Nobel Peace Prize Awarded to Three Activist Women

World

Nobel Peace Prize Awarded to Three Activist Women

Left: Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times; center: Jane Hahn for the New York Times; right:Yahya Arhab/EPA

Left, Leymah Gbowee in September; center: Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the Liberian president, on Friday; right: Tawakul Karman in Sana, Yemen, on Friday.

By ALAN COWELL, LAURA KASINOF and ADAM NOSSITER

Published: October 7, 2011

LONDON — The Nobel Peace Prize for 2011 was awarded on Friday to three women from Africa and the Arab world in acknowledgment of their nonviolent role in promoting peace, democracy and gender equality. The winners were President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia — the first woman to be elected president in modern Africa — her compatriot, the peace activist Leymah Gbowee, and Tawakkol Karman of Yemen, a pro-democracy campaigner.

They were the first women to win the prize since Wangari Maathai of Kenya, who died last month, was named as the laureate in 2004.

Most of the recipients in the award’s 110-year history have been men, and Friday’s decision seemed designed to give impetus to the fight for women’s rights around the world.

“We cannot achieve democracy and lasting peace in the world unless women obtain the same opportunities as men to influence developments at all levels of society,” said the citation read by Thorbjorn Jagland, a former Norwegian prime minister who heads the Oslo-based Nobel committee that chooses the winner of the $1.5 million prize.

In a subsequent interview, he described the prize as “a very important signal to women all over the world.”

Sitting inside her blue tent at the antigovernment sit-in where she has lived since late February, Ms. Karman, the Yemeni human rights activist, said “I didn’t expect it,” her eyes growing wide, a red flowered veil around her head. “It came as a total surprise.”

Ms. Karman, 32, a mother of three, took to the streets of the capital along with about 50 other university students in January, demanding the resignation of President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

“This is a victory for Arabs around the world,” she said of the prize, adding “and a victory for Arab women.”

In Liberia, Mrs. Johnson Sirleaf, said she and Ms. Gbowee accepted “this honor on behalf of the Liberian people, and the credit goes to them.”

“For we are now going into our ninth year of peace, and every Liberian has contributed to it,” she said. “We particularly give this credit to Liberian women, who have consistently led the struggle for peace, even under conditions of neglect.”

Mrs. Johnson Sirleaf is nearing the end of a heated re-election campaign, and as the world absorbed the news of her prize, her nation’s capital, Monrovia, was virtually shut down by a previously scheduled rally intended to energize the opposition before the vote on Tuesday.

Mr. Jagland said the election had not influenced the committee’s decision, calling the ballot there a “domestic consideration.” Analysts in Liberia have described the president’s re-election prospects as uncertain, though the Nobel announcement could change that. The Nobel committee’s decision underscored the gap between local perceptions of her — it is not hard to find critics of the president in Liberia — and the view from abroad.

Indeed, while Liberians widely acknowledge that peace and security have improved markedly during her tenure, Mrs. Johnson Sirleaf’s success in securing forgiveness for billions of dollars worth of Liberian debt and the change she has effected in the nation’s once brutal international image are often less appreciated in Monrovia than among outsiders. Unemployment is daunting, and the country is still mired in poverty.

But some residents took obvious pride in the decision and as the prize was announced, Bushuben Keita, a spokesman for Mrs. Johnson Sirleaf’s Unity Party, declared: “We are dancing. This is the thing that we have been saying: progress has been made in Liberia. We’ve come through 14 years of war, and we have come to sustained peace.

“This is proof that she has been doing well; there’s no cheating in this, this comes from other people. She’s doing very, very well. Her progress has been confirmed by the international community.”

In Yemen, Ms. Karman called the prize “the victory of our peaceful revolution. I am so happy, and I give this award to all of the youth and all of the women across the Arab world, in Egypt, in Tunisia.”

“We cannot build our country or any country in the world without peace,” she said.

In an op-ed piece published in The New York Times on June 18, Ms. Karman, whose first name in Arabic has been spelled as both Tawakkol and Tawakul, implored the United States to stop supporting President Saleh’s regime, which she characterized as a corrupt failure. Mr. Saleh has portrayed himself as indispensable to the American effort to eliminate Al Qaeda operatives that have based themselves in Yemen.

“We understand America’s concerns about terrorism and recognize your right to attack terrorist sanctuaries,” she wrote. “We have no objection to agreements that protect your security interests. We only ask that you respect international standards on human rights and the Yemeni people’s rights to freedom and justice.”

In Egypt, several activists who had been rumored to be in contention for the prize for their roles in the Egyptian revolution — the Google executive Wael Ghonim, the online organizer Esraa Abdel Fatah and the members of the April 6 Youth Movement — expressed pride that a young Arab had won the Nobel.

They declared that the true prize they sought was the fruition of the Egyptian revolution in the development of democracy in Egypt and the region. “We will work hard even if we didn’t get the Nobel prize,” Waleed Rashed, a spokesman for the April 6 group, said in an Internet posting.

More than 250 people were nominated for the prize this year, and there had been speculation that the committee would reward bloggers or other activists from the Middle East who used social networking sites and other Internet platforms as they challenged entrenched dictatorships, particularly in Tunisia and Egypt.

But if the committee had singled out the Arab Spring, it could have courted criticism that, far from rewarding efforts toward peace, it had chosen a phenomenon whose final outcome in Egypt and Tunisia is far from clear, and which has provoked bloodletting and strife in Libya, Syria, Yemen and Bahrain.

Mr. Jagland said the 2011 prize recognized those “who were there long before the world’s media was there reporting.”

The announcement in the Norwegian capital followed intense speculation that the prize would be awarded variously to a figure from the Arab Spring, the European Union or exclusively to Mrs. Johnson Sirleaf, 72, a Harvard-educated economist, who has often been cast as a pioneer in African politics.

In a recent interview with the Paris-based monthly magazine The Africa Report, Mrs. Johnson Sirleaf said she did not “want Africa to return to the men’s club” and forecast that women would take over in more African countries.

“It will definitely happen in other countries because many women are now vying for the presidency, which didn’t happen much in the past,” said Mrs. Johnson Sirleaf, who was inaugurated in January 2006.

