Ongoing deportation tragedy

This week DHS began a review of all deportation cases that are in the immigration courts. They have started training their agents and prosecutors to stop deportation of many undocumented people who are not convicted criminals. This new policy was first revealed by the ICE director last June. It applies to undocumented folks like those with family here, young "Dream Act" students and undocumented members of the military, All of those affected will be in a sort of limbo status, but at least they will not be deported.

The initial announcement and subsequent kick-off of the new policy is full of hope. But nobody should think that the tragedy of family separation is already on hold. The deportation buses continue to roll, and parents continue to be separated from their children and other family members.

Last week I was able to make an afternoon and nighttime visit to Nogales, Sonora. We spoke, sometimes at length, with people who had just been deported. A young man who spoke perfect English talked about the only life he has known, here in the US. Another man talked about his family in California and a son who was now also facing deportation. Long after dark, while we were talking at a shelter in the midst of many deportees who had arrived during the last three days, a new group of exhausted women came to the door. (We soon learned that their original homes are about 1,500 miles south of Nogales.) The face of a young mother who had arrived earlier showed panic because she feared losing her children to a foster home.

After the thousands of migrant deaths in the US borderlands, I see nothing more devastating than the still-continuing family separations.

By the way, there seems to be a widespread belief that deportations at Nogales do not take place at night. They do. During the previous night, three deportation buses unloaded their prisoners before 5 a.m. The last report I have is that there are two or three buses every night.

More from me on all of this very soon.

From Mike Moore

Where Does Occupy Wall Street Go From Here? ...a proposal from Michael Moore

Tuesday, November 22nd, 2011

Friends,

This past weekend I participated in a four-hour meeting of Occupy Wall Street activists whose job it is to come up with the vision and goals of the movement. It was attended by 40+ people and the discussion was both inspiring and invigorating. Here is what we ended up proposing as the movement's "vision statement" to the General Assembly of Occupy Wall Street:

We Envision: [1] a truly free, democratic, and just society; [2] where we, the people, come together and solve our problems by consensus; [3] where people are encouraged to take personal and collective responsibility and participate in decision making; [4] where we learn to live in harmony and embrace principles of toleration and respect for diversity and the differing views of others; [5] where we secure the civil and human rights of all from violation by tyrannical forces and unjust governments; [6] where political and economic institutions work to benefit all, not just the privileged few; [7] where we provide full and free education to everyone, not merely to get jobs but to grow and flourish as human beings; [8] where we value human needs over monetary gain, to ensure decent standards of living without which effective democracy is impossible; [9] where we work together to protect the global environment to ensure that future generations will have safe and clean air, water and food supplies, and will be able to enjoy the beauty and bounty of nature that past generations have enjoyed.

The next step will be to develop a specific list of goals and demands. As one of the millions of people who are participating in the Occupy Wall Street movement, I would like to respectfully offer my suggestions of what we can all get behind now to wrestle the control of our country out of the hands of the 1% and place it squarely with the 99% majority.

Here is what I will propose to the General Assembly of Occupy Wall Street:

10 Things We Want
A Proposal for Occupy Wall Street
Submitted by Michael Moore

1. Eradicate the Bush tax cuts for the rich and institute new taxes on the wealthiest Americans and on corporations, including a tax on all trading on Wall Street (where they currently pay 0%).

2. Assess a penalty tax on any corporation that moves American jobs to other countries when that company is already making profits in America. Our jobs are the most important national treasure and they cannot be removed from the country simply because someone wants to make more money.

3. Require that all Americans pay the same Social Security tax on all of their earnings (normally, the middle class pays about 6% of their income to Social Security; someone making $1 million a year pays about 0.6% (or 90% less than the average person). This law would simply make the rich pay what everyone else pays.

4. Reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act, placing serious regulations on how business is conducted by Wall Street and the banks.

5. Investigate the Crash of 2008, and bring to justice those who committed any crimes.

6. Reorder our nation's spending priorities (including the ending of all foreign wars and their cost of over $2 billion a week). This will re-open libraries, reinstate band and art and civics classes in our schools, fix our roads and bridges and infrastructure, wire the entire country for 21st century internet, and support scientific research that improves our lives.

7. Join the rest of the free world and create a single-payer, free and universal health care system that covers all Americans allof the time.

8. Immediately reduce carbon emissions that are destroying the planet and discover ways to live without the oil that will be depleted and gone by the end of this century.

9. Require corporations with more than 10,000 employees to restructure their board of directors so that 50% of its members are elected by the company’s workers. We can never have a real democracy as long as most people have no say in what happens at the place they spend most of their time: their job. (For any U.S. businesspeople freaking out at this idea because you think workers can't run a successful company: Germany has a law like this and it has helped to make Germany the world’s leading manufacturing exporter.)

