in the Gaza or West Bank. The following is an analysis of the problem from an Israeli volunteer's perspective:
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Israeli Settlements: The Only Obstacle to Peace
Is The Price Of Occupied Territory Too High?
Marcia Freedman is a former member of the Knesset, Israel's Parliament,
and a longtime activist for Middle East peace. She is author of
"Exile in the Promised Land" (Firebrand, 1990).
Each week I spend several hours at an Israeli roadblock, one of the many set up to control Palestinian movement. I belong to an Israeli women's human rights group called Machsom-WATCH. Machsom is Hebrew for "roadblock" or "checkpoint." The group was created to monitor the treatment of Palestinians at roadblocks set up by Israel ostensibly to prevent terrorists from entering Jerusalem. These roadblocks have completely disrupted the daily lives of Palestinians.
I monitor the roadblock at Kalandia, a refugee camp on the outskirts of Ramallah in the West Bank. This roadblock is one of three that people must pass through to travel between Jerusalem and Ramallah. It also divides Ramallah from a number of West Bank villages and towns that depend on the city for its hospitals, schools, and other vital services. Because of this checkpoint, it takes anywhere from two to four hours to get through in either direction by car.
Soldiers stop each car, check identifications, and examine the contents of all trunks. Even ambulances must wait their turn to be inspected. The rules for who can get through and who cannot change from day to day. Palestinians never know before setting out if they will be allowed to continue their journey. Some days the orders are not to let anyone through at all.
The roadblock is one enormous traffic jam. Palestinians have developed a routine of taking taxicabs from one roadblock to another and then walking through on foot. The roadblocks teem with people streaming through it in both directions, sometimes old women carrying bundles on their heads, young women carrying children, men carrying anything from briefcases to groceries. Young Israeli soldiers in full combat gear armed with M-16s, their guns always at the ready, stand guard as people walk around them.
The anger, the fear, the humiliation felt by the Palestinians trying desperately to get on with their lives is palpable. Sometimes they notice us, a handful of women wearing badges that say in Arabic and Hebrew, "Women for Human Rights," and they smile or thank us for being there. Most often they ignore us as they try to ignore the soldiers who have so much power over their lives.
So what are the soldiers doing there?
When I ask the soldiers what they are supposed to accomplish with their presence, they answer mechanically: "The purpose of the roadblock is to prevent terrorists from entering Jerusalem." They say they have to examine the contents of all cars to be sure there are no arms or explosives. When I suggest that it is ludicrous to think a potential terrorist would enter Jerusalem by going through a roadblock with a car full of explosives, the soldiers become defensive. They know it is true. They know that not a single terrorist has been caught at any of the dozens of checkpoints that monitor Palestinian traffic on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
Just up the road, on a hill overlooking Kalandia and just across from the city of Ramallah is Psagot, a Jewish settlement in the West Bank. The residents of Psagot do not have to pass through the Kalandia checkpoint. Instead they travel to Jerusalem on a deluxe four-lane highway, a "by-pass road." It is called a by-pass road because it by-passes areas populated by Palestinians. The West Bank is crisscrossed by these super highways, which can only be used by Israelis.
As I stand at the checkpoint, monitoring the soldiers who are controlling an occupied population, I reflect on what this is all about. These unarmed Palestinian civilians trying to live under an occupation that all but keeps them under house arrest are not a threat to Israel. But for the people of Psagot, the Palestinians of the West Bank are a threat by their very existence.
To understand the situation at the Kalandia checkpoint, or the terrible deterioration in Israeli-Palestinian relations, one has to understand the history of the settlement movement. Who are these settlers? Why are they there? And why is the current Israeli government willing to throw out the possibility of peace between Israel and Palestine just to maintain the settlements?
Today, this ideological minority controls the Israeli government.
There are some 200,000 Israeli settlers living on 120 settlements in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The first settlements, illegal under international law, were established in 1975 by extremist Jewish nationalists on land occupied by Israel after the 1967 Middle East war. The settlers called themselves Gush Emunim, or the Bloc of the Faithful, and they believed that the Jewish messiah could not come until Israel settled the "Greater Land of Israel," the area of historic Palestine that had existed under Turkish and later British occupation.