She was broadly perceived as a reformer and peacemaker when she took office after several years in exile, during which she worked as a World Bank economist.

In Yemen, Ms. Karman has been widely known as a vocal opponent of the pro-American regime of Mr. Saleh since 2007, leading a human rights advocacy group called Women Journalists Without Chains. But it was only earlier this year — before the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt had gained momentum — that her readiness to take to the streets inspired thousands more in Yemen to do the same.

Her brief arrest by the authorities in January incensed many people and is credited by some analysts in Yemen with starting the widespread protests that have convulsed the impoverished land since. Some of her supporters have labeled her “the Mother of Revolution.”

Since then, however, she has become a contentious figure, criticized even by some in the anti-Saleh opposition, and her share in the prize could stir further debate among antigovernment activists.

Among women of Yemen’s Arab neighbors, however, the choice of Ms. Karman was cause for celebration, both for women and Islam. Nadia Mostafa, a professor of international relations at Cairo University, said the prize was endowed with “political significance.”

“Islam has always been associated with radical terrorism, intolerance and more,” she said. “Giving it to a woman and an Islamist? That means a sort of re-evaluation. It means Islam is not against peace, it’s not against women, and Islamists can be women activists, and they can fight for human rights, freedom and democracy.”

In Liberia, Ms. Gbowee, 39, was cited by the Nobel committee for uniting Christian and Muslim women against her country’s warlords. As head of the Women for Peace movement, she was praised for mobilizing women “across ethic and religious dividing lines to bring an end to the long war” that had raged for years in Liberia until its end in 2003 and for ensuring “women’s participation in elections.”

Her organization was founded in 2002 when Ms. Gbowee rallied women to sing and pray to protest fighting in a fish market.

Vaiba Flomo, a women’s right activists who has worked with Ms. Gbowee since 1998, said: “What motivated Leymah was the children she saw dying from starvation; women are getting raped, receiving multiple traumas. People shared with her, made her to come to know these things.” Without such commitment, she said, “half the Liberian youth population will be amputated.”

“It’s good news for the Liberian people,” said Emmanuel Ogbodu, a teacher, standing by the side of the road in the ramshackle seaside capital, referring to Mrs. Johnson Sirleaf. “It’s a good way for peace in Liberia. Since she got in the chair, for me, we are experiencing peace. So I think she deserved it. Through her, peace came.”

Immediate reaction in Monrovia was muted as the news was slow to spread. But some who had heard expressed satisfaction. “I appreciate her highly, very well,” said Kona Ndoma, a civil servant.

“She has done very much for developmental purposes. So now, we go for the second term, please,” said Mr. Ndoma. “She stabilized peace. There is no gunfire at all.”

A woman selling fritters by the side of the road, Christiana Sami, said: “She deserves it, because she has developed the area. She’s done some important things.” A student, Grace Kollie, 18, walking to school, said: “She increased the education system in Liberia. She also carried on good development in the country.”

Forecasts of the winner are rarely accurate. In 2009, the committee stunned Nobel watchers by awarding the prize to President Obama.

Last year’s winner was the Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo — a choice that infuriated the Chinese authorities and led them to take reprisals against Norway. Mr. Liu was not allowed to leave China to receive the prize and was represented on stage at the award ceremony in December by an empty chair.

In the past the prize has not infrequently been split among several recipients, including the 1994 prize shared by the Palestinian Yasser Arafat and the Israelis Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin; the 1978 award to Anwar Sadat of Egypt and Menachem Begin of Israel; and the 1973 prize to Henry A. Kissinger of the United States and Le Duc Tho of North Vietnam.

Alan Cowell reported from London, Laura Kasinof from Sana, Yemen, and Adam Nossiter from Monrovia, Liberia. Reporting was contributed by Heba Afify from Cairo and Anthony Shadid from Istanbul, Turkey.

October 2, 2011 at 08:38:44

Why Democrats must embrace Occupy Wall Street

By Cliff Weathers (about the author)

Occupy Wall Street advertisement by public

Unless you live in a cave or watch Fox News (not that the two are mutually exclusive) you're likely beginning to hear about Occupy Wall Street, a movement opposed to the negative influence corporations and the wealthiest one percent have over American politics.

Occupy Wall Street recognizes the lack of legal repercussions over the global financial crisis and seeks to draw public attention to this. It was inspired by the Arab Spring movement, particularly the protests in Cairo's Tahrir Square which resulted in the 2011 Egyptian Revolution.

The aim of the demonstration is to begin a sustained occupation of Wall Street and to draw attention to the misdeeds of the banking industry and to call for structural economic reforms. Organizers intend for the occupation to last "as long as it takes to meet our demands."

When Occupy Wall Street began on September 17, scant attention was paid to it by the mainstream, corporate media. The major networks, cable news networks, and newspapers treated it as an afterthought, if at all. CurrentTV host Keith Olbermann was critical of his colleagues in the mainstream media:

Why isn't any major news outlet covering this? ... If that's a Tea Party protest in front of Wall Street ..., it's the lead story on every network newscast.

It was not until brutal and questionable actions by the New York City Police Department against non-violent demonstrators, such as the use of pepper spray on those already corralled into "kettles," that there has been some broad media recognition of Occupy Wall Street.

Yet, the media hasn't quite acknowledged its rationale. After the late-2007-2009 recession left many countries on the edge of financial collapse, a Canadian-based activist group called the Adbusters Media Foundation began to mull over the concept of a peaceful occupation of Wall Street to protest the financial and political status quo and the failure of the U.S. government to create effective change in the ongoing global financial crisis.

In Summer 2011, the organization took action. As a senior editor of the Adbusters magazine recalls:

[They] basically floated the idea in mid July into our [email list] and it was spontaneously taken up by all the people of the world, it just kind of snowballed from there.

Although Occupy Wall Street was proposed by Adbusters, the demonstration is mostly leaderless. Hacktivists from Anonymous encouraged its followers to take part in the protest, which increased the attention it received. Other groups followed, including the NYC General Assembly and U.S. Day of Rage.

The protest was coordinated with similar events throughout the United States and as of September 27, the Occupy Wall Street site reported that "52 cities were occupied or organizing" including Boston, San Francisco, and Chicago, and these efforts have been coordinated by OccupyTogether.org.

