The Undercurrent (June 2010, Vol. 5, Issue 1)

From the Editor:

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few years back, not long after we strt- The Undercurrent, as an independent newspaper (of, by, and for the people), brings together a lot of different folks with a lot of different ideas. That being said, The Undercurrent itself does not endorse any of the views expressed in ed The Undercurrent, we received a its pages, but endorses wholeheartedly the necessity of expressing views in all their variety—openly, honestly, and letter from a reader. The letter was with an aim for the truth, whatever it turns out to be. To that end, we encourage our readers to send us letters. We’ll mostly encourging, but it had one point of crit- print them without edit. When a letter addresses a particular article, we’ll let the writer respond. When it addresses the paper as a whole, we’ll respond. In this way, together, we’ll inch our collective way closer and closer to the truth. icism. The letter writer suggested that were were too negative, and that we would do better to highlight good things happening in the community...to leave recently witnessed is racial profiling.

I have the distinct privilege of working with Rev. the bad, negative, depressing stuff to mainstream media. The Floyd D. Harris, Jr. a champion of social justice in southwest writer ended by writing that this would truly make us an alterFresno.

I was personally saddened and humiliated for Rev. native newspaper.

Harris, myself and the City of Clovis as I witnessed an incident Obviously, the writer was correct, to an extent. So of racial profiling on Wednesday, May 5, 2010 around 3:00 PM; much of what we see and hear in the the mainstream follows paradoxically, Rev. Harris had parked to speak with me on his the old adage, “If it bleeds, it leads.” Too little space is given cell phone about how we could address systemic racism within to stories of communities coming together, building something our Valley. He was preparing to complete contracted work for better than what the community was given. Stories of people the City of Clovis Fire Department and 2010 Weed Abatement acting decently, even when there is nothing in it for them. season. He had been at this job site for five previous days. As Cyncism is far too convient a refuge.

Rev. Harris talked with me, he noticed a small Clovis police Especially when there is reason not to be cyncical. I truck circling. The officer circled the block three times watchthink our paper has offered our community reasons not to be ing Rev. Harris. Rev. Harris commented to me “They will be cynical. There are no greater champions for our city than Adam here in three minutes to question me and what I am doing Wall and Ed Stewart. And every month, in their column, “The here.” I was able to hear the entire conversation as Rev. Harris View Looks Good From Here, Fresno,” they chronicle the was approached within three minutes by a Clovis police officer. things that make our city better than we are often willing admit. The officer said “I was not physically present and therefore canThere is no act so uncynical as raising babies. The act not speak to this incident;” however, I was able to hear the of rasing a baby to be passionate, compassionate, other-serving entire conversation in which the officer challenged Rev. adult is as hopeful a practice there is. Every month Gina Kirby Harris’s presence with such statements as “What are you doing writes about the issues confronting parents, in her column here…Why have you been parked for thirty minutes…and, “Cultivating Consciousness.” And recognizing that the chalWho are you talking to on cell phone?” I asked to speak with lenges facing the young today are greater than we would all the officer and the officer responded with predictable anger and hope them to be, Cheryl Chancellor-Freeland, Juan C Garcia, frustration to my challenge of racial profiling. The officer’s and Everardo Pendraza provide strategies and resources for our responses of “I am just doing my job,” and “Are you calling me youth in their column, “Integral Vision.” a liar?” demonstrated a lack of understanding and defensiveness All of this being said, I think it should also be said as he was confronted with the realities of systemic racism. that writing critically about he issues facing us today, however Rev. Floyd D. Harris, Jr. has told me how he has to problematic, disturbing, or even drepressing they may be, is not ‘announce’ or ‘inform’ 911 dispatchers that he is a black man a sign of defeat, or cyncism. In fact it is an incredibly hopeful coming into the Clovis community to do work at a particular project. It suggests that there is room for improvement. It sug- location in order to avoid racial profiling and being stopped by gests that “we” can act from a position of being informed, and the police. I want to ‘call out’ and I need to call out the racial that “we,” given the chance, can act better. profiling that I listened to the other day. My intent is to do this It is to suggest that “we” are basically, intrinsically, publicly in whatever venue presents itself. The lack of addressdecent people. And that so much time, money, and effort is ing the wider context of racial profiling is endemic within local spent trying to deaden our better selves. There is a massive police departments that co-opt so called ‘marginal communieffort underway (it has been for a long time) to suggest to us ties’ with ‘block parties’ and ‘bounce houses’ in an effort to that we are basically a selfish lot, that we are controlled by a control and at the same time vilify brown and black neighborbasic instinct to simply get what we can, that this is the natural hoods. The social and economic disempowering of a growing order of things. We are told that the other, cannot be trusted. black underclass eventually results in the criminalization of That they should be kept out. That they are trying to take what African American men within lower socioeconomic neighborwe have. We are largely kept scared. If this was the natural hoods. The politics of blame and shame play out in the racist order of things, there would be no reason to write critically perceptions of privileged neighborhoods and police departments about the effort to reinforce these ideas, or to criticize policy that use fear mongering to build political will and economic shaped by such ideas. support. A recent example of this was the racialized commercial The critical nature of some of our writing comes from in which Margaret Mims, Jerry Dyer, Janet Davis, and the idea that such ideas are basically untrue, and that such poli- Elizabeth Egan came together to dramatize gang violence as a cies are basically wrong. In this sence this paper is an incredi- ‘Latino’ problem. bly hopeful project.

I am calling on the wider community to come together That’s all for now, more later...~CF to ‘call out’ racist practices wherever they occur. To the Fresno and Clovis city mayors, police chiefs, fire chiefs, and the wider communities they are commissioned to serve, this is something that needs to be named and addressed at the community and have the privilege of working with many courageous citizens, institutional level. Rev. Floyd D. Harris, Jr. and I, along with students, educators, and activists across our Valley who work community coalitions, intend to take away the ability to deny, for systemic change and justice in ways that have the potential defer, or hide institutional practices of racial profiling behind to profoundly affect the lives of our citizens and bring us closer official policies. Let this be a test case of accountability. to American ideals that proclaim equality for everyone. It is Sincerely, only when citizens, people, parents, students, teachers, and-yesDr. Elizabeth Swearingen police officers come together to name and challenge racist policies and practices that systemic change becomes possible. One of the ugliest forms of systemic racism that I have unfortunately

Letter to the Editor

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June 2010

Volume 5

Issue 1

Editorial Board Carlos Fierro editor@fresnoundercurrent.net

Jessi Hafer jessi@fresnoundercurrent.net

Matt Espinoza Watson mattw@fresnoundercurrent.net Abid Yahya abid@fresnoundercurrent.net

Contributors Stephanie Allison Christy Arndt Jeff Baker Christy Cole Jonathan Cook Jason Crockford Steve Early Cheryl Chancellor-Freeland Jon Fernandez Juan C Garcia Paul Gilmore Jean Hays Gena Kirby James Leveque John Mayone Michelle01 Nicholas Nocketback Everardo Pedraza Roberto Cintli Rodriguez Hugh Starkey Ed Stewart Adam Wall Lane Wallace Cal Winslow Copy Editing Christy Arndt Abid Yahya Layout Carlos Fierro

For advertising inquiries, please email ads@fresnoundercurrent.net.

For letters to the editor, please email letters@fresnoundercurrent.net.

For submission information, please email editor@fresnoundercurrent.net.

For subscription information, visit FresnoUndercurrent.net or send a check for $35 to “The Undercurrent” P.O. Box 4857, Fresno, CA 93744. ©2010 Out of respect for our contributors, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the permission of the Editor-in-Chief.

SCIENCE, HEALTH, & ENVIRONMENT 4

5 LOCAL 6

Cultivating Consciousness: Slow Down, You Move to Fast...

by Gena Kirby

Integral Vision: Living an Intergrated Life: Balancing Body, Mind, and Spirit

by Juan C Garcia, Everardo Pedraza, & Cheryl Chancellor-Freeland

Third World Water, Here at Home

by Jean Hays

STATE, NATIONAL, INTERNATIONAL 7

8

8

9

Obama, the More Effective of Two Evils

by James Leveque

Arizona, This is What Apartheid Looks Like

by Roberto Cintli Rodriguez

“A Shin Bet State”: Israel Targets Ha’aretz

by Jonathan Cook

AfterWords

by Carlos Fierro, John Mayone, & Abid Yahya

FEATURED TOPIC: L ABOR 11

13 14 8

The Great Valley Strike of 1933: A Medford Boorman History

by Paul Gilmore

As Andy Stern Prepares to Quit: No Knock-Out Blow in SEIU’s Courtroom Showdown

by Cal Winslow

Who’s Going to Pay the Tab Left Behind by Andy Stern? The Cost of Labor Civil War

by Steve Early

Caregivers Vote to Dump SEIU, Join New Union

by Lane Wallace

CALENDAR 16 18

UnderCurrentEvents Calendar The Undercurrent’s indie PREVIEW

MUSIC [RE]VIEWS 19

20

Meet the Musicmakers: Fierce Creatures

by Christy Arndt

Brooklyn Rider, Dominant Curve

by Nicholas Nocketback

GAME [RE]VIEWS 21

One Up! A Review for Gamers: Just Cause 2

by Hugh Starkey

BOOK [RE]VIEWS 22

The Unnamed reviewed by Nicholas Nocketback

EATS & DRINKS 23

The Ultimate Bread Recipe

by Jeff Baker

25

Jackfruit Fishless Tacos

by Jessi Hafer

25

Sangría

by Carlos Fierro

ABOUT THE COVER 24

COLUMNS 26

Stephanie Allison “Tangled in the Mangroves”

The View Looks Good From Here, Fresno: Labor

by Adam & Ed

27

Dear Nocketback

by Nicholas Nocketback

28

Green Up Your Thumb: Plants as Therapists

by Christy Cole

29 29 POETRY 30

Thrift Bucket:

Neighborhood Thrift

by Michelle01

MisFortune Cookies

by Nicholas Nocketback

Two Poems by Jason Crockford

SHORT [NON]FICTION 30

An Affair to Remember

by Jon Fernandez

force — with a sum greater than its parts — that can then flow out into the local and the global communities.

We hold this as truth, that the peace and the harmony we want to exist within the world, can be created within the family first, by bringing it home and lovingly, consciously and intentionally slowing life down.”

“SLOW DOWN, YOU MOVE TO FAST…”

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efore I ever thought of having children, I always heard adults say how quickly childhood goes by. Parents who meet in passing at a coffee shop, each bouncing their toddlers on their hips will exchange pleasantries and inevitably bemoan the quick passing of time since becoming parents. It’s not news that childhood is fleeting, right? So why then is it so difficult for us as parents to enjoy that precious elusive time that slips through our fingers like sand?

perinatal therapist, talks about the power of the Pause and is spearheading the Slow Parenting movement. The following is an excerpt from The Slow Parenting Manifesto: “We believe that family life can serve as the incubator for deeper compassion, creativity, love, harmony, humor, appreciation, respect, fun, ingenuity, conflict resolution, peace, friendship, growth, communication and, perhaps above all else, true, unending and powerful joy.

As we intentionally give value and We live in such a fast-paced society space to family life, we are thereby creating a that compels us to run along or be left behind.

While we understand that time waits for none of us, regardless of what Mick Jagger says, it is decidedly not on our side. So what do we do? We make a conscious decision to slow ourselves down. I hear you say, “But Gena, my life is busy, I have to work, I have a house that must be cleaned, food that must be purchased, cleaned and prepared; how do you expect me to slow down? I haven’t the time!”

Well, maybe you didn’t say exactly that, I mean who says haven’t anyway? But the gist is: How can I slow down? Well it’s a good question, and one that deserves to be examined more closely. What do you make time for in your life right now?

What are your priorities? Where in your plans/schedules/itineraries do your children fit in and what do you do with that time (if any)?

There is a movement out there in parent-world that embraces the idea(s) of letting go. The idea is sort of the “turn on, tune in, drop out” version of parenting, without the drugs. Carrie Contey (of www.earlyparenting.com), a prenatal and

That’s pretty easy for them to say right? Well, sure, but upon further reflection on their ideas, I have had to find space in my life to slow down and be there. Some days I have maybe 15 minutes that I can really give to my girls. But those precious moments I find are intense and pure. Like colostrum or uranium, the smallest amounts are potent and powerful.

My oldest knows when I am not fully present with her in the moment, and she will call me out on it and flat out ask me, “Mom, where are you?” My youngest ones are not yet fluent in English, but they can sense when I’m off fretting in my mind about yet another something in my life I cannot control.

I’ve decided to go on Slow-Down Walks with my girls. Just walking slow and allowing them to be kids. Kids don’t have the same concept of time as we adults do. They can get really immersed in the present moment and a walk that would take you and me 10 minutes could take 30-40 minutes. If I don’t have 30-40 minutes, we just stand out in the yard and I watch them get lost in the moment; I see them visibly enjoying their time with me, engaging me in their discoveries. The time is short but rich. I used to get freaked out because they would touch EVERYTHING! Old cigarette butts, sketchy dried up whatever’s, but after I learned that kids learn by utilizing their senses (all of them), they have to discover on their own what things are by touching feeling and yes, ick, sometimes tasting.

So if you see us walking in the Tower as you pass on your way to the store, and on your way back you pass us not too far from where you last saw us, you’ll know I’m on a Slow-Down Walk with my girls. It’s been lovely and I highly recommend you give it a try. You may not slow down time but you’ll savor the moments more. use all of our given senses. piano lessons. ______

Gena Kirby is a wife, mother, Doula, Childbirth Educator, and creator of mommymattersonline.com. She is the creator and host of the radio show, Progressive Parenting, which airs every Thursday at 1pm on KFCF 88.1 FM.

The Benefits of a Slow-Down-Walk

LANGUAGE SKILLS: “Mama, what is that?” You can’t help but talk when you have to explain what those squirrels are doing. Talking helps develop language and vocabulary.

WELL-ROUNDED TYKE: A real life hummingbird is worth a thousand pictures.

