MLK: The Resurrection
MLK, Jr.: The Resurrection
By David Brooks
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews
The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., during the March on Washington for Work and Freedom, a major demonstration on August 28, 1963, where he delivered his historic I Have a Dream speech. Next Wednesday will be the 50th anniversary of his murder in Memphis,
English Article Goes Here
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The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. was killed 50 years ago (April 4) in Memphis, marking the bloodiest moment of what would be a 1968 that shook the United States and various parts of the world. Half a century later, this country is in the midst of a reactionary wave that has elevated a white supremacist backed by the Ku Klux Klan to the presidency, almost enough to make fun of King’s famous dream.
But it is worth remembering that King, when he was assassinated, was no longer just the man with a dream of racial equality, but a Nobel Prize winner and international moral authority who had dared in his later years to question and condemn his country’s economic and imperial system, including the war against Vietnam.
King went to Memphis, in the southern state of Tennessee, to support a union garbage workers strike in the name of economic and social justice. At the same time, he was organizing a national mobilization called the Poor People’s Campaign to demand economic rights for the underprivileged of all races and colors, a fundamental change in the U.S. capitalist system.
In the official rites and celebrations that King receives each year, it recalls his famous I Have a Dream speech, which he gave in 1963, but they almost never mention the radical message at the end of his life.
In 1967, King told a civil rights organization that the movement must address the issue of a restructuring of American society as a whole, adding that doing so meant coming to see that the problems of racism, economic exploitation, and war were all linked. These are interrelated evils. On the issue of economic injustice, he did not limit it to a racial issue: Let us be dissatisfied until the tragic walls that separate the outer city of wealth and comfort from the inner city of poverty and despair are destroyed by the battering rams of the forces of justice.
A few months earlier, he commented at a meeting of a civil rights organization: I think it is necessary to realize that we have moved from an era of civil rights to an era of human rights (…) we see that there has to be a radical redistribution of economic and political power…’.
Fifty years later, despite major changes in the country’s laws and regulations around institutional racism, crowned by the election of the first African-American president and what that means in a country founded on the backs of slaves, in essence, little seems to have changed.
An AP/NORC poll last week found that only one in 10 African Americans think the United States has met the goals of the civil rights movement half a century ago (35 percent of whites believe it has) after two rounds by an African-American president.
Fifty years later, new generations are continuing the fight against economic inequality, which has reached a record level in almost a century, with 1 percent of the richest families controlling nearly twice the wealth of 90 percent of the poor.
Fifty years later, incidents of official violence provoke fury. Impunity prevails as before, and indicators of segregation and racism multiply along with, and part of, the official anti-immigrant policies. Not to mention militarism in a country that has been in its longest wars in its history hoping to forget Vietnam.
But in the face of this, 50 years later, King’s echoes are heard all over the country.
Teachers in Oklahoma will begin a strike this Monday, following the triumphant example of their West Virginia peers, demanding not only a living wage and respect for their work – as they did 50 years ago in Memphis – but also greater investment in public education, especially to serve the poor and minorities; their counterparts in Kentucky (where teachers declared themselves sick by closing schools in 26 counties last Friday), Arizona and Wisconsin
African-American Rev. William Barber, famous for his Moral Mondays movement in North Carolina in 2013, which fought state initiatives to reduce spending on education and healthcare and to overturn some electoral rights, is resurrecting King’s Poor People’s Campaign this spring, and declaring, as his predecessor, that this is a moral issue.
MLK Dreamed of a Different America
Recalling the Memory of a Man Who Dreamed of a Different America 50 years ago.
Martin Luther King was honored in many places around the world today on the 50th anniversary of his murder.
Author: International Editor | internacionales@granma.cu
April 4, 2018 21:04:51
A CubaNews translation. Edited by Walter Lippmann.
WASHINGTON: The life and work of Martin Luther King, a symbol of the struggle for civil rights in the United States, was remembered in the United States and much of the world today.
