Today's Stories

June 3, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts /
Lawrence M. Stratton
Legislating Tyranny

June 2, 2008

Uri Avnery
The Olmert Scandal

Nikolas Kozloff
Obama's Latino Problem Getting Worse

Allan J. Lichtman
Revisionist History: Bush, Borah and Hitler

Malini Johar Schueller
The Color of Randomness: Returning to the US From Beirut Via Syria

Robert Weissman
What's Driving Skyrocketing Oil Prices?

Peter Morici
Bailing Out Wall Street

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Don't Get Burned: How to Protect Yourself From Raytheon's Pain Gun

John Ross
Celebrating Catholic Fanaticism in Mexico

Ahmad Al-Akhras
Encounters with the Watch List

Website of the Day
Man on Earth

May 31 / June 1, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
The Worst is Yet to Come

Jeffrey St. Clair
Arkansas Bloodsuckers

Gary Leupp
How McClellan Prettifies Bush

Stan Cox
Broken Agriculture

Rannie Amiri
Lebanon: the Domino That Wouldn't Fall

P. Sainath
A Guaranteed Day's Work--in the Fields, at 110 Degrees, for $2 a Day

Binoy Kampmark
Going Bankrupt in Vallejo

Robert Fantina
Bush, Rice and McClellan

Seth Sandronsky
Will There be Water Riots, as Sacramento Goes Dry?

Corporate Crime Reporter
Death Penalty for Bush?

Anthony DiMaggio
Gaming the Ghetto: Grand Theft Auto IV, Racist Media and the Concrete Jungle

Karl Grossman
A Half-Trillion for Nukes

Matt Reichel
From Vegas to the Heartland and Back Again

Paul Myron Hillier
Of Gas and God

Andy Worthington
Suicide at Guantánamo

David Yearsley
And the Winner is ... Wayne Shorter

Daniel Cassidy
Free Lunch

Charles Thomson
If Hitler Had Been a Hippy ...

Gary Corseri
A Dream Deferred: Activism and the Arts

Wajahat Ali
Sex and the City Through a Man's Eyes

Ron Jacobs
Robins Weep

Poets' Basement
McNeill and Davies

Website of the Day
Last Charge of the Light Horse

May 30, 2008

Bassam Aramin
Here's the Truth You've Been Running From

Andrew Cockburn
Petraeus' Iran Obsession

Saul Landau
How We Got Into This Mess

Nikolas Kozloff
Meet South America's New Secessionists

Robert Sandels
Turning Back the Clock on Cuba

Dave Lindorff
Talk is Cheap

Martha Rosenberg
Raiding Big Meat; Arresting the Wrong People

Harvey Wasserman
Lieberman & McCain: Linking Internet Censorship and Atomic Reactor Terror

Doug Giebel
A Plague on Both Your Houses (of Congress)

Shaun Harkin
The Trial of the Raytheon 9

Website of the Day
The Once and Future Environmental Movement

May 29, 2008

Jeffrey St. Clair
Bill Clinton and the Rich Women

Nikolas Kozloff
Puerto Rico, Obama and the Politics of Race

Col. Dan Smith
Deceiving the Dead

Karl Grossman
The Most Lucrative Incentive for Nuclear Power in the History of the United States

William S. Lind
Inside the Washington Game

Robert Weissman
What to do About the Price of Oil

Dave Lindorff
Why Puerto Rico Won't Matter

David Macaray
A Union Fable

Chris Genovali
Fear and Loathing in the Northern Rockies

Laura Carlsen
Mexico's Battle Over Oil

Website of the Day
Support Antiwar.com

May 28, 2008

Wajahat Ali
The Libertarian Dark Horse: An Exclusive Interview with Ron Paul

Ralph Nader
What's Really Driving the High Price of Oil?

