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- Menachem Rosensaft: The Vatican's Response to Holocaust Denial Must Be Holocaust Education
- John Tepper Marlin: NAACP, Happy 100th Birthday
- Art Levine: Will Hilda Solis Arrest "Wage Theft" CEOs? Lessons from L.A.'s Car Wash Bust
- Karen Dalton-Beninato: As Obama Visits Springfield, Abraham Lin(yeswe)can Was Here
| Menachem Rosensaft: The Vatican's Response to Holocaust Denial Must Be Holocaust Education | Top |
| The Vatican's Response to Holocaust Denial Must Be Holocaust Education by Menachem Rosensaft Richard Williamson, one of the four excommunicated bishops whom Pope Benedict XVI wants to bring back into the Roman Catholic fold, is not the only Holocaust denier in the Society of St. Pius X, an ultra-right wing splinter group of the Roman Catholic Church. The Italian branch of the Society announced that it has expelled the Rev. Floriano Abrahamowicz for telling the northern Italian newspaper La Tribuna di Treviso that "I know that gas chambers existed at least for disinfection, but I don't know if they were used to kill people or not." Abrahamowicz, who called Jews "the people of deicide," has also described the reforms instituted by the Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican, commonly referred to as Vatican II, which absolved contemporary Jews of responsibility for the death of Jesus Christ, as "worse than heresy." Abrahamowicz's expulsion came in the wake of the firestorm over Williamson's declaration on Swedish television that "I believe that the historical evidence is largely against, is hugely against six million Jews having been deliberately gassed in gas chambers as a deliberate policy of Adolf Hitler . . . . I believe there were no gas chambers." Williamson went on to say that he thought that "between two to three hundred thousand Jews perished in Nazi concentration camps but none of them by gas chambers." Williamson is also openly anti-Semitic. He has endorsed the authenticity of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the notorious Russian Czarist forgery that purports to depict a Jewish conspiracy to rule the world, and has written publicly of "the false messianic vocation of Jewish world-dominion, to prepare the Anti-Christ's throne in Jerusalem." Faced with open revolt by leading Roman Catholic cardinals and bishops, especially in Germany and Austria, the Vatican last week conditioned Williamson's rehabilitation on his "absolutely, unequivocally and publicly" recanting his position on the Holocaust, something Williamson has refused to do, at least for the time being. He first wants to review the historical evidence. "If I find proof I would rectify (earlier statements) . . . But all that will take time," Williamson told the German weekly magazine Der Spiegel . It is outrageous that Pope Benedict did not immediately respond to Williamson's stalling tactics by reinstating the renegade bishop's excommunication. When members of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations leaders meet with the Pope today, they must demand that he categorically and permanently revoke Williamson's rehabilitation. Pope Benedict hopes that the memory of the Holocaust "will prompt humanity to reflect on the unpredictable power of evil when it conquers the hearts of men." But statements condemning Holocaust denial and reaffirming ecumenical sentiments toward the Jewish people are not enough. Pope Benedict should affirmatively declare holocaust denial to be heresy, and the Vatican should undertake a comprehensive program of Holocaust education. Students at Roman Catholic schools, universities and seminaries throughout the world must be taught not only that the Holocaust occurred, but that centuries of Christian anti-Semitism helped make it possible. They must be taught that while Bishop Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, later Pope John XXIII, helped rescue Jews from the Nazis during the Second World War, and while Archbishop Jules-Géraud Saliège of Toulouse, France, spoke out publicly on their behalf, Pope Pius XII remained silent, as did most Catholic cardinals, bishops and priests. They must be taught that thousands upon thousands of baptized Christians actively participated in the mass murder of European Jewry, and that hundreds of thousands looked on or looked away. They must be taught that many of the French policemen of the collaborationist Vichy regime who rounded up French Jews and helped send them to their death at Auschwitz regularly attended mass on Sundays. They must be taught that the Vatican never excommunicated Adolf Hitler or other baptized Nazi leaders, and that after World War II, Bishop Alois Hudal was instrumental in spiriting Nazi war criminals to safety in Latin America. They must be taught that the Franciscan priest Miroslav Filipović, known as "Fra Sotona" ("Brother Satan"), was a brutal commander of the Jasenovac concentration camp in Croatia, run by the collaborationist Ustasha regime, and that the Archbishop of Sarajevo, Ivan Šarić, enthusiastically supported and advocated the persecution and murder of Jews. While the Vatican's relations with the Society of St. Pius X is an internal matter, its attitude, and Pope Benedict XVI's attitude, toward Holocaust denial and Holocaust deniers affects us all. My five-and-a-half year old brother, my mother's son, was murdered in a gas chamber at Auschwitz. For the sake of continued Jewish-Catholic relations, all Catholics, indeed all Christians, must be taught that my brother's brutal death and the deaths of more than one million Jewish children who perished in the Holocaust is at least as real as the death of a Jew named Jesus in Jerusalem almost two thousand years ago. Menachem Rosensaft, a lawyer in New York City, is the Founding Chairman of the International Network of Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors, and Vice President of the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants (This article was previously published by JTA, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency) | |