Because the movement had no central leadership, the demands of Occupy Wall Street were initially nebulous, but soon gelled enough to call for President Barack Obama to establish a commission tasked with ending the influence corporate money has over our representation in Washington.

More demands are forthcoming, yet the basic message is that Wall Street is teeming with criminality and unfettered political dominance by dispatching hordes of lobbyists and showering our political leaders with contributions and favors. And it is this control that allows the the one percent to demand the ongoing servitude and suffering for the remaining 99 percent; people who are losing access to good jobs, decent health care, and their social safety nets. Meanwhile the one percent feasts on government welfare for itself and sucks dry our nation's collective wealth.

There has been a groundswell of support for Occupy Wall Street from educator and author Cornell West, filmmaker Michael Moore, actress Susan Sarandon, media mogul Russell Simmons, and writers Noam Chomsky and Naomi Klein among others.

Klein's is notably articulate in her support and damning of the movement's naysayers:

This is not the time to be looking for ways to dismiss a nascent movement against the power of capital, but to do the opposite: to find ways to embrace it, support it and help it grow into its enormous potential. With so much at stake, cynicism is a luxury we simply cannot afford.

West has addressed the dismissal of Occupy Wall Street by critics who claim it has no clear or unifying message:

It's impossible to translate the issue of the greed of Wall Street into one demand, or two demands. We're talking about a democratic awakening...you're talking about raising political consciousness so it spills over all parts of the country, so people can begin to see what's going on through a set of different lens, and then you begin to highlight what the more detailed demands would be. Because in the end we're really talking about what Martin King would call a revolution: A transfer of power from oligarchs to everyday people of all colors. And that is a step by step process.

Despite getting kudos from Klein and West for its raw, youthful energy, Occupy Wall Street needs to tidy up its act. Ultimately, the footage the public sees on the news is that of bedraggled kids with torn jeans and oversize t-shirts emblazoned with marker-etched slogans blocking traffic. Is it no wonder why the media has become keenly focused on the movement's lack of refinement? The protest needs an extreme makeover; it needs its demonstrators to look more like middle America. They need to be seen in blazers and khakis, and it must telegraph the frustration of those in those in their senior and middle years. The public needs to see demonstrators that look like their parents, grandparents, and neighbors. This connection must be established for the movement to succeed.

This is where the Democratic Party comes in. While there have been heroes of financial reform within its ranks, like Eric Schneiderman and Elizabeth Warren, many Democrats--particularly in New York--choose to ignore the suffering and frustrations of their constituents. Unfortunately, other Democrats are even accessories to these derelictions.

Democrats--or at least those still with souls--need to take a stand and support Occupy Wall Street. They need to embrace the movement and not be idle. They must recognize that this is just the beginning of a revolution, and one that should eventually have the support of an overwhelming majority of Americans; I believe it is only a matter of time.

I'm speaking particularly to Democrats in the city and in neighboring counties in Long Island, New Jersey, the Lower Hudson Valley, and Connecticut. I'm speaking to politicians, activists, and committee members. These are the people with the organizational tools, the networks, and the supporters to help this movement along. These are the people that can validate the demonstrations and bring legitimacy to the movement.

If Democrats fail to take to streets, it will be a failure to affirm one of the party's basic tenets, and that is to look out for the well-being of 100 percent Americans--the wealthy, the middle class, and the poor.

Take action -- click here to contact your local newspaper or congress people:
Why the Democrats must embrace Occupy Wall Street

Click here to see the most recent messages sent to congressional reps and local newspapers

A progressive man from South Nyack, NY.

The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author
and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.

Tracking Contractors: Over 1000 Instances of Misconduct

Move Over, FAPIIS--POGO Freshens Up Its Contractor Misconduct Database

By NEIL GORDON

The federal government's largest contractors have paid $25.3 billion in fines and penalties for everything from A to Z: from improper accounting practices to selling the government defective Zylon body armor. These and more than 1,400 other misconduct instances can be found in the Federal Contractor Misconduct Database (FCMD), which has now been updated with fiscal year 2010's top 100 ranking.

The top 100 features 7 new contractors, including international accounting firm Deloitte LLP, package delivery company United Parcel Service (UPS), and linguistic services provider Mission Essential Personnel. The FCMD now includes misconduct information on 160 of the federal government’s largest suppliers of goods and services.

The top 100 contractors received $276 billion in contracts last fiscal year, accounting for slightly more than half of the $536 billion in contracts awarded that year. As of today, these 100 contractors have accumulated 821 misconduct instances. Thirty-eight of the top 100 have zero or one instance, a reminder that misconduct need not be accepted as a cost of doing business with the federal government.

As has occurred in the past, the USAspending.gov data on which the top 100 ranking is based contains errors. Therefore, you will see double listings for Booz Allen Hamilton, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman.

Among the instances you will find in the FCMD:

• A Department of Defense Inspector General finding that Boeing overcharged the Army by about $13 million (131.5 percent) for spare helicopter parts.


• A DoD Inspector General audit report issued 4 months later that found United Technologies’ Sikorsky Aircraft unit overcharged the U.S. Army by as much as $12 million for Blackhawk helicopter spare parts.


• BP’s agreement to provide $1 billion to begin restoration efforts following last year’s massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.


• The assault plea of a former DynCorp employee who stabbed a man in Afghanistan in November 2010.


• FedEx’s agreement to pay the United States $8 million to resolve allegations of overcharging federal agencies for package deliveries.


• The $4 million settlement of claims that Fluor employees defrauded the federal purchase card (“P-card”) program at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Nuclear Site.


• Honeywell International’s payment of millions in fines to federal and state authorities for environmental and safety violations at its uranium hexafluoride (UF6) conversion facility in Illinois.


• Humana’s $3.4 million fine for violating Florida’s Medicaid fraud reporting law.


• IBM’s $10 million settlement of Foreign Corrupt Practices Act charges that its Korean and Chinese subsidiaries gave bribes to government officials.


• Corruption charges brought against former SAIC employees alleged to have received kickbacks and overcharged New York City on the CityTime information technology project.