Brian McKenna
Why I Want to Teach Anthropology at the Army War College

Corporate Crime Reporter
Why Vincent Bugliosi Wants to Prosecute George W. Bush for Murder

Brian Cloughley
The Attack on Damadola

Eric Walberg
Opium for the Masses from Afghanistan

Michael Dickinson
Raytheon's Pain Ray: Coming to a Protest Near You

Ijaz Khan
Opening Windows in Pakistan

Website of the Day
Older Than America

May 27, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
In Her Mind She's Killed Before: the Plot to Assassinate Ralph Nader

Greg Kafoury
Is Obama Turning (Further) Right?

Jean Bricmont
Western Delusions

Tim Wise
Farrakhan is not the Problem

Ricardo Alarcón
Puerto Rico's Turn

Stephen Soldz
APA Supports Psychologist Engagement in Bush Regime Interrogations

Andy Worthington
The Guantánamo 16

Alan Singer
Vapid, Stupid and Insulting: Chuck Schumer Speaks to the Graduates

Richard Neville
Storm in an A-Cup

Susie Day
Gone with the W

May 26, 2008

Uri Avnery
The Syrian Option

Bill Quigley
War Immemorial Day

Col. Dan Smith
Retreating from Hell: a Different Memorial Day

Cindy Sheehan
Why Memorial Day is a Double-Whammy for Me

Marjorie Cohn
Hillary's Assassination Politics: Her Last Shot?

Fred Gardner
Does the VA Care?

Raymond J. Lawrence
Pain Pays: Getting Rich at NY Presbyterian Hospital

Harvey Wasserman
Mugging the Election System

Moncia Benderman
Truth Matters

David Rovics
In Praise of Utah Phillips

Website of the Day
Fox News Jokes About "Knocking Off" Osama and Obama

May 24 / 25, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Death-Wish Hillary Primes Manchurian Candidate

Jeffrey St. Clair
Yellowstone: How Sununu Shrank the Ecosystem

Barbara Rose Johnston
Dam Legacies, Damned Futures

Nikolas Kozloff
U.S. Fourth Fleet in Venezuelan Waters

Adriana Kojeve
The Environment and the 2008 Elections

Robert Fantina
Justice Department's Revelations on Torture

Dave Lindorff
Bush's War on Children in Iraq

David Yearsley
The War on Kitsch

Nelson P. Valdés
The Buying of "Democracy" Agents in Cuba

Kathleen M. Barry
Celebrating Ethnic Cleansing

John Ross
Mexico's Narco Opera Reaches for High Point

Allison Kilkenny
Apathy Doesn't Live in Bronx

Fred Gardner
Orangeburg, 1968

Elizabeth Schulte
Can the Whole World be Fed?

Daniel Gross
Remembering the Wendy's Massacre: the Dangerous Side of Retail Work

Christopher Brauchli
The Search for a Token Right-winger

Richard Rhames
A Nation of Sheep

Daniel Cassidy
My Mother

Poets' Basement
Davies, Klipschutz and Willson

Website of the Weekend
Happy Birthday, Bob

May 23, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
War Abroad, Poverty at Home

Alan Farago
The Radical Extremists of the Building Industry

Conn Hallinan
Ballots and Bullets: From Beirut to Bolivia

Mark Engler
The World After Bush

George Wuerthner
Cars and Cows: Living Large in America

Kamran Matin
The Kurds and American Neo-Imperialism

Sandy Boyer /
Shaun Harkin
The Long Incarceration of Pol Brennan

Robert Weitzel
A "Holey" Instrument of Peace in Iraq

Cindy Sheehan
An Uphill Battle

Liaquat Ali Khan
Pakistan's Futile Constitutional Amendment

Website of the Day
A Message from the Moral Compass of the McCain Campaign

May 22, 2008

Vijay Prashad
Racist Grammar

Joanne Mariner
A Military Commissions Cheat Sheet

Sharon Smith
60 Years of Apartheid

Jeff Birkenstein
Disaster Redux: Some Early Thoughts on the Earthquake in China

Brendan McQuade
From Obama to the PRTs in Iraq

Peter Morici
The Sorry State of the Banking Industry

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Restoration Boulevard

Dave Zirin
What I Want to Ask Mary Tillman

Ron Jacobs
CPR for the Antiwar Movement

Stephen Lendman
Immoral Hazard

Website of the Day
Hagee: God Sent Hitler to Drive the Jews to Israel

May 21, 2008

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Gothic Politics of Hillary Clinton

Nikolas Kozloff
U.S. Military Bases in South America

Alan Farago
Miami, Cuba and the Presidential Campaign

Dave Lindorff
Big John and the Scary, Scary Iran Threat

David Model
Genocide in Iraq?