After a 1948 United Nations partition plan and the war that followed, Israel only possessed 78 percent of that historic Palestine. But Jewish extremists -- a small minority of messianic nationalists and an equally small expansionist secular minority -- were not satisfied. Israel's current prime minister, Ariel Sharon, has been their leader and hero for decades. Today, this ideological minority controls the Israeli government.
At first only a few hundred settlers moved into the territories. During the decade immediately following the 1967 war, Israelis generally viewed the territories as bargaining chips for possible negotiated settlements between Israel and its neighbors. Though successive Israeli governments established settlements in the Golan Heights, the Jordan Valley of the West Bank, and the northern end of the Sinai Peninsula, they were established for strategic reasons. Thus, they could be dismantled and abandoned in exchange for permanent peace agreements with Egypt, Syria and Jordan. But from 1975 on, the settlement activity has had an ideological bent.
In 1977, the government of Menachem Begin and the conservative Likud Party came to power, upsetting the Labor Party hegemony for the first time since Israel's founding. Likud has held control ever since, except for the 1992 victory of Labor leader Yitzhak Rabin, which was cut short by his assassination, and the leadership of Ehud Barak in 1998, which was cut short by his ineptitude.
Under Likud, the number of settlers in the established communities that sprawl over the hills of the West Bank has multiplied. The settlements, connected by hundreds of miles of by-pass roads and protected by the Israeli army, are considered non-negotiable territory by a government that believes Israel must settle all of historic Palestine.
But in fact most settlers, about 60 percent, are not religious nationalists, according to surveys carried out by Israel's largest peace organization, Peace Now. The majority are former low-income Israeli city-dwellers who were lured by government-sponsored incentives: tax breaks, small-business venture capital and extremely low-interest mortgages.
As long as these settlements remain, there will be no peace.
These initiatives allowed them to buy apartments and build villas, providing a much different standard of living from the crowded and poor urban neighborhoods the settlers had moved from. Many in this group would willingly return to Israel proper if their return were subsidized to the same extent that their movement to the settlements had been. Given the enormous cost of the occupation, this would be a small economic price to pay for peace between Israelis and Palestinians.
As long as these settlements remain, there will be no peace. The current Israeli government believes it can confine the 3.5 million Palestinians to 40 percent of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in four or five noncontiguous "cantons" controlled in perpetuity by the Israeli army.
This situation cannot last. The Israeli checkpoints cannot control the movement of individuals who are willing to die to liberate their people from occupation. In just the past 16 months, the number of terror incidents has risen dramatically. For how long will the population of Israel, six million people, be willing to live in fear to perpetuate the dream of 200,000 settlers and their expansionist supporters?
Israelis are beginning to question the wisdom of this government and the legitimacy of the army's conduct. In late January, more than 100 army reservists published newspaper ads denouncing the army's treatment of Palestinian civilians and declaring they would not serve in the West Bank or Gaza. In just two weeks this number has more than doubled. The peace camp is beginning to regroup, bringing tens of thousands into the streets demanding an end to the occupation.
I am a Jew, and I support the national liberation of the Jewish people. I believe in our right to a homeland of our own, both to protect ourselves from the anti-Semitism that has persecuted us and to realize our aspirations and self-determination as a people. But I deplore and condemn the extremist minority that today holds these dreams hostage.
Israel must recognize the legitimate rights of our historical cousins, the Palestinians, to a just and viable state of their own. The Israeli settlements must be evacuated. It is time to allow the Palestinian population -- displaced, exiled and long-suffering since 1948 -- to fulfill their own national vision.
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I have to admit that I have never considered the issue of the settlements thoroughly, and thinking of it now, my reaction would be much the same as the Palestinians if some invader came in and put down little colonies with special roads to keep my people from having a single place to call their own. If my rights as a person were denied and it was a struglle to live because of an oprressor, how could I not revolt? Think about it. How far would you have to be pushed? The Founding Fathers had it easy compared to the Paletsinians, and they still felt abused enought to throw off the Imperial yoke. I may not like their tactics, but I think the Palestinians have a legitimate claim.