REAL WORLD PERCEPTION: Life is just for looking at, life is full of opportunities to use all of our given senses.

IMAGINATION: There’s a lot life has for us to discover and you can see more of it walking slow than from a car seat on your way to piano lessons.

EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT: Even if what you’re talking about may seem trivial at the time, your child will reap benefits galore just from the time shared, not just the content.

For more information on Slow Family Living visit: l www.earlyparenting.com l www.slowfamilyliving.com l www.suzlipman.wordpress.com/2010/04/15/slow-parenting-gainingsteam-its-about-time/ l or visit mommymattersonline.com, or call (559) 930-2032 and ask for Gena.

Many times I’ve felt the twang of regret, that maybe by keeping my daughter out of the hustle and bustle her peers experience, she is somehow missing out.

When I see her playing outside, coming and going as she pleases and as I watch her play without being told what to do, discovering on her own, I feel like maybe she’s not missing out at all. Sure, she takes Kung Fu (for free in China Town at The Center for Traditional Shaolin Studies), but it’s once a week for one hour.

emotional life and spirits also benefit greatly.

If you are already engaged in an exercise program and it is working for you, then keep doing what you are doing. If not, you can begin with the kind of exercise that inspires you. If you enjoy walking, do that. If you like exercising in a gym, then do that. If you would like to learn and practice Yoga then there are various yoga studios in the Fresno area that you can join. Beginning an exercise routine should not have to be that difficult.

Sometimes it just takes going through the motions of your good intentions for exercise.

People can certainly walk around their neighborhood or find some beautiful places in Fresno to run. One of the most beautiful places to walk, jog or run in Fresno is Woodward Park. People can certainly join a health/exercise club (for $1 a day) at several of the other gyms in town to get started on a n the previous two articles, we followed a founder and director of The Yoga Center of regular exercise program. But then again, one theme related to the healing benefits of Fresno, reiterates the wisdom of the yogis can begin by simply walking or jogging on a meditation and we briefly introduced Ken who teach that a clean intestinal tract makes it regular basis to get their physical body movWilber and his Integral Theory model to The possible to achieve higher levels of awareing. We can juice these experiences up by Undercurrent readership. In this article, our ness. Stuart Sovatsky, author of Eros, taking our iPod or MP3 player and listen to focus is on the practical ways in which we can Consciousness and Kundalini, highly recom- some uplifting music or an interesting book mended to the second author of this column nurture ourselves and live an integrated life on tape by a favorite self-help author. the more costly intestinal cleanser, Arise that honors and balances our body, mind and The ideal time to engage in exerand Shine (ariseandshine.com). Of spirit. cise is early in the morning, all the systems in the body, the before you get started digestive/eliminative with the rest of Nurturing and Strengthening Body system is one of your day.

In our fast-paced, fast-food, digitized the most fundaYou will and “instant-ready” society, it is easy to negmental for bodihave a lect the significance and role of our bodily ly health. lot of health—both on physical and dietary levels.

In addipositive In study after study, we are learning that we as energy to Americans are one of the most obese—if not tion to participating in some kind of perioddevote to the rest the most obese—society in the world. And ic intestinal cleansing of your day. even if many of us are not obese, that doesn’t program to eliminate However, people mean that we are in the best of physical unprocessed fecal matter, it can adjust their health. One research study indicates that is important to eat healthfulexercise time to there is a strong correlation between the size be sure, we should be To ly. what fits for them. of a person’s midsection, and their likelihood eating foods which are low in The most important of having a heart-attack. However, the good fat and low in salt.

In addition, part of all of this is news is that more and more people are waking we should also be eating foods consistency.

If you’re up to the importance of the role that their bodlevel content, with high energy going to see results ies play in their lives. To be sure, taking a such as fresh vegetables, lots of and maintain your look at how we treat our bodies, how and greens and fruit as well.

In general, body in the best shape, what we feed them, and how much we exerwe should be conscious of what we you must exercise it on cise them has a direct effect on their proper The food we eat put into our bodies. a consistent basis functioning for optimal living. has a direct bearing on our emotions whether it is 3, 4, or 5 Anthony Robbins, in his audio proThere is a symbiotic and well-being. days per week. gram entitled Get the Edge, talks about the importance of cleansing our bodies. In addi- relationship between us and our bodies; Cultivating Mind and tion to drinking 8-10 8 oz glasses of water per if we take care of our bodies, our bodies as adults, will take care of us.

Moreover, Healing Emotions day, he also promotes doing some kind of we should model healthy eating habits for our Another very important part inner colon or intestinal cleanse. There are children. of our well-being is our mind and emotional various types of cleansing programs that will In terms of exercise, there are so life.

I write these two together because of get a person started on this inner cleansing many exercises to engage in that can have their interconnectedness.

Often, it is our path; for example, there are seven-day proon our physical well-being. positive effects thoughts that seem to drive our emotions.

If grams one can find at local health stores as The interesting thing is that as we get our we dwell on positive thoughts, we are very well as 30, 60 or 90-day programs at webbodies into good physical shape, our minds, likely to feel positive feelings. And likewise, sites such as DrNatura.com. Yogi Shalom,

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Living an Integrated Life: Balancing Body, Mind, and Spirit

if we dwell on negative thoughts, we seem to generate more negative thoughts and begin to feel feelings that are not particularly pleasant.

And yet thoughts are an “occupational hazard” of having a mind. And we all have minds. However, it is very important to cultivate a healthy mental and emotional life. One of the first steps to accomplishing this is to be aware of our feelings. It is important to grow in what Daniel Goleman terms, “emotional intelligence,” in a book of the same title.

Growing in emotional intelligence can have major positive effects in our emotional wellbeing and in our relationships with others. So the first step is to become emotionally literate.

It is vital to gain a vocabulary of various feeling words to be able to name the various feelings we are feeling at various times of the day.

Another tool to use is a journal to write down feelings and experiences (many people find this exercise very helpful). Moreover, others take their feelings of guilt to a priest for confession and absolution and others discuss their feelings with a therapist, or both. In fact, it is the act of engaging and working with the feelings, making them conscious that helps to transform negative feelings. This is preferable to stuffing your feelings, suppressing them, and then letting them get the best of you when by yelling at your kids, fighting with your partners, or kicking the can or hitting the wall.

Don’t let emotions get the best of you. You don’t need it and neither do the people who surround you and love you the most.

And yet, others may want to take it a step further and join a support group for a weekend and do some deeper inner work. There is a group in Fresno that meets regularly for men who are interested in growth and self-awareness. This group offers support for men to look inside of themselves as they integrate aspects of themselves that interfere with their well-being. We call that interference, “the shadow.” Other groups are available at Fresno Family Counseling Center at 559-229-3085 to work on basics such as communication, anger, and self-awareness.

Current groups exist for women, men, and adolescents. These are just a few of the very effective solutions that can start a person on their journey to go deeper in their own path of self-discovery, self-awareness and healing and integration. _______ Everardo Pedraza, M.A., is an independent writer who teaches English literature and writing at Sunnyside High School and is a graduate student in the Marriage and Family Therapy Counseling program at California State University, Fresno. He is also CoCoordinator of Contemplative Outreach of Central California and the founder of PeaceMeditation.com.

Third World Water, Here at Home

by JE AN HA YS

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These pipes supply drinking water to Seville residents

This is a Third World country here in Seville,” says Rebecca Quintana, a member of the Agua Coalition, as she points to the patched, ancient water pipe that runs down the middle of an open irrigation canal in the small 75-family town just northwest of Visalia in Tulare County.

The pipe, one of several in the same condition, supplies water to the residents of Seville. No one can remember how long the drinking water supply has been contaminated: sixty, seventy years or longer.

The water pipes are, at least, that old, having been patched again and again. When the water pressure decreases in the patched pipes, water from the canal seeps in, laden with nitrates, agricultural chemicals, and who-knows-what else.

May 3-7 was National Drinking Water Week. The Community Water Center of Visalia, a part of the Agua Coalition of more than eighteen small Valley communities working for clean, safe, affordable drinking water, arranged a community water tour and rally in Seville

supply was taken over by Tulare County after being run by a series of one-person water boards. It is hoped that Congressional representatives will secure direct emergency funding for projects that would help upgrade old infrastructure, install treatment systems, or connect to a new water source.

So far, that hasn’t happened.

Federal and state grant funding continues to bypass the communities that need it most.

Josie Nieto has lived in Seville most of her life. She says that, whenever she turns her water faucet on, tiny worms and, sometimes, very small

frogs come out with the water, to say nothing of the sand that collects in the bottom of the drinking glass. Josie’s daughter and granddaughter are also residents of Seville. Last summer, her daughter became very ill with an E. Coli infection, which they suspect was borne by the water supply. Josie’s beautiful four-year-old granddaughter was born with numerous birth defects. She cannot speak, sit, or stand, and requires 24-7 care from her mother and grandmother. Numerous other children in the area suffer the same fate.

From the eighteen small communities in Tulare, Kings, Fresno, and Kern County represented at the Rally in Seville, story after story of drinking water contamination was told. Rebecca Quintana’s comment is, indeed, right on: “This is like living in a Third World country.” Laurel Firestone, Susana De Anda, and Maria Herrera of the Community Water Center (www.communitywatercenter.org) know it, too, and are working tirelessly to bring water equality to all small communities in the San Joaquin Valley and beyond.

Everyone has the human right to clean, safe, affordable drinking water!

It’s time our legislators acted in service to this vision; it’s time they get to work prying loose the state grant funds that were appropriated to develop permanent solutions to drinking water problems. Enough is enough! It’s OUR right to OUR safe drinking water. _______ Jean Hays is a member of the local branch of Women’s International League for Peace & Freedom’s Save the Water Committee. She is also Chair of the Valley Water Consortium. You can reach her at skyhorse3593@sbcglobal.net.

to call attention to the plight of this and many other small towns throughout the San Joaquin Valley as they continue to struggle against water contamination.

Nitrates, many times over the legal health limits, are ever-present in the wells, making it impossible to drink water from the faucet.

Seville’s Stone Corral Elementary School, one of the poorest in the state, spends between $5,000 and $7,200 per year to buy alternative drinking water supplies so they can provide safe water to local children.

Last year, Susana De Anda of the Community Water Center opens the Rally for Safe Drinking Water Seville’s water

Obama, the More Effective of Two Evils

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n 2008, I spoke to a number of people who are generally about as skeptical as I am of Barack Obama, and often heard the standard lesser-of-two evils argument regarding Obama versus McCain. Obama had praised Reagan (something that makes the average liberal’s stomach turn) and basically promised to escalate the war in Afghanistan. But, there were reasons to believe that a McCain presidency would have been almost as disastrous as Bush’s. McCain was practically itching, physically, to bomb Iran (assuming he wasn’t just trying to pander to a bloodthirsty base); the stimulus package, if McCain was willing to countenance one in the first place, would probably have been much smaller, keeping far more people out of work; and a Palin presidency would have hung over the nation like the sword of Damocles. A McCain administration was easily a stupider, more violent, more mean-spirited possibility. But every time the Obama administration has come to a fork in the road, it has broken to the Right, often to the active exclusion of Left-leaning voices and even to the cheers of liberals enamored by the President. Almost two years on, I can’t even take the lesser-of-two-evils argument all that seriously.

On health care reform, Obama stated, in 2008, that he was in favor of a universal, single-payer health plan, but as early as the Spring of 2009, he began to back away from those statements, invoking ‘a tradition, in America, of employer-based health-care.’

[1] Single-payer advocates were neither invited to the health-care summits chaired by Senator Max Baucus and, occasionally, forcibly excluded. It was reported by the HuffingtonPost that in backroom deals with health insurance companies, the administration had guaranteed that there would not even be a public option in the final bill, excluding the major reform element opposed by the insurance companies. [2] The individual mandate, which did make it through, all but guarantees higher profits for the insurance companies, making it a federal offence to not purchase their product, without any demands that policies be any more effective or affordable.

Left-wing groups like Moveon cheered the bills passage—ironic, given the plan’s Republican pedigree. The mandate was first conceived by none other than the Nixon administration and a number of key features of health reform originated in the American Enterprise Institute. Obama’s approach has been defended as being a ‘step closer’ to a single-payer health insurance plan, but I’m at a loss to explain how. The current plan came about through intense lobbying on the part of

the health insurance and pharmaceuticals industry. If this plan increases their profits, as the stock market thinks it will (from November of last year, health care stocks have risen about 30%), then this plan leaves them with much more money in their pocket to lobby against any further reform efforts in the future.

On civil liberties, Obama’s stance is almost a carbon-copy of Bush/Cheney’s abuses, from Guantanamo to warrentless wiretaps.

Regarding the latter, Glenn Greenwald writes: “the Obama DOJ has engaged in one extraordinary maneuver after the next to shield this criminal surveillance program from judicial scrutiny.” [3] And Obama’s promises to close Guantanmo have largely been a shuffling of the deck: prisoners may be moved to places like Afghanistan or Thomson, Illinois, but many will still be held indefinitely without charges, without any ability to view evidence against them, and without any right to challenge their detention.

Obama’s education policy has also continued down the path laid out by the Bush administration. No Child Left Behind has started to transform public schools into oppressively tedious places where students are subjected to the catechisms of endless tests of their ‘basic skills’. Science, geography, art, music – in short, everything that could potentially make school interesting—are being cut.

Creative and practical math lessons are being shunned for number-crunching ‘math skills’, and ‘reading skill’s have taken the place of teaching actual literature (as if students can’t learn reading skills from a little poetry).

Yet, for all the bad that Bush did under NCLB, Obama is worse. Obama’s Race to the Top program has done nothing less than target the teaching profession in public schools, by compelling states to implement privatization programs that turn teachers into a totally expendable workforce. Last March, Obama publicly applauded the firing of an entire high school’s worth of teachers and staff in Rhode Island after the union refused to work without pay—a move most reminiscent of Reagan’s firing of the air traffic controller’s union in 1982. Obama insisted that the faculty will be replaced by ‘great teachers’; but this is likely a euphemism for the low-wage, lowskilled, highly replaceable workforce that former Secretary of Education describes of postKatrina New Orleans, where privatized charter schools have exploded: ‘teachers—young kids—who come in and work sixty, seventy, eighty hours a week, burn out in two or three years and are gone, and then are replaced by yet another cadre.’ [4] Ravitch is right to

by JAMES LEVEQUE

describe this teaching structure as “insanity” but it’s also the structure that Obama’s current Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, has hailed has a model for the rest of the country.