The murderous bullet that killed the renowned Baptist pastor in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968, deprived humanity of one of its most tireless activists, who has since become an example to many of those who dream of a better world, reports Prensa Latina.
King dedicated his life to demanding an end to discrimination in the United States, where hundreds of years after the war of independence, blacks could not access certain places and had no right to vote.
He was also a harsh critic of the Vietnam War.
Despite the public notoriety he achieved, the activist was investigated and harassed by the FBI. In recent years, the real extent of the official political persecution of his movement, which included wiretaps of private calls and the spread of unfounded rumors, has come to light.
This Wednesday, personalities from around the world remembered his historic speech on the Lincoln Memorial esplanade in Washington, D.C., where he spoke the historic phrase “I have a dream.”
Half a century later, many of their demands remain unfulfilled in the United States, where discrimination and differences between blacks and whites continue to be a daily reality.
King’s granddaughter, Yolanda Renee, recently climbed on a platform to remember the Baptist pastor’s words when he asked that “his four little children be judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.
“I have a dream where we’ve had enough and where this world is one free of weapons. Period,” said the nine-year-old.
For his part, the president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, recalled the legacy of the American social leader in a message published on Twitter.
“Martin Luther King was shot in the head in 1968 while greeting his followers in Memphis, Tennessee. Venezuelan young people must know their struggle and their dreams for us to make them a reality,” Maduro said.
Meanwhile, in Cuba, he was honored in a monument erected to his memory in the central park of 23 y F in the Vedado neighborhood.
The memorial event, organized by the Memorial Center that bears his name, opens a broader agenda of activities to be carried out this year related to the event.
Victor Fowler, director of the Centro Cultural Dulce María Loynaz, said Martin Luther King was an example of commitment and strength.
MLK: When a Dream Doesn’t Die
MLK, Jr.: When a Dream Doesn’t Die
Fifty years after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., the United States is still convulsed by racial inequality, but hope also remains.
By Marylín Luis Grillo
digital@juventudrebelde.cu
Posted: Wednesday 04 April 2018 | 09:35:06 PM
A CubaNews translation.
Edited by Walter Lippmann.
It was a single shot from a Remington-Peters rifle. Martin Luther King Jr. had fallen in Memphis, Tennessee.
Hours earlier, in a sermon, as if in anticipation of the bullet that tried to quell his throat, he had said to the congregation of the city: “We have difficult days ahead of us […] Like everyone else, I would like to have a long life. […] But that doesn’t worry me now. I just want to do God’s will. And he has allowed me to climb to the top of the mountain. And from there I saw the promised land. I may not get to her with you. But I want you to know tonight that we, as a people, will reach the Promised Land. And I’m happy about it. Nothing worries me.
Luther King, who at the age of 39 had won the Nobel Peace Prize, had led a non-violent struggle for the civil rights of the African-American community, which had become the banner of hope… King did not die, because dreams do not die, they only come true.
The results of their struggle are not yet complete. Fifty years after his murder, the United States is still convulsed by inequality. The latest statistics illustrate that African-Americans suffer three times as many expulsions and school dropouts, their average household income is half that of white families, and with only 13 percent of the population, El País reported, they account for 40 percent of drug arrests.
A study by the Inequality of Opportunity Project also concluded that racial income disparities are one of the most persistent issues in American society, and that the racial identity to which one belongs marks the opportunities for study, work, salary levels, and social advancement from generation to generation.
Black people are also three times more likely than whites to be victims of police in the United States, and in 2015 alone, for example, with Barack Obama in the White House, law enforcement officers killed more unarmed blacks than armed whites. Faced with an Afro-descendant, the trigger is pulled without much attention.
Police repression, increasing inequality, debates in society about the role of identity groups, and Trump’s racist rhetoric are some of the factors that have led to the resurgence of movements like the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the birth of others like Black Lives Matter.