Sci-fi writer writer, conservative, and libertarian (with a small "l"), Jerry Pournelle had this to say about the consequences of "Free Trade" and the reposnibilties of government and business to citizens:
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First, if you are going to live in a liberal democracy, certain things are certain. One is that the franchise will expand to include as many as possible. Another is that the people will vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. You can try to slow that process -- National Review once said its mission was to stand astride the course of history and shout Stop! -- but you will not halt it.
Thus, given that there is no possibility of victory by a political party based on the proposition that government ought to contract a lot, and people have no economic claims on that government, the externalities I described in yesterday's commentary are fairly described as givens: things we 'must' do in the sense that given our political system they will happen. We can modify the benefits we hand out to people, but we will not eliminate them, and you will not win an election on a platform of "let them get religion" as Calvin Coolidge said when asked what the federal government would do for the unemployed.
Second, justice consists of giving each man his due (in the modern world each person his or her due). A just society is one that has the fixed and abiding intention of rendering to each man his due. What are the just desserts of a 45 year old sewing machine operator who has made over a million sweat suits, earned a good bit of profit for her company, and now finds that she has no salable skill while her job has been exported to Bulungi? I ask seriously. We as a society owe her nothing? We insist that she owes us loyalty, to the point of sending her sons to war; we insist that she obey the laws not merely from fear but from choice. But we owe her nothing economically?
Third, I am as aware as anyone and possibly more aware than most that if your goal is to maximize economic gains and make efficient investments, and that goal is so important that all other goals pale into insignificance, free trade and laissez faire capitalism are the proper choices to make, and economic regulations tend to muck up the system, sometime to the point of collapse. Command economies don't work.
There remains the question, is free trade laissez faire likely to lead to a just society? It certainly leads to Ariba and Global Crossroads if not to Enron. Efficiency demands that bubbles be allowed to build and to burst. Cotton mills move to the south, then offshore entirely. Manufacturing jobs vanish. Economic efficiency abounds.
But that is in the absence of the externality of politics. Political reality is that the US is divided deeply into nearly equal camps -- but both sides are agreed that there shall be a "safety net" and public benefits for those who through no fault of their own -- or even through their own lack of wisdom -- find themselves impoverished or even just greatly reduced in circumstances. You may find that reality monstrous or comforting, but absent a drastic modification in our political institutions, a modification possible only outside normal politics, it is still reality.
Burke said that for a man to love his country his country ought to be lovely. Certainly most of us would not find anything like The Great Depression lovely regardless of our personal economic circumstances. We don't want big socialistic government, but we don't want people sleeping in shanties and cardboard boxes, and we don't want the kind of thing you can find just outside Buenos Aries or Rio either. We don't want street gangs, and we don't want mercenary death squads.
We have developed a fairly workable system that by and large most of us find congenial and even agreeable.
My question was,
Given the externality that we must provide health care and some minimum life support to citizens, is it really cheaper to have free trade as opposed to tariff for revenue (which can be used to help pay for those put out of work by free trade)?
I have a lot of mail accusing me of socialism. I have yet to see any realistic refutation of the proposition that this is reality. And I have yet to get an answer to my question, which is, again, is not imposing a tariff calculated to maximize tariff revenue collected (and thus allowing inefficient industries to continue to operate and employ people) preferable to free trade with lower prices of goods but higher taxes to support the unemployed? I ask it as a purely economic question; I have asked it for years; and I have yet to see an actual economic analysis leading to an answer. My attempts with spread sheets and input/output models lead to ambiguous results -- and that's my point. I certainly prefer to keep people working, both for their good (they feel valuable and part of society, not alienated) and mine ( alienated people are very bad for a social order and their children tend to be criminals).
Understand. I am by temperament "libertarian" in that I like to be left alone and I have no great desire to mind anyone else's business. At the same time, I am quite certain that without strong government lawlessness would prevail. I have some experience in organization and attracting loyalty and I would probably do well as a pirate king, but it is not my preference as a way to live. I prefer a republic and if that includes tariffs that raise the prices of what I buy but save me in taxes to pay people to be unemployed, I'll gladly pay the higher price until someone shows me just how much higher those prices are likely to be.