On our wars abroad, Obama’s position is moderately different from McCain’s. In 2008, McCain came across as literally itching to attack Iran. He may have been posturing for a bloodthirsty political base, and perhaps was smart enough to know in the back of his mind that such a move would have been a disaster for both countries, but we’ll never know. In any case, Obama’s primary foreign war, Afghanistan, is going about as well his predecessor’s attempt to pacify that country. Obama has relied on aerial bombardments that have killed thousands of civilians. On the ground troops are hardly doing better and we still get a trickle of reports, such as the New York Times’ report on April 5th of the killing and subsequent cover-up in February of five civilians—including two pregnant women—by special forces in Afghanistan. [5] It’s absurd to believe that this policy is better, or even different, than what McCain’s would have been. The military historian, Andrew Bacevich, told Bill Moyers in April that ‘The Afghanistan decision was [Obama’s] chance to change course, when it comes to the fundamentals of US national security policy. And instead, he made in December, made the same decision with regard to Afghanistan as John McCain would have made, had we elected John McCain president.’ [6] There are areas where Obama’s policy is likely better than what McCain would have offered. The fiscal stimulus would probably have been even smaller under McCain, assuming he would have opted for a stimulus at all, condemning the U.S. to an even higher unemployment rate. McCain would have probably attempted to extend the Bush-era tax cuts that Obama is set to let lapse next year, which could potentially bring in over 1 trillion dollars in the next decade. And Obama has at least opened up the discussion to repealing the noxious ‘don’t-ask-don’t-tell’ policy, even if he refuses to repeal it outright. These differences aren’t negligible, but are they worth near-messianic adulation of Obama, or the contortions that many on the Left engage in to defend policies that they would have fought under Bush or McCain?

And this brings me to the point where Obama is far worse than McCain could have ever hoped to be: Obama has largely silenced the Left and made once-despised policies completely acceptable. Civil libertarians found many Bush-Cheney policies on wire-tapping, state secrets, and assassinations

to be abhorrent; now that Obama has adopted the same policies—even extending them in some cases—these policies are practically consensus opinion. Big doses of economic austerity that Bush or McCain could never hope to have accomplished, like cutting Social Security and Medicare, are being slowly pushed by the administration without serious opposition.

There are still mainstream liberal voices that criticise Obama and his administration. But a cult of personality around Obama, and a debilitating fear of the Tea Party has prompted the Left to defend Obama in ways that would otherwise scandalize it.

For example, The Nation’s Melissa HarrisLacewell, has charged the Tea Partiers who ‘spit on and scream at duly elected representatives of the United States government’ [7] with sedition—a charge historically levelled against the Left (see: Palmer Raids, 19191920). This sort of Adoration of The State doesn’t wear well on the the Left, but it’s what we’re subjected to as long as we continue to merely assume that somewhere in his heart of hearts, Obama has an inner Leftist just waiting to bust out. _______ James Leveque, a longtime resident of Fresno, is a teacher and writer. He has written and published on a variety of topics in politics and literature. He is currently doing post-graduate work at the University of Edinburgh. He can be reached at leveque.james@gmail.com. _______ NOTES: [1] http://www.democracynow.org/2009/6/16/repo rt_senator_max_baucus_received_more [2] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/milesmogulescu/ny-times-reporterconfirm_b_500999.html [3] http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_gre enwald/2010/04/01/nsa [4] Interview with Diane Ravitch. Behind the News with Doug Henwood. WBAI, New York.

4/8/2010 [5] http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/06/world/asi a/06afghan.html?hp [6] http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04092010/bacevichwatch.html [7] http://www.thenation.com/blog/birthnation

Arizona: This is what Apartheid Looks Like

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by ROBERTO CINTLI RODRIGUEZ

hose who think that there’s an immigration crisis in proposal until the courts decide on its constitutionality.

Arizona are correct, however, this is just part of the SB 1070 brings us to a moral precipice. After World story. The truth is, a civilizational clash is being played War II, a consensus developed here that it had been wrong to out in the same state in which the state legislature questions have incarcerated the Japanese in internment camps because the birthplace and legitimacy of such action was morally wrong.

President Barack Obama and Virtually no one had the courage to where Sen. John McCain comassert this while it was happening. petes with Senate hopeful, J.D. Law enforcement has that chance Hayworth, to see who is the most today, to refuse to obey SB 1070 that anti-immigrant. is both morally repugnant and outside of the U.S. Constitution.

It is also the same state Regarding the larger civilizationthat, several years ago, denied a al struggle, the context is akin to holiday for Martin Luther King when Europeans first came to this Jr., and that today permits virtucontinent. The conquistadors came ally anyone – on the basis of for gold, land and bodies (slaves). trumped-up fear – to carry conThe friars, on the other hand, came cealed weapons anywhere. for souls. Similarly, the migra and Welcome to Apartheid extremist legislators want bodies Arizona – the land of Sheriff Joe deported; the state school superinArpaio, “States’ Rights” and a tendent, Tom Horne, wants souls. desert that has claimed thousands Last year, the state legislature of migrant lives. By way of the attempted to eliminate Ethnic Studies same extremist legislature, the K-12 curriculum. from the state’s battle here is much larger and Tucson Unified The real target was more profound. This civilizationSchool District’s Mexican American al clash is being waged daily Studies (MAS) program. After young here via more bills involving students ran from Tucson to Phoenix who belongs, which language can in 115 degree heat, the bill was be spoken here, and who and defeated. This year, a similar, yet what can be taught in the state’s more preposterous bill is back. HB 2281 seeks to outlaw curschools. This is beyond the notion of who is “legal.” riculum that is anti-American and that advocates the violent Whoever said that this crisis is proof that the illegal overthrow of the U.S. government. The bill creates a mechaMexican American War never ended is partially correct, nism by which books will be judged to be in compliance. because this conflict is even older than that war in which American Indian and African American classes are exempt Mexico lost half its territory to the United States. The irony and thus the clear target again is the MAS program. Horne is regarding the recently signed SB 1070 – which permits law enforcement to question people about their citizenship, based on record claiming that only things from Western Civilization on “reasonable suspicion” – is that those principally targeted (Greco-Roman) should be taught in Arizona schools. PreColombian Indigenous knowledge from this continent – the will be those who look the “most Hispanic.” foundation for the highly successful MAS program – is con“Looking Hispanic” has always been a misnomer; what it really means is those who are dark and short and who sidered outside of Western Civilization.

Amid the immigration crisis, the legislature is slated look the most Indigenous. Truthfully, here in Arpaio Country, to also pass HB 2281 this week. This conjures up the line the profiling that everyone fears is already here with us. And from the movie, The Other Conquest: “They came for our to dispel illusions, the darkest amongst us have always been souls, but they didn’t know where to look.” subjected to racial profiling by the “migra” and by law President Obama and Congress may yet nullify SB enforcement agencies everywhere in the country. This is true 1070 and similar bills nationwide, but this will not discourage whether we’ve been here for a few days or for thousands of years. And to dispel further illusions, this civilizational clash those who continue to want our bodies… and souls. alluded to is national in scope; witness the many hundreds of anti-immigrant bills nationwide since 2006. Only its epicenter is here.

What is changing with SB 1070 is that racial profiling is no longer outside of the law; here it now has legal cover. But to be sure, people of conscience will never accept it as law. And just as Arizona Rep. Raul Grijalva is calling for a national and international boycott of Arizona – many are calling on law enforcement to have the moral courage to refuse to recognize SB 1070 as a law and simply view it as a

[Editors Note: The State of Arizona did in fact pass HB 2281, effectively prohibiting the teaching of Mexican-American Studies in a state full of Mexican-Americans that just so happens to have also once been a part of Mexico.] _______ Roberto Cintli Rodriguez is an assistant professor at the University of Arizona, and can be reached at: XColumn@gmail.com or 520-743-0376. Archived Column of the Americas can be read at: http://web.me.com/columnoftheamericas.

“A Shin Bet State”:

Israel Targets Ha’aretz

by JO N ATHA N C O OK

Nazareth—An Arab member of the Israeli parliament is demanding that a newspaper be allowed to publish an investigative report that was suppressed days before Israel attacked Gaza in winter 2008.

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he investigation by Uri Blau, who has been in hiding since December to avoid arrest, concerned Israeli preparations for the impending assault on Gaza, known as Operation Cast Lead.

In a highly unusual move, according to reports in the Israeli media, the army ordered the Haaretz newspaper to destroy all copies of an edition that included Blau’s investigation after it had already gone to press and been passed by the military censor. The article was never republished.

Blau has gone underground in London after the Shin Bet, Israel’s secret police, demanded he return to Israel to hand back hundreds of classified documents they claim are in his possession and to reveal his sources. He published several additional reports for Haaretz in 2008 and 2009 that severely embarrassed senior military commanders by showing they had issued orders which intentionally violated court rulings, including orders to execute Palestinians who could be safely apprehended.

Haneen Zoubi, an MP who previously headed an Israeli media-monitoring organization, said it was “outrageous” that the suppressed report was still a secret so long after the Gaza attack. She is to table a parliamentary question to Ehud Barak, the defense minister, today demanding to know why the army suppressed the article and what is preventing its publication now. Barak must respond within 21 days.

She said publication of the article was important, because Israel had been widely criticized for killing many hundreds of civilians in its three-week assault on Gaza, and because subsequent reports suggested that Israeli commanders sought legal advice months before the operation to manipulate the accepted definitions of international law, to make it easier to target civilians.

“There must be at least a strong suspicion that Mr Blau’s article contains vital information, based on military documentation, warning of Israeli army intentions to commit war crimes,” she said in an interview. “If so, then there is a public duty on Haaretz to publish the article. If not, then there is no reason for the minister to prevent publication after all this time.”

Zoubi’s call yesterday followed mounting public criticism of Haaretz for supporting Blau by advising him to stay in hiding and continuing to pay his salary. In chat forums and talkback columns, the reporter has been widely denounced as a traitor. Several MPs have called for Haaretz to be closed down or boycotted.

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A Haaretz spokeswoman refused to comment, but a journalist there said a ‘fortress mentality’ had developed at the newspaper.

“We’ve all been told not to talk to anyone about the case,” he said. “There’s absolute paranoia that the paper is going to be made to suffer because of the Blau case.”

Amal Jamal, a professor at Tel Aviv

Haaretz reporter Uri Blau

University who teaches a media course, said he was concerned with the timing of the Shin Bet’s campaign against Blau. He observed that they began interviewing the reporter about his sources and documents last summer as publication neared of the Goldstone report, commissioned by the United Nations and which embarrassed Israel by alleging it had perpetrated war crimes in Gaza.

“The goal in this case appears to be not only to intimidate journalists but also to delegitimize certain kinds of investigations concerning security issues, given the new climate of sensitivity in Israel following the Goldstone report.” He added that Blau, who had quickly acquired a reputation as Israel’s best investigative reporter, was “probably finished” as a journalist in Israel.

Shraga Elam, an award-winning Israeli reporter, said Blau’s suppressed article might also have revealed the aims of a widely mentioned but unspecified ‘third phase’ of the Gaza attack, following the initial air strikes and a limited ground invasion, that was not implemented. He suspected the plans involved pushing some of Gaza’s population into Egypt under cover of a more extensive ground invasion. The plan had been foiled, he believed, because Hamas offered little resistance and Egypt refused to open the border.

On Monday, an MP with the centrist Kadima Party, Yulia Shamal-Berkovich, called for Haaretz to be closed down, backing a similar demand from fellow MP Michael Ben-Ari, of the right-wing National Union. She accused Haaretz management of having “chosen to hide” over the case and blamed it for advising Mr Blau to remain abroad. She said the newspaper “must make sure the materials that are in his possession are returned. If Haaretz fails to do so, its newspaper license should be revoked without delay.”

Another Kadima MP, Yisrael Hasson, a former deputy head of the Shin Bet, this week urged Haaretz readers to boycott the newspaper until Blau is fired. A petition calling on the Shin Bet to end its threat to charge Blau with espionage has attracted the signatures of several CARLOSFIERRO, JOHN MAYLONE & ABID YAHYA byC prominent journalists in Israel.

“We believe the Blau case is unique and studies.”

FC wants to end breast cancer…all are concerned this unique case will create a If it is not bad enough that KFC you have to do is buy a bucket dangerous precedent,” their letter states. is responsible for increasing the risk of of…chicken breast?

Yes, you read cor“Until now, prosecution authorities have not cancers by the sale of its product, considrectly.

KFC, home of hormone-laden, sought to try reporters for the offence of er another of its recent releases. In the greasy, environmentally destructive holding classified information, an offence chicken in a bucket, is going to help find same week that KFC introduced the most of us are guilty of in one way or anothrelease of its pink a cure by seller.” buckets, they also ing pink buckA group of Israeli human rights announced the release ets of breast organizations is due to submit a letter this of their “Double Down for your conweek to the government demanding that the Sandwich.” The sumption. investigation concentrate on lawbreaking by Double Down consist Before we get the army rather than the “character assassiof two fried or grilled into the irony nation” of Blau and his sources. chicken breasts sandof curing Yesterday, the Supreme Court wiching two strips of breast cancer tightened restrictions on Anat Kamm, one of bacon, Monterey Jack, by eating the Blau’s main informants, who has been under and the Colonel’s spebreast of house arrest since December for copying up cial sauce (Colonel chickens, let’s to 2,000 military documents while she was a Sanders has been dead first address soldier. She is accused of espionage with intent for 30yrs now and he’s the utter to harm the state, a charge that carries a tariff of still producing special ridiculousness 25 years in jail. sauce?). of KFC fightThe papers copied by Kamm, 23, For KFC, it’s ing cancer. included military orders that violated court rulless a Double Down ings and justified law-breaking by soldiers. and more a double Studies by the Judge Ayala Procaccia said: “The acts threat. If the cancer Physicians attributed to the respondent point to a deep interdoesn’t get you, the Committee for nal distorted perception of a soldier’s duties to congestive heart failure Responsible the military system he or she is required to serve, will.