“No Justice, No Peace” said one of the posters that flooded the streets of Sacramento a week ago protesting the death of another black man by police, 22-year-old Stephon Clark, who was shot down in the Californian capital on suspicion of breaking car windows and running around with a cell phone in his hand, which officers said they mistook for a gun.
Police opened fire up to 20 times on Clark and eight bullets hit him, seven from behind. The video of the arrest hardly shows whether the young man was approaching the officers or not. They do not order him to freez, or to lie on the ground, after the first order to show his hands, they immediately shout “gun” and shoot. The city has been shaken up again, but it is not enough.
This is a good time to remember Luther King. Less than two weeks ago, her nine-year-old granddaughter, Yolanda Renee, was repeating the mythical words “I have a dream. She called for “a world without weapons”. His father, Martin Luther King III, son of the pastor, announced Friday the launch of a global initiative to encourage young people to focus on non-violence to resolve their conflicts.
The struggle continues, but it must be carried to its end; “from the mountain of despair, a stone of hope,” Dr. King would say. He was the same one who never stopped spreading faith because he had died: no bullet can kill dreams.
Hollywood anti-Cuban Mafia Action Movie
MARTIANOS
Followers of the thought of José Martí Network of Cuban emigres.
Hollywood to Film anti-Cuban Mafia Terrorist Action Movie in Miami
By Arthur González
Posted by Virgilio PONCE on April 4, 2018 at 11:07am
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
The truth always finds a way, even if it takes time, and now Hollywood has agreed to bring to the big screen the story of some of the terrorist actions carried out by the anti-Cuban terrorist mafia of Miami, which the Cuban people have denounced so much.
The totality of the denunciations of these terrorist actions against Cuba will have to wait for Hollywood to decide to count them, since many of its perpetrators still live peacefully in the United States, supported by renowned Congressmen such as Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Mario Díaz-Balart, Bob Menéndez, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and others.
The film, based on the recent book entitled The Corporation, attempts to recount the events of 30 years, carried out by Cuban mafia members. All have the status of “political refugees” granted by the US authorities, although in the book they are classified as “real adventures”, avoiding calling them “terrorist acts” in order not to seek conflict with those most responsible for these plans.
This mafia was formed, trained and financed by the CIA to act in Cuba against the Revolution. Many of its members were part of the mercenary Brigade [2056] that invaded the island in 1961. After being released by the Cuban government, they returned to the United States, training for terrorist acts, where the struggle over money and political power brought a war between them.
The Corporation, tells part of the life of a single group of these Cuban “political refugees”, led by José Miguel Battle, mercenary of the Bay of Pigs invasion. He became the boss of illegal gambling and drugs, from Miami to New York, something that still happens in the underworld of these anti-Cubans, many of whom amass powerful fortunes with which they support politicians of Cuban and American origin.
José Miguel Battle, is one of hundreds of henchmen of the dictator Fulgencio Batista, who managed to escape revolutionary justice and found support and safe haven from the U.S. authorities. They refused to comply with the extradition agreement signed with Cuba and in force until 1961, despite the official demand that Cuban authorities made for years.
Murderers, torturers and former members of the dictator Batista’s repressive bodies, such as Battle, make up this mafia half-described in the book. This is because there are others, not mentioned in the book, despite the volume of crime they committed. These include Rafael Díaz-Balart, former interior minister, also a refugee in Miami; Rolando Masferrer, chief assassin of a paramilitary body known as Los Tigres; Colonel Esteban Ventura, murderer of hundreds of young people; Conrado Carratalá Ugalde, former head of the Department of the Batista Police Department; Luis Alberto del Rio Chaviano, Brigadier General of the Batista army; Colonels Orlando Piedra Negueruela, Mariano Faget Díaz and Rafael M. A. Gutiérrez Martínez; Pilar Danilo García y García, Brigadier General, chief of the tyrant’s police force; Lieutenant Colonel Irenaldo Remigio García Báez, former head of Batista’s Military Intelligence Service.