POGO’s FCMD complements the federal government’s contractor responsibility database, the Federal Awardee Performance and Integrity Information System, or FAPIIS. POGO was pleased to discover the recent addition of several new useful features to FAPIIS, which is on its way to becoming an indispensable resource that strengthens accountability over the more than $1 trillion in taxpayer money spent each year on federal contracts and grants.

Neil Gordon is a POGO Investigator.

Understanding Our Weakness … and Moving Forward

SOCIAL POLICY

ORGANIZING FOR SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC JUSTICE

Mike Miller: Understanding Our Weakness … and Moving Forward

Written by Mike Miller

To understate the obvious: our side in the fight for social and economic justice and full democratic participation by all people isn’t doing well. I would like to use the California budget crisis to ask “Why? Why isn’t there a politically serious, no cuts, improve public services, progressive taxation proposal on the table?”

Easily asked; not as easily answered. The roots of the problem go deep.

The last time there was a serious effort to pass a “no-cuts” tax relief and reform proposal was 1975-1977 when the California Tax Reform Association (CTRA), a Sacramento-based and labor-supported public interest organization, and the Citizens Action League (CAL), a coalition of labor, minority, religious, senior, neighborhood and activist organizations, supported Sen. Nick Petris’ SB 154 – the Tax Justice Act.

It provided substantial property tax relief to 80% of homeowners and to renters (very highly priced homes didn’t do so well), and made up lost revenues by a combination of new upper-income tax brackets, mineral extraction taxes, and closure of corporate loopholes. It was vetoed by Governor Jerry Brown. Then-Assembly Speaker Leo McCarthy and the SB 154 coalition got a veto override vote; Senate leader David Roberti and CTRA-CAL couldn’t in the Senate. Proposition 13 became law the next year.

Jump To Now

Recently, a $26 billion deficit loomed because of the housing crisis-precipitated recession. At the same time, wealth concentration and income inequality were growing by leaps and bounds. An SB 154-type package could have made up the early deficit figure of $26 billion with no cuts in, and, indeed, improvements to, programs.

Conservative Republicans in California wanted to eliminate $26 billion of government services as part of their general destroy government strategy. They continue to play variations on Ronald Reagan’s “Get the government off your back” theme.

Democrats wanted to eliminate $13 billion of government services – the “crippled programs syndrome” approach that leads to inadequate public programs. They wanted to pay for the remaining $13 billion with a mix of regressive and mildly progressive taxes.

Yet, according to surveys of Californians, a majority supports Prop. 13 reform and progressive taxes, and is angry at the increasing concentration of wealth, income and power going on in the state and the country.

And, despite the supposed "anti-tax" climate, many local school and other bond and revenue measures are adopted by the voters, even when they require 2/3 approval.

There's a radical disconnect here? How should we understand it? What should we do about it? Why?

It is easy to blame spineless Democrats. But surveys and elections are two different things. Politicians understand that in the absence of mass-based “popular” organizations, money is required to buy mass media, that without mass media it’s difficult to win elections, and that you get money to buy mass media from people who have lots of it. Small donations aren’t sufficient. While politicians may or may not be spineless, they know what it takes to win elections.

Who were Democrats able to seduce (though it does take two to climb into the bed) in their crackpot realism compromise that cut the most vulnerable? Organized labor, particularly most public employee unions. Until labor is willing to disengage from its hand-in-glove relationship with Democratic politicians, and mount, or participate in, mass-based campaigns to push Democrats from the left, this drift to the right will continue.

Who might initiate the effort to pull labor away from its seductress? In 1976, some private sector unions that participated in the CTRA-CAL coalition wanted to preserve corporate loopholes in their particular sector of the economy. Others in the coalition said, “no deal. Either there’s across-the-board elimination of corporate loopholes, or we’re out.” There are no “Others” now to push labor in this way.

We have to look at a second source of our problem: the displacement of vigorous voluntary sector organizations of low-to-middle income and minority communities by the plague of community-based nonprofits, each of which may operate a program of merit but who collectively constitute a layer of co-opted leadership now dependent on a combination of government and foundation funding, making them competitors with one another for pieces of a shrinking pie.

In CAL days, religious congregations, unions, moderate and militant community groups, and various identity-based organizations came together in creative, sometimes tense, lowest significant common denominator coalitions that could — when they agreed — muster the clout to pass significant legislation and wrest significant concessions from corporate power.

We now face this irony: while individual community organizations are more powerful than they were 1974-78, and while some of them are part of state-wide and national “networks,” the sum is less than the parts. Each of the major networks in California — IAF, PICO, Gamaliel, ACCE (heir to ACORN), as well as important “independents” — can point to victories on specific campaigns. None of them seems to have any idea how, or they lack the will, to create majority coalitions that can slow, halt and reverse growth of the plutocracy. They list often-major victories while the experience of most Californians is that the quality of their lives continues to decline.

“The left,” broadly defined, pursues policies, strategies and tactics that may individually be of merit but whose cumulative impact has been to isolate it from the white working class, significant sectors of the very constituencies for whom it seeks and claims to speak, and middle-class “Anglo” moderates.

With no apparent place to go, the former drop out or support people and organizations ranging from George Wallace to The Tea Party. In the black community, the division between the people who go to church and the people who hang out on the street is far deeper than in the days of multi-class ghettos. Parallel divisions exist among Latinos, elderly, disabled, youth and other groups.

The political result in California is that centrist Democratic governors and legislative leaders made alliances with moderate Republicans to create legislative majorities, boxing progressives in and isolating them — despite majority public support for their economic policies.

Meanwhile, corporate power and individual wealth got off scot-free. It is easy to say they use “divide and conquer” strategies or have limitless money at their disposal. Both are true. But they are givens – the complaints of observers, not those who would make and change history.

What Is To Be Done: Two Steps Backward In Order To Move Forward

A new majority constituency position has to be defined by a group of leaders representing important labor, minority, senior, disabled, student, small business, professional and other significant groups in the state. They have to take this position deeply into the rank-and-file of their respective organizations. In many of these organizations this means getting beyond the usual activist core that speaks for others but fails to engage and involve them. Such a group, program and approach can stake out a moral claim that allows them to speak for the best of our religious and small “d” democratic traditions.