10. We, the people, must pass three constitutional amendments that will go a long way toward fixing the core problems we now have. These include:

a) A constitutional amendment that fixes our broken electoral system by 1) completely removing campaign contributions from the political process; 2) requiring all elections to be publicly financed; 3) moving election day to the weekend to increase voter turnout; 4) making all Americans registered voters at the moment of their birth; 5) banning computerized voting and requiring that all elections take place on paper ballots.

b) A constitutional amendment declaring that corporations are not people and do not have the constitutional rights of citizens. This amendment should also state that the interests of the general public and society must always come before the interests of corporations.

c) A constitutional amendment that will act as a "second bill of rights" as proposed by President Frankin D. Roosevelt: that every American has a human right to employment, to health care, to a free and full education, to breathe clean air, drink clean water and eat safe food, and to be cared for with dignity and respect in their old age.

Let me know what you think. Occupy Wall Street enjoys the support of millions. It is a movement that cannot be stopped. Become part of it by sharing your thoughts with me or online (at OccupyWallSt.org). Get involved in (or start!) your own local Occupy movement. Make some noise. You don't have to pitch a tent in lower Manhattan to be an Occupier. You are one just by saying you are. This movement has no singular leader or spokesperson; every participant is a leader in their neighborhood, their school, their place of work. Each of you is a spokesperson to those whom you encounter. There are no dues to pay, no permission to seek in order to create an action.

We are but ten weeks old, yet we have already changed the national conversation. This is our moment, the one we've been hoping for, waiting for. If it's going to happen it has to happen now. Don't sit this one out. This is the real deal. This is it.

Have a happy Thanksgiving!

Yours,
Michael Moore
MMFlint@MichaelMoore.com
@MMFlint
MichaelMoore.com

Perhaps a national awakening

What a relief (and a joy) last week to see Arizona senator Russell Pearce recalled and Ohio governor John Kasich's anti-union law thrown out by voters. This just might be the beginning of a nationwide awakening...this and of course the unshakeable perseverance of the Occupy Wall Street protestors.

But what a challenge ahead. A few examples:

* There are still 13.9 million people out of work (9%). 3.3 million of them are workers between the ages of 25 and 34.

* Hard working people who have been contributing here for many years are still being deported, often causing merciless family separations.

* House Republicans remain in their endless obstruction mode, fixated on their singular goal of getting rid of Barack Obama.

* Republican presidential candidates are uttering one absurdity after another, yet they maintain their following. Example: Herman Cain and Michele Bachmann have just said that they would approve waterboarding of prisoners, a practice that has been defined as torture since the Spanish Inquisition. Romney has kept silence on the issue.

* The Guantanamo prison remains open. costing taxpayers $800,000 annually for each of the 171 captives -- more than 30 times what it would cost to keep one of those prisoners on U.S. soil.

* Representatives of our government have been lobbying countries to quietly sign a new law that allows use of those monstrocities known as cluster bombs.

* From New York City to Oakland and Berkeley, riot police have been let loose on non-violent Occupy protestors at a cost of millions of dollars. (In NYC, they cut up the tents with knives and sawed through tent poles.) In the meantime, the protestors are being demonized by the FOX propaganda machine.

It will be a tough winter road ahead. But one can feel the warmth of human solidarity and resistance.

Occupy Tucson

Here is the link for Occupy Tucson's site:

http://occupytucson.org

Once there, scroll down for the link to a report and good photos of the November 3rd police raid when all the protestors made a completely peaceful move from Armory Park to Veinte de Agosto park. My Franciscan friend Jerry Zawada and I went to Armory after the El Tiradito vigil (our weekly interfaith vigil for migrants who have died in the desert) and talked with folks there till about 8:30 pm, without even a hint that the raid would take place just a couple of hours later.

America's poorest poor

The UK's Guardian reports today that 20.5 million people are among America's poorest poor -- those at 50% or less of the official poverty level. That is one in 15 people, a record high.

* The US housing bust pushed many inner-city poor into suburbs and other outlying places and reduced jobs and income.

* "Those living in deep poverty represent nearly half of the 46.2 million people scraping by below the poverty line. In 2010, the poorest poor meant an income of $5,570 or less for an individual and $11,157 for a family of four."

* "Broken down by states, 40 states and the District of Columbia had increases in the poorest poor since 2007, and none saw decreases. The District of Columbia ranked highest at 10.7%, followed by Mississippi and New Mexico. Nevada had the biggest jump, rising from 4.6% to 7%."

* "Extreme poverty today continues to be prevalent in the industrial midwest, including Michigan cities Detroit and Grand Rapids, and Akron, Ohio, because of a renewed decline in manufacturing. But the biggest growth in high-poverty areas is occurring in newer Sun Belt metro areas such as Las Vegas, Riverside, California, and Cape Coral, Florida, after the plummeting housing market wiped out home values and dried up construction jobs."

* "As concentrated poverty spreads to new areas, including suburbs, the residents are now more likely to be white, native-born and high school or college graduates — not the conventional image of high-school dropouts or single mothers in inner-city ghettos."

* "Just over 7% of all African-Americans nationwide now live in traditional ghettos, down from 33% in 1970.

* 2009 census estimates: 27.6% of all Hispanics living in poverty, compared with 23.4% of African Americans.

For the full article, go to:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/03/us-poverty-data-poorest-poor?CMP=twt_gu