Nor does the text tell of Operation Condor, carried out by the CIA in Latin America. In it, many of these Cuban mafiosi took charge of murdering and torturing thousands of young people. Others include the terrorist acts suffered by the Cuban people at the hands of CIA agents, such as Carlos Alberto Montaner, who was arrested and punished for placing an incendiary flask in a shopping mall in Havana, escaped from prison and is now a refugee in Havana.
Likewise, they omit to mention the multiple murderer Luis Posada Carriles, a “political refugee” in Miami despite being the confessed author of the bombing of a Cuban civilian plane in mid-flight, where 73 innocent people died.
The terrorist acts planned and carried out by dozens of counterrevolutionary organizations financed by the CIA, such as the Comandos L, Alpha 66 and Omega 7, would need a series with many seasons for the world to know the truth about why Cuba has been denouncing them for 60 years.
Thousands were killed and assassinated by these mafiosi, including Cuban diplomats, the detonation of bombs in Cuban embassies, consulates and commercial offices abroad, dynamited ships, the introduction of pathogenic germs to sicken people, animals and the flora of the island, and many more crimes.
The Corporation is a tiny part of the history of this anti-Cuban mafia, all with the status of “political refugees”, thanks to the subversive manipulation of U.S. immigration policy against Cuba, due to, in the first place, the Cuban Adjustment Act.
The accounts of daylight shootings in the streets of Little Havana and the successful blows celebrated with parties where they gave away bags of cocaine. These are almost child’s play compared to the murky actions of that mafia, such as placing a bomb beneath the seat of former Chilean Foreign Minister Orlando Letelier in Washington, DC, where he, his wife and the driver were blown to pieces.
Its authors, including Guillermo Novo Sampol, live peacefully in Miami as “political refugees”, thanks to the efforts of Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen.
The book, although it does not cover all the terrorist actions, is a sample of those who are those murderers whom the United States welcomed as “refugees”, hiding the truth from its citizens who, with part of their taxes, have kept that rascal that forms part of the evil called “Cuban exile”.
That’s why we remember José Martí when he said:
“He smiles at the appearance of truth.”
Arthur González, Cuban, specialist in Cuba-U.S. relations, editor of the El Heraldo Cubano blog.
Of the Dream and the Nightmare
Of the Dream and the Nightmare
Fifty years after Martin Luther King’s momentous visionary speech, African Americans continue to struggle to find the path to true equality.
By Juana Carrasco Martin
juana@juventudrebelde.cu
Published August 37, 2013 21:39:36 CDT
Updated: Thursday, September 21, 2017 | 10:25:08 PM
A CubaNews translation.
Edited by Walter Lippmann.
Martin Luther King greets the crowd at the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963. Author: AP Published: 21/09/2017 | 05:38 pm
It was a blast, revalidating the struggle of many, raising the awareness of others and forming ranks in a social movement involving blacks and whites because it was for the civil rights of all. It also awakened those who were still lethargic after hundreds of years of outrage and submission.
On August 28, 1963, the 100th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation for black people in the United States, the end of slavery, was observed when a crowd, led by the Rev. Martin Luther King and other leaders of the black people’s struggle and social and labor movements, marched on Washington and gathered at the National Mall at the foot of the imposing statue of Abraham Lincoln.
“I have a dream,” he said in his speech to what he called the greatest demonstration of freedom in the history of the nation, and he called out with utter crudeness that a century later “we must face the tragic fact that the black man is not yet free. He was chained by segregation and discrimination, “living on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity,” he was “an exile in his own land.
The dream? that the words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence will apply to each and every American as a guarantee of the inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. These were denied to “citizens of color” who had been given a bounced check from a bankrupt justice. But this marginalized, humiliated, separated people, who were denied every opportunity, even the most basic, knew of their right to open the doors of justice, to cast aside racial injustice and to build “the solid rock of brotherhood.”
The time was urgent, warned Martin Luther King, and also alerted his people and the rest of the United States: “1963 is not the end, but the beginning” (…) “There will be no rest or tranquility in America until the black man establishes his citizens’ rights. The winds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.