Eric Walberg
Afghanistan: Who is the Enemy?

Franklin Lamb
Lebanon Gets a President

Kenneth Couesbouc
Tax Against Tyranny

Website of the Day
Child Labor and War-Affected Children: a Photo Essay

May 20, 2008

Ralph Nader
A Trip Inside Google

Uri Avnery
With Friends Like These

Patrick Irelan
The Empire and the Fleet

Ray McGovern
Come Out, Admiral Fallon, Wherever You Are

David Macaray
The UAW Strike Against American Axle

Chris Genovali
Big Oil on the Water: Skating Around the Tanker Issue

Ibrahim Fawal
Birmingham, Israel and the Nakba

Christopher Ketcham
Let Us Now Praise Famous Suicides

Andy Worthington
Guantánamo Trial Delayed

Martha Rosenberg
Merck is a Repeat Offender

Website of the Day
Defend the Students Who Pied Tom Friedman

May 19, 2008

Saul Landau
Cuba Will Live

Paul Craig Roberts
The Metamorphosis of the Conservative Movement

Brian McKenna
Brotherly Love in Philly's Badlands

Patrick Cockburn
City of the Dead: Mosul on Lockdown

B. R. Gowani
The Central Problem Pakistan Needs to Tackle

Dr. Trudy Bond
Psychologists and Torture: If Not Now, When?

Cindy Sheehan
Whose War is It?

John Mohawk
The Warriors Who Turned to Peace

Remi Kanazi
When Free Speech Doesn't Come for Free

Robert Day
I Get a Horse

Website of the Day
Evolve or Die

May 17 / 18, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
The View from the Crusaders' Castle

Tim Wise
Testosterone is Not to Blame: Why Sexism isn't the Reason for Hillary's Loss

Andy Worthington
Gitmo Trials: Betrayal, Backsliding and Boycotts

Robert Fantina
The Double-Talk Express Derails

Karim Makdisi
In the Wake of the Doha Truce

Harry Browne
Only Ireland Can Vote on EU's Future

John Ross
Suicide by Taco? The Demise of Mexico's PRD

Dave Lindorff
Fear at the Pump

Robert Weissman
Pharmaceutical Payola

Laray Polk
Bush Family Appeasement

David Yearsley
Puritans in Seattle

Ron Jacobs
Riot Squads, Privatization and the National Front

Paul Quinnett
My Last Flight

Sam Bahour
Refugees are the Key

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
Poverty Wages

Dr. Susan Block
The Groom May Kiss the Groom

Kim Nicolini
Paranoid Park: Inside the Fractured Landscape of Male Adolescence

Jeremy Scahill
John Cusack's War

Jeffrey St. Clair
Booked Up

Poets' Basement
Dominguez, Gerard and Davies

May 16, 2008

Stephen Soldz
Involuntary Drugging of Detainees

Jonathan Cook
Police Attack Al-Nakba March

Paul Craig Roberts
Lies of Aggression

Christopher Brauchli
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Pharmacy

James L. Secor
Olympic Torch China: the View from Shaoxing

Franklin Lamb
Did Hezbollah Thwart a Bush/Olmert Attack on Beirut?