| John Tepper Marlin: NAACP, Happy 100th Birthday | Top |
| Today is both the 200th birthday of Abraham Lincoln and the 100th birthday of the NAACP. When the NAACP was founded in 1909, the number of faithful Lincoln Republicans was dwindling, but John E. Milholland was one, an Irish-American and a Presbyterian> He became the NAACP's first Treasurer and focused on what it needed most, money. FDR later championed black Americans and won them for the Democratic Party. As the Republican party has again been moving to the right on civil rights issues, William Ruckelshaus supported Barack Obama for President despite a long-time Republican party affiliation in the Ruckelshaus family. The NAACP's founding was scheduled for February 12, 1909, and this is considered the NAACP's birth date even though the meeting was postponed to May 30. Billed as a conference of the Niagara Movement, the meeting was held in New York City's Henry Street Settlement House. The 40 people in attendance called themselves at first the National Negro Committee. Harvard Professor W. E. B. Du Bois helped organize the event and presided over it. One year later, at its second conference, the membership renamed themselves the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. The first officers, as reported by Mary White Ovington were: - National President, Moorfield Storey, Boston - Chairman of the Executive Committee, William English Walling - Treasurer, John E. Milholland - Disbursing Treasurer, Oswald Garrison Villard - Executive Secretary, Frances Blascoer - Director of Publicity and Research, Dr. W. E. B. DuBois. John E. Milholland's daughter, Inez Milholland insisted that a delegation from Howard University be allowed to march in the 1913 woman suffrage parade in Washington. She died in 1916 after an exhausting series of weeks campaigning against President Woodrow Wilson for not supporting the right of women to vote. At a memorial for Inez in 1924, her father complained publicly about the absence of black people on the program, which he had not prepared. He invited his three black guests to speak.. More on Barack Obama | |
| Art Levine: Will Hilda Solis Arrest "Wage Theft" CEOs? Lessons from L.A.'s Car Wash Bust | Top |
| Just a day before Wednesday's Senate panel vote for the pro-worker Hilda Solis as Labor Secretary, another blow for workers' rights was struck by the crusading City Attorney of Los Angeles, Rocky Delgadillo. He filed a 176-count criminal case against two Los Angeles carwash owners and their machete-wielding manager for violating labor laws and criminal statutes by allegedly abusing and intimidating workers, and for failing to pay the minimum wage; the city attorney likened the conditions to a "work environment that bordered on indentured servitude." "In this city, we will hold to account and prosecute those who cheat or abuse their employees," said Delgadillo. "We are not going to allow business owners to cut corners -- in violation of the law -- to turn a profit." The owners of these four car wash sweatshops, Benny and Nissan Pirian, could each face as long as 86 years in jail and a total of more than $1.25 million in fines and restitution. (Neither Pirian brother returned phone calls for comment, and manager Manny Reyes told this reporter "I don't know anything" about allegations that he flaunted a machete, a bullet and a billy club at various times to threaten workers and organizers. ) But it's not just the Southern California car wash industry that routinely violates basic labor laws on pay, hours and workers' rights: it's a widespread scandal involving an estimated $19 billion a year in virtually unpunished wage theft involving some of the country's major corporations, including Wal-Mart , Tyson and even Federal Express . And it's no surprise, then, that such companies are among the most virulent opponents of the Employee Free Choice Ac t, which aims to level the playing field by giving workers the right to choose how to form a union. One of the challenges for Solis is whether she'll be tough enough in cracking down on such rampant abuses with a Labor Department gutted by eight years of pro-business GOP hacks in charge. It's not that likely, though, that the moderate Solis will pursue criminal cases against the top CEOs who have yet to face the prospect of jail time over wage theft, given the corporate flack the Obama administration faces over the Employee Free Choice Act. Both federal and state wages-and-hours laws include criminal provisions. Even so, as the AFL-CIO's general counsel, Jon Hiatt, observes, "My dream is that the first act of the new Secretary of Labor would be to identify top executives of companies that routinely violate wages and hours laws -- and take them out of their offices in handcuffs. The deterrent value would be enormous." In the 1930s, he points out, FDR's secretary of labor pursued the prosecution of the top executive of the F.W. Woolworth company for refusing to recognize a union -- and