Three national television networks, for the first time, covered the march for jobs and freedom in together. The message reached the entire nation that a melting pot was being said, the pot that had mixed all the peoples who had come to its shores and built a powerful country, but that was one of the great lies. The Black ingredient, even the original peoples, the “red skins”, had been taken out of society. That media coverage was proof that it was time for change.
There Joan Baez and Bob Dylan sang, as did the gospel performer, Mahalia Jackson, who carried the feeling of the crowd with I’ve Been ‘Buked and I’ve Been Scorned. Many spoke, including Joachim Prinz, president of the American Jewish Congress, recalling his years as a rabbi in Berlin under Hitler, who said – according to The Guardian – that his great people, who had created a great civilization, had then become a nation of silent spectators to hatred, brutality and mass crimes and cried out: “America cannot become a nation of spectators. America must not remain silent.”
On August 28, 1963, and Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech, a door was opened. It was hardly mentioned in the 64,000 pages of debate and congressional hearings that gave way to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 or the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which put on paper what it should be and yet was not; but it was a touch of the target.
Enemies took it into account. Cointelpro, the program of espionage and infiltration into the social movements of the time, made him its target. William Sullivan, the FBI’s assistant director of domestic intelligence, recommended: “We must mark him now, if we have not done so before, as the most dangerous black man in the future of the nation.”
Hot summers came and their street uprisings, many more marches and actions, unity with the anti-war movement, and rejection of the Vietnam War, which they also used as their favorite cannon fodder for blacks and Latinos. Martin Luther King was in that fight for all.
Little by little there were achievements, even a middle class of “coloured” men and women emerged, their numbers increased in universities, they became professionals, their faces already appeared as leading figures in Hollywood films, they showed, even more, their value in the sports world, where the image of a black fist is vivid as a symbol of Black Power, the power of black people.
Blood flowed – that of Martin Luther King himself in April 1968, that of Malcolm X, that of George Jackson, that of many others – Mumia Abu Jamal is still in prison and those who chose more radical methods of struggle are being persecuted. Other leaders in an ongoing struggle were highlighted, as the Lincoln Memorial speaker said as the summer of 1963 ended: it was only the beginning…
And 50 years later, what?
Present at the rally at the National Mall on Saturday, August 24, 2013, which brought together no less than 100,000 Americans of all colors, generations and ideologies to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s oratory piece, were the parents of Trayvon Martin. He was the 17-year-old boy shot dead in the chest by a white vigilante in Florida on February 26, 2012. It took protest marches in many American cities and a lot of work to have the perpetrator arrested and put on trial, and almost now, in July, a jury of five white women and a Latina declared him “Innocent.” Not a few posters in front of Lincoln’s statue again called for justice for what is perceived as a hate crime.
Police in New York and other U.S. cities are accused of practicing stopping and frisking bystanders, most of whom are black or Latino, and preferably young, for no reason. They are stopped because of racial profiling. African-Americans make up seven times more than whites among the prison population, which is already the highest in the world. In the United States, it is known and recognized that they invest more in prisons than in schools….
Only 21 percent of their youth reach high school or college, compared to 37 percent of whites. Budget cuts in major cities declared bankrupt and in federal spending itself, that of the entire nation, affect the public school system and, of course, scholarships or university credits. It goes without saying that communities and neighborhoods where poor or low-income minorities live are among the hardest hit by teacher layoffs. During Barack Obama’s tenure alone, more than 300,000 school jobs have been lost – with a high proportion of these being African-American teachers and staff. Public education will be of even poorer quality, which means that there is no future sown there.
The unemployment rate in 2012 was 13.6 percent for the African-American work force, while the white unemployed made up 8.1 percent. Of the 45 million Americans who receive food aid because they are poor, more than 25 percent are black.