Medicine and a serious perversion from the basic responsiAnd, if neither the cancer nor found that KFC chicken regularly carries bility that a citizen owes the state to which he or the heart failure do younin, perhaps the known carcinogens she belongs.” Kamm, the court decided, must not irony will. KFC is fighting cancer by (http://alturl.com/6eta). In the study, leave her apartment and must be watched by a feeding its customers the mastectomized PCRM found that KFC grilled chicken close relative at all times. contained “heterocyclic amines breast of chickens… ~CF Media coverage of the case in Israel has (HCAs)…[and HCAs have been] linked been largely hostile to both Kamm and Blau. to several forms of cancer, including alifornia has a long history of buildGideon Levy observed in Haaretz today: “The ing cars. Some of that history is breast cancer, in dozens of scientific real betrayal has been that of the journalists, who have betrayed their profession — journalists who take sides with the security apparatus against colAfterWords continued next page... leagues who are doing their job bringing light to the dark.”

Calling Israel “a Shin Bet state”, Levy added: “If it depended on public US soldiers total US total US opinion, Kamm and Blau would be exeUS soldiers cuted and Haaretz would be shut down on killed in May 10 soldiers killed soldiers killed killed in May 10 the spot.” _____ Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the IRAQ IRAQ AFGHANISTAN Middle East and Disappearing Palestine: AFGHANISTAN Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair.

His website is www.jkcook.net. A version We have not included numbers for civilian casualties because, though there are many studies and sources positing estimates, there is of this article originally appeared in The no single, reliable, regularly-updated source of data regarding civilian casualties. Just assume that the number of civilians killed in National, published in Abu Dhabi.

K

C

Casualty Counter 1,089

51

4,402

1

Iraq and Afghanistan dwarfs even the number of American soldiers injured, let alone killed, each and every month.

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attention to the actual cameras; mostly I just noticed the big warning signs: PHOTO ENFORCED. One day, I was driving with a friend of mine in the passenger seat. He’s lived in Oakland for quite some time. At one point, we were approaching an intersection as the light turned yellow, and I thought about punching it, but the sight of a camera mounted atop the traffic light caused me to hesitate, and I hit the brakes, muttering to my friend, “It’s photo enforced, better not chance it.” He responded, “That’s not a traffic camera, that’s just Homeland Security. The traffic cameras are bigger, mounted in these big cylinders, aimed low, right at the drivers’ faces. This,” he pointed up, “is just Big Brother.”

It wasn’t until weeks later that I realized what had happened, or what is happening, or whatever. I remember reading 1984 when I was 14 years old. My mom had a paperback copy that she had read when she was in school, and that’s the same copy I read, three times that summer. I remember just tripping out on Orwell’s scenes of the bleak future in which Winston, the novel’s protagonist, confined himself to a tiny corner of his apartment, the only spot in which the cameras couldn’t see him. I remember thinking how wild and insane that was. I remember thinking about how scary that would be, how glad I was that I was in a free country, as was drummed into my head in school.

But that afternoon in Oakland, my friend said, “That’s just Big Brother,” and I just understood him, and it rolled right off, and we kept on driving, and that was that.

Orwell warned us about this more than 60 years ago. And not even in some ot too long ago, I vague, metaphorical way. He warned us worked in Oakland, specifically, exactly about this, about cameras CA for a few months. Parts of Oakland have watching us. a great many photo-enforced traffic signals, And as I hit the brakes that day, the such that when you run a red light, you think only thing that concerned me, ironically, is you got away with it until, several weeks later, that I mistook the general Big Brother camera you find a ticket in your mailbox, complete (with which law enforcement agencies merely with a goofy-looking picture of yourself watch and monitor us) for a more specific behind the wheel. I never really paid much type of Big Brother camera (with which law

to produce cars in America.

Nummi also brought the Japanese car-making philosophy to the United States; whereas the American auto industry fostered a conignominious, some glorious. And some points tentious relationship between laborers and and places in that history have lived through management, Toyota tried very hard to create the ignominious and the glorious. The an environment of cooperation. Laborers in Fremont Nummi plant saw a bit of both. The Toyota were seen as being insightful when it Nummi plant, before it was the Nummi plant came to production. One example of this in was just the sort of place that gave American Toyota plants were the stop cords along the cars such a bad reputation in the 70s and 80s. line. Line workers had the ability to stop the GM cars coming out the Fremont plant were line if they thought it necessary. In GM plants known to come off the line with missing or it was a cardinal rule that the line should mismatched parts. In 1982, GM closed down never stop; the line workers were treated like its Fremont plant, but in 1984 the plant robots even before robots replaced workers on reopened as NUMMI (New United Motor the line.

Manufacturing, Inc.), a joint venture between The Nummi experiment was sucToyota and GM to build smaller cars; somecessful; GM cars coming out of Nummi were thing that GM didn’t do very well and Toyota the same quality as Toyota cars, and Toyota did exceedingly well. continued to grow.

However, even as GM produced quality small cars, their overall market share continued to shrink. In June 2009, GM pulled out of Nummi. Toyota continued to make Corollas in the Nummi plant, the only unionized Toyota plant in the United States, until April 1, 2010 when Toyota closed the doors to the Nummi plant and its 4700 workers. ~CF GM got the wherewithal to build better, more profitable small cars and Toyota maintained access to the American market.

Protectionists rumblings and legislations meant that Toyota would have a harder time maintaining its immerging place in the American market, but Nummi allowed Toyota

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enforcement agencies use minor traffic infractions to generate huge revenue sums at the expense of the hard-working, commuting public). I actually felt relieved (like, whew) that this camera was just (just!) Big Brother.

What got me to hit the brakes—what really made me behave—was the threat of the cost of a ticket.

And that’s exactly how they get us. ~AY

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ay 4th marked the 40th Anniversary of the incident at Kent State University in Ohio, when National Guard troops opened fire on students who were guilty of no greater crime than protesting the war in Viet Nam. Four were killed, nine were wounded.

It happened in our America.

We must always remember that the Bill of Rights is not carved in stone. It is malleable, as the Patriot Act proves.

Please always do everything you can to speak out and to speak your mind. We must be a nation of people, not “sheeple,” and that is an end to which we can all strive by simply being ourselves, being vocal, speaking out, and allowing and encouraging others to do the same. We did not agree with much of what the demonstrators at the Bill Ayers event had to say, but they spoke their minds and they let Bill speak his. That is what makes America great. Don’t sacrifice this freedom, fight for it every chance you get. The Kent State students died for this freedom, as have millions through the ages.

When we take the stance that it’s “my way or the highway,” we cease to be America; we become the oppressor we sought to speak out against. ~JM

The Great Valley Strike of 1933 Labor

A Medford Boorman History

asked.

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ate April in Fresno shouldn’t be so cool and cloudy. It even rained the other day – more than once. And because of the rain, more than the usual number were taking refuge at the local watering hole.

There was a kind of solidarity in there.

Everyone knew that the heat was coming sooner or later, and we were all grateful.

beer, work, and who makes the money – you know, solving the problems of the world.

“You guys ever have any of that Carlsberg beer?” Frank was bringing up a story he’d heard.

“Carlsberg is a Danish beer.” Kevin pointed out. “You know Denmark’s got a great old brewing tradition. Under-rated. It’s brewed in Copenhagen.” He said Some folks were playing pool and drinking pitchers. Three suits with loose ties Copenhagen with some German-ish accent.

Med rolled his eyes. “Fucking were guffawing at a tall table, shouting their this goddamn fucking CopenWhat’s Kevin. orders to Dave the bartender, who forgave HAH-gun shit?

You say tomato, I say toethem for forgetting that ‘drinks are ordered at the fucking governator now?”

You mah-toe. the bar, friends.’ At one end of the bar sat a Frank was patient, waiting to get few strays, pretty much keeping to themback to his story, so I put in that I’d had selves. Down at the other end, on the corner, Carlsberg a couple times. “Good beer.” a couple talked quietly about some serious “Yeah well, did you hear about the thing. Another couple, a second “date” after strike?”

Frank went on. last night maybe, were laughing and feeding “No.” the jukebox – each, I’m sure, nervously taking “Well. These warehouse guys at note of the others’ selections, a bar’s version Carlsberg went on strike the other day – a of a personality test (“who, exactly, did I just three day strike.

Guess what they struck sleep with? Let’s ask the jukebox.”) We regulars were in our usual spaces along the mid- over?”

“I don’t know? What did they strike dle of the bar, watching the Giants on the over?” silent TV. All of us had escaped work in one “Guess.” way or another. That was another reason for “I don’t know, man. Money?” solidarity.

“No. They didn’t strike over money.

My mountain friend Med Boorman, They struck over fucking beer. True story. my drinking buddy Frank Maddox, and the Beer!” house intellectual, Kevin Anderson, and I “What do you mean beer?” Med were having a very important discussion about

by P AU L G I LM OR E

“The boss put in a new rule saying they could only drink during lunch breaks.

Only during lunch! They used to get three free beers a day – outside of lunch!”

“No shit?”

“No shit.” Frank continued his story. “They had alcohol locks on the trucks so the drivers wouldn’t drive drunk, so that’s not the problem. The boss just wanted to take away their free beer. So anyway, they stopped the strike and the boss is going to meet with them about the issue. I bet they get their beer back. Or at least two of ‘em.”

“I hope they get all three,” Med said. “Why not four – it’s a long day.

Eight hours.”

“Hey, that reminds me. It’s almost May Day – International workers day,” Kevin said. “We should have a Carlsberg in solidarity with the workers, man.”

“I’ll take three, if you’re buying – that’s more fitting.” This from one of the suits who had overheard the story.

“Sure man.” Kevin was typically a pretty stingy bastard, but here he was opening his wallet for strangers. You never can tell, I guess. He shouted to the bartender: “Hey

Dave, three pitchers of Carlsberg. I’m buying!”

“Fuck you man. You know we don’t have Carlsberg. What do you really want?

I’m working here.”

“Well, okay then. I guess I’ll just take a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon.” Kevin turned to the suits. “Sorry guys.”

“No problem.”

“You know Pabst used to have that rule,” Kevin offered. “It’s an ancient brewers rule!” he said, literally pointing straight up to make his point. “500 years old, man. Maybe more. Workers used to have stuff like that.

Free beer was a perk of the job. Pabst was the last to get rid of it, I hear. They struck over it in the 80s. Milwaukee. Dave, let me get that guy with the tie a can of Pabst.”

“Big spender.”

“Man. Why don’t we have that kind of fight in us here in the valley? Striking for three fucking beers. Nobody fights for anything around here. We just take it.” This was Frank talking now.

And I added something about worshipping Ag. and having nothing to show for it either, except incredible poverty and unemployment and a whole hell of a lot of pollution.

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nobody wants to pick cotton. And these guys – the strong ones – could maybe pick four hundred pounds a “Hey man,” Med said. day.”

Something clicked. He had some“Less than three bucks a thing to say now and we could tell day,” I said. he was getting started. “Hey man.

“Yeah man. Math whiz We got a whole long history here. here,” said Med. “Anyway these People around here never just took it. They were beaten back. There’s folks are whole families picking cotton, trying to survive. Migrants, a difference. And, yeah, we’ve got man. Constantly searching for problems, but things are better for work.” lots of folks than they used to be.

Kevin offered his two And it’s not because any boss or cents: “Those Okies took a lot. Run grower did it out of the kindness of off their land and then pushed their hearts. It’s because people around out here – treated like shit.” refused to take it, man.”

“Nothing against the “Are you gonna tell us about Cesar Chavez now?” said one Okies, man,” said Med, “my aunt’s an Okie, but these people weren’t of the ties.

Okies, hardly. Steinbeck got it “We know that story, wrong. Grapes of Wrath – first, Med,” said Kevin. “The UFW, grapes, Bobby Kennedy – all of it.” that’s late thirties, after the Okies started coming in big numbers. This “All of it?” asked Med. is early thirties. Steinbeck’s kinda This was a challenge. Never tell a playing into racism man, talking story-teller you’ve heard the whole about Okies. He figured that a huge story. “I’ll tell you what,” he connovel about Mexicans and Filipinos tinued, “I’ll leave out all the shit about Nixon and the Teamsters, the would get most folks to say, oh well, just a bunch of wetbacks anyway. crowbars, and fucking Chuck But no, Steinbeck says, look, Colson and the election of 1972 – America. We’re doing this to white some of the “all of it” you haven’t people. Ain’t that awful? He knew heard. I’ll spare you that. But let his audience.” me tell you man, this goes way “So, the strike?” This from back.” one of the pool players. Several “To the 50s?”

“Further, man. And you’re folks had their ears open now. I had never seen that before. right, Frank, we got nothing on “Well,” said Med, “it was those folks and the fight they had in in the fall of ’33. Simple. They’re them. You know they had a big strike in 1933? You ever heard that getting sixty cents and they want a dollar. Just a dollar. No way, says one?”

“Are you talking about the the grower association. But some of these folks are old Mexican revolubig San Francisco thing?” Kevin tionaries, man – that’s what you got asked.

“No. I’m talking about the to remember. They’ve seen worse.

A lot of ‘em are old Wobblies too. cotton-picker strike – the biggest one in history – right here in the val- They’ve taken plenty of beatings.

They know that these locals are born ley in 1933. This was the depression man. And there were a million with fucking axe handles in their hands.” Med downed a shot and a desperate people wandering the beer, real quick. highways. Woody Guthrie shit, “So anyway, these strikers man. The real Woody Guthrie.