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Which shows, to me, at least, that there are a lot of people thinking the same things about Free Trade, and what it does to our society. Dr. Pournelle is only concerened about how Free Trade afects Americans, but is well aware of its other consequences, if you read some of his science fiction. He would have been firmly in the Ross Perot faction opposing NAFTA. The past several years have shown the Perot, for all his other faults, was right on this one.
Last night's Women's Figure Skating final has already produced a protest from the Russians, saying that Irina Slutskaya should get a gold medal just like Sale and Pelletier did when the Canadians protested the pairs results. Of course that ignores a fall in the pairs finals, and the fact that while Slutskaya skated cleanly, her routine was nowhere near the difficulty of Sarah Hughes' performance, and lacked most of the passion and artistry as well. Now, if Michelle Kwan had won gold, that would be an issue for protest.
Similarly, South Korea is complaining of the disqualifictaion of their skater in men's short track after he illegally blocked , American an American skater, saying that they are victims of home ice advantage. Of course, thet are conveniently forgetting the boxing controversy at the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, where Roy Jones, Jr., clearly beat his South Korean opponent, but lost due to bad judging, and they've ceratinly forgotten the behaviour of another South Korean boxer who refused to leave the ring after losing his match to an American.
Basically, people have decided that the rules don't apply to them, and if the results don't go their way, they protest. This will only get worse as time goes by.
Some of the bigger weasels in our society have started putting items from the World Trade Center up for auction on Ebay and other sites, hoping to profit from the Sept. 11 attacks. Come on people, have some respect for the dead, and take you money grubbing somewhere else. As if those stupid "I Survived" t-shirts weren't bad enough, no people are trying to make money by selling things like tickets to the observation decks and old versions of Microsoft Flight Simulator (that still have the twin towers) . There's nothing more disgusting than tring to make money off of a tragedy (which is why I still haven't seen Titanic). So much for coming together as a nation, and treating people with the respect they deserve.
With the President's trip to Asia there has been a lot in the press about China's contributions to the "war" on terrorism, in terms of defusing the situation between India and Pakistan, and between North and South Korea, and little said abuot their war against separatists inside China, or their stance that Taiwan is part of the PRC. There have been some token indications that some political prisoners will be released, but at the same time those who post negative articles about the government on the Internet are jailed, Falun Gong and most other religious groups are persecuted, there is no Freedom of the Press, and there are still forced abortions of non-sanctioned pregnancies.
Most of these issues are on the back burner because China is "helping" in the "war". We're also ignoring the situation in Tibet, trade issues, forced labor, weapons proliferation, and the fact that American reconaissance aircraft are being agressively shadowed again. These are just the people we want to be in bed with. Of course, business will love it if somehow China's markets are opened to western nations.
More disturbing reports are filtering out of Afghanistan now that the fighting is mostly over. The problems are many and varied.
During the bombardment of Taliban forces, it would appear that while most of the targets hit were Taliban ones, Air Force and Navy planes also hit villages, cars and fuel trucks that had nothing to do with the Taliban, but were simply innocent civilians going about their daily lives. Some of the targeting errors were due to bad intelligence, some were due to a swiftly changing combat environment, and others because many of the vehicles in use by civilians and the Taliban look alike.
The third of the issues is probably the worst. It implies that U.S. aircraft were attacking vehicles with bombs, missiles, and cannons, even if they weren't positively identified as the enemy. Reports have said that military officers have returned to villages and other areas inadvertantly bombed to apologize and promise rebuilding assistance, but what good does that do for the dead? This is the sort of thing that is minimized when actual troops are used on the ground. Yes, it exposes our guys to casualties, but it also minimizes the "collateral damage" among people we are ostensibly helping.
Another problem recently brought to light is the refusal by U.S. commanders to do two things, both of which may have made the world a safer place. First, even though officers from the 82nd Airborne and 101st Air Assault Divisions requested to be put in place between Afghanistan and the Pakistani border to prevent the escape of Tliban and al-Qaeda fighters, the American commanders in the region refused to do so, saying that the elite Airborne units might take casualties.