he was indeed photographed being dragged from his office in handcuffs. But even without criminal penalties, the lax federal enforcement in recent years has created a workplace climate that essentially gives a green light to owners and managers to break laws with impunity. These scofflaws apparently included Vermont Hand Wash manager Manuel Reyes , charged with two counts each of witness intimidation and brandishing a deadly weapon -- with a maximum penalty of two and half years in the county jail. Reyes threatened Israel Jimenez, a union supporter, with violence when the manager showed him .38 caliber bullets on one occasion in April and a machete and combat knife on another occasion in June -- after Jimenez complained about his hours being cut. That's according to this reporter's interviews with union supporters, an unfair labor complaint filed last July , and the new criminal charges. Jiminez says, through a translator, "When the manager showed me his machete, he said that he kept it, and other weapons, in his car for whatever might come up at the car wash. He has told me when he pulls out his gun, he uses it to kill. This made me afraid for myself and my co-workers who are trying to improve the conditions at this carwash." Reyes's alleged threats were a response, in part, to the union organizing campaign by the Carwash Workers Organizing Committee (CWOC) of the United Steelworkers that began last March. That organizing effort is joined by a coalition of community and union groups known as CLEAN , which stands for Community-Labor-Environmental Action Network, to improve working conditions for the roughly 10,000 workers in the car wash industry in Los Angeles. Henry Huerta, the director of the CLEAN Carwash Campaign, says of the car wash owners: "They're driven by greed and a belief that they can get away with a blatant disregard for the law." He witnessed Reyes's unique approach to reform appeals when Huerta was leading a group of demonstrators outside of the Vermont Hand Wash, and Reyes reached into his trunk, then brandished a billy club raised high for all to see. The workers stood inside the car wash, cowed, while Reyes glared at Huerta and others, turning around slowly with the billy club in his hand, signaling his willingness to use it, Huerta recalls. If all these threats and wage theft abuses weren't enough, the car wash owners charged criminally Tuesday not only forced some workers to live on tips alone, but they have reportedly endangered the safety of their workers with the heedless use of chemicals and arranged for them to drink unclean, polluted water on the job. As even a car care industry newsletter reported : Prosecutors have accused the Pirians of routinely denying employees fair wages, refusing to pay for overtime, and ignoring rest and lunch break requirements. Some of the Pirians' employees were paid a flat rate of $35 to $40 per day, with some working for tips alone, Delgadillo's office said. Investigators also have charged the Pirians with failing to provide adequate drinking water for employees. At some of the carwash locations, the only drinking water provided allegedly came from a filtered pump attached to the same washing machine used to clean dirty towels, according to the city attorney's office. The only alternative on-site was to buy bottled water for $1.50 to $2 per bottle, officials said. The carwashes also did not meet safety standards and failed to arrange necessary medical attention for workers who suffered serious physical injuries, including acid burns, deep puncture wounds and lacerations, prosecutors said. As Bosbely Reyna told reporters Tuesday when the prosecutor announced the charges: "The owners cheated us out of our wages and didn't pay us for all the hours we worked. The working conditions are dangerous, and they treated us with no respect, yelling at us to work faster and humiliating us in front of customers." In fact, according to the CLEAN campaign, Bosbely , who worked at Vermont Hand Wash for nearly two years as a dryer and detailer, suffered along with his co-workers from health effects from using acids and other toxic chemicals without any protective gear, such as goggles or gloves. Bosbely bravely reported the dangerous working conditions at the carwash to Cal/OSHA and answered questions from the press when other workers were afraid to. He also joined his coworkers in taking legal action against the owners of the carwash for not paying minimum wage or overtime pay, and not allowing workers to take meal and rest breaks. In October 2008, management at Vermont Hand Wash fired Bosbely. But all his legal complaints to state labor and environmental agencies didn't lead to any redress by the owners, either because they were tied up in appeals and delaying tactics by the company, or the owners' blunt refusal to abide by any rulings against them. As CLEAN pointed out in its news release this week: The City Attorney's criminal complaint is only the latest enforcement action taken by government agencies against carwashes operated by Benny and/or Nisan Pirian: * Pirian family-owned carwashes have been cited by Cal/OSHA for putting workers in danger due to unsafe working conditions; * The National Labor Relations Board recently filed a complaint against Vermont Hand Wash for, among other instances of alleged misconduct, firing and/or retaliating against workers who spoke out publicly about working conditions; * A Pirian family-owned carwash was cited by the Los Angeles County Department of Public Works for