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2025 and it’s Over (Maybe)
I am growing weary of the idiotic coverage of Obama recently. His recent trip to Afghanistan was widely covered, a word to the troops, signing a treaty, making jokes about eating dogs at the Correspondent’s dinner – all seem quite beside the point. I know full well that Obama and Romney are two separate people and that Obama would likely make better Supreme Court nominations. Beyond that, Obama answers the question of what the Occupy Movement wants: Everything he led them to believe he stood for:
Democracy Now finally provided some perspective on the idea with the help of Tarik Ali. As he points out, this is an occupied land, with our puppet talking big, and we reached an agreement with him?
I think I’ll just let the interview speak for itself, but we also provide some coverage and background of Mayday:
Wednesday, May 2, 2012
Obama Touts War’s End in Afghanistan, But Critics See Election-Year Guise for Prolonged Occupation
Filed under Afghanistan, Drones, Drone Attacks, Obama, War on Terror
Guests:
Ann Wright, retired Army colonel and former U.S. diplomat. She spent 29 years in the military and later served as a high-ranking diplomat in the State Department. In 2001, she helped oversee the reopening of the U.S. embassy in Afghanistan, where she served as deputy chief of mission. In 2003, she resigned her State Department post to protest the war in Iraq.Tariq Ali, British-Pakistani political commentator, writer, activist, and editor of the New Left Review. Author of numerous books, including The Obama Syndrome: Surrender at Home, War Abroad. He joins us from Santa Monica, California.
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Rush Transcript
This transcript is available free of charge. However, donations help us provide closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing on our TV broadcast. Thank you for your generous contribution.Donate >Transcript
NERMEEN SHAIKH: We begin with Afghanistan, where several large explosions rocked the capital Kabul hours after President Obama’s surprise visit to the country on the one-year anniversary of Osama bin Laden’s death. The suicide attacks were claimed by the Taliban and resulted in at least seven deaths and numerous wounded. Taliban spokesperson Zabiullah Mujahid said, quote, "It is a message to Obama that he and his forces are never welcomed in Afghanistan and that we will continue our resistance until all the occupiers are either dead or leave our country."During his brief visit, President Obama delivered a prime-time address to the American public from Bagram Air Base. Obama signed an agreement with President Hamid Karzai on future Afghan-U.S. relations in Kabul Tuesday ahead of a NATO summit in Chicago later this month.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Good evening from Bagram Air Base. This outpost is more than 7,000 miles from home, but for over a decade it’s been close to our hearts, because here in Afghanistan more than half a million of our sons and daughters have sacrificed to protect our country. Today I signed a historic agreement between the United States and Afghanistan that defines a new kind of relationship between our countries, a future in which Afghans are responsible for the security of their nation and we build an equal partnership between two sovereign states, a future in which war ends and a new chapter begins.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: President Obama, speaking at Bagram Air Base Tuesday night during an unannounced trip to Afghanistan. The Strategic Partnership Agreement pledges American support for Afghanistan for 10 years after the withdrawal of the last U.S. soldiers at the end of 2014. President Karzai said the agreement signaled a new chapter in bilateral relations between Afghanistan and the U.S., one marked by, quote, "mutual respect."AMY GOODMAN: Meanwhile, a new Pentagon report issued Tuesday said even though there has been a decline in violence, the U.S. has made limited gains on key issues in Afghanistan. The report says the most pressing concern remains the safe haven provided to insurgents in Pakistan, stating, quote, "The Taliban-led insurgency and its al Qaeda affiliates still operate with impunity from sanctuaries in Pakistan."
Well, to talk more about the significance of President Obama’s surprise trip and the agreement, we’re joined by two people. Ann Wright is with us, retired Army colonel and former U.S. diplomat. She spent 29 years in the military, later served as a high-ranking diplomat in the State Department. In 2001, she helped oversee the reopening of the U.S. embassy in Afghanistan, where she served as deputy chief of mission. In 2003, she resigned her State Department post to protest the war in Iraq. She has been back to Afghanistan twice.
We’re also joined via Democracy Now! video stream from California by Tariq Ali, the British-Pakistani political commentator, writer, activist, editor of the New Left Review, author of numerous books, including The Obama Syndrome: Surrender at Home, War Abroad, joining us from Santa Monica.
We’re going to go first to Tariq Ali. Can you talk about President Obama’s announcement last night from Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan?