These units were drpped behind German lines during the D-Day invasion, and were placed in Saudi Arabia to deter Iraqi forces during Operation Desert Shield. All of the men a volutnteers twice over. Firts they volunteered to join the Army, and then they volunteerd again for Airborne training. They signed up for dangerous jobs in elite units so that they could fight the hard battles against dangerous opponents. The whole reason they existis to perform the important missions. They should have been allowed to do so. It would have prevented some of the problems we are likely to see in the future.
Next, the British SAS had identified a valley that they believed Ossama bin Laden coul be trapped in. They requested permission to block off the exits to the valley and raid it. The American commanders delayed until American Delta Force units were in position to attempt the capture, not for any reasonable military reason, but because they wanted to be able to make the poitical statement that bin Laden had been captured or killed by Americans. If the purpose of our military operations in Afghanistan was to bring Ossama bin Laden and his fellow conspirators to justice (or even to seek revenge), it shouldn't matter if we our our allies capture or kill him, as long as it gets done. This should be about getting the job done, not politics.
February 13, 2002
Immediate Release
The Progressive
Detainees Mistreated in U.S. Pakistani Who Died Was Allegedly Denied Medical Care
MADISON, WIS--Muhammad Butt, the only September 11 detainee to die while incarcerated in the United States, allegedly was denied medical care, The Progressive magazine reports in its March issue.
Butt, who died on October 24 at the Hudson County Correctional Facility in Kearny, New Jersey, had requested medical attention many times in the ten days leading up to his death, his cell mate told representatives of Human Rights Watch, according to an article entitled "Ill-Treatment on Our Shores" by The Progressive's managing editor, Anne-Marie Cusac
"What the roommate told us was he helped Butt fill out request forms," says César Muñoz, a Bloomberg Fellow at Human Rights Watch. "He told us Butt filled out five or six. He would fill one out and wait two days. When there was no answer, he'd fill out another one. He never got an answer." Human Rights Watch refused to release the name of the cell mate, for fear he would suffer retribution.
On the day Butt died, "he banged on the door for five or ten minutes," the cell mate told Human Rights Watch, according to Muñoz. Butt allegedly got no response. Muñoz and Allyson Collins, associate director of the U.S. program of Human Rights Watch, visited the cell mate on January 27.
The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), which was housing Butt at the Hudson County Correctional Facility, denies that anything untoward happened.
We have absolutely no information to substantiate any of the allegations being propagated by Human Rights Watch," says Kerry Gill, an INS public affairs officer in Newark.
"The allegations of mistreatment are not confined to Butt's case," Cusac reports in her story. "Many others who were rounded up on orders of Attorney General John Ashcroft after September 11 claim to have been beaten, locked in solitary confinement, injected with substances against their will, or denied blankets, food, and toilet paper." Her report discusses several of their cases.
Cusac won a George Polk Award for magazine reporting in 1996.
A Fair Vote in San Francisco
by Eric C. Olson
The Nation
On March 5 San Franciscans will have the opportunity to vote for an electoral system that elected "Red Ken" Livingstone as London's Mayor and Mary Robinson as Ireland's President and catapulted Albert Wheeler, Ann Arbor's first African-American mayor, into office in 1975. With widespread adoption of instant-runoff voting, progressive third parties would have the opportunity to grow and gain influence without the adverse effect of throwing elections to the GOP.
The campaign for Proposition A pits supporters of instant-runoff voting--the local AFL-CIO Labor Council, Common Cause, CalPIRG, the Sierra Club, Greens and the city's Democratic Party, among others--against establishment Republicans, political consultants and the Chamber of Commerce.Opponents of the measure prefer low-turnout elections in which conservative voters turn out more reliably and appear willing to spend big bucks to keep the status quo. But this battle has much wider implications for US politics than for the city of San Francisco.
For both Naderites frustrated at losing progressive voters to Gore and Democrats frustrated at getting "spoiled," this is the ballot measure to watch in 2002. That's because instant-runoff voting frees voters to support their favorite candidate without helping to elect their least favorite.