repeatedly allowing carwash wastewater to flow into our storm drains. "We hope this sends a message to carwashes across the city that they can no longer violate the law with impunity," said Glen Arnodo of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor. "This community, including thousands of workers across Los Angeles, will stand together with carwash workers until they win this fight for justice and dignity." The Los Angeles Times also cited the Pirians' history of flouting laws and a series of lawsuits: The criminal charges follow a number of lawsuits filed against the Pirians by the nonprofit [legal services organization] Bet Tzedek. The first suit, filed in 2005, alleged violation of labor laws, including wage and hour and overtime laws. It was settled. In May, the firm sued the Pirians again, alleging wage and hour and overtime violations. Bet Tzedek is seeking class action status for about 300 current and former employees. "It's the exact same thing," sighed Kevin Kish, director of Bet Tzedek's Employment Rights Project. "We deal with a lot of industries where there are a lot of unrepentant employers. I'm a little surprised at the level of unrepentance here." The entire carwash industry, it seems, along with other industries with low-paid immigrant workers, are a throwback to the early 1900s with bosses who do whatever they like to workers as if federal and state regulations don't exist. The carwash industry in Los Angeles represents, in short, a utopian ideal of management-labor relations for GOP anti-union politicians and their pro-business cheerleaders in Washington's right-wing think tanks . As James Sherk of the Heritage Foundation asked last year in an essay, "Do Americans today still need labor unions?" His answer was headlined in bold: " NO: LABOR UNIONS ADD TO COSTS AND DISCOURAGE PRODUCTIVITY ." But the crimes being pursued by Los Angeles City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo, responding to the violations brought to his attention by union supporters, shows just why unions are needed and why employers can't be allowed the untrammeled freedom to pay workers whatever they want and treat them like serfs. As Kevin Kish, director of the Employment Rights Project at the Bet Tzedek Legal Services, notes, "The City Attorney is sending a clear message: wage theft is a crime, and it won't be tolerated in Los Angeles." The use of criminal prosecution, instead of the time-consuming and often fruitless approach of seeking redress through complex civil ligitation, is "quite extraordinary," observes Jon Hiatt, the AFL-CIO counsel. Union activists hope that when Hilda Solis is confirmed as Labor Secretary, as now seems likely, she'll take some cues from the innovative, tough-minded prosecution in Los Angeles. If that turns out to be the case, we could perhaps look forward to seeing a CEO from Tyson, Wal-Mart or other wage-robbing employer marched by federal agents in a "perp walk" past ogling cameras and pushed into a waiting squad car. And the dream of union attorneys -- and exploited workers -- everywhere then might then finally come true. ************************************** Art Levine is the co-host of the "D'Antoni and Levine" show on BlogTalk Radio, every Thursday at 5:30 p.m, ET. | |
| Karen Dalton-Beninato: As Obama Visits Springfield, Abraham Lin(yeswe)can Was Here | Top |
| From Live Green Orleans . Generally, when he was speakin', he was cool and quiet and things all fit together, and when you come away you was calm - but your head was workin'; but that time up to Bloomington he was like - what's that the Bible calls it? - avengin fire" - yes, sir, that's it, he was like avengin fire." Ronald W. Diller On this, Abraham Lincoln's 200th birthday I have to confess to catching Lincoln fever. It was bound to happen considering that post-Katrina we ended up living next to the office where Lincoln was talked into running for President. Our front window looks out over the courthouse where he honed his oratory skills, and over the last few years I've gotten used to Lincoln reenactors in top hats strolling the block. I'm still hoping to come across Lincoln's Lost Speech delivered here in Bloomington but it remains unrecorded despite a room full of reporters present at the time. It was described by witnesses as so impassioned that Lincoln was jumping tables shouting that the union would be preserved. One said: "I never knew exactly what did happen there. All I recollect is that at the beginnin' of that speech I was settin in the back of the room and when I come to I was hanging' on to the front of the platform. I recollect I looked up and seen Joe Medill [ Chicago publisher] standin on the reporters' table lookin foolish-like and heard him say, "Good Lord, boys! I ain't took a note!" - Ronald W. Diller quoted in Lincoln's Lost Speech by Elwell Crissey Bloomington was the occasional home of a young Lincoln becoming so progressive he no longer felt at home in the Whig party and developed a new one. It's still easy to get a feel for Lincoln's evolution as a circuit lawyer riding through the tree-lined neighborhoods of this sleepy town. His friend and eventual campaign manager Jesse Fell was to become famous for planting hundreds of trees here and founding the local college, as well as being the grandfather of Adlai Stevenson. In the state capital it's still possible to find tales passed down about Mary Todd Lincoln's parenting, notable at the time because the Lincoln boys were allowed to be, shall we say, more rambunctious than