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Talk Nation Radio for February 24, 2010

Action Medic Roger Benham and Suncere Ali Shakur on Haiti

Produced by Dori Smith
TRT:29:49
Download at Pacifica’s Audioport here if you are a member or go to Radio4all.net and Archive.org for free download information. You can also follow this story on our blog here.

Post URL to Mp3: http://ia360942.us.archive.org/3/items/ActionMedicRogerBenhamAndSuncereAliShakurOnHaiti/2010-02-23-RogerBenham-SuncereShakur-HaitiAidUpdate-MutualAidDisasterRelief-pt1-128.mp3

Emergency Medical Technician and Action Medic, Roger Benham, returned from volunteering in Haiti on February 2nd and he joins us for part one of a two part special on relief efforts there. The US Military arrived expecting violence and as a result the aid was held up at the airport while security measures were sorted out. Roger Benham is part of Mutual Aid Disaster Relief. They arrived in Haiti during the first week after the quake, anticipated the needs people would have and worked to simply meet them. Their success stories are an inspiration.

After the January earthquake in Haiti, community organizer and activist Suncere Ali Shakur founded the ad hoc group, “Being Able to Move Heaven and Earth for Haiti,” or BAM. The BAM web site will soon be up, meanwhile go to Mutual Aid Disaster Relief for information.

When we last spoke with Shakur he was fund raising and coordinating media and aid for eleven groups doing work for Haiti including Mutual Aid Disaster Relief, a group whose members largely consist of members of Common Ground Relief. But Shakur’s life has just taken a remarkable turn. The lives of 19 young Haitian orphans will now be a part of his life and Haiti’s future. For now we might call them the Shakur 19.

The “19″ are Children ranging in age from 1-week-old to 6-years-old. They had no parents, and no names when Suncere Ali Shakur first learned about them. Now they have Shakur’s last name and he is gearing up to be a father to them and more. He has committed to the goal of providing good lives, education, and security for the kids, and he and a team of other volunteers already have plans to build them a home in Haiti.

Contact Suncere at 828-776-0062 if you’d like to be involved in helping the Shakur 19.

For Haiti relief in general, Checks can be made out to:
Artistic Evolution Inc///Dedicated Haiti Relief Account
(Mutual Aid’s 501(c)(3) fiscal sponsor)
http://www.mutualaiddisasterrelief.org/

The Mutual Aid Disaster Relief team, MADr, is a network of groups committed to working in solidarity with the people of Haiti. Their first team arrived shortly after the earthquake and began offering the same kind of program this group set up for New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. At their web site, http://www.mutualaiddisasterrelief.org you can read updates from volunteers in Haiti.

Here is a sample dated Monday, February 15 Daily Summary Report, Team 4 (Team Montana):

“Speaking of Partners In Health, their doctors rotated out of the country on Sunday, with the next PIH team due in on Wednesday. This has left a 4-day window with no team of doctors at the hospital… meaning Team Montana is working with the Haitian nurses to take care of ALL of the surgical patients and most everyone else at the hospital. One of the biggest issues is that the PIH doctors are the best in their respective fields in the US and are pulling off major, life saving surgeries – including skin grafts – in what’s basically a “country hospital,” leaving patients with gigantic surgical wounds – both traumatic wounds and surgical wounds – in a less than ideal environment. It’s important to remember that this hospital does not have an EKG or an AED, let alone an ICU ward. The team feels very strongly that if they weren’t there for this window of time, at least some of the patients would have ended up with massive infections, if not worse.

The hospital is a very real place, for lack of a better way to put it. Patients generally come with their families. Their families bring the bed linens, take care of meals, etc. The hospital is just FULL of people, and any time a patient passes away, the grief just spreads like fire beyond their family and into the streets. That said, the team is holding it down, working all day doing all sorts of care. Two ED nurses from a missionary organization showed up a couple days ago, and they’ve been helping out a lot too”.

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Talk Nation Radio for February 17, 2010
Dahr Jamail on Iraq War Vet Court Martialed over his Stop Loss Song

Produced by Dori Smith
TRT:29:47
Download at Pacifica’s Audioport here if you are a member or try Archive.org and Radio4all.net for free downloads.

We’re joined by journalist Dahr Jamail, author of Beyond the Green Zone, Dispatches from an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq. He’s been on tour with his latest book, The Will to Resist, Soldiers who Refuse to Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan, and his February 8th article in TruthOut.org, “Army Imprisons Soldier for Singing Against Stop-Loss Policy,” is also about a soldier who has resisted further military service. Iraq War Veteran Marc Hall was stop-lossed after a 15 month tour. His original protest song about the stop loss policy landed him in prison in Liberty County Georgia, and the Army will send him back to Iraq for court martial proceedings.

