Report to the Stars and Gears club, via our website, and what we are trying to achieve.

Health care rally in SF

Stars and Gears were out at the rally for health care in SF. We handed out materials, signed stuff, and talked with people there.

There were somewhere between 50 and 100 people, with several speakers outlining how health care reform is desperately needed.

There was a doctor who talked about difficult hospital conditions.

There was an insurance industry worker who described the "death spiral" of rising premiums - premiums are increased to raise revenue, but this eventually causes people to drop their coverage, leading to increased premiums to compensate, etc. in a degenerate cycle.

There was a cancer survivor with a health care horror story. She had been successful in the corporate world, but diagnosis with cancer led her to loss of job, hence loss of insurance, and eventually, to financial ruin. She warned: "it can happen to you."

The speakers wanted Senate Democrats to use reconciliation protocol so that their majority would tell. They recognized that a more comprehensive and aggressive health care reform would be ideal, but saw the bill in congress as an important partial victory.

At the end the crowd chanted "what do we want? health care! when do we want it? now!"

Moral responsibility for American war

Everybody knows America has been at war overseas for nearly a decade. The bodies of innocents are stacking up. But most people don't think it's their fault. They don't feel guilty the same way they would if they had just knifed those Iraqis/Afghans/Pakistanis/etc. to death.

Who's to blame then?

Political executives like Commander-in-Chief Obama, Defense Secretary Gates, etc. and military brass like Petraeus --- yes. The soldiers, pilots, and military people who carry out the orders they craft --- how not? Their fingers are on the triggers and buttons.

The military-industrial corporations, who buy politicians to ensure demand for their instruments of destruction --- undoubtedly.

Those who support the war, who agitate for war, who vote for war --- certainly. They enable the war machine. Without them wars could not be fought. These are the likes of Bill Kristol and Christopher Hitchens, and the multitudes who take their arguments to heart and come out in support of war candidates.

Now we come to trickier creatures. What about those people who say: I don't support the war. I voted against it. But we live in a democracy, and even though I don't support it, the war was legitimately democratically decided. "Don't blame me, I voted for the other guy."

These people in their own minds would never accept any responsibility for the heaps of corpses baking in the desert or strewn among boulders.

But aren't they also to blame? They accept as legitimate a democratic process that results in the slaughter of people on the other side of the planet. They uphold a money-bought democracy knee deep in blood.

Though they would never admit it, these people are also war enablers. They let fealty to our anti-democratic democracy pull them in line with perpetual war. As if our democracy, even if it weren't controlled by money, should be legitimately able to violate human rights, international law, and ultimately human life by unilateral military action!

They bear moral responsibility as well.

The only ones who are not to blame are those who reason: a system that produces such carnage so regularly is broken. I do not uphold such a system; I actively oppose it. I seek to change it or overturn it.

Only these people, who are not deceived by money-bought democracy, who are not monstrously arrogant enough to think that by right of being American they have the right to kill by bombs whoever they decide to, deserve moral absolution for the national crimes.

They say "the system that produces regular slaughter is broken" and carry that conviction into practice. If everyone who opposed the wars came to the same conclusion, the human devastation could finally come to an end.

Fremont NUMMI's big battle

I've been trying to follow the story of the NUMMI plant worker's fightback against Toyota's planned closure. An article describing it is here: http://www.peoplesworld.org/labor-campaigns-vs-nummi-closure/

Not covered in the story is the Jan 24th meeting that has been making the internet rounds - for instance, here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UICPuHDD0GM

The way this meeting has been painted is union leadership betraying membership. But that's just wrong. The guy who makes the linked videos is a good guy, but he got it wrong here.

First of all, the UAW leaders have fought the plant closure from the beginning right down the line. At that moment it seemed lost and they had to try to get the best deal possible --- but since then labor has rallied to them and they've renewed the fight. Attacking them in their moment of uncertainty, that nervous moment when they look defeat straight in the face, is just cruel. It's something management would do to get a better deal on severance.

And in fact, union supporters who publish a sheet called Mother Muckraker made exactly that accusation. They noted that a blitz of anti-union agitation preceded the Jan 24 meeting, which itself was held not at the usual union meeting time, but forced in as an alternative/special meeting, with news media invited (?). They noted that the invitations to the events themselves promised a violent outcome ("the 'powder keg' is ready to ignite").

They further questioned who the white haired heckler who kept interrupting Contreras was. As far as anyone knew, he didn't even work at NUMMI. They figured he was a hired heckler. His cameraman (and why were there so many cameras?) was inciting violence, shouting "F--- him up!! F--- him up!!! Beat his a--!!!"

"Put that s--- on Youtube!!!" screams the white haired heckler. Sure enough, multiple recordings are soon up on Youtube.

As the Mother Muckraker sheet says, its an obvious set up to discredit the union as thugs, just as has been done time and time again against unions, at town hall meetings, etc. The goal is to destroy the union's solidarity, make it look bad, try to defeat their fight back, and get to give the workers as small a severance package as possible.

Nobody should fall for the staged theatrics.