Linn Washington, Jr.
The Price of Protecting Racist Cops

Dave Lindorff
What West Virginia Means

May 15, 2008

Stan Cox
Big Brother Close Up

Jeff Halper
Rethinking Israel After 60 Years

Greg Moses
Living for the Children of Palestine

John Ross
Why Mexican Justice is a Euphemism

Ron Jacobs
Go to Work, Go to Jail

Binoy Kampmark
Indian Jailbirds: the Case of Binayak Sen

Eve Spangler
We Should Not Celebrate Dispossession

Martha Rosenberg
Meat Wars with South Korea

Website of the Day
Idaho Wolf Killers

May 14, 2008

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
Oil Wars

Reza Fiyouzat
Torture, a Bully's Creed

Felice Pace
California Water Politics: Of Dams and Water Buffaloes

Hamdan A. Yousuf / Dania S. Ahmed
A Generation Defined by War

Robert Weitzel
Hillary's "Final Solution" to the Persian Problem

Ralph Nader
You're Either with the American People or the Big Auto Bosses

Dave Lindorff
Hillary, McCain and the Stupid Vote

Missy Comley Beattie
White Heaven: Hillary's W. Virginia Idyll

Neve Gordon
Israel as a Site of Struggle

Dr. Susan Block
A Washington Witch Hanging

Website of the Day
Hillary's Downfall

May 13, 2008

David Rosen
Sexual Terrorism: the Sadistic Side of Bush's War on Terror

Alan Farago
Nuclear Florida: Beachfront Reactors in an Age of Rising Sea Levels?

Saul Landau
The Crisis at Home

Saree Makdisi
Forget the Two-State Solution

Paul Craig Roberts
How Empires Fall

Andy Worthington
Gitmo's Suicide Bomber

Brother Bede Vincent
The Problem with Rev. Wright--There are Too Few Like Him

Linda Mamoun
Marketing Ethnic Cleansing

David Macaray
The Myth That Won't Die

Website of the Day
Burning the Future: Coal in America

May 12, 2008

St. Clair / Frank
The Pentagon's Toxic Legacy

Ziga Vodovnik
Rebels Against Tyranny: an Interview with Howard Zinn on Anarchism

Gary Leupp
Why All of Our Efforts Won't Stop an Attack on Iran

Frankln Lamb
Choufeit's Bloody Pentacost

Suzanne Baroud
The Ambition of Hillary Clinton

Martha Rosenberg
Farmer Ernie's Chamber of Horrors

Dave Zirin
The Boss's Boycott

Carl Finamore
I Ain't Gonna Work No More

Peter Morici
Recession Watch

Richard Rhames
The Third Way to Nowhere

Website of the Day
The Untold Story of Black New Orleans

May 10 / 11, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Real Clear Numbers: 101,000 Casualties a Year

Franklin Lamb
Hezbollah Eases Up and Beirut Opens Its Shutters

Ciara Gilmartin
A Surge in Iraqi Detainees

Diane Farsetta
Inside a Nuclear Industry Soirée

Kent Paterson
Mother's Day in Ciudad Juarez

Alan Farago
The Social Engineers

Rannie Amiri
Beirut on the Brink

Patrick Irelan
Bolivia, Morales and the Red Ponchos

Robert Fantina
The Lexicon Legacy of George W. Bush

Nikolas Kozloff
El Salvador 2009: Another Feather in the Cap of Chavez?

George Ciccariello-Maher
The Yumare Massacre, 22 Years On

David Yearsley
Bacharach at 80

Ron Jacobs
Rosa Luxemburg's Shock Doctrine

John Holt
Can Yellowstone Survive?

David Michael Green
It's So Over

Ben Terrall
Dealing Sleep

Kim Nicolini
The Best Film of the Bush Era?

Jeffrey St. Clair
Booked Up

Poets' Basement
Gibbons, Orloski, Frisella, Gladstone-Gelman

May 9, 2008

Franklin Lamb
A Wild Day in Beirut

Andy Worthington
The Afghans of Gitmo

Benjamin Dangl
Polarizing Bolivia

Mark A. Huddle
Remembering Mildred Loving, an Unsung Hero of the Civil Rights Movement

David Macaray
Hollywood Gives SAG the Brush Off

Dave Lindorff
Team Clinton: Going Down Ugly

C.G. Estabrook
The Way We Live Now

Matt Kosko
McCain, Clinton, Obama and the Wages of Lesser-Evilism

Robert Weissman
Big Business is not the Solution to Global Poverty

Michael Dickinson
Jailing the Joint

Website of the Day
The Role of Third Parties in the U.S.A.