At a White House concert February 10th President Barack Obama praised the singers and song writers who would risk being sent to jail during the civil rights era as they spoke out for what they believed.
Obama said, “Dr. King himself once acknowledged that he didn’t see “the real meaning of the movement” until he saw young people singing in the face of hostility. …You see, it’s easy to sing when you’re happy. It’s easy to sing when you’re among friends. It’s easy to sing when times are good. But it is hard to sing when times are rough. It’s hard to sing in the face of taunts, and fear, and the constant threat of violence. It’s hard to sing when folks are being beaten, when leaders are being jailed.”

Iraq War Veteran, Army Specialist Marc Hall was sent to prison in Louisiana for sharing his Stop Loss song with the Military and the general public. Hall’s song is angry, but “it it hyperbole” says Dahr Jamail, and Hall has denied having any ill intent toward anyone in the Military. Still, the Military is sending him back to Iraq for courts martial proceedings. That means his lawyer and others who may wish to speak out on his behalf will have great difficulty attending the trial.

The story was published in Truthout.org February 8, 2010, and in Inter Press Service, February 10, 2010: Army Imprisons Soldier for Singing Against Stop-Loss Policy.

We compare this case with the case of civil rights protesters and singers who were celebrated at the White House February 9th 2010 by President Barack Obama. See his statements below from a press release.

Press Release 2-10-2010
White House

THE WHITE HOUSE Office of the Press Secretary For Immediate Release, February 10, 2010 REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT AT “IN PERFORMANCE AT THE WHITE HOUSE: A CELEBRATION OF MUSIC FROM THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT” February 9, 2010 East Room 8:08 P.M. EST

THE PRESIDENT: Welcome to the White House, everybody. And thank you for braving the storm. I am thrilled to see all of you here today — friends, guests, members of my Cabinet, members of Congress, our Vice President and Dr. Jill Biden, and everyone watching at home — for the fifth in a series of evenings celebrating the music that tells the story of America.

Tonight, we celebrate the music of a movement.

To help us do that, Michelle and I are thrilled to welcome a tremendous group of artists who influenced that music, and artists who were influenced by it:

Yolanda Adams; Joan Baez; Natalie Cole; Morgan Freeman; Jennifer Hudson; John Mellencamp; Dr. Bernice Johnson Reagon; Smokey Robinson; the Blind Boys of Alabama; the Howard University Choir; and a man who was good enough to take a night off from his Never Ending Tour — Mr. Bob Dylan.

I want to thank some of them for spending some time earlier here today, leading a workshop of high school students — perhaps even inspiring the next generation of civil rights leaders.

Let me also just acknowledge a good friend to us all, Dr. Joseph Lowery, who was here — who couldn’t be here with us today, but he is recuperating after an illness and we want to keep him in our thoughts and prayers tonight.

Now, the civil rights movement was a movement sustained by music. It was lifted by spirituals inspired by the Bible. It was sharpened by protest songs about wrongs that needed righting. It was broadened by folk artists like a New York-born daughter of immigrants, and a young storyteller from Minnesota, who captured the hardships and hopes of people who were worlds different from them, in ways that only song can do.

It was a movement with a soundtrack — diverse strains of music that coalesced when the moment was right. But that soundtrack wasn’t just inspired by the movement; it gave strength in return — a fact not lost on the movement’s leaders.

It’s been said that when Dr. King and his associates were looking for communities to organize and mobilize, they’d know which were disciplined enough and serious enough when they saw folks singing freedom songs. Dr. King himself once acknowledged that he didn’t see “the real meaning of the movement” until he saw young people singing in the face of hostility.

You see, it’s easy to sing when you’re happy. It’s easy to sing when you’re among friends. It’s easy to sing when times are good. But it is hard to sing when times are rough. It’s hard to sing in the face of taunts, and fear, and the constant threat of violence. It’s hard to sing when folks are being beaten, when leaders are being jailed, when churches are being bombed.

It’s hard to sing in times like that. But times like that are precisely when the power of song is most potent. Above the din of hatred; amidst the deafening silence of inaction; the hymns of the civil rights movement helped carry the cause of a people and advance the ideals of a nation.

Bernice Johnson Reagon knew this. One day when she was young, she was sitting in church when a local sheriff and his deputies showed up to intimidate the congregation. “They stood at the door,” Bernice wrote, “making sure everyone knew they were there. Then,” she said; “a song began. And the song made sure that the sheriff and his deputies knew that we were there.”