How?Think of traditional "delayed" runoffs. Ballots are cast and, if no candidate receives a majority vote, voters return weeks later to choose between the top two vote-getters, typically in a lower-turnout election. Those who supported the two advancing candidates must show up again to reconfirm their initial vote, while supporters of eliminated candidates must decide whom they prefer among the top two.
Instant-runoff voting accomplishes the same result with one efficient election. Voters indicate their favorite and their runoff choices by ranking them on their ballot, 1, 2, 3. If no candidate receives an absolute majority of first choices, the weak candidates are eliminated and their supporters' votes are counted for their runoff choice based on their rankings. In 2000, for example, enough Nader voters likely would have chosen Gore second to help defeat Bush in instant-runoff tallies in Florida and New Hampshire. Gore would have won the Electoral College, knowing his victory depended on voters demanding fair trade, strong environmental protections and more peaceful approaches to foreign policy.
Instant-runoff voting could help heal some of the racial divisions that occur during elections in many of our nation's largest cities. Representative Jesse Jackson Jr. cites examples of racially polarizing traditional runoffs in Houston, Los Angeles and New York in his endorsement of Proposition A, particularly friction between African-Americans and Latinos in the Los Angeles runoff between Antonio Villaraigosa and James Hahn. Jackson notes that in New York, "the divisive Democratic primary runoff between Mark Green and Fernando Ferrer made it difficult for Green to mobilize and win Latino and black voters in the general election, contributing to four more years of a Republican mayor." California--and the Bay Area in particular--is developing into a hotbed of enthusiasm for instant-runoff voting. Already, Oakland voters agreed to use instant-runoff voting in special elections to fill vacancies, and the Berkeley City Council supports placing an IRV charter amendment on the ballot. Voters in Santa Clara County and the city of San Leandro adopted charter amendments to allow instant-runoff voting in local elections. Furthermore, California Assembly SpeakerRobert Hertzberg introduced legislation to implement instant-runoffvoting for special elections to the US Congress and to the state legislature.
Instant-runoff voting advocates will also keep an eye on the East Coast on March 5. In Vermont, it's Town Meeting Day, and a grassroots effort by progressives, League of Women Voters members and other citizens have petitioned and placed the issue of instant-runoff voting for statewide offices on the meeting agenda of at least thirty-seven communities across the state. Citizens from tiny Guilford to Burlington will thus weigh in on the broadly supported campaign to bring instant-runoff voting to their state.
Other efforts on behalf of instant-runoff voting in states like New Mexico, Alaska and Washington are poised to capitalize on a San Francisco victory and a clear message from Vermont's towns. If you agree that it's time to take a chink out of the tarnished armor of our failing electoral model, please contribute to FairvoteSF; PO Box 22411, San Francisco, CA 94122-2411 (www.ImproveTheRunoff.org, info@improvetherunoff.org">info@improvetherunoff.org).
© 2002 The Nation Company, L.P.
Going Down the Road
by Jim Hightower
The Nation
Wal-Mart Warriors
In my Texas politicking period, I was able to score a couple of underdog victories for statewide office simply by going down the road. Instead of another high-tech, made-for-television campaign, I crisscrossed this far-flung state with high-touch populist politics, visiting with folks in just about every place that has a ZIP code.
By getting out to where the workaday people actually were--in chat & chew cafes and inner-city churches, union halls and community colleges, kitchens and bars--not only did I gain support but, more important, I learned what ordinary people were doing and thinking, and I began to see the possibilities for building progressive majorities.
While most Texans who rallied behind my campaigns would not call themselves progressive, neither were they the bland bunch of corporate conservatives, compliant workers and contented consumers pictured by the pundits and consultants. At their core, I found grassroots Texans to be anti-establishment mavericks--and a whole lot more savvy, activist, progressive and politically exciting than the Powers That Be could ever imagine.