That position has to benefit 70% of Californians in its policy impact, avoiding, for example, the division over tuition increases in state institutions of higher education where middle-class households pay more so children of lower-middle class, working class and low-income households can receive student aid. This position must restore a steeply progressive income tax at high income levels, adopt and increase mineral extraction taxes, close corporate loopholes, and split the property tax between commercial/industrial and residential property and otherwise revise Proposition 13.

A campaign for this policy should be viewed as a three-to-five year effort so that local campaign committees can be built in most state assembly and senate districts, aimed at creating a veto-proof legislature in 2014 or 2016. It should target the legislature so that politicians who support it can be rewarded and opponents can be punished.

The local campaign committees should be non-partisan, but consciously seek to develop visible spokespersons who could be primary challengers against a negative legislator, principally in Democratic Party primaries, but also supporting the few moderate Republicans left, and perhaps in some circumstances supporting a third party candidate. The campaign should be kicked off by massive public rallies or mass meetings held throughout the state so a credible threat can be made to boycott corporations that threaten to move out of California because of the policy’s tax consequences for them.

Underneath the umbrella of the statewide campaign, a door-to-door canvass should be initiated that combines fund-raising, political pressure on legislators and education with a canvass-organizing effort to build new individual- membership, dues-paying, neighborhood and small town level clubs that have a life of their own. The clubs would use political participation, direct action and mutual aid to pursue a multi-issue agenda. They would define a program of public service improvements they want in their districts. The canvass-organizer who was their original organizer would shift to being their organizer whose salary and benefits are paid by their dues and such grass-roots fundraisers as raffles. Imagine a relatively small neighborhood of 10-20,000 with a club of 500 members who pay $100 a year in dues. The club has social, cultural, educational, mutual aid (time dollars, buying clubs, pooled baby-sitting, etc), direct action, lobbying and electoral activities as parts of its community-building activities.

CAL created a unit of experienced canvassers and added an organizing component to their job. While canvassing, they asked people if they would be interested in coming to a house meeting to discuss what they could do to help the campaign. They also assessed responses, and tried to discover who knew whom, and who respected whom on the block. When they thought they had a potential leader, they asked that person to convene the house meeting, and gave her the list of interested people in the immediate neighborhood. Canvassers raised "quota" (the fundraising goal) in three, instead of the usual five, days. In the remaining two days, they organized the house meetings, helping leaders create the agenda, and training them to conduct a small house meeting (a dozen-to-25 people). The level of participation that was generated staggered CAL's canvassers and leadership. The anger was waiting to be tapped. (The only similar energy I've seen since are the responses in the Latino community to immigration rights battles and the responses of public employees and their allies to Wisconsin's Governor Walker. And, unfortunately, the responses to The Tea Party.)

The feasibility of such an effort was demonstrated in the 1975-76 SB 154 campaign. A contemporary version has to take into account vast differences in today’s political climate. That, in turn, requires initial conversations among the group of leaders to whom I earlier referred.

Putting that group together is like stringing individually distinct beads on a necklace: it’s done one at a time as a result of one-to-one conversations initiated by one or two respected people who are willing to step up to see if this can be done. The conversations are framed in an “If…then” manner: “If a dozen-or-so key leaders in California are willing to meet to discuss how to make this campaign happen, would you be willing to be one of them?”

If no critical mass, no forward movement. And if no forward movement, we will continue to move backward.

Mike Miller directs the San Francisco-based ORGANIZE Training Center. He was a founder and chairperson of the Citizens Action League (CAL).

Adapted from a shorter article with the same title that appeared in Beyond Chron: The Voice of the Rest. San Francisco’s Alternative On-line quarterly.

Bringing it All Back Home: An Example of How Open Government Tools Can Affect Everyday People and Public Policy

Bringing it All Back Home: An Example of How Open Government Tools Can Affect Everyday People and Public Policy

By DANIELLE BRIAN

It recently struck me that open government advocates are a pretty weird group. Last week was a big week for our community. Eight countries, including the United States, made formal written commitments to pursue the National Action Plans they each unveiled in the days leading up to the United Nations General Assembly in New York. Since then, 38 other countries have agreed to join them. But when I returned to DC from the NYC fanfare, it struck me that really only supernerds (like me) get excited about the abstract concept of open government. It isn’t tangible and evocative like a baby seal or a pink shirt-wearing woman with a bald head. It struck me that maybe I should take some time to try and tie that abstract concept to our everyday lives.

One recent compelling example of the power and importance of access to government records is the “Drilling Down” series by The New York Times. That series has raised new questions about natural gas drilling, which is expanding across the country and, specifically about hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” which is driving this drilling boom. Fracking has taken the mid-Atlantic states by storm—covering Pennsylvania, West Virginia and soon New York with drills creating natural gas wells that pock the states in numbers normally seen only in Louisiana and offshore.

The series has provided, among other things, new evidence that there may be a greater impact to underground aquifers and drinking water from fracking than had previously been acknowledged. Last year, ExxonMobil’s CEO asserted in congressional testimony that “There have been over a million wells hydraulically fractured in the history of the industry and there is not one, not one, reported case of a freshwater aquifer having ever been contaminated from hydraulic fracturing. Not one.” Without access to government information, and the serious investigative journalism of The New York Times, that might have been the end of the story.

It should come as no surprise that once the series started—the oil and gas industry wasn’t happy and began to fight back. Lobbyists were all over Capitol Hill (our friends on the Hill were telling us all about it) trying to challenge the paper’s motivations, sourcing and anything else they could think of to undermine series.

The Keystone of the Investigation

Here's where the open government part comes in. Not only did the reporter, Ian Urbina, develop sources both inside and outside the federal and state government agencies regulating fracking, he also relied heavily on documents, often obtained through open record laws, to prove what he was learning and disprove that definitive congressional testimony. We at POGO understand the necessity of having those inside sources—or whistleblowers—to help guide investigators through the arcana of government regulation. However, it is the documentary evidence, especially when working with anonymous sources (and we believe they should almost always remain anonymous else they risk suffering the wrath of an unforgiving bureaucracy) that makes for a compelling and irrefutable investigation.