Barack Obama, the first black president of the United States will speak today, August 28, in honor of Martin Luther King. But it is well-known that the president is only an image in a House that is still white and protective of the interests of the powerful 1% against the 99% who – without distinction of race – have declared themselves in struggle and have also begun a path to close the gaps of class inequality, as the Occupy [Wall Street movement] which has been marginalized.
Now, in the southern states, even in other regions, electoral districts are being reconfigured and the black population is once again segregated from the vote, even having to pay to register. It also is the population with the lowest income, thereby discouraging voting. There is only one black senator among the top 100 in Congress, and 43 representatives in the House of Representatives, among 435…
Therefore, the validity of the thought of the civil and pacifist leader: “I have a dream: that one day this nation will rise up and live the true meaning of its creed. We hold this truth to be self-evident: All men are created equal.
Martin Luther King will continue: “Even though we face difficulties today and tomorrow, I still have a dream.”
Ostentation or Petulence?
MESA REDONDA
Ostentation or Petulence?
By Luz Maria Martinez Zelada
March 31, 2018
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
The Cuban people are, par excellence, cultured and simple, but there is a segment who practices ostentation, as a way of attracting attention. In manycases it manages to affect others.
The display of many jewels at the same time is reminiscent of street vendors who used to put them on their bodies for marketing purposes, which does not reflect good taste and is shocking to most people.
But the wearers of so much shininess will say that they like to show off the brilliance of the metals and it is still a childish truth.
There is another example of the financial capacity of the ostentatious, referring to audio equipment: the more powerful, the more expensive.
Owners of powerful devices go out on the street or place them in front of the window, not so much for the purpose of listening to the music but so that everyone [in the neighborhood] knows so much about their property that they cannot sleep, hear the television or talk at home.
Other demonstrations abound, such as the dogs, man’s best friend. Some make the noble animal the object of display, dogs that must be the most expensive to walk wearing a shiny chain too.
Boasting about one’s advantageous financial situation makes one think of the sentences of José Martí, in the letter he wrote to Maria Mantilla, from Cape Haitian on April 8, 1895.
“…Too much shop, not enough soul. He who has much inside needs little outside. Whoever has a lot on the outside has a little on the inside, and wants to hide what little… ” “.
“…it is a human duty to cause pleasure instead of sorrow, and he who knows beauty respects and cares for it in others and in himself. But he will not put a jasmine in a Chinese vase: he will put the jasmine, alone and light, in a crystal of clear water. That’s the real elegance: that the glass is just the flower.
In the face of so much showing off, one might wonder if these ostentatious people lost their ability to admire the flower, influenced by the consumer society, which was alien to the roots and idiosyncrasies of the Cuban people.
(Taken from ACN)
Are Men Stronger Than Women?
Are Men Stronger Than Women?
The machismo superimposed on honesty where health is concerned, puts Latin American men, who believe that they do not need to go to the doctor, at risk of suffering serious illnesses and thus put their lives in danger.
By Juventud Rebelde
digital@juventudrebelde.cu
Posted: Saturday, March 3. 2018 | 06:54:26 PM
A CubaNews translation.
Edited by Walter Lippmann.
The machismo superimposed on honesty in health is concerned, makes Latin American men believe that they do not need to go to the doctor at risk of suffering serious illnesses and that they put their lives in danger.
Compared to other regions of the world, the health of Latin American men is more exposed to male chauvinism, believing that they are stronger than women and that they do not need to go to the doctor, puts them at risk of suffering serious and life-threatening illnesses.
This was recently announced by a study prepared by Panamanian specialists and reviewed by the Xinhua news agency.
The research explains that the decline in men’s health compared to women’s health is a global problem with great impact in our geographical area, although there is also a gap in the matter in Africa and Europe.
According to statistics, men in Latin American countries live between eight and 12 years less than women, mainly because the social stigma that considers them to be the head of the household weighs heavily on the lack of accurate reporting on men’s health.
In this region, the prevalence of certain metabolic, cardiovascular and sexual dysfunction diseases affecting men is increasingly noted.