TARIQ ALI: Well, Amy, I mean, A, why is he there? It’s clearly a lot more to do with the re-election campaign, where the execution of Osama bin Laden is obviously going to be a key feature, and they’ve started using it, and secondly, to pretend that somehow this war is over. But it’s not over, because the United States can stay there or use the so-called Afghan bases until 2024. And forgotten, Amy, are the pools of blood, the embers, the cries of rage, the sobbing of women and children, and the horrors that have been inflicted on that country. And this is what the real cause for continuing terrorism is. I noticed the President saying, "I am in Bagram Air Base, 7,000 miles away." He could have said, "And not far from here is Bagram Prison, where prisoners are still being tortured without any recourse to law at all." So it’s essentially a PR visit designed to aid the re-election campaign. As far as Afghanistan is concerned, everyone, including the Pentagon, knows that this war is unwinnable.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: But Tariq, can you say something, Tariq, about the actual agreement that was signed, because a number of people have pointed out that key issues have not been resolved, including how long some U.S. forces will stay in the country even after the formal withdrawal in 2014?
TARIQ ALI: Well, you know, formal withdrawals are useless, because essentially what the agreement—Karzai has signed. And who does he speak for? He’s not a sovereign leader. Afghanistan is not a sovereign state; it’s an occupied state. So having President Obama go there and sign a deal with a puppet president who represents nobody and who can barely travel inside the country itself is a joke. And for this guy to agree that U.S. forces can use the bases 'til 2024 is a total joke, because he won't be there. If the Americans really leave Afghanistan, they’d be well advised to take him with them.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, let’s talk about President Hamid Karzai for a minute. During an interview with Christiane Amanpour on CNN, he talked about the massacre of 17 Afghan villagers earlier this year. He denied calling U.S. soldiers demons but said the killings were an act of intentional terrorism.
PRESIDENT HAMID KARZAI: Demons, I have never used the word "demon" in the English language. The word "intentional terror," yes, I did use in the English language. It was my input into the statement that we made. This was intentional. When someone walks out of a military barrack and goes to kill villagers, that’s intentional, and that’s terrorism.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s Afghanistan’s president, Hamid Karzai. Tariq Ali?TARIQ ALI: I know. Well, what else could he say, Amy, when it was such an obvious, blatant violation of everything the West is supposed to stand for? And, of course, pretending that this is an individual act by one guy, not part of a general problem. I mean, this is one guy doing it. Essentially, U.S. military policy in the region is to do it systematically in different parts of the country. That’s the real problem. And the fact that Karzai has to come out and say this in these conditions shows how much anger there is. And by the way, 60 percent of U.S. citizens, according to the last Pew foundation opinion pollings, are against carrying on in that country. So the Afghans don’t want it, American citizens don’t want it, but the United States president is carrying on.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: But one of the points that Obama made in his speech last night was that the U.S. will work with Afghanistan over the next decade, but will not be establishing permanent bases in the country.
TARIQ ALI: Well, I mean, you know, their bases are already there.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: We will work with the Afghans to determine what support they need to accomplish two narrow security missions beyond 2014: counterterrorism and continued training. But we will not build permanent bases in this country, nor will we be patrolling its cities and mountains. That will be the job of the Afghan people.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Tariq, your response?TARIQ ALI: It’s, you know, surreal. The Afghan people have made it clear they don’t want them. The training he talks about, the number of incidents there have been of trained Afghan soldiers actually then breaking loose and carrying out attacks on the occupying armies in Afghanistan are now legion. The special agents they have trained have turned on intelligence agents from the West and killed them. And the reason for that is that large numbers of Afghans join the army and the police forces to get training, because that is what the insurgent leadership tells them to do, and then they turn these guns on the occupiers. So the notion that everything is calm and that Karzai somehow represents something is a totally grotesque analysis.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: I want to bring in Ann Wright into the conversation. Ann Wright, there was an AP report issued earlier this week that found that the number of attacks against ISAF and U.S. forces in Afghanistan by Afghan soldiers and the police are increasing and are also underreported. So that’s one concern. The other is that Afghan forces are in fact unprepared to take over once U.S. forces leave. Can you—
ANN WRIGHT: Well, indeed, the U.S. government is loath to let everyone really know what the extent of displeasure is for U.S. forces to be there. I mean, when you have the president of the United States having to come into Afghanistan in the middle of the night, and the agreement is signed at midnight, not in the middle of the day, you know that the security is lax. The idea that—you know, we’ve had 1,941 U.S. soldiers alone and probably 500 NATO soldiers have been killed, lots of contractors. In fact, the kidnapping of contractors and aid workers is rife right now. Not to—I mean, and then you talk about the numbers of Afghans that have been killed, I mean, in the tens of thousands. There is a reason why Afghans are shooting Americans: we have invaded and occupied their country. And the numbers of warlords that are a part of the government, who have their militias that are now being retrained, re-equipped in the new national army, means that they will come back to those warlords later.
