The muted rumblings in Greece, site of the Athenian Acropolis and birthplace of democracy, precedes the perfect political storm.  Olga Stefan, a 20 year old Greek university student thinks her government is in ..“someway afraid of us.  There are too many of us.”   This simple equation will soon reach critical mass across the industrialized developed world.  The concentration of wealth in the United States has become an obscenity.  The top 4% own outright 55% of the wealth.  This was not accumulated by hard work and savings over time.  This wealth was taken by stealth and force and generated by insider Wall Street stock market access and high speed computer trading in bogus derivatives (Whiskey Tango Foxtrot).  What The Fuck are they?  A tsunami of rage is coming.

The Doors song, “5 to 1” is prophetic.  Jim Morrison was the son of a career Naval officer, a military brat like myself.  The Doors music along with Jimi Hendrix, an Airborne veteran, was the sound track of the GI’s in Viet Nam.  We killed and died as the blood and wealth of the nation was soaked up on foreign ground in Viet Nam.  Martin Luther King Jr., an American hero, said it clearly, “ The Great Society has been shot down on the battlefields of  Viet Nam.”  Today, now as we breathe, our future and our children’s future is being shot down on the battlefields of iraq and Afghanistan.

The American middle class, built out of the GI Bill after WW II and inherited by the sons and daughters of the “Greatest Generation” has been eviscerated by the Wall Street and Pentagon ghouls  in their multinational corporate star chambers.  We are like a snail crawling along the edge of a straight razor, unable to see it and unwilling to drop off.

The so-called wealth generators in their gated communities are beginning to tremble in fear. The wars and the warriors are coming home.  Those of us in the public sector unions, those of us in the working class jobs, those of us who are small business owners, we fought your wars for you and we kept that knowledge.  If we send men off to war, don’t be surprised when they come home talking dirty.  Be careful how you vote.

Dave Ionno
Viet Nam Veteran for Peace against the Wars

Written for the Oakland, California community.

We mourn because a little girl is dead for no reason. We mourn because a little girl is dead for terrible reasons. We mourn for Aiyana Jones, because she is yet another victim of police violence, and because as a community, we want to stand in solidarity with her community and her family – and all those who suffer at the hands of the prison-industrial complex in America.

Aiyana was murdered by the police on May 16, 2010, in Detroit, MI during a no-knock raid on her family’s home. Police threw a flash grenade into the first-floor window, where the little girl lay asleep. After police barged into the home, an alleged confrontation took place between Officer Joseph Weekley and Aiyana’s grandmother, during which it is claimed that Weekley’s gun “accidentally” went off, killing the girl. There is video documentation of what transpired, but there are many conflicting accounts at this time – and more information will undoubtedly be revealed in the near future. The lawyer for Aiyana’s family states that the video taken contradicts the police account of what happened. He states, “What I’m most concerned about is that this videotape demonstrates that police are involved in a cover-up of a child’s killing.” (CBS News) Charles Jones, Aiyana’s father, told reporters that upon rushing into the room where Aiyana was shot, the police forced him to get down on the ground – and he had to put his face in his daughter’s blood.

We do not mourn Aiyana’s death because she was so young and so innocent, though this terrible reality weighs heavy on our hearts. We mourn Aiyana as we mourned Oscar Grant, as we mourned countless individuals whose lives have been ended or forever changed by systemic police violence and the profit-driven prison-industrial complex. So while we do mourn this little girl’s murder, we also acknowledge its connection to the larger whole, which encompasses a racist system of perverted “justice” and social control.

In a sick way, Aiyana’s death represents the intersection of police violence and media spectacle – the raid on her family’s home was filmed as part of a reality television show called “The First 48.” The raid that night was being filmed for media consumption, for entertainment purposes. How disturbing and poignant that the video this film crew recorded of the incident reveals the true brutality of police violence, when its original intent was surely to “document” a dramatized story about police heroics, a story constructed for the American audience to bolster societal beliefs about the role of the police.

Though it is clear that in the coming days and weeks, more terrible facts will most likely be coming to light regarding the circumstances surrounding Aiyana’s murder, what is clear at this point is that the police are not giving an honest account of the incident. This should not be surprising. Acts of police violence are often covered up or depicted as tragic, yet solitary, incidents. By no means should we participate in perpetuating this lie. What happened that night to Aiyana and her family was business as usual when it comes to policing. It happened in Detroit, Michigan, last week – but in 2009 it happened in Oakland, California, and it happens in cities around the country – and the world – all the time.