It is common for men in this area of the planet to live less and less, and not only that, but to arrive much more deteriorated in their old age, because they never go to the doctor or have a follow-up visit.
The opposite is true of women, who, because of their preparation, are closely linked to a doctor, a pediatrician or a gynaecologist. Hence, it is the man who most often goes to the doctor with chronic illnesses.
Teachers Demand Raises and Funding
Thousands of teachers in the U.S. demand better salaries and more funding for public schools
Several hundred public schools remained closed this Monday, either because of spring break, or because many teachers decided to leave and their districts allowed them to participate in the mobilization.
Published: Tuesday 03 April 2018 | 09:36:27 AM
By Juventud Rebelde
A CubaNews translation.
Edited by Walter Lippmann.
Teachers march in the United States Author: Internet Published: 03/04/2018 | 09:35 am
WASHINGTON, April 3. Tens of thousands of teachers in Kentucky and Oklahoma came together yesterday in their state capitals to demand more funding for education, salary and pension improvements.
According to USA Today, 120 public schools in the first of those territories remained closed on Monday, either because of spring break, because many teachers decided to leave or because their districts allowed them to participate in the mobilization.
“Stop the war on public education!” and “Enough is enough,” the Kentucky teachers shouted outside the state capitol in Frankfort, where they protested against a change to their pension system and cuts to education funding.
Teachers oppose a bill passed by the state legislature last Thursday and demand that Governor Matt Bevin veto it.
If the Republican politician signs the legislation, it will phase out defined benefit teacher pensions and replace them with hybrid retirement plans that combine the characteristics of a traditional pension with the 401(k) accounts used in the private sector.
In addition, retired teachers in Kentucky do not receive Social Security benefits, so any freezing of their pensions affects their total retirement income.
State teachers also demand the necessary funding for the public school system.
“Today we notify you that if you don’t pass a budget that protects Kentucky’s public services, provides adequate funding for schools, then we will vote to remove them from office,” Stephanie Winkler, president of the Kentucky Education Association, told the crowd.
According to ABC News, members of other public employee unions, including those representing firefighters, police, plumbers and pipe fitters, joined the teachers in a show of solidarity.
In Oklahoma, meanwhile, protesters demanded a higher wage increase for teachers and support staff and an increase in funding for education, which plummeted 28 percent in the last decade, according to the state teachers’ union.
The Oklahoma protest comes despite Republican Gov. Mary Fallin signed a law last Thursday that gives educators – currently at $45,000 a year – an average wage increase of $6,100.
Even with that increase, Oklahoma’s teachers would earn below the national average for public school teachers, which is $58,950 a year, and only surpasses those in Mississippi and South Dakota.
“Finance education”, “They are starving our schools” and “Mourning for public schools”, was read on the posters carried by those attending the protest.
Washington Suffers a Credibility Crisis
Washington Suffers a Credibility Crisis
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
Objectively, the credibility of the US government, with either party at the forefront, has always been in question because its foreign policy pronouncements on peace, freedom, democracy and human rights systematically contradict or contrast with its actions.
These days, the Associated Press (AP), a U.S. news agency, lamented in a commentary by its journalists that the conflictive and misleading daily statements of its President, Donald Trump, and the most important members of its team of senior advisors fuel new doubts about the credibility of the White House.
“Some Republican congressmen even wonder if they have a partner in the president of the nation with whom to negotiate in good faith and how much the president’s word is worth.
An AP paper says the former assistant Republican leader in Congress has told the agency that negotiating with White House officials has become impossible for Republicans, given the president’s propensity to undermine the public and private guarantees of his own team. White House officials have been seen in the unusual position of urging legislators to downplay some of the President’s statements.
“Recently, in one of his usual morning tweets, Trump threatened to veto a massive budget bill after the White House itself had assured legislators that the president would sign it.
The White House officials privately insisted, according to the AP journalist, that the president was venting his feelings after hearing reports that the agreement presented a defeat of several of his priorities.
