Left Field Day at Shea
Join the Socialist Party on Tuesday, September 13 at 7:00 for “Left Field Day at Shea.”
We’ve got a block of seats for the Mets vs. Nationals baseball game, so the New York Mets will welcome the Socialist Party on the scoreboard!
Tickets are only $5, and we’ll all be sitting together way out in the left field upper deck.
Despite a few bad games lately, the Mets are in a wild card race, so the game itself should be exciting, but we’ll also be taking the opportunity to protest the war in Iraq, public money stadium giveaways and corporate sponsorship stadium names.
Bring a sign. Bring a kazoo. Bring your wacky commie newspapers.
To sit with the Socialist Party, get in touch with me ASAP. There are a few tickets left.
The Soul of Street Art
It’s hard to decide which side is more annoying in the recent furor over subway graffiti, art and New York’s bad old days.
On the one side, you have Mark Echo, a former graffiti artist and current clothing designer and mini-mogul. Echo recently held a ‘graffiti party,’ in which a couple dozen artists tagged up a totally fake-looking cardboard facade of a subway car, in a supposed celebration of the street art and hip hop that sprang out of City Hall’s abandonment of black and latino neighborhoods during the fiscal crisis in the 70’s. In reality, Echo is repackaging and commodifying that old youth rebellion in order to relive a bit of his youth and, well, to sell a bunch of clothes and stuff. All youth rebellion eventually gets coopted, but it’s far worse when it is self-inflicted, even if delayed.
On the other side is Mayor Mike, and the city papers’ editorial writers who bray about Mark Echo glorifying New York’s bad old days, as if the graffiti in the 70’s caused the trains to break down, the subway fare to increase, the crime rate to rise, rather than simply bringing some much needed color and vitality to a grey and crumbling city. They sound like the bunch of puritanical middle class elitists that they are.
Today, subways and buses are completely covered by corporate advertisements. Why is this not viewed as ugly vandalism? It’s pervasive and distracting, but it pays the bills, so it’s okay, apparently.
I was riding the 7 train into Manhattan the other day, which I never do (I’m an E, F guy; J if I’m going to Brooklyn), and I was awestruck after 45 Courthouse Rd – just before entering the tunnel. There, for about two city blocks, is a glorious collage of colorful, funny, sad, inventive murals and tags. It’s all over the roof-tops, the sides of buildings, the alley ways and the streets themselves. It’s clearly the product of many competing artists vying for the eyes of 7 train rides. They are courting us, entertaining us, enlightening us. And, best of all, they’re not trying to sell us a fucking thing.
The Column That Never Was
The column that I was hired to write for a certain Queens weekly has been canceled before the first piece was even published. That piece, a critical look at the fall-out from Congressman Greg Meeks’ support for CAFTA, did not appear in this past Thursday’s issue, although an editorial lavishing praise on the Congressman for his championing of banks over people, was featured rather prominently.
I called to find out what happened, and was told the next day that Rep. Meeks had called the newspaper to complain about the previous post that appeared on this blarg. That’s all, she wrote.
The managing editor – who hired me – explained over and over that “integrity” is really important to the paper, and that I had really crossed a line by posting the Congressman’s voicemail message to me, without explaining that I had called him first. Of course, I explained that I hadn’t called him, and that that’s what made his personal phone call to me so noteworthy, and odd. She explained that she hadn’t actually read the piece so much as glanced at it over the shoulder of the publisher, who was livid about the whole affair. (The publisher, it should be noted, was hectoring me about how labor’s position on CAFTA was “illiberal” within seconds of my being hired and explaining my first column.) She also hadn’t read the actual submitted column itself.
Again explaining how “ethics” were so important to this paper, she asked me if I understood their position. I said, well, no, I didn’t, really, since nothing was misrepresented on my website or in the column (neither of which, again, she had read), to which she finally answered something along the lines of “well, I guess you’re just not a good fit for this paper.”