Except not white, mostly. And they have set up camp on a small were getting paid sixty fucking god- farmer’s land in Pixley. And they’ve got these Communist organizers.” damn cents to pick a hundred “Commies?!” Frank was pounds of cotton. With two people surprised. for every one job available. You “Yeah man. Real fucking ever picked cotton?” commies. ‘Anyone who asks for 25 “No.” This was all of us. cents when the boss is paying twen“Well. You couldn’t pick two hundred pounds in a day, let me ty is a communist.’ You know that.”

“But these were Party tell you.”

“You ever picked cotton?” members?” asked Kevin.

“Yeah – Pat Chambers and asked Kevin. some twenty-year-old New York girl “No.” Med said quietly. named Decker – they spent, like, And then louder, “But hey man,

labor years in jail over this stuff. The Syndicalism Act, man. A strike organizer? To jail you go! They got busted thirty times over the years.

Anyway, this strike – they go all the way through the fall. Vigilantes came out up and down the valley to crack Mexican heads. They even killed two in Pixley.”

“Pixley?” I was surprised.

“Fucking Pixley. And there was a lot more over the years.

But the point is they won – they fucking won. Well, sort of.”

“What sort of?” Dave asked.

“Well, they got something like seventy five cents a hundred.

That’s a twenty-five percent increase though. That’s nothing to sneeze at man. And you never win completely. And the feds stepped in on it too.

Threatening to cut off relief to anyone who refused the deal.”

“Well, shit,” said Kevin.

“What do you want, man?” asked Med. “You want a movie?

It’s never clean. Never. There’s always a little loss in a victory. But come on. These folks couldn’t even fucking vote, but they knew they had power, man. Power!”

“Well, I’d rather fight over two or three fucking beers,” Frank said, bringing it back to Carlsberg.

Med got up to leave.

“Sixty cent cotton and thirty cent meat, or two or three beers – it don’t matter. As long as work sucks, people will ask why. And then they’ll try to do something about it.”

Med left and we all turned back to our start positions. The TV, the pool, the jukebox. “Think it’ll rain?” ______ Paul Gilmore teaches history at Fresno City College. He has lived in Fresno since 2001. In the 20th century, Paul lived in various exotic locations, including Baraboo, Wisconsin and Atlanta, Georgia.

He has come to like Fresno more.

Paul is interested in all sorts of history, but especially that which is not widely known, under the surface— under the surface in the sense of the mountain of ice beneath the iceberg, or perhaps an “undercurrent.”

Regardless of the metaphor, he hopes you understand that the iceberg symbol isn’t meant to be a negative thing—in this metaphor, you’re not on the Titantic. You’re the iceberg. Paul can be reached at oscartategilmore@hotmail.com.

As Andy Stern Prepares to Quit

No Knock-Out Blow in SEIU’s Courtroom Showdown

A

by CAL WINSLOW

mid news bulletins that Andy Stern is about to step down from his job as president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the union has fallen on its face again.

Its multi-million dollar lawsuit against the new National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW) in Federal Court in San Francisco has failed in its intent to destroy the NUHW. In trial, SEIU called itself the United Healthcare Workers (UHW), its California healthcare workers local. This was deceptive; UHW, placed in trusteeship in January 2009, is run from SEIU headquarters in Washington, DC. We’ll use “SEIU” here for the sake of clarity. SEIU went to court with a civil lawsuit demanding $25 million in damages in a vain attempt to bankrupt NUHW and 28 of its leaders. The core of its case was that the defendants had conspired (for “personal power and profit”) – for years and all on “company” time – to leave SEIU and found a new union.

The trial was part and parcel of SEIU trustee Dave Regan’s promise “to drive a stake through the heart of NUHW”, doing so, he told Randy Shaw, to make certain that NUHW leaders “never again work in the labor movement.”

SEIU is the large organization of service workers, including hospital and healthcare workers. NUHW is a new union of healthcare workers, founded by the former leaders of UHW. They were relieved of their duties (fired) a year ago in January when SEIU trusteed and then wrecked UHW. In fact the results of this trial, to be fair, were mixed. SEIU lost but NUHW did not win. The jury found no conspiracy, no theft, no violence, no sabotage and no “contracts left open” - and no evidence at all against 12 of the original defendants. There was no evidence of a penny stolen. The 12 “acquitted” won defense verdicts against SEIU. The jury did find the remaining defendants plus NUHW liable for $737,850. The largest part of this resulted from the jury’s calculations of the defendants’ alleged betrayal of fiduciary duties - the jury ordered that defendants pay back part of salaries and costs for January 2009, as well as small amounts for security and dues that SEIU allegedly failed to collect. In this they apparently agreed that the former UHW officers and staff obstructed the transfer from UHW of 65,000 long-term care members to the scandal-ridden southern California local 6434 – without consent. And, they seemed to agree that these defendants spent some time in January – before trusteeship – preparing to launch the new union, NUHW. This, to say the least, was not the crime of the century.

Neither was it a big reward in a case where SEIU spent more than $10 million.

So, there is room for celebration, but not too much. There are other significant points here, points that need making, in part because coverage thus far emphasizes SEIU’s “paltry” recoveries. Also because they are perhaps more important, representing, as they do, labor’s civil

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war in California; and the fundamental issues remain far from settled.

First, the money. In a case that began with demands for $25 million, inevitably there will be the sense of relief; in contrast, the $737,850 doesn’t in fact sound like much.

Indeed, $737,850 is not much in 21st century corporate America; it is the equivalent of a minor bonus for a junior executive in a bailed-out bank. It is next to nothing in the TV lives of our rich and famous. To the defendants against whom judgments were made, however, this victory must be bittersweet at best. When are they to worry? Now? How, god forbid, would they pay? In the future?

When? $73,850 is a lot of money for the Goldstein family, now living with this order.

Glenn Goldstein, the son of a New York City truck driver is married, the father of two. He has spent virtually his entire adult life organizing hospital workers; he was Director of Organizing for UHW when fired. He volunteers for NUHW. Emily Gordon, 31, is ordered to pay $31,400. Gordon is married; her husband is a student. She worked since 2002 for the union as Assistant Director of Research. She was an activist in college. She is proud of union roots deep in her family history. Two great grandparents and one grandparent were garment workers. Her mom is in the teachers union “unions have always been part of my family.”

Barbara Lewis now owes $66,000.

Lewis grew up in Van Nuys. She attended community college then UC Berkeley. She is married, has two sons. While still a student, Lewis began working for the Hotel and Restaurant Workers Local 2 in San Francisco.

She then took an assignment in Chicago, then Las Vegas, joined SEIU then moved to Southern California. There she became a leader in UHW’s hospital division. She was twice elected to UHW’s executive board.

Dan Martin is ordered to pay $66,000. Martin has been a member of SEIU or on staff since 1983. He was an elected administrative vice president of UHW, is married and has two daughters, both in college.

He now volunteers for NUHW. Martin says, “We’re lucky, you know, we have networks, friends, supporters. I’ve had to think about all those people out there on their own, every day people get rolled into court like this – they live in fear; this system is terrorizing people.”

The money, for SEIU ($25 million – $750,000, who cares?) was not important.

Erica Boddie, SEIU’s paid member correspondent in the courtroom, told listeners in a posttrial press conference, “It’s not about the money, I don’t care if we only got $1.99, we proved a secret conspiracy.” Michelle Ringuette, SEIU Director of Strategic Affairs

labor

called the result “a slam dunk!” and “a victory for UHW members.”

OK, SEIU doesn’t care about the money. They spent millions to punish the above “conspirators.” Money has never been an object. How many millions spent on the pseudo-legal Marshall trusteeship hearings; how many more on parachuting Mary Kay Henry’s “warriors” into California, hundreds of staff; $10 million was the estimate of SEIU’s June Fresno campaign, and another $10 million on this trial. Henry herself, a highly paid international vice president, we learned, had in her first weeks in California a driver and a full-time bodyguard. SEIU spent almost $2 million on a Blackwater style security firm, and it’s only the beginning. And the source of all this cash? The ever-generous members - these millions come in the form of union dues, paid by service workers, including hospital workers, nursing home workers and home care workers.

What’s really going on here, then?

First, the fact is that nearly 700,000 of SEIU’s members reside in California. And second that SEIU is, above all, as Rose Ann De Moro of the California Nurses Association once remarked, “a giant dues collection agency.”

So, in this context $10 million on a trial is not so much after all. And, to make the point a little clearer, California Kaiser members alone send in $3.5 million to SEIU every single month.

But obviously there was more than money involved. The case was also about workers’ power – or “workers empowerment” in the language of the California healthcare workers. It was about democracy. The members and leaders of UHW (pre-trusteeship) led a 150,000 member, militant, democratic union, one governed from the bottom up, committed to worker empowerment. They did this in defiance of the SEIU regime - the corporate, top down monolith headquartered in Washington D.C., led by Andy Stern.

The trial was held in the Federal Building, a stone and glass fortress-like structure just north of the Civic Center. The judge, William Alsup, still sports the Mississippi drawl of a southern gentleman; not to worry, I was assured. He was Harvard educated, a long time resident of San Francisco, at worst a “corporate liberal.” And, as he repeated ad nauseam, he “knew the law.”

Below Alsup were his clerks and reporters, then the jury on his right and the first string lawyers. In the back, two sets of pews. Across from our side, the five pews were packed with lawyers and more lawyers.

Black suits, dark blue, dark grey, shiny shoes.

Expensive haircuts. It’s worth recording this four firms represented the plaintiffs (SEIU): Bredhoff and Kaiser, Washington, D.C.; Rothner, Segall and Greenstone, Pasadena; Altshuler and Berzon, San Francisco; James and Hoffman; Washington, D.C. James and

Hoffman, “a professional corporation,” specializes in “labor and employment disputes.”

Among its lawyers was Judith A. Scott, Chief Counsel for SEIU. These lawyers made SEIU’s case.

The crime, they argued, agreeing with the defense without saying so, was political.

According to Gary Kohlman, lead attorney for SEIU, in this country there are rules and one’s duty is to follow the rules. “Rules, rules, rules, ladies and gentlemen!” No exceptions. The defendants’ first obligation was to obey the rules set down in the SEIU constitution. They were to follow these rules and this constitution, he pronounced. All else, their obligation to their organization, to its members, to their own consciences was secondary. If Andy Stern says transfer the 65,000 long-term care workers, regardless of their preference, do it!

There were rules and they were to be followed. It’s “the American way,” he said.

Otherwise, yes he said this, “there would be chaos.”

SEIU sees the real crime first as an example of a violation of its “one voice” – “one strategy” policy, a system that has made dissent treason in one of the most centralized unions in the country.

The defendants, all fired staff of UHW, joined by NUHW members and supporters, also crowded into five pews. They were, without any disparagement whatsoever, a rather ordinary looking lot (not always fashion statements), varying in age from 20s to 60s, modestly dressed, no celebrities, people known mostly for their dedication to their union and its members. They were (I think they would agree) just workers in the workers’ movement.

At the lawyers’ table on our side, Dan Siegel, of Siegel and Yee, Oakland, CA, plus two of the firm’s lawyers and two volunteers. I read in the Recorder, “a legal journal” published in Oakland, that NUHW is paying Siegel a flat monthly amount; Siegel reports he “prefers to think of it as a kind of contingency.” “If they get the union on a solid footing and begin to accumulate funds, perhaps they’ll be able to pay us a little more for our time.” He added that “taking on this client wasn’t really about money.”

SEIU abandoned most of its case at the beginning. No criminal charges were ever filed, no charges of theft or violence. The damage claim of $25 million was down to $4 million by jury time.

So Siegel and his team did pretty well in the circumstances. These could hardly have been more unfair. The judge disallowed the core of Siegel’s case. The judge allowed Kohlman constant interruptions in the course of Siegel’s opening statement. The judge routinely advised the jury not to consider the defendant’s motives, only the plaintiff’s most narrow charges. I guess, given their limited awards, the jury was not entirely convinced.

The larger point, of course, is this: What were workers doing in this setting? Why were vital disagreements in the workers’ movement being contested here? Judge Alsup explained that the case was analogous to a dispute between the Bank of America and a branch office. No one on the jury was a union member. The answer is that the defendants were dragged into this temple of property by money – in the plausible belief that this alone would defeat them. In pre-trial motions, as Carl Finamore has revealed, SEIU offered to drop the case if NUHW would dissolve - and pay SEIU $13 million. Nothing doing.

Our history is replete with workers in the dock – charged with conspiracy. The very first unions were called “criminal combinations” – members subject to injunctions, fines and imprisonment and both in civil and criminal cases. There was no evidence against the individual 1886 Haymarket martyrs, just the “conspiracy.” In 1918, 100 members of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) were charged in Chicago with conspiring against the government. This trial (the presiding judge was Kenesaw Mountain Landis, known also as the disgraced Commissioner in the 1920s baseball scandals) and subsequent convictions were instrumental in breaking the IWW. In the ‘20s, the federal case against two foreign-born workers, Sacco and Vanzetti, ended in execution for conspiracy to murder; there was vast support for these men, worldwide. In 1941, the socialist leaders of the Minneapolis Teamsters were tried then imprisoned. Their real crime was the construction of a powerful union; their conviction was crucial in the establishment of the infamous Teamster bureaucracy. In the 1970s, I witnessed the coal miners’ strike movements – strikes to win the right to strike over, among other things, safety issues. They too were the targets of furious companies and compliant federal judges. They were fined millions.

Today, their union is a shadow of its former self. One result: 29 miners just killed in West Virginia in an explosion in the Upper Big Branch Mine. We are treated to this grim spectacle thanks to the huge and viciously anti-union Massey Energy Company.

We have now learned that SEIU in southern California prefers no union at the University of Southern California Medical Center to one led by NUHW. This certainly was the case at Memorial Hospital in Santa Rosa in December, where SEIU contested the representational election despite having not one worker publically willing to support it.

And it seems to be the case in California’s nursing homes, where SEIU carpetbaggers wheel and deal with the employers – which facilities will be union, which won’t? Well, healthcare workers are not coal miners, true enough. Their work, however, is vital, is it not

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indispensible? It is dangerous. Its rewards are not lucrative. John Borsos has called nursing homes the “sweatshops of the 21st century.”