So, even though the series quoted various people challenging the Exxon CEO’s statement to Congress, it was the documents that overcame industry’s efforts to discredit criticism of fracking. For instance, Urbina used the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to uncover a 1987 Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) report that documented a case where “…fractures were created allowing migration of fracture fluid from the gas well to Mr. Parson’s water well… This fracture fluid, along with natural gas was present in Mr. Parson’s water, rendering it unusable.”

Perhaps even more significant was that there were other incidents that were not available for review by government reviewers because they were sealed in legal settlements—an enormous impediment to conducting oversight.[1] This information could have helped EPA officials determine whether the incident at the Parsons well represented an anomaly or was part of a pattern.

“Very often damage claims against oil and gas operators are settled out of court, and information on known damage cases has often been sealed through agreements between landowners and oil companies,” the EPA wrote. “This is typical practice, for instance, in Texas. In some cases, the records of well-publicized damage incidents are almost entirely unavailable for review. In addition to concealing the nature and size of any settlement entered into by the parties, impoundment curtails access to scientific and administrative documentation of the incident.”

One of the strengths of the NYT’s series was not only the journalism itself, but also the fact that the paper provided an online “document reader.” Readers could go through thousands of pages of documents for themselves and see that the documents were collected through a variety of means: FOIA, press releases, state open records laws, good old-fashioned gumshoe searching through local government records, and leaks from insiders. Together, this mosaic of documents revealed a different story from what was being said publicly by industry and its largely weak-kneed government regulators.

Public Policy Impact

Despite the industry’s best efforts to derail the momentum for public policy change because of the series, those documents were like kryptonite. This use of open government tools had a real impact: The EPA stepped up scrutiny of Pennsylvania rivers for radioactivity (happily their first results were “at or below” safe levels—but as the NYT emphasized, ongoing monitoring is the key).

The EPA also joined the state of Pennsylvania to push drinking water facilities and waste treatment plants to more aggressively monitor for radioactivity the wastewater and biosolid sludge they were processing from fracking operations.

Internal emails leaked from the Energy Information Administration (EIA) proved to be perhaps the most controversial part of the series. Those emails revealed that a number of industry and government officials raised serious concerns about the “irrational exuberance” with which the oil and gas industry was suggesting how long gas wells can continue producing and how much money investors could make on these types of wells. One insider predicted an “Enron moment.”

Industry and its defenders argued that because the original stories used redacted versions of those emails in order to protect sources, they were unfairly misrepresenting the whole story.

However, once the NYT’s FOIA request for the emails was honored and the paper put the unredacted versions online, readers could judge for themselves. I agree with the NYT Public Editor that an intern probably should not have been described as “one official” as the NYT article did in one reference. However, as the NYT later explained, to protect anonymity of one of their sources, it was necessary to avoid any mention of that source having been a former intern. That decision in no way undermined the legitimacy of the story, and in the end, the NYT’s publishing of the unredacted documents effectively silenced doubts about the validity of the paper’s findings. Again, public policy was affected by the power of the information revealed in the series.

The Securities and Exchange Commission and the New York Attorney General’s office have also both subpoenaed oil and gas companies to determine whether they had been misleading potential investors.

And that is the whole point of open government. Access to information is what allows us to ensure the government is doing its job protecting public health and safety—from our drinking water to our investments. Maybe fracking is worth the risk. And if that’s true, shouldn’t the oil and gas industry want all records to be released to prove that point and defend themselves against unfair accusations? Whatever public policy issues are important to you, being able to access the information contained inside our government bodies is an essential part of our democracy.

Danielle Brian is POGO's Executive Director.

Image via Flickr user MFA of RM.

---

[1] This is a practice that should never occur. Government investigators should always be able to look at these sealed records to determine if there is a pattern of misconduct or a threat to public health and safety that is being shielded by legal settlements. This is an area where open government advocates still have our work cut out for us. (back up to the piece)

Posted at 02:36 PM in Energy & Environment, Financial Oversight, Open Government | Permalink

Bringing it All Back Home: An Example of How Open Government Tools Can Affect Everyday People and Public Policy

Bringing it All Back Home: An Example of How Open Government Tools Can Affect Everyday People and Public Policy

By DANIELLE BRIAN

It recently struck me that open government advocates are a pretty weird group. Last week was a big week for our community. Eight countries, including the United States, made formal written commitments to pursue the National Action Plans they each unveiled in the days leading up to the United Nations General Assembly in New York. Since then, 38 other countries have agreed to join them. But when I returned to DC from the NYC fanfare, it struck me that really only supernerds (like me) get excited about the abstract concept of open government. It isn’t tangible and evocative like a baby seal or a pink shirt-wearing woman with a bald head. It struck me that maybe I should take some time to try and tie that abstract concept to our everyday lives.

One recent compelling example of the power and importance of access to government records is the “Drilling Down” series by The New York Times. That series has raised new questions about natural gas drilling, which is expanding across the country and, specifically about hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” which is driving this drilling boom. Fracking has taken the mid-Atlantic states by storm—covering Pennsylvania, West Virginia and soon New York with drills creating natural gas wells that pock the states in numbers normally seen only in Louisiana and offshore.

The series has provided, among other things, new evidence that there may be a greater impact to underground aquifers and drinking water from fracking than had previously been acknowledged. Last year, ExxonMobil’s CEO asserted in congressional testimony that “There have been over a million wells hydraulically fractured in the history of the industry and there is not one, not one, reported case of a freshwater aquifer having ever been contaminated from hydraulic fracturing. Not one.” Without access to government information, and the serious investigative journalism of The New York Times, that might have been the end of the story.

It should come as no surprise that once the series started—the oil and gas industry wasn’t happy and began to fight back. Lobbyists were all over Capitol Hill (our friends on the Hill were telling us all about it) trying to challenge the paper’s motivations, sourcing and anything else they could think of to undermine series.