This, finally, was an answer I could accept. This is a paper that does not endorse candidates, that takes no strong positions on controversial matters (aside from that perennial controversy of curbing one’s dog). This is a paper that wants opinion writers who have no strong opinions. That’s me out, comrades.
I hold no ill will towards the paper, although I am annoyed at having been jerked around all summer. I would rather have been rejected from the start, so I could focus my energies on writing for a newspaper that has enough backbone to withstand an angry phone call from an amateurish Congressman, and genuinely wants to drive home to their readers three lanes of political traffic, instead of just the middle of the road.
Meeks and CAFTA: Follow the Money
Gregory Meeks is catching well-deserved heat for his support of the Central American Free Trade Agreement – a NAFTA-style trade deal that narrowly passed in Congress last month. Defeating the bill was the top political objective of organized labor this summer, and Meeks was one of only 15 Democratic congressmen to join with Bush and the Republicans in supporting the bill.
Meeks has enjoyed dependable support from labor – over a quarter of all financial contributions to his 2004 re-election came from unions and his name has appeared on the Working Families ballot line for the last three election cycles – but now there are many in the labor movement demanding that he be cut off from any further support. The Working Families party, and many of the city’s labor unions, will be sending mailings to 75,000 union members who live in Meeks’ district, documenting the damage of CAFTA, while fishing for potential candidates to run against Meeks.
“This isn’t about retribution,” claims Brian McLaughlin, president of the one million-member Central Labor Council, but “voters in Queens didn’t elect Greg Meeks to send American jobs abroad.” New York State has lost over 61,000 jobs to overseas plant relocations since NAFTA, according the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, and studies indicate that the state could lose another 50,000 after CAFTA.
This isn’t about protectionism, either. We now have ten years of NAFTA to study. Those good jobs that left the US did not translate to equivalent jobs in Mexico. Health care and pensions did not follow those jobs, and the pay was low – even by Mexican standards – and there is no reason to expect a different outcome from CAFTA.
No reasonable person opposes free trade as a concept. Our coffee beans, mangos and maple syrup have to come from somewhere, and people around the world deserve the opportunity to work, make money and support their families. But trade bills like NAFTA and CAFTA only raise the corporate bottom line, not human living standards.
Rep. Meeks recognized these flaws when he cast his “yes” vote on July 27. “Despite the fact that CAFTA is by no means a perfect agreement,” he said, “voting it down was not a valid option because it would not subsequently be replaced by a perfect agreement.” Well, no, but voting it down would have handed the Bush administration a strong rebuke and ensured that any future Central American trade deal incorporate more labor and environmental protections.
As much as Rep. Meeks would like to portray his vote on CAFTA as a profile in courage, the truth is that it was very calculated gamesmanship. In a face-to-face meeting with Brian McLaughlin before the vote, Meeks indicated that he was still on the fence but that he would not cast the deciding vote against labor. With a final vote of 217 to 215, he did just that. Why? Call me cynical, but I think the distinguished gentleman looked at his campaign treasury and saw that Big Business contributed over twice as much money as Big Labor.
Meeks’ biggest campaign contributors are banks and financial firms like Prudential and the Bond Market Association, thanks to his seat on the House Financial Services Committee. The Working Families party is calling on House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi to remove Meeks from his committee assignment, saying that he has “used [his] committee membership cards to access corporate America’s ATM at the expense of working families.”
It’s a tough line, but we’ll see how long it lasts. The WFP refuses to rule out endorsing Meeks again in 2006.
Greg Meeks is emblematic of the weakness of labor unions operating within the Democratic party, and the moral bankruptcy of the party itself. How can working people depend on a congressman like Greg Meeks to protect their jobs, homes, health and safety when he takes so many legal cash bribes from investment firms and banks that do not have the interests of working families at heart?
What working families need is a political party that is truly independent of corporate interests. The Working Families party was supposed to be a step in that direction, but it has been far too cautious about running independent campaigns and directly challenging bad Democrats. It’s time for the WFP to prove its mettle.