AMY GOODMAN: Ann Wright, I saw you yesterday at the May Day protest, and you were out there protesting through the day, so you hadn’t heard the news that had just broken that President Obama had made the surprise trip to Afghanistan. Now, you have a unique relationship with the United States and Afghanistan. You reopened the mission there in 2001 as a U.S. diplomat. You had been an Army colonel. Talk about what happened then and your thoughts today.
ANN WRIGHT: Well, 10-and-a-half years ago, when we went in as the first U.S. mission to the—with the U.S. embassy, we were giving the U.S. probably a year and a half to two years to whatever they needed to do with al-Qaeda and then do some quick humanitarian assistance, civic actions, schools, health clinics, things like that, and then remove ourselves, because we know the history of what foreign involvement is in Afghanistan. The invaders and occupiers always leave, and seldom in very good shape. We’ve seen that with the British, the Russians, and now the United States, where we’ve spent trillions of dollars in Afghanistan, we’ve been there for ten-and-a-half years, and now the president of the United States has to fly in at midnight.
AMY GOODMAN: You, then, worked under Ryan Crocker.
ANN WRIGHT: That’s correct. Ryan Crocker—
AMY GOODMAN: He now—
ANN WRIGHT: —was the first chargé d’affaires that we had at the U.S. embassy. And now he is back as a retired Foreign Service officer, but now reappointed by the Obama administration as the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan.
AMY GOODMAN: At yesterday’s May Day march, Democracy Now! spoke to Eli Wright of Iraq Veterans Against the War, who served in Iraq from 2002 to '08. This is what he said about Obama's visit to Afghanistan.
ELI WRIGHT: I mean, obviously, I don’t support either of these wars, so, you know, I—our organization calls for immediate and unconditional withdrawal from Iraq, and we also oppose the war in Afghanistan, as well. I think what we’re doing is creating more terrorism. We’re creating more enemies of our country by engaging in these wars. And all we’re doing is spreading further hatred around the world. I don’t think that we—you know, I don’t think that the record will show that we have brought liberty or freedom or democracy to either of these countries that’s worth the human costs and the economic costs that it’s—you know, that we’re all paying.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Eli Wright yesterday at Iraq Veterans Against the War, the group, at the May Day protest. Ann Wright, is there anything positive you see in what President Obama did yesterday, holding his news conference from Bagram and saying at some point in the future the U.S. will be out of Afghanistan?ANN WRIGHT: Well, the positive part is at least he’s talking about removing the majority of the troops from Afghanistan. However, we have to be very cautious about what he’s saying and hold his feet to the fire on this. We don’t know for sure how many troops are going to be left behind, where they’re going to be—supposedly there to continue to train the Afghan army. One would always question why Afghans need any more training, because it sure seems like they know how to use weapons and they know how to target facilities. In fact, within hours after the President left, a major U.S. compound in Kabul came under attack with RPGs, grenade launchers and all sorts of things, with seven people being killed. So it’s not like they need more training in military operations, in my opinion.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: I want to turn to another issue that’s been quite controversial, and that has to do with the use of drones. President Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser has publicly confirmed that the United States has used drones to conduct targeted killings overseas. John Brennan spoke on Monday at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. He detailed and defended the killings.
JOHN BRENNAN: President Obama believes that, done carefully, deliberately and responsibly, we can be more transparent and still ensure our nation’s security. So let me say it as simply as I can. Yes, in full accordance with the law and in order to prevent terrorist attacks on the United States and to save American lives, the United States government conducts targeted strikes against specific al-Qaeda terrorists, sometimes using remotely piloted aircraft, often referred to publicly as drones. And I’m here today because President Obama has instructed us to be more open with the American people about these efforts.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: That was President Obama’s special adviser on homeland security and counterterrorism. John Brennan’s speech was disrupted by Medea Benjamin of CODEPINK. Over the weekend, Benjamin helped organize the International Drone Summit in Washington, D.C.MEDEA BENJAMIN: How many people are you willing to sacrifice? Why are you lying to the American people and not saying how many innocents have been killed?