May 8, 2008

Sharon Smith
Rockefeller Family Fables

Saul Landau
The NATO Axiom

Laura Carlsen
A Primer on Plan Mexico

Binoy Kampmark
Food Riots are Coming to the U.S.

Kenneth Couesbouc
China's Paper Feet

Liaquat Ali Khan
Pakistan's Constitutional Shenanigans

Franklin Lamb
Blindsided, Hezbollah Mulls Its Response

Sen. Russ Feingold
Government in Secret

George Wuerthner
The Problems with Conservation Easements

Richard W. Behan
A Brief Exposé of a Fraudulent War

Adam Federman
Marching for Sean Bell

Website of the Day
State of the Air

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Teachers Remind SEIU That Unionism (in Puerto Rico) Means More Than PR

San Juan Showdown

By STEVE EARLY

San Juan, P.R.

Operating with its usual purple panache, controversial political ties, and a huge advertising budget, America’s most Latino-friendly-union has been romancing San Juan all wek long. As the Clinton and Obama campaigns wrapped up their paid media assault on Democratic primary voters, the 1.7 million member Service Employees International Union (SEIU) continued its own PR offensive, laying the groundwork for an upcoming vote among 40,000 teachers. In that election, SEIU seeks to replace a militant independent federation as Puerto Rico’s largest labor organization.

In feel-good TV spots, full-page ads in all the major dailies, bus stop signs, and even airborne banners, SEIU has been “celebrating with enthusiasm” the official opening of its 2008 convention. That lavish gathering of 3,000 mainland delegates and guests began —under tight security--with a welcoming address from SEIU’s special friend on the island, Anibel Acevedo-Vila.

Acevedo is the Popular Democratic Party governor and  super-delegate for Obama. He was indicted on 19 criminal counts in March, accused of tax fraud, concealing illegal donations, and engaging in a conspiracy to violate campaign finance laws. If convicted on all these charges, he faces 20 years in prison. But, in the meantime, he plans to run for re-election in November despite shrivelled, Bush-level approval ratings.

Obama may have skipped a previously planned weekend rally with SEIU supporters to avoid an uncomfortable photo op with his most prominent local backer. (Instead, the soon-to-be Democratic nominee will speak to the delegates from a safer distance, via teleconference , on Wednesday).

Unlike the senator from Illinois, SEIU has no qualms about flaunting its relationship with the governor. Regardless of his legal problems, Acevedo remains a key ally in the union’s on-going campaign to destroy, with government help, the Federacion do Maestros de Puerto Rico (FMPR).  And that explains the biggest ruckus at the convention so far, which occurred on Saturday when two hundred FMPR members stopped by to express their lack of “enthusiasm” for Acevedo and Andy Stern, president of SEIU.

As properly credentialed SEIU visitors were being bussed from their hotels to pre-convention meetings, they could see that the whole “convention center district” had been cordoned off with metal barricades. Behind them were  scores of armed police, unarmed security guards, and then an inner ring of SEIU staffers wearing yellow vests  signifying that they too were “sergeants-at-arms.”

Using the “mobile picketing” skills well honed during a ten-day strike by thousands of teachers in February, the FMPR delegation marched right up to a police check-point--two hundred yards from the meeting hall—and burst right through. The flying wedge took  several casualties along the way, from flailing  police clubs and attempted collars. They then made a successful dash for the front door of the building, which is bigger than an airline terminal.

The ensuing picket-line—composed of fleet-footed survivors of the race to get in—had a feisty David vs. Goliath feel to it. For more than two hours, the teachers walked, chanted, sang union songs, distributed leaflets, and displayed a big FMPR banner under the soaring arches of the! convention center entrance. The FMPR message was “Stop Union Raids” -- one that SEIU has fervently embraced back home but only when the California Nurses Association is “raiding” SEIU, in which case it should stop immediately. Arrayed between the teachers and curious SEIU delegates were 25 muscle-bound, jack-booted San Juan riot cops, who arrived with sirens blaring and even bigger clubs than their colleagues on the outer perimeter.