Officer Weekley is on paid administrative leave at this time, as was Officer Tony Pirone of the BART Police following the murder of Oscar Grant.

Members of the Oakland community will gather at 11 am this Sunday, May 23rd, at Frank Ogawa Plaza in Oakland in a silent vigil to mourn a young life lost, a family shattered, and another victim of systemic police violence.

As a contrast to the deconstruction and dismantling of the public schools and libraries of the city of Hartford we are financing the building of a new school in Senjaray Afghanistan near Kandahar. So we take from our own children, who have no Music, Art or sports and crowded classes, to build in a country, whose people we kill and who don’t want to be like us. The returning veterans and GI’s are telling you what is happening and you refuse to listen. One Iraq veteran has related to me this story. Truck convoys, driven by contractors, have to swipe a card at the gate as they enter. Every swipe pays $40,000 to the company, KBR, Triple Canopy, Dyne Corp, Blackwater(XE). On inspection by the GI’s it was found that half the trucks were empty.   This is only the tip of the iceberg of corruption and waste by the military and defense contractors.

How much of my tax dollar is diverted to this instead of to the city budget? Can any of you find out the answer? It is your fiduciary responsibility to find out. I will assist you with the handouts I have and provide you with the website of Nationalpriorities.org.

Understand one thing. The Wars are coming home everyday. As you sow you shall reap.

Dave Ionno
Veteran for Peace and Viet Nam Veteran against the Wars

Chief Betsy J.S. Hard

Bloomfield Police Department

785 Park Avenue

Bloomfield, CT 06002

Dear Chief Hard,

I believe that I was racially profiled by one of your officers on March 31st. I am challenging you to engage in a public dialogue about racial profiling in particular and police misconduct in general. I was given a flimsy justification for the traffic stop, and when I received my ticket the stated reason for pulling me over was not listed. While I’m not expecting a response, I want you and your department to know that the public is now aware of this incident. As a black male I am all too familiar with the practice of racial profiling by law enforcement. However, I refuse to accept this form of discrimination.

Department of Justice statistics show that the police are three to four times as likely to use force against people of color and search them during traffic stops. Of course, there is also an extensive history of unarmed black males who have been shot and killed by law enforcement officers. Individuals who are familiar with the complaint process have told me that there is next to zero chance of your officer being held accountable, so I have chosen to address this case in the court of public opinion. People of color should not have to feel threatened by an entity which purports to “serve and protect”.

Sincerely,

David Samuels

“You passed me on the right,” said the officer. I demanded to know how I was supposed to make a right hand turn without passing him – should I have stopped in the middle of moving traffic until Officer Friendly drove through the intersection? His response was, “Your marker plates aren’t displayed.” Both my front and rear plates are clearly displayed on my back window and front dashboard – this is a common practice to deter theft of the plates. I have driven both of my vehicles with the plates displayed in this manner for over a decade and the cops haven’t blinked. When I received my ticket, the stated reason that the officer provided for stopping me was not listed. Of course, I will be filing a complaint with the Bloomfield Police ( I won’t hold my breath waiting for justice), but this minor case of harassment has got me thinking about the far more serious abuses of power perpetrated against people of color by law enforcement every day. Blacks are four times as likely to be subjected to the use of force by the cops, Latinos three times. People of color are also much more likely to be searched. Should I just be grateful that I wasn’t added to those grim statistics today? I don’t think so.

While pundits such as Haar pontificate on the issue of job creation then return to their comfortable homes and full refrigerators, single mothers in Hartford are selling their food stamps in order to buy necessities like shoes for their children. The draconian state public assistance program has a term of 21 months, the shortest in the country, and doesn’t allow clients to get back on if they can’t find work or experience some type of financial hardship.

Racial disparities in income and net wealth between people of color and whites continue to widen. The Insight Center for Community Economic Development released a report on disparities in gender wealth to mark International Women’s Day. The report finds that close to 50% of all single black and Latina women have zero or negative wealth. Single women of color possess about $100 of net wealth, while white women average $ 41,000.