MODERATOR: Thank you, ma’am, for expressing your views. There will be time for questions and answers after the presentation.
MEDEA BENJAMIN: I speak out on behalf of Tariq Aziz, a 16-year-old in Pakistan, who was killed because he wanted to document the drone strikes. I speak out on behalf of Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, a 16-year-old born in Denver, killed in Yemen, just because his father was someone we don’t like. I speak out on behalf of the Constitution, on behalf of the rule of law. I love the rule of law. I love my country. You are making us less safe by killing so many innocent people.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: That was Medea Benjamin of CODEPINK, and she was actually dragged out while speaking. Tariq Ali, your comment on the use of drones in Pakistan, in particular?TARIQ ALI: Well, I mean, this is part of the cycle of war, vengeance, terror, response from insurgents, more war, more vengeance, more terror. These drone attacks, we know full well—anyone in Pakistan will tell you about them—kill large numbers of innocents. Now, by "large numbers," I don’t mean tens of thousands, obviously, but I mean several hundreds, occasionally more than that, over a year and a half. And Obama has upped the drone attacks. During his period in office, the number of drone attack—during his first year in office, there were more drone attacks in Pakistan than during the previous five years of the Bush administration. So here he’s been much worse, much more aggressive, and much more militaristic.
And the real problem, apart from all the moral and ethical problems, is they have nil impact. They kill people, they kill innocents, and they create more problems for the United States. As for the notion that these drone attacks somehow are defending the United States and making it safe against terror, that is so crazy. It really is crazy thinking. And if these people still haven’t realized it, I don’t know whether they ever will. These drone attacks, most people, many, many international lawyers regard them as illegal anyway. Targeting your own citizens abroad, targeting your own citizens where they are, is an added dimension to this. This is the first president who’s now acquired the right, the legal right, to order the targeting and killing of any U.S. citizen without recourse to law. This has happened under this particular president, so—
AMY GOODMAN: Let’s bring Ann Wright in to get a last comment on this, retired Army colonel, the diplomat who helped to open—reopen the U.S. mission in Afghanistan in 2001.
ANN WRIGHT: Well, John Brennan saying that he, on behalf of the President, was telling the American people about this program, well, we’re the last to learn then, because the rest of the world certainly knows about this targeted assassination program. And in fact, before Medea interrupted John Brennan on Monday, we had had a tremendous day on Sunday as we got John Brennan, as he went in to CNN, Fox News and ABC News, to let him know the irate feeling we have, by the American people, about this weapons program. It needs to stop. It is, you know, the targeted assassination of Pakistanis, Yemenis, Somalis, Afghans, and Americans now, where we have now had four Americans that have been killed by these assassin drones at the direction of the senior leadership of our country, extrajudicial killings by these drones, and they must stop.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to leave it there. I want to thank you very much, Ann Wright, retired Army colonel, a former diplomat, spent 29 years in the U.S. military, returned to Afghanistan twice after, in 2001, reopening the U.S. mission there as one of the top diplomats. Tariq Ali, thanks for being with us, editor of the New Left Review, latest book, The Obama Syndrome: Surrender at Home, War Abroad. This is Democracy Now! We covered May Day around the world. Stay with us.
The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us. Rush Transcript
This transcript is available free of charge. However, donations help us provide closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing on our TV broadcast. Thank you for your generous contribution.Donate >Transcript
AMY GOODMAN: Tom Morello, singing in Union Square yesterday. Tens of thousands of people turned out in New York, hundreds of thousands around the world. He was singing "This Land Is Your Land," as we move into the 100th anniversary of its author, Woody Guthrie. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh, here on Democracy Now! Nermeen?NERMEEN SHAIKH: On Tuesday, hundreds of thousands of people across the world marked May Day by filling the streets and demanding better working conditions, greater job security and improved quality of life. May Day, also known as International Workers’ Day, resonated with anti-austerity protesters in Spain, Portugal and Greece. Mariano, a member of Spain’s General Union of Workers, denounced the conservative government of Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy for recently announcing job cuts in the health and education sectors as well as tax increases as of January 2013.