Healthcare workers need unions. We all do. But what kind?

We were told that Andy Stern would testify, also Dave Regan, now the trustee of SEIUUHW. They didn’t. Dan Siegel, in his closing statement, lamented not having the chance to ask Stern just how the SEIU constitution could be considered democratic.

And why 65,000 workers could be transferred without consent?

And why no free choice of unions?

The trial is over for now; how to sum up? As Randy Shaw has suggested, SEIU’s suit ultimately failed – and in this most important sense. NUHW remains in the field active, stronger than ever. Its reputation as a militant democratic union is untarnished. The personal attacks on its leaders, especially Sal Rosselli, will, if anything, have backfired.

In the meantime, scores of representational elections will be fought in the months to come.

Thus far, there is a pattern – unmentionable in court. The workers prefer NUHW. In Santa Rosa at memorial Hospital in December, NUHW defeated SEIU 283 to 13. In January, in southern California, nurses at Kaiser Sunset defeated SEIU 736 to 36; Kaiser professional workers chose NUHW 906 to 218. At Doctors Hospital in San Pablo it was NUHW 158 to 24. The struggle continues. _____ Cal Winslow has written CounterPunch articles on the subject of the SEIU and NUHW, including “Stern’s Gang Seizes UHW Union Hall,” February 2, 2009. He is also the author of Labor’s Civil War in California and an editor of Rebel Rank and File: Labor Militancy and Revolt From Below during the Long Seventies. He can be reached at cwinslow@berkeley.edu. _____ This article originally appeared at www.counterpunch.org/winslow04 132010.html.

Who’s Going to Pay the Tab Left Behind by Andy Stern? labor

S

The Cost of Labor Civil War

by STEVE EARLY

Fernholz also alluded, in passing, to internal conflicts instigated by Stern’s union. In Fernholz’s view, Andy’s disastrous trusteeship over United Healthcare Workers-West (UHW)—which led to the formation of NUHW—was just “something of a distraction from his broader mission.”

Nation contributing editor Marc Cooper put Stern’s “broader mission” in the proper liberal perspective when he dismissed those marginal characters always sniping at Andy on the Left Coast. Stern may have been “abrasive,” “diviThe ensuing flow of encomia and criti- sive,” and uncaring about “whether he made a lot of friends—or enemies,” Cooper admitted. cism summed up, in one place or another, much Nevertheless, he “embodied the best that was good or bad about Stern’s career in hope for labor’s renewal” and was never labor, including his recent role in passage of Obama’s health care legislation. But the effusive “a ruthless and power-hungry ego-tripper farewells penned by his longtime admirers on the who ran roughshod over a noble rank-andfile.” Only “the Berkeley-style left,” liberal-left contained one omission. Not a single loaded down with a “reading diet” comone addressed the little matter of membership dues money. As in how many millions of dollars posed of “too much Lenin and Trotsky” of it was spent, in the final years of Stern’s reign, would ever propagate such a political on the costly internecine conflicts, in and around “fantasy.” Just remember, Cooper warned, SEIU, that were instigated or aggravated by him. Andy’s “rivals were hardly saints themBefore we get to that total, let’s note the selves.” ?Saintly or not, two of those formidable rivals weighed in on Stern’s political “bottom line” played up instead by his departure with commentary far more journalistic fans. While Alec MacGillis at The rooted in reality than any of the liberal Post and Kris Maher at The Journal were both probing Andy’s troubled financial legacy in their cheerleading above.

As UNITE HERE President John news stories, Post columnist Harold Meyerson The Washington Post: “A told Wilhelm was hailing Stern, for the umpteenth time, as “the combination of events destroyed what leader of liberalism’s most effective political ought to have been a great legacy for organization.” Finding Andy to be a “figure of Andy [who] could have been a really great Dostoevskian complexity” as well, Meyerson argued that he “has done more than any other to labor leader. He’s a smart guy with a lot of abilities and a strong strategic sense. But build a nationwide progressive infrastructure.” something happened to the guy. It says in Meanwhile, over at The Nation, its editor expressed—and not for the first time either—her Scripture that pride goeth before the fall, and fervent admiration for Stern’s singular charisma, that’s what happened here.” NUHW leader Sal Rosselli echoed the blistering (and more secular) “pragmatism,” and “vision.” According to critique of Stern that Wilhelm delivered before Katrina van den Heuvel, Andy’s “push for dramatic structural change, his openness to remaking the AFL-CIO executive council in Florida a month ago: labor’s traditional ties to the Democratic Party “Stern’s multi-million dollar fights and creating new institutions and alliances for against healthcare workers in California and working people, and his urgency, even desperaagainst UNITE HERE have diverted resources tion, about the future of labor” made him a ”bold away from healthcare reform and employee free and heretical reformer.” choice, weakening the former and scuttling the Van den Heuvel did note that, under latter. These wars of choice have taken a toll on Stern’s leadership, “SEIU waged bitter battles” the union’s finances as well as on Stern’s crediinside organized labor. “One of the nastiest, she wrote, “turned in SEIU’s favor with a ruling last bility.”

“Wherever Stern parachutes himself week”—a vague reference to the confused jury next,” Rosselli said, “he will leave behind a verdict, described on this site by Cal Winslow a workers’ organization in disarray, undemocratic, few days ago, in a disgraceful SEIU civil suit unable to pay its bills, and unwilling to defend its against the rival National Union of Healthcare members, with a crisis of leadership from top to Workers that will hardly be determinative of bottom.”

NUHW’s on-going fight to replace SEIU in At least one count in their joint indictCalifornia. At The American Prospect, Tim ment is simply incontestable—namely, the ervice Employees International Union (SEIU) President Andy Stern was always a fan of the blogosphere. So it was quite fitting that news of his imminent departure from SEIU first appeared, earlier this week, on several blogs. Andy bid SEIU members adieu, officially, a few days later (using a YouTube video, of course). By then, the unconfirmed reports of his resignation had become major news in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and other national papers.

ruinous cost of warfare that SEIU itself unleashed upon the progressive wing of labor, in Puerto Rico and on the mainland, via its “organizing union” implosion of the last three years. For a forthcoming book, I’ve done a preliminary tally of that tab (which Brother Andy is now leaving behind for others to pay). The figures below, particularly staff time/salary costs, are just estimates—because only those paying the bills, on all sides, then and now, know the exact numbers for sure. *In 2007-8, SEIU spent many millions

on its direct-mail pounding of the much smaller California Nurses Association, and a related “ground campaign.” A year ago, the pro-single payer CNA (now operating with additional allies as National Nurses United) agreed to work cooperatively with SEIU, but not before their staffintensive, multi-state conflict had consumed huge amounts of dues-payer money. *In 2008, SEIU’s next target was 40,000 public school teachers in Puerto Rico, who already had a union, the left-led FMPR. The largest union on the island, FMPR was stripped of its bargaining rights for striking against the government. SEIU then swooped in to spend what FMPR estimates was $20 million (the actual amount was probably less) on a failed effort to win an island-wide representation vote to replace FMPR. There was only once choice on the ballot—SEIU—and the teachers rejected it in the fall of 2008. *Also in 2008, SEIU spent an estimated

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$10 million laying the groundwork for Stern’s January, 2009 seizure of UHW—the largest trusteeship of this type in U.S. labor history. The pre-invasion costs included repeated mailings to 150,000 workers, moving scores of national staffers into the state, and the expense of protracted hearings and pre-trusteeship litigation (Ray Marshall, the hearing examiner alone charged $200,000). To resist a headquarters take-over, UHW was forced to spend $6 million (in SEIU’s version, much more) that would otherwise have been available for new union organizing and political action. *In June 2009, SEIU spent $10 million to bring 900 full-time and temporary staffers from around the country to Fresno County, California.

They were put up in hotels for a month, given rental cars, and per diems—only to get several hundred more votes than NUHW’s largely volunteer organizers in a contested unit of 10,000 home care workers. *Throughout 2009, the cost of the actual UHW trusteeship and related courtroom activity (such as the $25 million damage suit filed against former UHW leaders and SEIU’s massive legal intervention to block or delay representation votes sought by NUHW) appears to be in the $10 million to $20 million range.

Law firms involved in suing NUHW (there were four in all) billed SEIU $9.8 million in 2009 alone. That was before their case against NUHW went to trial and got really expensive because SEIU had as many as 18 SEIU lawyers in court at one time. (The jury awarded only $750,000 in damages, a judgment soon to be appealed.)

Among the big trusteeship-related expenses claimed by SEIU, in that case, were the millions of dollars it paid to several corporate security firms, allegedly needed to protect out-of-state staff and SEIU officers who seized UHW. Prior to trusteeship, the once flourishing UHW, a model local, sent $20 million a year in per capita dues to SEIU in Washington. Now, under trusteeship, UHW is $6 million in arrears, a debt that will probably be forgiven but, in the meantime, represents an additional loss of national union revenue. *Stern’s disastrous meddling in the UNITE HERE divorce has, so far, involved $20 to $25 million in disputed disbursements, related legal and “security” expenses, plus loans and grants to fund the on-going fight between the former Change to Win union merger partners. At great cost, and with much borrowing from local affiliates, UNITE HERE, now headed by John Wilhelm, is clearly prevailing over “Workers United/SEIU,” the faction led by former president Bruce Raynor. Before Raynor defected to Stern’s union a year ago, he doled out $16 million to his supporters, to finance his side of the fight, while claiming to have 150,000 members on his side. That number now appears to be in the 75,000 to 90,000 range.

WU/SEIU thus took in only $10 million last year, while spending $19 million. Stern had to make up the difference via millions in per capita dues rebates, salary reimbursements, and a big loan.

Meanwhile, the costly, complex, and still unre-

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solved litigation over who gets the Amalgamated Bank and other joint UNITE HERE assets makes SEIU’s lawsuit against NUHW look like a simple slip-and-fall case. The Wilhelm side, which is trying to hold Raynor and others personally liable for their disputed pre-divorce expenditures, incurred more than $6.5 million in legal fees last year. And the meter is still running. *To finance its re-building of UHW outside SEIU, NUHW operated in 2009 with $3.5 million in loans (from UNITE HERE primarily), grants, and contributions. The big-ticket item looming ahead in California health care is the SEIU decertification vote at Kaiser Permanente that NUHW will be seeking this summer.

In January, 2,300 KP hospital staffers in southern California already voted to switch to the new union by a large margin. If SEIU fails to block an election showdown involving another 45,000 Kaiser workers, its campaign will require tens of millions of dollars, including the deployment of hundreds of staffers to counter-act NUHW’s strong shop-floor network at Kaiser.

In light of all of the above, is it any wonder then that, as The Washington Post just reported, “SEIU membership growth has slowed — after growing by 300,000 workers from 2006 to 2009, it added only 50,000 workers last year, for a total of 1.86 million.” (In every press release, including the one announcing Stern’s retirement, SEIU turns that real number, as just reported by the U.S. Department of Labor, into “2.2 million.”) In addition, as Alec MacGillis of The Post wrote: “The union’s finances are far more leveraged than those of most other unions — it owes $121 million, while much of its $188 million in assets include IOUs from strapped locals.”

In all the tributes to Stern, the dollar figure that keeps getting repeated is the $85 million that his union spent electing Obama and other Democrats in 2008. Some reports even recall the $10 million SEIU set aside afterwards for a 35-state grassroots campaign (called “Change That Works”) designed to hold newly-elected officials accountable. The union spending that goes un-noted, for the most part, is the cost of labor’s civil wars, circa 2008-10. The total tab for progressive union mayhem, all SEIU-related, easily matches Stern’s much applauded expenditures on national politics during the same period. And that’s why The Washington Post headline, April 14, had it right when it called Stern’s record “a mixed legacy.” A financial day of reckoning is coming, but Andy won’t be around to settle up the bill. _____ Steve Early worked for 27-years as an organizer and international representative for the Communications Workers of America in New England. He is the author of Embedded with Organized Labor, from Monthly Review Press, and the forthcoming The Civil Wars in U.S. Labor, from Haymarket Books. He can be reached at Lsupport@aol.com. _____ This article originally appeared at www.counterpunch.org/early04162010.html.

Caregivers Dump SEIU, Vote to Join New Union

Offshoot now represents Salinas Valley Memorial

by LA NE W ALLA CE

C

Monterey Herald Staff Writer - 05/18/2010

aregivers at Salinas Valley Memorial Hospital have voted to leave Service Employees International Union and join the rival National Union of Healthcare Workers.

Results, announced Monday after three weeks of voting by mail, show 408 votes for the health care union, 242 votes for SEIU, and 13 votes for no union. The local union represents more than 830 workers, including respiratory care practitioners, licensed vocational nurses, certified nursing assistants, clerical workers and others.

The current contract at Salinas Valley expires Aug. 14, said hospital spokeswoman Adrienne Laurent. Hospital officials will negotiate a contract earlier than that if the new union wants to, she said.

“We’ve always had good relations (with unions), and we expect that to continue,” Laurent said.

The Salinas Valley vote is part of an ongoing struggle between SEIU and NUHW, which broke off in January 2009. NUHW members said they left because of a hostile takeover of California’s health care union.

Since then, NUHW has been trying to get SEIU health care workers to switch. How much success it has had depends on which side is telling the story.

The election for NUHW “is our second-biggest hospital election,” said Sadie Crabtree, a spokeswoman for the union. About 2,600 Kaiser Permanente health workers in Southern California have voted to go with the new union. NUHW is working toward an election that would ask 47,000 Kaiser workers throughout the state if they want to change unions. Workers at more than 360 facilities have petitioned to join NUHW in the last 15 months, and most are still waiting for their elections, Crabtree said.

Adriana Surfas, a spokeswoman for SEIU, called the Salinas election results “disappointing.” She

said NUHW efforts to organize 18,000 workers in San Francisco and another 18,000 in Sacramento never reached the election stage because workers were against the new union. SEIU lost an election representing 10,000 workers in Fresno, Surfas said.