Urban community residents aren’t the only ones who are suffering. Qualified job applicants all over Connecticut who have gone into debt due to circumstances such as medical bills are being rejected by employers due to credit background checks. These people have been caught up in a vicious cycle of falling into debt because they can’t find a job and being unable to get hired because they’re in debt.

Representative Matthew Lesser has introduced legislation which would restrict employers from doing credit checks unless they are relevant to the position for which a person is applying. Lesser says that the strongest opposition to his bill, which appears to be a no brainer in terms of helping people get back to work, are unregulated companies who are “making a killing” off of doing credit checks.

The state tax structure continues to be a monument to injustice. The General Assembly imposed slight tax increases on Connecticut’s wealthiest residents last year. The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy finds that 20% of non elderly taxpayers with the lowest family incomes ( $26,000 per year) pay an average of 12% of their income for state and city taxes. Connecticut’s wealthiest 1% of taxpayers only pay about half that amount – 6.5%.

It’s not just the big, bad Republicans who are protecting the rich – during the 2009 legislative session Democrat Senator Andrew McDonald called for the income threshold of taxpayers classified as wealthy to be raised above $250,000, claiming that income is considered “middle class” by many of his constituents. A real progressive income tax would bring in revenue which could be used toward balancing the state budget, prevent cuts of already underfunded social services and contribute to an economic climate which would be conducive to job creation.

It’s going to take a grassroots movement to bring about the changes that are needed to put people back to work and balance the state’s books, while bringing about economic justice. The Democrats, with a few exceptions, are acting like a watered down version of the GOP while Governor M. Jodi Rell continues her campaign to finish off people of color and vulnerable populations of all races in Connecticut.

Black and progressive leadership in the state has been demobilized by the election of President Barack Obama, while the Right continues to gain momentum as the Connecticut Tea Party organizes in a major way. Check out their website and their Facebook page if you think I’m kidding. The poor and working class in this state are in great danger of seeing their bleak existence become even worse.

Back in the World (the US) there was a growing body of politically radicalized veterans. Viet Nam Veterans against the War had over 50,000 members and the GI coffee house movement was widespread. The Winter Soldier hearings put a face on the atrocities and massacres and showcased the pain and rage that was twisting the spirit of the armed forces. We in the armed forces at the time regarded ourselves as citizen soldiers. I was an enlistee, RA all the Way, regular Army and volunteered for Viet Nam. I enlisted out of a sense of duty as a calling. It was not nor ever should be regarded as a JOB. The current professional volunteer armed forces has become a contracted killing machine, a constitutional abomination. I have begun to question who it is loyal too. I swore an oath, …”to protect and defend the US constitution against all enemies both foreign and domestic.” I have never released myself from that oath.

Here is what has become of us. Blackwater(Xe), DyneCorp, Triple Canopy and Hallibuton KBR have become the mercenary assistants of the US Armed Forces. Iraq Veterans against the War in concert with Veterans for Peace and VVAW have exposed the corrupt relationship between the Pentagon and the military industrial complex. Former veterans of the US armed forces have contracted out as body guards and hired killers to the CIA and State Dept expecting to be cared for and protected by the Uniform Code of Military Justice. They do not deserve nor have earned it. They and their corporate employers are subject to the Geneva conventions and International Law under the Nuremberg rulings.

Here is what we can do. We can support and advocate GI resistance. We can constantly put the cost of the war to our economy in the public eye at every and all city council or legislative hearings. Go to icasualties.org and read the names of the American dead in public. We in the Underground can bring the truth above ground.

Dave Ionno
Veteran for Peace

Victor Gerena is Hartford’s anti-hero.
In September, 1983, he allegedly robbed Wells Fargo of $7.2 million. It was a daring, non-violent daylight theft that brought down the full weight of the United States government on him, his family, his friends, and the entire movement for Puerto Rican independence both here and on the Island.

The Feds want Victor: he’s on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List.   A million dollar reward from the FBI for information leading to his capture is still in effect.  And bounty hunter wannabes will give you $1,000 for information leading to his arrest (now that’s a crime). Victor is a wanted man, but more than twenty-six years after the robbery, he still hasn’t been caught.