SEIU members who ventured forth to fraternize with the FMPRistas soon discovered that they were indeed brothers and sisters from another union planet--but hardly “an enemy”  worthy of Stern’s unprecedented security arrangements. As disapproving union officials hovered in the background, SEIU Local 1021 member Henry Baker, a San Francisco city worker and member of SDS (circa 1969), even joined the teachers’ protest. (“I just don’t like us being here and the teachers over there with all these cops in between,” he told me.)

Meanwhile, a 49-year old science teacher named Rafael Feliciano Hernandez—the bearded, soft-spoken president of FMPR and “maestro” of its successful march through the police lines—was chatting quietly with other SEIU free thinkers. Rafi — as he’s called — patiently recounted all the difficulties faced by his “strong rank-and-file union” during the last six months, thanks to SEIU.

Details of that saga first reached a larger mainland audience via a scathing column in The N.Y. Daily News by Democracy Now co-host Juan Gonzalez. An organizer of the Puerto Rican Young Lords in the late 1960s and, more recently, a union activist himself, Gonzalez criticized SEIU for “arrogant and colonialist” behavior in Puerto Rico, calling its attempted undermining of FMPR a “shameful betrayal of solidarity.” The villain of this piece was none other than a former buddy, Dennis Rivera, longtime  leader of SEIU District 1199  and past supporter of myriad good causes in NYC including the 1990-91 Daily News strike led by Gonzalez.

In his widely-read column, Juan reported that Gov. Acevedo had given his “close friend” Dennis “the green light last year to oust the teachers’ federation and replace it with a newly-formed group, the Union of Puerto Rican Teachers” (or Sindicato Puertorriqueno de Maestros”). The SPM is the bastard child of a school administrators’ association that affiliated with SEIU six months ago. The association is pro--privatization (which SEIU supposedly isn’t) but affiliated with the union anyway to gain access to its vaunted political war-chest and lobbying clout. With aid from Rivera, Puerto Rican principals and supervisors have, in Gonzalez’s words, “created a new union for their own subordinates.” When these teachers took a strike vote in January — after two years of frustrating talks with management negotiators who included members of SEIU’s new affiliate—the FMPR was quickly “decertified,” even before its members walked out.

Under “Law 45,” the public sector bargaining statute enacted ten years ago (after heavy lobbying by US-based unions like SEIU and AFSCME), all strikes are banned. Strikers can also be fired and striking unions deprived of their “exclusive bargaining rights” plus the ability to collect mandatory dues. Despite these legal risks and penalties, the FMPR — which is 80 per cent female — still managed to rally 25,000 teachers outside the governor’s mansion! on Feb. 21.
When its illegal walkout began several days later, it “paralyzed island public schools,” according to Gonzalez. But it also generated widespread support among students, parents, and local communities concerned about FMPR issues like class size and deteriorating school conditions.

After ten days of picketing, ten thousand teachers came together in an island-wide “general assembly” and voted to “suspend” the work stoppage.In return, they won amnesty for all strikers, maintained the terms of their old contract, held onto a previously granted  $150 raise, and got the government to freeze its plans for privatization, via charter schools. The teachers also secured a pledge from Acevedo to hike starting pay to $3,000 a month over the next eight years. (Today, new teachers here earn
 $19,200 a year.)

FMPR activists I interviewed outside the convention center were quite proud of these gains — and the  political significance of their strike. Ana Serrano, a school social worker from Aguadilla, said everyone in her town, two hours away from San Juan, “knew why we went on strike. We were doing this for better schools, not just for us.”

A Brooklyn-born graduate of SUNY Binghamton with a masters degree from NYU, Serrano now works in a school that’s infested with rats and termites. During the strike, she said, fellow militants were beaten, arrested, and pepper-sprayed, while  their elected leaders were heavily red-baited. Along w ith hundreds of other strike veterans, Serrano is now helping to keep FMPR afloat financially by making voluntary contributions to its treasury. They’re confident of winning any re-certification vote (yet to be scheduled) that will pit their member-controlled organization against what they call the “chupa cuotas” (or “dues-suckers”) from SEIU.