MARIANO: [translated] This is brutal and dictatorial. They have the absolute majority. And that is why, in parliament and in senate, they do not take into account other opinions. They impose their law.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: May Day protests went well beyond Europe into Asia with demonstrators in Indonesia, the Philippines, East Timor, South Korea and Bangladesh—all calling for higher wages and better working conditions. Among protesters in Dhaka, Bangladesh, the National Garment Workers’ Federation organized a rally where hundreds of women joined the march.FIROZA BEGUM: [translated] We demand that workers should get a good salary to live with a standard of honor, because these garment workers bring in foreign currency, and they keep the wheel of Bangladesh’s economy active. We demand that we must get a sufficient salary, comparing the price hike of essential goods, and for the government to start a rationing system for us.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: May Day was also observed with large protests across South America in Bolivia, Chile and Venezuela. Meanwhile, Iraq’s communist party members marched in central Baghdad to demand the government overturn a law banning strikes. Russia, England and Turkey also saw large protests marking International Workers’ Day.And here in the United States, the Occupy Wall Street movement renewed its campaign against inequities in the global financial system with a series of May Day protests across the country. In California, Occupy Los Angeles united with immigrants, with protesters dancing to live cumbia and reggae music and lounging on the grass.
DON LEE: Los Angeles and the whole entire nation of the United States is built on the work of immigrants, and every type of immigrant, from, you know, German to Mexican American.
AMY GOODMAN: Not all of yesterday’s demonstrations were peaceful. In Seattle, black-clad protesters allegedly used sticks to break down downtown windows and ran through the streets disrupting traffic. In San Francisco, the Occupy movement was blamed for a night of violence in which cars and small businesses were vandalized. In Oakland, police fired tear gas, sending hundreds of demonstrators scrambling.Occupy demonstrators in the Bay Area canceled plans to shut down the Golden Gate Bridge, instead joined picket lines organized by labor groups. Clarence Thomas is a member and former officer with ILWU Local 10, representing longshore and warehouse workers in the Bay Area.
CLARENCE THOMAS: It’s very, very important that we take these actions today, International Workers’ Day, because this is the day that celebrates the struggle for the eight-hour workday in this country. It’s also a day that celebrates worker independence. Workers need to be independent. They need to be able to organize and mobilize in their own name, and they need to be able to use direct action and general strike in order to gain victories for working people.
The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us. May Day Legacy of Labor, Immigrant Rights Joined by New Generation of Occupy for Historic Protests
Filed under Occupy Wall Street, Unions, Immigrant Rights, Immigration
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Rush Transcript
This transcript is available free of charge. However, donations help us provide closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing on our TV broadcast. Thank you for your generous contribution.Donate >Transcript
AMY GOODMAN: Meanwhile, in New York City, tens of thousands of protesters continued streaming into Union Square Park, then marched towards Wall Street in the evening for a General Assembly, among them, immigrants’ rights activists highlighting the plight of undocumented workers and students. Democracy Now! spoke with one of the protesters, named Guadalupe.FANNY GUADALUPE: My name is Fanny Guadalupe. I am president for Sisa Pakari. [translated] The most important thing that we’re asking today is for a multicultural, multiethnic and multinational society. We want full amnesty and the fulfillment of Obama’s campaign promises. Today, we are asking once again for a leader who will make good on his word. These children have immigrant parents who are asking for the universal right to be free of borders, free of flags. We need to have work with dignity, not persecution, not deportations and not xenophobia.
AMY GOODMAN: Here in New York, Democracy Now!’s Mike Burke spoke with professor and Occupy organizer Jackie DiSalvo, who reflected on the history of May Day, dating back to the Haymarket Massacre, Chicago, May 1st, 1886.JACKIE DISALVO: I’m Jackie DiSalvo. I work with Occupy Wall Street, and I’m a liaison to the coalition that Occupy Wall Street has formed with labor and immigrant organizations and the May 1st Coalition. So I work both in the Occupy Wall Street May Day committee and on the solidarity coalition May Day committee.
We’re coming together under a labor alliance in Occupy Wall Street, but labor is in so much struggle right now, and it is all blacked out in the press. We organize what we’re calling the "99 Pickets" campaign, and there are many going on today. In fact, right now, the National Association of Broadcast and Entertainment Technicians are picketing ABC-Disney. And they were going to pick up some supporters at—from Occupy at Bryant Square and march up to 67th Street. There’s—this morning, the New York Times reporters were out in front of the New York Times. The Newspaper Guild can’t get a contract. There are just—we have over 40 labor pickets, and then a lot of pickets that are going to the 1 percent, the banks, mainly.