Although, after hours of uncertainty, Trump signed the legislation into law, this situation disturbed some Republicans. “The lack of control over Trump’s outbursts is a concern on both sides of the House,” said a Republican Congressman from Pennsylvania who has sometimes been critical of the leader. “The disorder, chaos, instability, uncertainty and excessive statements are not the virtues of conservatives,” he said.
Members of both parties have expressed concern that the President seems oblivious to the way in which, by assuming certain positions and then relinquishing them without modesty, he undermines his own influence and agenda.
Trump’s hesitancy with the budget bill was just one in a series of recent incidents that put the credibility of the White House’s words in the spotlight. Earlier this month, during a private fundraising event, Trump boasted of inventing trade data in a conversation with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
In recent days, Trump and his team have strongly denied the possible dismissal of General Herbert R. McMaster as National Security Advisor, as well as likely changes in the legal team dealing with Trump’s role in the special prosecutor’s investigation into alleged Russian interference in the presidential election and constitute an obstruction of justice. Beyond public statements, John Kelly, the White House chief of staff, had privately assured his staff that there would be no restructuring.
But by the end of the week, McMaster had been separated and the legal team seemed to be looking for his replacement.
Trump’s problems with the truth are not new, the AP commentary says, often altering the facts, from the number of people who came to his inauguration to the scope of the tax reform he signed last year. And just as he did in boasting of his lie to Trudeau, the president rarely seems ashamed to repeat claims that have proven to be false. Polls show that Americans do not believe Trump is truthful, and in a recent poll conducted by Quinnipiac, 57% of respondents said the president is dishonest. The leader’s supporters say he was elected despite similar polls during his campaign.
Such a bias often puts his advisors in the uncomfortable position of issuing strong public statements that the President immediately denies. Spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders repeatedly denied reports of McMaster’s departure in the days leading up to Trump’s announcement that he had a new National Security Advisor.
Peter Wehner, who worked in the governments of President Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush said, “Trump has no one to blame but himself. He doesn’t even know his own position.
April 2, 2018.
Parkland Survivors on TIME magazine cover
Parkland Survivors on TIME magazine cover
In a recent issue of Time magazine, five Parkland high school students look at the reader cry of ENOUGH to demand that their legislators take action to make schools and streets safe across the country.
Posted: Monday 02 April 2018 | 10:34:06 PM
Author: juana@juventudrebelde.cu
By Juana Carrasco Martin
juana@juventudrebelde.cu
A CubaNews translation.
Edited by Walter Lippmann.
A recent issue of Time magazine, one of the most important American publications, has a very special cover: five teenagers – students at Parkland High School, where 17 of their classmates were shot dead by another young man who was also a student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School – look straight ahead with a word that crosses not only that cover, but also the claim of a majority of the concerned population: Enough, a term that can also be translated as Enough is Enough.
Among the young people are Emma Gonzalez, David Hogg and Cameron Kasky, who have become spokespersons and advocates for control over guns in private hands in the United States. They are activists against armed violence, which is almost an epidemic in the northern nation, and they demand measures from their legislators to make the country’s schools and streets safe.
However, their demand does not have many receptive ears in the political class, where many of its members are tied to the National Rifle Association that thrives on this business. But the young people persist. A month after the shooting, many U.S. schools held 17 minutes of silence in honor of the 17 massacred in Parkland. A march went through Washington, the nation’s capital, with sibling marches in cities and towns across the country. They called for a change in the permissive and enabling rules and laws for these irrational crimes. It was the largest demonstration ever held in the United States for this purpose.
A recent AP-NORC survey emphasizes that national support for arms control is currently at its highest level in five years. About seven out of 10 adults favor stronger laws on the issue, representing 69 percent of respondents, The Hill said.
So, what does the president do? He calls for states in the Union to hand over weapons to teachers and school employees to answer Fire! with Fire!, a simple lesson in insanity….
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