What a difference a century makes. Colorful figures like Jesse James and Pretty Boy Floyd were considered thieves and killers back in their own day.  The Wells Fargo corporation profits off its “wild west history” by promoting the legendary characters who used to rob their stage coaches, calling them “varmints” on the corporate website.

While Victor Gerena doesn’t rate any space in Wells Fargo mythology, Black Bart does. Bart, whose real name was Charles E. Bolton, robbed 27 stages over a period of four years in the late 1800’s.  Even Wells Fargo will tell you that he was known for his polite manner when he relieved the company of its gold.  And he wouldn’t rob passengers on the stage–only the company strongbox.

It was Black Bart’s poetry, though, that really made him famous. With wordplay that is worthy of a 21st century city kid who tags subway cars, Bart signed himself “The Po8″. Here’s some of his work:  I’ve labored long and hard for bread/ For honor and for riches/ But on my corns too long you’ve tread/ You fine-haired sons of bitches.

The story goes that Bart was caught when a detective found a laundry marking on a handkerchief he left behind.  Bart did some prison time; when he got out it was rumored that Wells Fargo paid him money just so he wouldn’t rob any more of their stagecoaches.

American culture has a long history of celebrating the outlaws who rob the rich and protect the poor.  Woody Guthrie sang about Pretty Boy Floyd and made him even more famous. A traditional song about Jesse James goes: Jesse was a man, a friend to the poor/He never would see a man suffer pain/ And with his brother Frank he robbed the Chicago bank/And stopped the Glendale train.

Black Bart’s last Wells Fargo robbery was 1883.  Victor Gerena’s first was 1983. How long will it be before songs are sung about Victor?

Even in death, the peoples’ historian is dangerous

by Steve Thornton

Historian and activist Howard Zinn’s death on January 27th was a huge loss, but some of the ugly reaction to his passing may be our great teacher’s final lesson.  The media criticism of Zinn right after he died exposes those who control how we view the world.

We all know that history is written by the victors. Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States turned this maxim on its head and made a mighty contribution to countering the lies of America’s past.  Zinn’s work is dangerous because it requires us to look at our country’s complicated past with new eyes. His writings have made an impact on millions of people.  The pundits and news media won’t let his influence stand.  They need to put their spin on his life.

It is certainly fair game to note the controversy that surrounds a famous figure, and Zinn’s books should be open to scrutiny.  But when National Public Radio allowed conservative David Horowitz to comment that there is “absolutely nothing in Howard Zinn’s intellectual output that is worthy of any kind of respect,” calling A People’s History a “travesty,” you know that the old man’s work has struck a nerve.

The New York Times also took a swipe, but sought out a more “respectable” critique of Zinn from liberal historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.  “I don’t take him very seriously,” Schlesinger told the Times, “He’s a polemicist, not a historian.”

It’s easy to be outraged at this disrespectful display. I know I was angry.  As FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting) pointed out, when apartheid apologist William F. Buckley died there was no attempt by NPR to “balance” his obituary with a left-wing critic.

But then I thought: Do I really want Howard to suffer the same fate as other radicals whose lives have been “dumbed down?” Maybe the worst example of the historical taming of progressives is Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  By the end of his life, King had become a true challenge to the rich and powerful.  The Poor Peoples’ Campaign, being organized when he was assassinated, took the issue of racial inequality and gave it a class analysis.  King’s work for unions showed he would engage in struggles that linked economic justice with racial justice.  His outspoken opposition to the Vietnam War lost him support in the civil rights movement.  But today?  King Day is a holiday when department stores hold special sales.  Politicians flock to official ceremonies and quote snippets of “I Have A Dream.”  King’s image is becoming a pale copy of the man who warned us against the triple evils of racism, materialism and militarism.

Dr. King knew what Howard Zinn was trying to do: the civil rights pioneer wrote that “many of the ugly pages of American history have been obscured and forgotten.”  Zinn uncovered the ugliness of official America and at the same time introduced us to the “countless small actions of unknown people” whose work actually changes society for the better.

So Howard Zinn will not be canonized by the people who manipulate our news, culture and history.  That’s how it should be. As Catholic Worker founder Dorothy Day said, “don’t call me a saint.  I don’t want to be dismissed that easily.”