The Keystone of the Investigation

Here's where the open government part comes in. Not only did the reporter, Ian Urbina, develop sources both inside and outside the federal and state government agencies regulating fracking, he also relied heavily on documents, often obtained through open record laws, to prove what he was learning and disprove that definitive congressional testimony. We at POGO understand the necessity of having those inside sources—or whistleblowers—to help guide investigators through the arcana of government regulation. However, it is the documentary evidence, especially when working with anonymous sources (and we believe they should almost always remain anonymous else they risk suffering the wrath of an unforgiving bureaucracy) that makes for a compelling and irrefutable investigation.

So, even though the series quoted various people challenging the Exxon CEO’s statement to Congress, it was the documents that overcame industry’s efforts to discredit criticism of fracking. For instance, Urbina used the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to uncover a 1987 Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) report that documented a case where “…fractures were created allowing migration of fracture fluid from the gas well to Mr. Parson’s water well… This fracture fluid, along with natural gas was present in Mr. Parson’s water, rendering it unusable.”

Perhaps even more significant was that there were other incidents that were not available for review by government reviewers because they were sealed in legal settlements—an enormous impediment to conducting oversight.[1] This information could have helped EPA officials determine whether the incident at the Parsons well represented an anomaly or was part of a pattern.

“Very often damage claims against oil and gas operators are settled out of court, and information on known damage cases has often been sealed through agreements between landowners and oil companies,” the EPA wrote. “This is typical practice, for instance, in Texas. In some cases, the records of well-publicized damage incidents are almost entirely unavailable for review. In addition to concealing the nature and size of any settlement entered into by the parties, impoundment curtails access to scientific and administrative documentation of the incident.”

One of the strengths of the NYT’s series was not only the journalism itself, but also the fact that the paper provided an online “document reader.” Readers could go through thousands of pages of documents for themselves and see that the documents were collected through a variety of means: FOIA, press releases, state open records laws, good old-fashioned gumshoe searching through local government records, and leaks from insiders. Together, this mosaic of documents revealed a different story from what was being said publicly by industry and its largely weak-kneed government regulators.

Public Policy Impact

Despite the industry’s best efforts to derail the momentum for public policy change because of the series, those documents were like kryptonite. This use of open government tools had a real impact: The EPA stepped up scrutiny of Pennsylvania rivers for radioactivity (happily their first results were “at or below” safe levels—but as the NYT emphasized, ongoing monitoring is the key).

The EPA also joined the state of Pennsylvania to push drinking water facilities and waste treatment plants to more aggressively monitor for radioactivity the wastewater and biosolid sludge they were processing from fracking operations.

Internal emails leaked from the Energy Information Administration (EIA) proved to be perhaps the most controversial part of the series. Those emails revealed that a number of industry and government officials raised serious concerns about the “irrational exuberance” with which the oil and gas industry was suggesting how long gas wells can continue producing and how much money investors could make on these types of wells. One insider predicted an “Enron moment.”

Industry and its defenders argued that because the original stories used redacted versions of those emails in order to protect sources, they were unfairly misrepresenting the whole story.

However, once the NYT’s FOIA request for the emails was honored and the paper put the unredacted versions online, readers could judge for themselves. I agree with the NYT Public Editor that an intern probably should not have been described as “one official” as the NYT article did in one reference. However, as the NYT later explained, to protect anonymity of one of their sources, it was necessary to avoid any mention of that source having been a former intern. That decision in no way undermined the legitimacy of the story, and in the end, the NYT’s publishing of the unredacted documents effectively silenced doubts about the validity of the paper’s findings. Again, public policy was affected by the power of the information revealed in the series.

The Securities and Exchange Commission and the New York Attorney General’s office have also both subpoenaed oil and gas companies to determine whether they had been misleading potential investors.

And that is the whole point of open government. Access to information is what allows us to ensure the government is doing its job protecting public health and safety—from our drinking water to our investments. Maybe fracking is worth the risk. And if that’s true, shouldn’t the oil and gas industry want all records to be released to prove that point and defend themselves against unfair accusations? Whatever public policy issues are important to you, being able to access the information contained inside our government bodies is an essential part of our democracy.

Danielle Brian is POGO's Executive Director.

Image via Flickr user MFA of RM.

---

[1] This is a practice that should never occur. Government investigators should always be able to look at these sealed records to determine if there is a pattern of misconduct or a threat to public health and safety that is being shielded by legal settlements. This is an area where open government advocates still have our work cut out for us. (back up to the piece)

Posted at 02:36 PM in Energy & Environment, Financial Oversight, Open Government | Permalink

Occupy Wall Street: FAQ for those still confused

Occupy Wall Street: FAQ

Nathan Schneider

September 30, 2011

Q: I hear that Adbusters organized Occupy Wall Street? Or Anonymous? Or US Day of Rage? Just who put this together anyway?
 
A: All of the above, and more. Adbusters made the initial call in mid-July, and also produced a very sexy poster with a ballerina posed atop the Charging Bull statue and riot police in the background. US Day of Rage, the mainly internet-based creation of IT strategist Alexa O’Brien, got involved too and did a lot of the early legwork and tweeting. Anonymous—in its various and multiform visages—joined in late August. On the ground in New York, though, most of the planning was done by people involved in the NYC General Assembly, a collection of activists, artists and students first convened by folks who had been involved in New Yorkers Against Budget Cuts. That coalition of students and union workers had just finished a three-week occupation near City Hall called Bloombergville protesting the mayor’s plans for budget cuts and layoffs. They had learned from the experience and were itching to do it again, this time with the hope of having a bigger impact. But no one person or group is running the Wall Street occupation entirely.

So nobody is in charge? How do decisions get made?

The General Assembly has become the de facto decision-making body for the occupation at Liberty Plaza, just a few blocks north of Wall Street. (That was Zuccotti Park’s name before 2006, when the space was rebuilt by Brookfield Properties and renamed after its chairman, John Zuccotti.) Get ready for jargon: the General Assembly is a horizontal, autonomous, leaderless, modified-consensus-based system with roots in anarchist thought, and it’s akin to the assemblies that have been driving recent social movements around the world, in places like Argentina, Egypt’s Tahrir Square, Madrid’s Puerta del Sol and so on. Working toward consensus is really hard, frustrating and slow. But the occupiers are taking their time. When they finally get to consensus on some issue, often after days and days of trying, the feeling is quite incredible. A mighty cheer fills the plaza. It’s hard to describe the experience of being among hundreds of passionate, rebellious, creative people who are all in agreement about something.