Ernesto Gonzales, a nutrition services aide who has been at the hospital for 14 years, said, “We basically wanted our union back.” The NUHW negotiators are the same ones who had been with SEIU before the union split, he said. The SEIU, he said, “fired all our union reps.”

“The SEIU representatives who came in for this election were from out of the area and didn’t know the workers,” Gonzales said.

One of the hospital workers who voted to retain SEIU was Zedrick Zapata, a certified nursing assistant.

“They’re the ones that I trust, and have always been there for us,” he said.

NUHW, Zapata said, “hasn’t done anything for the workers.”

In April, a federal jury in San Francisco awarded more than $1.5 million in damages to SEIU in a lawsuit alleging sabotage, theft, vandalism and other offenses by NUHW. The SEIU had sought $25 million.

The petition follows an earlier attempt to replace SEIU as the representative for some 600 Monterey County health care employees, including workers at Natividad Medical Center. That effort was abandoned in July.

Including the Kaiser workers, more than 100,000 workers in hospitals and nursing homes have filed petitions for union elections, Crabtree said. _____ Lane Wallace can be reached at mhbusiness@montereyherald.com. _____ This article originally appeared in the Monterey Herald. See http://www.montereyherald.com/news/ ci_15108228?nclick_check=1.

Sunday

Monday

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"INDIE" w/ DJ Dinobyte Rock & Soul Artifacts, Audie’s Olympic, 9p l Rudy Parris Band ADG, 11:30a l Hail the Sun, Circles for Circles, SL, 8p l Spoken, Life Blood, Burning Yesterday, CR, $10, 6:30p l Crossroads of Comedy, CRS, 8p

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ONGOING: l

TUESDAY

Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Roger Rocka's, thru July 18 The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, 2nd Space, thru Aug 8

Woodward Shakespeare: Merchant of Venice, free, Thurs, Fri, & Sat, WWP, 8p

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email: Calendar@FresnoUndercurrent.net

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WEDNESDay

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The HUB, Open Mic w/ special guests

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Eva Scow Trio, ADG, 11:30a

from San Diego, Audie’s Olympic, $3, 9p

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The HUB w/ Yogoman Burning Band & DJ

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Cheap Girls, Menzingers, Reinventing

Outlaw Country w/ DJ Audie

5000, Audie’s Olympic, 10p, $1 OLY & PBR Drafts till midnight

Tokyo Garden Jazz Jam, TKG, 6p

l l

Dam, SL, 8p

l

Outlaw Country w/ DJ Audie

5000, Audie’s Olympic, 10p, $1 OLY & PBR Drafts till midnight

Olympic, $3, 9p

Another Breath, Soul

Control, Bridges, $7, CYC, 6:30p

Monsanto, CRS, 4-8p

13 l

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Open Mic, Audie’s

Monsanto, CRS, 4-8p

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Rock & Soul Artifacts,

Audie’s Olympic, 9p

KRZR Night: 2 Cents,

From the Fallen, $5, SL, 8p

The Skatalites, Los Hooligans, DJ Prof.

Stone (Ska/Reggae), Audies Olympic, $12, 9p

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l

K.P., Audie’s Olympic, $5, 9p the Square, $8, TC, 7p

2 Cents, SL, 8p Crossroads of Comedy, CRS, 8p

15

14 l

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"INDIE" w/ DJ Dinobyte,

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Art Ho

Girls Night O Rademacher TKG, Reading: Joh San Joaq Center, 6 Stick To You Maker, Ha $13, 6:30

10

l

Girls

10pm

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Nate at the

l

Rush (film),

l

The Expansi

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comm

Austin's Com

Moment O 6:30p

16

"INDIE" w/ DJ Dinobyte Rock & Soul Artifacts, Audie’s Olympic, 9p Crossroads of Comedy, CRS, 8p

l

l

6

Fresno Musician's Guild -

l

l

The HUB w/ Populus & DJ K.P., Audie’s Olympic, $3

17 l

Physchobilly

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Inner Ear Po

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American Me

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Audie’s O

Austin's Com

Oppressor

Rapture, C

20 l

l

Outlaw Country w/ DJ Audie

l

l

l

5000, Audie’s Olympic, 10p, $1 OLY & PBR Drafts till midnight

Monsanto, CRS, 4-8p

David Arthur Brown, Steve Ono, Abigail Nolte, Audie’s Olympic, $10/$15, 6:30p Heartsounds, Seahaven, $7, TC, 7p Fres Folklore Soc: The Carolina Chocolate Drops w/Lance Canales & the Flood, $20, Warnor Theatre, 6:30p Monsanto, CRS, 4-8p

27 l

21

l

l

22

Metal Mondaze w/ DJ Evil G, Audie’s

Olympic, 10pm

Dead Panic, The Penny Dreadfuls, Manic

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"INDIE" w/ DJ Dinobyte,

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Audie’s Olympic, 9p Crossroads of Comedy, CRS, 8p

Relapse, The Pit Rats, l

l

Rock & Soul Artifacts,

The HUB w/ Strong Arm Steady, Audie’s Olympic, $5, 9p

RESURRECT: Drum & Bass Party w/ The Bassfeinz Kru & DJ Prof. Stone, Audie’s Olympic, 9p

*

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"INDIE NIGHT LIVE" w/ The Stellar Corpses & DJ Dinobyte, Audie’s Olympic, $5, 9p Crossroads of Comedy, CRS, 8p l

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Girls Night O

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Jill King, $5,

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Opening Nig Merchant

Takings Not

Machine C

Extremetie

You Me at Six, SL

29

24

l

$4, CYC, 6p

28 l

23

30 l

The HUB w/ Zion I, Audie’s Olympic, $10, 9p

Calendar current as of printing

where:

2ST: 2ND Space AAM: Arte Ameri AQS: Aqui Shi, 1 #108 ADG: Austin’s D Ness Ave

Thursday

op(Tower/Downtown)

Out, Audie’s Olympic, 10pm r, Fay Wrays, Many Arms, 9p hn C. Doffelmeyer Cowboy Poetry, quin River Parkway River 6p ur Guns, The Ghost Inside, Grave avenside, Last Night In Town, CR, 0p

Night Out, Audie’s Olympic,

m

Movies (films, music, &

4 l l l l l l l l l

11 l

mendary), $3, FCB, 8p

l

, TT, 8p

medy Show, ADG, 8p

ion, End The Oppression, A

Of Silence, Siphon Soul..., CR, $8,

y Night w/ The Gogetters,

Olympic, $8

e, Of Salt and Swine, The

l

r, Maltreated, Beneath The

CR, $10, 6:30p

Out, Audie’s Olympic, 10pm

ght: Woodward Shakespeare, of Venice, free, WWP, 8p

, FCB, 8p

Stealing, Black Tie Occasion,

City, For All That Stands, The

es, CR, $8, 6:30p

:

e Theatre, 928 E Olive icas, 1630 Van Ness 1144 E. Champlain Dr.

Downtown Grill, 820 Van

l l l

l l l

Lecture: Ancient Calendars of Meso-America,

l

Central Valley Burlesque Society, $15, FCB, 8p

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$3, AAM, 1p

free, AAM, 11a

Disarm the Tyrant CD Release, w/Evisceration, Ecryptic, Veil of Nithael, RL, 8p

l

Rainbow Pride Parade & Festival, Tower District, 10a

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Tex-Mex Baile, CRS, 9p

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2:10 Dance Party/Show Party Fest, CR, $10, 7p

12

l

Crazy Moon Studios Anniversary Party/Fund Raiser, Yesterday's Chonies, Audie’s Olympic, $5

l

Mob Figaz, Crest Theatre

Cloud 99, IBC, 7p

l

HateFX, Sangre, Illusion of Choice, SL, 8p

l l

Glen Delpit (Americana/blues), Audie’s Olympic, 5:30-8p 500 Miles to Memphis, Bruce Parton (Country Punk Rock & Roll), Audie’s Olympic $10, 9p Crucial Point, Wages of Fear, DCOI, Born Loser, The 32s, Harsh Reality, $6, CYC, 6:30p Kyle Monroe & The Day Trotters, Brier Rose, Joey Vannucchi, KPJ, 8p Mezcal, $10, AAM, 8p Nails, Fell to Low, $7, TC, 7p Cloud 99, Rousseau, 7p Four Pillars, Exhale, A Plane Morning, Simple Creation, CR, $8, 7p l l

I See Hawks in L.A., Highway City. Poorman's Poison, Audie’s Olympic, $7, 9p l Dave Lane (Americana), Audie’s Olympic, 5:30-8p Sounds & Sciences, Dawn DeFeo, See the Light, Man Up!, KPJ, 7:30p Shanon Ashley & the Men, Pierter Moerdyke, the Roger Perry Band, $6, FCB, 8p End The Oppression, A Moment Of Silence, Siphon Soul, Claim The Sky, As Death Comes Calling, Buried in Vain, CR, $8, 7p Radar Bros, Wheels Of Fortune, Primer Skyline, FP, $6, 9p

25 l

l

Mariachi de la Tierra, $10, AAM, 8p

18 l

The Remuda: Californio de Buckaroo (documentary),

Flash Cadilla & the Fres Phil, $25+, WWP

Something Beautiful, Skouts Honor, KPJ, 8p

Sounds & Sciences, Your Hero is a Villain, $8, CR, 7p

l

Shotgun Serenade, Audie’s Olympic, $5

l

l

RunKidRun (Tooth & Nail), Lakes, Hazel & Vine, Paint Me

l l

saturday

Bitter Sober, Aesop & The Fables, Needy Eevy,

Confide CD Release w/Soveriegn Strength, All

Fres Filmworks: The Secret in their Eyes, $10, TT, 5:30p & 8:30p

l

5

l

l

An Evening w/ Roger Perry & Friends, Audie’s Olympic, $5 6-12a

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oetry Jam, $5, FCB, 8p

medy Show, ADG, 8p

friday

Glen Delpit & The Subterraneans, Audie’s Olympic, $5, 5:30-9p l Strange Vine, The Whiskey and the Devil Chaplain, Buffalo Guns, Audie's Olympic, 9p Benefit for Jocelynn Guerra w/Heroes Are Forever, KPJ, 7:30p Patrick Contreras, $10, AAM, 8p Men Who Cook, $20, FAM, 6p Henry Rollins, $22, TT, 7p Jazz Fresno presents Rick Helzer (piano), $12, Club One, 8p Javon Davis, ADG, 5p Subdue, Throne of Agony, Calico Zero & Guests, $9, CR, 7p Cloud 99, Patio Café, 7p Don’t Go Home Fridays, CRS, 5-7p l

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CIF: 935 F St CPB: Cracked Pepper Bistro,389 E Shaw CR: Club Retro, 4450 N. Brawley CRS: Crossroads, 3315 N Cedar Ave CT: Crest Theater, 1170 Broadway Plz CYC: Chinatown Youth Center, 901 F Street FAM: Fres Art Mus, 2233 N 1st St

FCB: Full Circle Brewing Co. 620 F Street FP: Franks Place, 1432 Fulton St IBC: Iron Bird Café, 1915 Fulton St ITZ: Studio Itz, 370 N Fresno St KPJ: Kuppajoe, 3673 N First St LMK: The Landmark, 644 East Olive PAL: Palominos, 805 East Olive PDP: Piazza del Pane, Cedar & Nees

or Nothing, ICatchFire, Watch for the Day, KPJ, 7p Amphitheater, 7:30p

Wanted Dead or Alive, SL

Afton Presents:Claudia's Ashes, CR, $9, 6p

19 l l l

A Place to Bury Strangers, Quiet Americans, Audie’s Olympic, $8, 9p Fedup, Jungle Juice, Inferior, Lifeless, Vulgar, $4, CYC, 6p NoTown Roller Derby $12, Fres Fairgrounds, 5:30p A Place to Bury Strangers, Quiet Americans, Audie’s Olympic, $8, 9p l Argyle Pimps, $10 door ($6 RSVP), TT, 8p Roman Candles, Campout + Between the Cities and Stars, TKG, 9p Every Avenue, Sing it Loud, The Secret Handshake, $13, CR, 6p Head Like A Kite, Smoosh, Fierce Creatures FP, $6, 9p Hot Room's SummerFest: A Story Untold, Dressed In White, Last Night In Town, At The Crossroads, CR, 6p

26 l l l l

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RL: The Red Lantern RR: Roger Rocka’s, 1226 N Wishon SBN: Sequoia Brewing, North, 1188 E. Champlain SBT: Sequoia Brewing, Tower, 777 E. Olive SL: The Starline, 831 E Fern SLG: Starline Grill, 833 E Fern TC: The Captive,1440 N Van Ness

TKG: Tokyo Garden, 1711 Fulton St TM: the Manhattan, 1731 W. Bullard TP: Thai Palms, 7785 N. Palm TT: Tower Theatre, 815 Olive WST: William Saroyan Theatre, 700 M St WWP: Woodward Park VVV: Veni Vedi Vici, 1116 N Fulton

FIERCE CREATURES far left

ALEXANDRIA BURNING left

BROTHER LUKE AND THE COMRADES • FIERCE CREATURES • HAIL THE SUN

MANY ARMS right

RADEMACHER • FAY WRAYS • MANY ARMS

Love the Captive is bringing us another strong bill for this Indie Tuesday. This show will feature Brother Luke and the Comrades, who create beautifully crafted indie folk gems. The band always gives great heartfelt performances that match the passion of their songs. Also on the bill is Fierce Creatures, who are turning into Fresno's hottest indie rock act. Their music is richly layered with an array of instruments and brings to mind such bands as The T U E J U N 0 1 Arcade Fire and Broken Social Scene.

9 0 0 P M • 1 8 + • $ 5 Lastly is Chico's Hail the Sun, who are reminiscent of early At the Drive In.