MIKE BURKE: And can you talk about the significance of these protests taking place today on May Day—
JACKIE DISALVO: Oh, yeah.
MIKE BURKE: —and how this fits into the history of May Day?
JACKIE DISALVO: Yeah, it’s really great that May Day is being revived. I mean, May Day was at the heart of a different kind of labor movement and a different kind of labor tradition. In fact, a general strike had been called, and in Chicago 60,000 workers went out, and the police shot them. And there was a demonstration to protest the police violence. And in that demonstration, what was probably a police provocateur threw a bomb, and the police shot more people, and then they tried and hung four anarchists that they’d probably been wanting to go after for years. And it was called the Haymarket Massacre.
A few years later, in Europe, the—I think it was the first or second international—I’m not sure. It was the 100-year anniversary of the French Revolution, that European unions proclaimed May 1st International Workers’ Day. And it’s been celebrated around the world ever since, particularly in Europe and Latin America.
What happened here was that the 1 percent, already early in the century, were very threatened by workers celebrating a holiday that was about class struggle. And so, Grover Cleveland changed the labor holiday to September. So that’s when labor gets a day off, not in—they used to just take off, in strike, on May Day. And then, in the period of the Cold War and McCarthyism, just shortly after the passage of the Taft-Hartley Act, which has crippled the labor movement ever since—you know, the Taft-Hartley Act prohibits a union going out in strike, if supporting another union, or even a boycott. And it’s illegal to go on a general strike. In that period, Eisenhower changed the name of May Day to Loyalty Day, so it was supposed to be a celebration of patriotism, not of class unity, but of unity with the 1 percent. And the unions stopped celebrating it. They had continued to celebrate somewhat during the ’30s, when they were in intense struggle, but when the unions got purged through the McCarthyist purge, where a lot of the militants were kicked out of the unions, labor started backing off on a lot of things, and they did not celebrate May Day anymore.
In 2006, Mexicans in Los Angeles, for whom May Day was a holiday, resented the fact that May Day was no longer a holiday for them, and they were in an intense struggle over threatened—I think at that point the laws were going to declare it a felony to be illegal. And so, they called for a day without immigrants. And in order to have this day, they had to leave their jobs. And so, a million Mexicans—not just Mexicans, but a million immigrants left their jobs and went into the streets, shut down Los Angeles. Two hundred thousand marched in New York City, many in Chicago. And Labor Day was back on the calendar.
AMY GOODMAN: Baruch College English professor and Occupy organizer, Jackie DiSalvo. In Union Square, we bumped into an entire baseball team: the Dodgers. Well, the Tax Dodgers, that is.TAX DODGER: We’re a baseball team, and we go to bat for the 1 percent, not the 99 percent. We’re the Tax Dodgers, the best team that corporate money can buy.
AMY GOODMAN: And can you describe what you’ve got here?
TAX DODGER: Well, we’ve got our full baseball team out here, and we’ve got all the best heavy hitters in corporate America who are part of our team: Verizon, GE, Citibank, ExxonMobil, Pfizer, Bank of America, Time Warner. You know them all. We’re practically household names at this point.
AMY GOODMAN: Then the Tax Dodgers broke into song.TAX DODGERS: [singing] Take me out to the tax game
Bail me out with the banks
Buy me a bonus and tax rebate
Never pay nothing, not federal or state
So just shoot, shoot, shoot for the loopholes
It’s law, so you can’t complain
Where the one, two, three trillion you’re out
Since we rigged the game.
Bail me out with the banks
Buy me a bonus and tax rebate
Never pay nothing, not federal or state
So just shoot, shoot, shoot for the loopholes
It’s law, so you can’t complain
Where the one, two, three trillion you’re out
Since we rigged the game.
Take me out to the tax game
Flip the bird to the crowd
Losers pay taxes, we take rebates
Cause we make the rules for the corporate state
And it’s wham, bam, slam through the loopholes
We always win, what a game!
We’re the one, yes, the 1 percent
And we have no shame!
Flip the bird to the crowd
Losers pay taxes, we take rebates
Cause we make the rules for the corporate state
And it’s wham, bam, slam through the loopholes
We always win, what a game!