Key issues in the vote may include money and leadership accountability — ie how much workers should pay in dues and what their leaders should be paid. FMPR fees are only $16 a month; that’s $6 dollars less than what SEIU charges the much lower-paid school cafeteria workers that it already represents in Puerto Rico. SEIU’s newly-affiliated school bosses union has a dues rate twice as high as FMPR’s, As Feliciano explains, his own salary is capped at $2,600 a month—no more than the highest-paid teacher. (He’s also limited to serving two consecutive terms.) In contrast, SEIU’s top Puerto Rican official, Roberto Pagan, gets paid almost as much as the FMPR president for attending just a few board meetings each year as an SEIU vice-president.( In addition, he receives another $60,000 annually from his San Juan local.) Meanwhile, Rivera earns nearly $200,000 20annually as head of  SEIU’s national health care division — more than five times the average wage of  unionized hospital workers in the U.S.

The radical idealism of  FMPR stands in sharp contrast to dominant trends in SEIU (notwithstanding the brave convention fight about to be waged this week by United Healthcare Workers-West and its allies in SEIU Members for Reform Today (SMART).   While a middle-aged English teacher named Edgardo Alvelo was telling me about member involvement in the ! FMPR, the self-proclaimed “21st Century Union” was inside the convention hall showcasing a new system for “servicing” its members via regional call centers. Under a Stern-proposed expansion of SEIU “Membership Resource Centers,” workers will be given 800 numbers to call for information and advice about job-related problems. As part of controversial SEIU deals with several big catering firms, this method of “representation” has already been “trialed” with union-negotiated restrictions on workplace agitation and strikes.

Alvelo was incredulous that any union would  undermine its own ability to apply direct “pressure on the boss” through member mobilization. In FMPR, he explained, “the shop steward is a leader at the school level. He or she represents other workers and helps them organize concerted actions to win better conditions. You can’t do that from the outside.”

For Alvelo, his union’s dispute with SEIU is both personal and political. He’s known Dennis Rivera (“a nice person, in terms of personality”) since they were both schoolmates in the town of Aibonito. The SEIU leader was called Dennis  Hickey back then. “My mother worked for Dennis’s father,” recalls Avelo, explaining that the elder Hickey came from the mainland to manage a local textile plant and ended up marrying a local girl. Rivera adopted his mother’s name when he moved to Newe York to become a hospital worker organizer in the late 1970s, after several years of  activism  in the Puerto Rican Socialist Party. (In a catchy satirical tune, blasted from its borrowed sound truck, FMPR keeps Rivera’s patrimony in the picture for better rhyming purposes (if not other reasons as well); as I left the “convention district” on Saturday, I could still hear the sound of Spanish lyrics about “t! riqui, triqui, Dennis Hickey” and his  “pirateria sindical” (pirate union).

Serrano also knew Hickey- Rivera during his radical youth. But she’s extremely wary now about his penchant for partnering with conservative politicians like Acevedo or George Pataki, when he was GOP governor of New York. “We have members from all the different Puerto Rican parties in our union,” she says. “But it’s not good for a workers’ organization to become an appendage of any one of them. Because, when they get into power, then the union just shuts up.”

Serrano left the last word on Rivera and his political trajectory to Pedro Albizu Campos. A Harvard-educated, US-Navy veteran, Albizu spent many years in federal prison for his “seditious” brand of Puerto Rican nationalism. In that movement, “Don Campos,” as Serrano calls him, knew a thing or two about the slippery slope from principle to pragmatism and then on down to sellout. Once this backsliding begins, she explains — paraphrasing Albizu --“you slip and you slide until you fall and break your ass.”

Within the FMPR, Serrano is not alone in believing that Dennis Rivera and SEIU are headed for such a fall themselves—on the hard rock of Puerto Rican teachers determined to have a union they can call their own.

Steve Early is a Boston-based labor journalist and lawyer who is covering the SEIU convention in San Juan. He’s been active in the labor movement since 1972 and can be reached at Lsupport@aol.com

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