Since those days, I've continued going down the road, working with grassroots groups all across our country--and absorbing the phenomenal energy and rebellious spirit that is steadily spreading across our land, albeit mostly beneath the radar of the cognoscenti holed up in the power centers. Trying to judge America's political possibilities by focusing on the dismal waltz of the dead in Washington is like a cat watching the wrong mousehole. Our future is out here, where we can build on the work of hundreds of thousands of unsung people who daily are taking on the corporate greedheads and political boneheads. These people are lighting prairie fires of rebellion against the way things are, and from them, we can learn how to put progress back in progressive.
Winning Against Wal-Mart
I've learned that progress crops up in unexpected places, such as in hard-core conservative Arizona. I recently traveled there for a meeting of Local 99 of the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW), where I met a scrappy and happy group of veterans from the Wal-Mart wars. They've been forging alliances with local businesses, neighborhood groups and just plain folks, and in the past three years these coalitions have stunned the company by stopping ten new Wal-Mart stores.
Why single out Wal-Mart? Because it's a hog. Despite the homespun image it cultivates in its ads, it operates with an arrogance and avarice that would make Enron blush and John D. Rockefeller envious. It's the world's biggest retail corporation and America's largest private employer; Sam Robson Walton, a member of the ruling family, is one of the richest people on earth.
Wal-Mart and the Waltons got to the top the old-fashioned way: by roughing people up. Their low, low prices are the product of two ruthless commandments: Extract the last penny possible from human toil and squeeze the last dime from its thousands of suppliers, who are left with no profit margin unless they adopt the Wal-Mart model of using nonunion labor and shipping production to low-wage hellholes abroad.
Wal-Mart always expects to get its way, whether confronting suppliers, competitors, workers, governments--or the people of Glendale, Arizona. A developer in this middle-class suburb of Phoenix had announced plans to build a neighborhood shopping center, promising it would be a visual oasis. The City Council OK'd the plan and all was well--until word got out that the real occupier of this oasis was to be Wal-Mart. Indeed, Wal-Mart on steroids: a round-the-clock SuperCenter bigger than four football fields. It would crush neighborhood businesses and supplant good local jobs, remaking another community in Wal-Mart's image. Except that Kathleen Lewis and Bill McDonough stood up.
Bill, who was president of Local 99, already had some victories against Wal-Mart, and knowing that the company would resort to union-baiting, he reached out for allies in the larger community. One who reached back was Lewis, whose Headlines Styling & Barbering Service became the headquarters of the neighborhood rebellion against the invading hog. Around kitchen tables, she and other mad-as-hellers organized a citizens' group that dared to challenge the mighty Wal-Mart. Few of these middle-class folks had ever thought of themselves as rebels, but the realization that a global behemoth could bull into their lives without so much as a pretty-please ignited the latent American radicalism within them.
The fight was on. The City Council, deceived by the developers, withdrew its approval of the zoning for the shopping center. The Wal-Mart side, squawking like stuck pigs, launched a citywide referendum on the project, dumping hundreds of thousands of dollars into it. Against this, Lewis's group spent a whopping $8,600 running their kitchen-table campaign. UFCW, operating separately, went door-to-door, engaging thousands of families.
Finally came the vote. The turnout was more than double that in the previous election, and by a resounding 60-40, Glendalers refused to be Wal-Marted.
The significance is not that one Arizona SuperCenter was defeated--or even sixteen--but that regular people like Kathleen Lewis and her citizens' crew are finding that the Wal-Martization of our society and culture is not inevitable, and that they share some common ground with organized labor. Like dozens of other Wal-Mart wars (www.walmartyrs.org and www.walmartwatch.com), the Arizona phenomenon represents an incremental rise in a simmering grassroots rebellion by America's middle class against the corporate order. "We did what had to be done," said Lewis. For labor, UFCW is showing that it can turn up the heat on the biggest of the big, energize its own middle-class members, forge winning coalitions--and begin to realize its own strength. As Bill McDonough put it after the Glendale victory, "When we prevail, it demonstrates that it can be done. Local 99 is a core army of 16,000 members, with reserves ten times that or more if we use the people close to us to help. The same tactic should be employed across the nation. When and if that happens, you'd be talking about an army of 150 million."
© 2002 The Nation Company, L.P.