We’re the one, yes, the 1 percent
And we have no shame!
TAX DODGER: Go back to work, everyone! Strike’s over!
AMY GOODMAN: Those were the Tax Dodgers on Democracy Now!, here on Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.NERMEEN SHAIKH: Several major unions also participated in New York’s May Day march. Democracy Now! spoke to members of CWA, Communications Workers of America, TWU, Transport Workers Union, the AFL-CIO and more.
NEW YORK LABOR CHORUS: [singing] Solidarity forever
For it’s the union, yes
The union makes us strong
For it’s the union, yes
The union makes us strong
DOMINIC RENDA: Yeah, my name is Dominic Renda. I’m with the Communication Workers of America, also known as CWA. And I’m out here because workers need to take a stand against corporate greed and against the wars that only benefit the wealthy. May Day means dignity for working people. And May Day started here in the United States, and it’s important for us to recognize that. There’s a lot of people who are unemployed, and they deserve jobs, and a lot of people that deserve, you know, healthcare, and they’re not getting health insurance from their employer. Pensions are becoming a thing of the past. Unions are becoming a thing of the past. And the thing is, is that working people, we really need to organize, because without the unions, there would just be the very rich and the very poor.
PROTESTERS: May Day! Whose day? Our day! What day? May Day! Whose day? Our day!
BARBARA INGRAM-DEMONDS: I’m Barbara Edmonds, and I’m with District Council 37 AFSCME. And I’m here today to support the efforts of May Day in fighting as a coalition to protect working families, struggling families and individuals—quite frankly, known as the 99 percent—to make sure that our issues, our causes are not forgotten and that we are not demonized, because we need to make sure that we protect the rights and the important value of the common good, which has been lost, quite frankly, over this last year or so, whether it’s fights in the labor community, fights in our communities around the city and around the country, fights to protect those most vulnerable in our populations. So this is a day that I’m very happy to be here with my union family, AFSCME District Council 37, and many of the labor unions, faith- and community-based organizations across the city represented here.
MARVIN HOLLAND: I’m Marvin Holland, Transport Workers Union. I’m the political director. TWU has always participated in May Day since we’ve restarted it back in 2006. And we’re happy to say that this is probably the biggest one we’ve had so far. We just want to get a decent contract, with perhaps some cost-of-living wages. We think it’s time to turn the tide on the constant concessionary contracts that have been happening to state workers throughout the country.
BERESFORD SIMMONS: Hi. My name is Beresmond Simmons. I’m with the Taxi Workers Alliance. I’ve been driving a cab in New York City for over 40 years. And I’m here today to support the workers, because taxi drivers are some of the most exploited workers in New York City, and we need some attention from the authorities who are abusing us.
LINDA HARRISON: My name is Linda Harrison. I’m with TWU Local 100. I’m here today for workers’ rights. I was one of the laid-off workers. And I just came back to work the end of March, the last week in March. It was almost two years that we were off. And, I mean, we found money that the MTA had, that they could have kept us on, that services that they cut was unnecessary. And this day—so this day is a day for us to come out and unite as one. All the unions are here. Everyone’s being represented.
And we just want rights. We just want equality. We don’t want them to give us anything. We work for whatever, you know, for our [inaudible]. They don’t give us stuff. We work hard. We have, you know, sometimes dangers on the trains. We have different situations where our lives are in danger. And we still have to deal with it. We have to come back to work, and we have to, you know, go through different things and trauma and all these things like that. And we just want them to just pay us for what we give back, what we give to them: our experiences, our—you know, the skills that we have, and things like that. Like, we’re not dumb. We’ve got—all of us have college. They got skills. They have classes for us, so we know that they know that we have these skills. And we’re just asking them to just give us what we deserve.
FITZ REID: Hi. My name is Fitz Reid. We are part of DC 37 Local 768, healthcare workers. We are here to support all the oppressed and the workers, students. We just want to get a movement going so we can redeem the dream, to get back the wealth that we produce and provide for the capitalists, so we can get our fair share, at minimum. The struggle should not just to maintain what we have, but we should have—we should have full healthcare, universal healthcare. And that would take the burden off the union, so we will not have to negotiate that, because all of us would get the standard care. We are all human beings. And if we cannot provide healthcare for the workers and for the masses, what else becomes primary? That’s a priority.
AMY GOODMAN: Some of the voices of organized labor at the May Day rally in New York.
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