Fortunately, though, they don’t need to come to consensus about everything. Working alongside the General Assembly are an ever-growing number of committees and working groups—from Food and Media to Direct Action and Sanitation. Anyone is welcome to join one, and they each do their own thing, working in tacit coordination with the General Assembly as a whole. In the end, the hope is that every individual is empowered to make decisions and act as her or himself, for the good of the group.

What are the demands of the protesters?

Ugh—the zillion-dollar question. Again, the original Adbusters call asked, “What is our one demand?” Technically, there isn’t one yet. In the weeks leading up to September 17, the NYC General Assembly seemed to be veering away from the language of “demands” in the first place, largely because government institutions are already so shot through with corporate money that making specific demands would be pointless until the movement grew stronger politically. Instead, to begin with, they opted to make their demand the occupation itself—and the direct democracy taking place there—which in turn may or may not come up with some specific demand. When you think about it, this act is actually a pretty powerful statement against the corruption that Wall Street has come to represent. But since thinking is often too much to ask of the American mass media, the question of demands has turned into a massive PR challenge.

The General Assembly is currently in the midst of determining how it will come to consensus about unifying demands. It’s a really messy and interesting discussion. But don’t hold your breath.

Everyone in the plaza comes with their own way of thinking about what they’d like to see happen, of course. Along the north end of the plaza, there’s a collage of hundreds of cardboard signs people have made with slogans and demands on them. Bystanders stop and look at them, transfixed, all day long. The messages are all over the place, to be sure, but there’s also a certain coherence to them. That old standby, “People Before Profits,” seems to capture the gist fairly well. But also under discussion are a variety of other issues, ranging from ending the death penalty, to dismantling the military-industrial complex, to affordable healthcare, to more welcoming immigration policies. And more. It can be confusing, but then again these issues are all at some level interconnected.

Some news reports have been painting the protesters as unfocused, or worse, as hopelessly confused and uninformed. Is there any truth to that?

Sure. In a world as complex as ours, we’re all uninformed about most things, even if we know about a few. I remember a police officer remarking of the protesters on the first or second day, “They think they know everything!” That’s how young people generally are. But in this case, noticing the over-concentration of wealth around Wall Street and its outsized influence in politics does not require a detailed grasp of what a hedge fund does or the current selling price of Apple stock. One thing that distinguishes these protesters is precisely their hope that a better world is possible. I might add that, for many Americans, such nonviolent direct action is the only chance of having a political voice, and it deserves to be taken seriously by those of us in the press.

How many people have responded to the Adbusters call? How large is the group? And how large has it ever been?

The original Adbusters call envisioned 20,000 people flooding the Financial District on September 17. A tenth of that probably ended up being there that day. Despite a massive Anonymous-powered online social media blitz, lots of people simply didn’t know about it, and traditional progressive organizations like labor unions and peace groups were uncomfortable signing on to so amorphous an action. Over the course of a difficult first week, with arrests happening just about every day, new faces kept coming, as others filtered out to take a break. The media coverage after last weekend’s mass arrests and alleged police brutality has brought many more. Now, during the day and into the night, one finds 500 or more people in the plaza, and maybe half that sleeping over. At any given time, several thousand people around the world are watching the occupation’s 24/7 livestream online.

Rather than a mass movement from the outset, this occupation has ended up depending on a relatively small number of highly determined, courageous young activists willing to sleep outside and confront police intimidation. But that is changing. As word spreads about it, the crowd has been getting older, more diverse. Already, though, this tactic of a somewhat rowdy occupation has garnered influence far greater than a traditional march would. After all, 20,000 marched on Wall Street on May 12—protesting bank bailouts and budget cuts for state employees—and who remembers that?

What would a “win” look like for the occupation?

Again, that depends on whom you ask. As September 17 approached, the NYC General Assembly really saw its goal, again, not so much as to pass some piece of legislation or start a revolution as to build a new kind of movement. It wanted to foment similar, like-minded assemblies around the city and around the world, which would be a new basis for political organizing in this country, against the overwhelming influence of corporate money. That is starting to happen, as similar occupations are cropping up in dozens of other cities. Another big occupation has been in the making for months, slated to begin on October 6 at Freedom Plaza in Washington, DC, and the organizers of that have been visiting Liberty Plaza on and off, learning all they can from its successes and mistakes.

I’ve heard some people saying, when Liberty Plaza was swamped with TV news cameras, “We’ve already won!” Others think they’ve hardly begun. Both, in some sense, are true.

Are there cops all over the square? How bad has the police brutality been? If I came there, what are the risks?

The police presence is nonstop, and there have been some very scary encounters with them—which also gave occasion for tremendous acts of courage by protesters. The worst incident was last Saturday, of course, but there has been very little trouble since then. A large contingent of protesters has no intention of getting arrested, and almost nobody is interested in taking pointless risks or instigating violence against people or property. The more that ordinary people join the cause—together with celebrity visitors like Susan Sarandon, Cornel West and Michael Moore—the less likely the police will probably be to try to suppress it. As one sign along Broadway says, “Safety in Numbers! Join Us!”

Nonetheless, challenging the powers that be—and doing so impolitely, outside the bounds of a permit—is never going to be 100 percent safe. To the extent that this movement is effective, it will also carry risks. If you take part, it’s not a bad idea to keep the National Lawyers Guild’s phone number written on your arm, just in case.

If I can’t come to Wall Street, what else can I do?

A lot of people are already taking part in important ways from afar—this is the magic of decentralization. Online, you can watch the livestream, make donations, retweet on Twitter and encourage your friends to get interested. People with relevant skills have been volunteering to help maintain the movement’s websites and edit video—coordinating through IRC chat rooms and other social media. Soon, the formal discussions about demands will be happening online as well as in the plaza. Offline, you can join the numerous similar occupations that are starting up around the country or start your own.

Finally, you can always take the advice that has become one of the several mantras of the movement, expressed this way by one woman at Tuesday night’s General Assembly meeting: “Occupy your own heart,” she said, “not with fear but with love.”

Nathan Schneider

September 29, 2011