the average child of the nineteenth century. Lincoln's Midwestern lost speech showed that both parents contributed to this fiery nature. He knew what he was doing' that night. He knew he was cuttin' loose. He knew them old Whigs was goin' to have it in for him for doin' it, and he meant to show 'em he didn't care a red cent what they thought. He knew there was always a lot of fools in that new party he was joining - the kind that's always takin' up with every new thing comes along to get something to orate about. He saw clear as day that if they got started right that night, he'd got to fire 'em up, so he threw back his shoulders and lit in," recalled Diller, the local druggist and an eyewitness to the speech. Bloomington was on Lincoln's court circuit, and they have plaques all over town to prove it. One day Lincoln's friend Fell saw him walking out of the courthouse and invited the young attorney into his brother's office to request an autobiography. Fell had been hearing the excitement out East over the Lincoln / Douglas debates. Lincoln declined for a year and when he changed his mind asked that, "If any thing be made out of it, I wish it to be modest." As to the note's briefness, 'There is not much of it, because there is not much of me." An eyewitness to the Lost Speech, John Wentworth of the Chicago Democrat wrote, "I shall not mar any of its fine proportions by attempting even a synopsis of it." The press was either too enthralled to write, or publishers censored the fiery anti-slavery rhetoric. Bloomington author and Illinois Supreme Court Reporter Isaac Newton Phillips in 1901 discounted a version written decades after the fact with: "We do not know what he said." But we do know how he said it. His speech was full of fire and energy and force. It was logic; it was pathos; it was enthusiasm; it was justice, equity, truth, and right set ablaze by the devine fires of a soul maddened by the wrong; it was hard, heavy, knotty, gnarly, backed with wrath," said his law partner William Herndon who also described it as the best speech of Lincoln's career. This was table-jumping, string bean Lincoln. All cheekbones because he had not yet taken an 11-year old's advice to grow a beard to lend him gravitas. She was possibly the first campaign image consultant. The Lost Speech did not survive to be dissected. Even if it had, our first courthouse burned to the ground at the turn of the century, much of the Lincoln lore burning with it. I stop in once in awhile to ask for a copy of the Lost Speech, just in case one has turned up. The speech probably was not religious. Upon finding out most of Springfield's ministers polled against his candidacy Lincoln wrote: "I am not a Christian -- God knows I would be one but I have carefully read the Bible, and I do not understand this book. These men well know that I am for freedom in the territories, freedom everywhere as far as the Constitution and the laws will permit, and that my opponents are for slavery. They know this, and yet, with this book in their hands, in the light of which human bondage cannot live a moment, they are going to vote against me. I do not understand it at all." What Lincoln saw in New Orleans on his first flatboat trip south influenced him deeply and he wrote to an old friend, "How can any one who abhors the oppression of negroes, be in favor or degrading classes of white people? Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we began by declaring that "all men are created equal." We now practically read it "all men are created equal, except negroes." "When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read "all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and Catholics." When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretence of loving liberty -- to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocracy," Lincoln's letter concluded. With letters like this written around the time of the famous lost speech, it's easy to imagine the direction it took. In ten minutes he was about eight feet tall; his face was white, his eyes was blazin' fire, and he was thunderin, 'Kansas shall be free!' 'Ballots, not bullets!' 'We won't go out of the Union and you shan't.'" Diller described. The Union line is the only part of the speech universally agreed upon by eyewitnesses. "Generally, when he was speakin', he was cool and quiet and things all fit together, and when you come away you was calm - but your head was workin'; but that time up to Bloomington he was like - what's that the Bible calls it? - avengin fire" - yes, sir, that's it, he was like avengin fire," Diller said. I like to think that the Abraham Lincoln of the Lost Speech is the one President Barack Obama will be paying tribute to in Springfield today. The Lincoln filled with the quality the world needs now more than ever. Avenging fire. * * * More on Abraham Lincoln's 200th Birthday and another legend born 200 years ago today, environmentalist Charles Darwin by our travel writer and soon-to-be eco-volunteer in the Galapagos Islands at Live Green Orleans.com . Why the focus on Darwin? A survey by the Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion & Public Life found that 63% of Americans say they believe that humans and other animals have either always existed in their present form or have evolved over time under the guidance of a supreme being while only 26% say that life evolved solely through processes such as natural selection. More on Barack Obama | |
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