Joan Baez and Bob Dylan knew this. One day in 1963, they joined hundreds of thousands on the National Mall and sang of a day when the time would come; when the winds would stop; when a ship would come in. They sang of a day when a righteous journey would reach its destination.

And Congressman John Lewis — a man of that Moses Generation; a man who couldn’t be here tonight, but whose sacrifices helped make it possible for me to be here tonight — he knew this too. For in the darkest hour, he said, “the songs fed our spirits and gave us hope.”

So to everyone here, or watching at home, let us enjoy the music we hear tonight. Let the music feed our spirits; give us hope; and carry us forward — as one people, and as one nation. Enjoy. (Applause.)

Talk Nation Radio for February 10, 2010
Indentured Workers on Corporate Visas Compete for US Jobs and more, Donna Conroy part two

Donna Conroy of Bright Future Jobs, see part 1 here.

Produced by Dori Smith
TRT: 29:42
Download at Pacifica’s Audioport here if you are a member or at Archive.org and Radio4all.net

We continue our special on US Jobs, how US workers are being marginalized, their jobs outsourced in many cases to workers who are being brought to America to work under visas held by their bosses. They have H1B status. We hear more from Donna Conroy, Executive Director of Bright Future Jobs. She is working to advance legislation introduced by Democrat Dick Durban of Illinois that would give US workers a fair shot at a job in their own country.

Corporations are hiring foreign workers to save on benefits, pensions and wages, and here the current headlines about Greece are illustrative. Mismanagement by corporations and government offices has led to high inflation and a collapsing economy, and so the Greek Government has announced a plan to cut both social programs and pensions. As in the US, aging Greek workers may have to tack on years of work despite any plans they had to retire. As news spread of this plan, Gold and metals futures rallied, the Greek and U.S. stock index futures rose, and the international financial press lauded a major financial bail out plan. International markets love the idea of the Greek Government breaking its social contract with citizens.

US firms have been doing this for years, and Donna Conroy explained why the promises they have made to keep at least some US jobs at home are deceptive.

We hear what amounts to begging at times, politicians and others asking how we can convince corporations to stay in the US, in our states, and here and there we see think tanks with experts calling on US workers to accept much lower pay as a solution. Politicians have been running campaigns on their ability to keep jobs in America, but the equation seems to be that American workers are getting the message that all of the hard won battles within unions are being reversed and there is nothing they can do about it.

Donna Conroy is Executive Director for the group Brightfuturejobs.com, working to advance a bill to set limits on the outsourcing of US jobs. For Talk Nation Radio, I’m Dori Smith, this program is produced in Storrs, Connecticut and syndicated with Pacifica Network, talknationradio@gmail.com to write to us and you can listen to this broadcast again or download for air on your local radio station at talknationradio.org or our blog.

Talk Nation Radio for February 4, 2010
Donna Conroy on Corporations Holding Visas for their Foreign Workers

TRT: 29:45
Produced by Dori Smith
Download at Pacifica’s Audioport here if you are a member or at Radio4all.net and Archive.org.

We’re joined by former IT worker Donna Conroy to talk about the way US corporations are able to hold visas, hiring “H-1bs”, citizens from abroad who get hired for their US job openings.

President Obama may be diffusing some voter anger over the bank bail out with his announcement that he will provide TARP bail out money community banks, so they can in tern lend to small businesses. When larger banking companies accepted TARP money the intent was that they lend to small business and the public, however, they have not done so, and it’s yet another indication that they are increasingly rejecting assumptions about a social contract that ties them to governments and societies that help them earn profits.

According to Donna Conroy, corporations have little if any loyalty to US workers despite any big incentives they may have received over the years. The question is, what do taxpayers get from corporations they may have helped build, and later on helped bail out, only to find themselves training their replacements who happen to be from China, India, and other countries.

Donna Conroy is Executive Director and Lobbyist for the group www.Brightfuturejobs.com, they are supporting a bill written by Democrat Dick Durban of Illinois that would help set limits on the amount of outsourcing of jobs, US based corporations can do.

You can go to the web site www.brightfuturejobs.com for further information on Dick Durban’s bill, “”The H-1B and L-1 Visa Fraud and Abuse Prevention Act of 2009″ (S. 887).

Special: We hear a celebration of Black History Month from the Pacifica Radio Archives, clips of civil rights leader Fanny Lou Hammer. Thanks, Brian DeShazor, Archives Director, and Pacifica.

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