This is gonna be a pretty rocking post-arthop show, folks! Fresno post-punk trio Fay Wrays will be playing their riff laden Shellac-influenced tunes for the post-arthop patrons at Tokyo. Taking the middle slot will be Philadelphia's Many Arms, who's drummer also leads the rhythm section for Joe Lally of Fugazi fame! They play this amazing hybrid of jazz and math rock; there will definitely be more than a few time changes in their set! Then there’s J U N 0 3 Rademacher. With a brand new line- T H U up they are more rocking than ever! 9 0 0 P M • 2 1 + • $ 5

What more is there to say about this one? Henry Rollins doing spoken word for at least two hours! For those of you who have listened to his spoken word before you know why I'm excited. For those of you who aren't that familiar with his work, this man has been in the music, film, and literature business for almost thirty years! He's been the front man for the seminal bands Black Flag and The Rollins Band, he's been in more than a few films, and he has quite a few books to his name! I know J U N 0 4 twenty-two bucks is a lot to shell out, F R I 7 0 0 P M • A L L A G E S • $22 but this will be well worth it!

South Valley band The Whiskey & the Devil Chaplain will be returning to Audie's, entertaining us with their wonderfully crafted bluegrass-laden folk tunes. They’ve become an Americana mainstay in the Central Valley, making the rounds in Fresno, Visalia, and Merced. Joining them will be Strange Vine.

For only having two members, they create one hefty sound! Finishing up will be Fresno/Madera band Buffalo F R I J U N 0 4 Guns, who do a damn great job rein9 0 0 P M • 2 1 + • $ 5 venting post punk sound and making it their own.

S T A R L I N E

HENRY ROLLINS

TOWER THEATRE

BITTER SOBER • NEEDY EEVY • ALEXANDRIA BURNING

Bitter Sober have made only one trip to Fresno and, on that night, they became an Audie's favorite. They're this hybrid of pop, punk, and Ani DiFranco style folk…except with more hooks. Also playing will be Fresno's favorite band of ladies, Needy Eevy, who have been working on their craft for around five years, and, through lineup changes, they've still managed to persevere. Lastly is Alexandria Burning, which is comprised of members of Wax Erratic, Sleepover Disaster, and The Shroud. These folks are bringing S A T J U N 0 5 back that dark and almost gothic 9 0 0 P M • 2 1 + • $ 5 sound of the nineties in the best way.

AUDIE’S OLYMPIC

RADAR BROTHERS • WHEELS OF FORTUNE • PRIMER SKYLINE

Every indie rock fan worth his/her weight in Grandaddy-like clothes should want to make this show! Los Angeles' Radar Brothers will be returning to Fresno and Tokyo Garden—it's been five or six years since years since their last stop! The Radar Bros will be back touring in support of their extremely well-received new album The Illustrated Garden. This album maintains their almost lazy style of West Coast pop and it will be great to hear it performed live. Support for this show will F R I J U N 2 5 be folk rockers Wheels of Fortune and 9 0 0 P M • 2 1 + • $ 6 Primer Skyline.

TOKYO GARDEN

THE WHISKEY & THE DEVIL CHAPLAIN • STRANGE VINE • BUFFALO GUNS

AUDIE’S OLYMPIC

A PLACE TO BURY STRANGERS • LIGHT POLLUTION • QUIET AMERICANS

Hey Fresno! This is going to be a big one and should not to be missed! From the ashes of defunct band Skywave rose A Place to Bury Strangers, and these Brookynites have been rising up the indie ladder ever since! They play an extremely loud yet pop-heavy style of noise rock. Accompanying them on this tour is Light Pollution who are gaining a lot of momentum themselves, recently receiving attention from NPR, which usually means very good things for bands. Opening the show is S A T J U N 1 9 Quiet Americans, who word has it 9 0 0 P M • 2 1 + • $ 1 0 - 1 5 may have an album for sale!

AUDIE’S OLYMPIC

BETWEEN THE CITIES AND STARS • ROMAN CANDLES • CAMPOUT

This show looks like it's going to be a show of Fresno debuts. Between the Cities and Stars are new Fresno band that recently played their first show.

They're a noise rock band who play up tempo songs filled with distortion- and reverb-drenched vocals, a la Ceremony. LA's Roman Candles will provide some contrast with their busker style folk rock. This band is just two guys, one accordian, and one guitar. They keep it simple and good. Campout, another two-piece from San Francisco, play S A T J U N 2 6 girl pop that can compete with the 9 0 0 P M • 2 1 + • $ 5 best of them!

TOKYO GARDEN FRANK’S PLACE

page THE VENUES / Cellar Door = 101 W Main St, Visalia • Tower Theatre = 815 E Olive, Fresno • Audie’s Olympic = 1426 N Van Ness, Fresno • Howie & Sons

18

Pizza = 2430 S Mooney, Visalia • The Starline = 831 E Fern, Fresno • The Partisan = 432 W Main St, Merced • Tokyo Garden = 1711 Fulton, Fresno • Veni Vidi Vici = 1116 N Fulton, Fresno • Babylon = 1064 N Fulton, Fresno • Chinatown Youth Ctr = 901 F St, Fresno • Frank’s Place = 1432 Fulton, Fresno

I

MEET FIERCE CREATURES

n the midst of a random Monday night hail storm, Fierce Creatures-all seven of them-gathered at the Revue, for a discussion of their first EP, I Mostri Feroci. This five-song avant-garde rock production sounds unlike anything heard in Fresno, and they don’t mind that; in fact, they’re not necessarily trying to reflect on the local culture at all.

As our conversation unfolded, it became apparent that they were drawn together for an important reason: to dare to create music that everyone has been waiting for, to be experimental, progressive and timeless.

Mathr, the band’s male vocalist, sharply dressed, spoke keenly about the creative process behind the EP. “It’s not a concept album by any means.

Everything just fell into place. There was no preconceived notion of what it should sound like,” he said. He continued by explaining that I Mostri Feroci is a medley of five playful songs, encompassing a variety of topics that were deemed worthy, like vampires, revenge, money, Satan and Moby Dick.

Although some of the topics may seem lighthearted, the songs have amazing emotional depth and an underlying morality.

“I think that if people understand us, we’ll have more room to experiment, and do things that people don’t expect,” Mathr said.

Musicians like David Byrne and Radiohead are sources of his inspiration. “I like abstract, very strange, and difficult-to-understand music that sometimes doesn’t have a point. I want people to give it a point, in a way.

Amanda is more studied; she’s more structured than I am,” Mathr said.

“We’re more avant-garde than people may expect, but we’re also very asymmetrical,” said Amanda Valdez, their female vocalist. Balance between polarities, yin and

yang, seems to keep them unified quite well.

For example, when our conversation wandered into silliness, they each held a finger to their noses to signal a time to focus.

Fierce Creatures snagged their name from an oddly comedic movie about zookeepers, although the band narrowed it down from a lengthy list of possibilities; and when I inquired about those names which didn’t quite fit, they referenced titles like Radiohead, UB40, Neil Young “The Band”, and Black Church (which turned out to be a popular

name already claimed by several other bands).

“We’re a very democratic band, so we voted; and there was an election process,” Mathr said.

Nathaniel Stiers, the band’s bassist, chimed in. “And we had to veto all the ones that we hated; and this is how we make every decision. Everybody gets a voice and if anyone is opposed then we throw it out,” he said, peering through a retro pair of black studious glasses.

This democratic process carries over into their songwriting as well; everyone agreed that the process is more laid-back in this band compared to that of smaller groups in their past. In the future they want additional musicians to contribute either as guests or permanent fixtures.

Jon Rulloda, one of three guitarists, said, “It seems like it should be harder to write with more people.”

Reflecting on this thought, Mathr

said, “It’s more distilled; emotions are less high when we get together. It feels like it’s easier than it is with three people, no matter how much you get along with those people. If one person is on the wrong vibe, it kind of gets dispersed.”

Fierce Creatures actively experiment with instruments that other bands tend to shy away from. Rulloda, an imaginative character whose ideas extend beyond the guitar and mandolin, likes to implement unusual instruments which often go unexplored by rock bands.

“I like using really odd instrumentation that a lot of people don’t use. I just bought a theremin, but I don’t know how to play it; but it’s an interesting instrument. I bought a singing saw, too, to try to learn how to play it.” Rulloda said. “It makes it a lot more fun when you get to experiment with things that you just haven’t played before; it’s as exciting as when you first pick up a guitar.”

It’s intriguing that the band’s female vocalist, Amanda Valdez, was able to jump into her role without previous experience in other bands. Seated comfortably among the experienced musicians, she explained, “I’m an actress.” Perhaps her roots in theater were sufficient preparation; her natural singing voice is undoubtedly meant to be heard.

Late that night, Fierce Creatures played their first formal show to a packed house at Veni Vidi Vici. Looking into the crowd, I saw that it was impressively odd, ranging from hippie chicks to darkly dressed music connoisseurs. During a particularly humorous moment, I was smothered by a giant man wearing a genuine fur pimp-coat as he lurched across the room.

The band was saturated in a deep red light which matched the hue of Amanda V’s hair, and they played in a way which was both mysterious and familiar; it felt natural, even primal, yet it was unpredictable. I think that the rapt look on everyone’s faces was very revealing; no one had expected a performance of that caliber out of the blue.

Their songs romped like a Karen O and the Kids song, in unison, and evoked a sweet familial vibe; this was supported with tribal beats and other different styles of percussion. The air buzzed with intensity that we, here in the valley, would typically experience only on a weekend trip to San Francisco. We were all floored.

Stopping for a moment between songs to talk to the crowd, Amanda V asked, “Do you want to dance? A little bit?” The crowd, together, responded, “A lot a bit!” The rest of their set caught wind like some unearthly hurricane winding around the room, and at this point I was, admittedly, freaked out. I realized then that Fierce Creatures’ presence represents a significant breakthrough in music.

The valley music scene may have its limits, with only a few local venues, radio stations and record stores to choose from; but Fierce Creatures are not too worried about that challenge because in the end, good music will prevail.

Fans can tune to 90.7FM KFSR, Fresno State’s radio station, for on-air performances and interviews with Fierce Creatures. I Mostri Feroci is set for online release in mid-May, and is available for sale at their shows. _____ Christy Arndt is a Fresno native and CSUF graduate. If you are a local musician, and would like to be interviewed for “Meet the Musicmakers,” please contact her at christyarndt@gmail.com.

Brooklyn Rider

Dominant Curve (2010)

reviewed by N IC H O L A S N O C K E TB A C K

x

N Palm Ave

W Bullard Ave

B

If Haydn Were a Hipster

rooklyn Rider is a genre-bending all string quartet celebrating classical roots and greats like Haydn and Debussy but formatting, nay, creating a sound that is contemporary and fresh—yes, fresh classical. I believe, if I were a man of real influence or a celebrated linguist, I’d dub them neo-classical.

Imagine a class of rogue hipsters, being classically trained, mastering it, playing for all the blues and grays that populate the philharmonic, getting their cash, then hitting the dive bar to play their own blend. Thus, you have Brooklyn Rider.

I originally found them (or as the kids say “was put on game”) on a South by Southwest sampler. Their sound, while being exclusively strings, was so fresh and different, that it made me hunger for that classical form again. This, their third album, is fully global—meaning they have French and Asian and European traditions.

Dominant Curve is an amalgam of chamber music, written originally by Claude Debussy in 1893. The boys, however, have manipulated the arrangement in both size and scope, translating it—if you will—for those of us needing more hip, contemporary relevancies.

However, for those of you who are fans of the classics and tune your radios to 89.3 for things NOT NPR, you’ll find their sound inspiring. And, for those of you who don’t know a thang about Debussy or Opuses (the plural may be Opi, but who cares), here are some key terms to google before listening: Achille-Claude, Dmitri Yanov-Yanovsky, rhythmic ostinatos, Blue Rider group, 1889 Universal Exposition in Paris. Or, for you more instant-gratification folks, just check them out at brooklynrider.com.

a grenade on the ground and tether two over it, or strap an enemy to a moving vehicle, then drive it off a cliff. That’s just to name a few possibilities. Rico also has access to a retractable parachute that can be deployed while in mid-grapple or while in a free fall. It can also be used in conjunction with the grapping hook to travel around Panau.

Another way to fill your chaos bar is to find any of the over 2,000 weapon, armor and vehicle upgrades through out the game. Yeah, over 2,000 of Square/Enix (2010) / (for PS3, Xbox 360, and PC) them. That’s a game right there alone.

There are also hidden items each gang review by HU G H STAR KE Y needs you to find.

Just Cause 2 does have some o, what did you do today? I drove, have to enlist the help of three of the local flew, scaled mountains and paramiscreant factions, go to various locations problems too. There are a few glitches through out the game, as well as some chuted through the island of Panau located all over the 400 square miles that located in Southeast Asia. While there I are Panau. The island has a wide range of clipping issues. All the faster cars in the game feel light, almost like gliding, and blew up pretty much everything in sight; terrain from beaches to snow capped from gas stations to full scale underground mountains to unpaved jungle landscape to can thus be problematic to control. I was not a fan of the planes missile silos; all if the game but found the while picking the helicopters to be up drug packages some of the best I’ve and liberating the ever controlled in a island from it’s game. Another possible oppressive leader, pitfall for some may be Pandak “Baby” the length of time Panay. required sometimes to Sounds travel from on point to like I might have another. Even flying been hitting the these can take a few sauce, or the plot to minutes and should a Troma action have been positioned movie? Well, it’s a with the overall size little of both, which and scope of the island you can attest to kept in mind. Four hunafter playing Just dred square miles is Cause 2; recently pretty big. released by Hanging with Square/Enix (priRico, blowing stuff up marily a role playand soaring all over ing game developPanau is a ton of fun, and that’s really casinos.

From there the goal is to create a ment company). what Just Cause 2 comes down to. There a much chaos as possible to fill your chaos I must admit I was skeptical of so many possibilities you as the player are meter, which opens up the next story drivJust Cause 2 initially and even more so given and so many ways to cause havoc en mission to progress the story. Fuel given that Square/Enix usually does not there is no way to not have fun. Just refineries, radio towers and statues of the release sandbox type action games. The Cause 2 it one of the rare games that is island’s dictator are amongst the items you whole package (story, voice acting, hell constantly rewarding the player with will blown up and break down using rifles even the title and loading screens) has a power ups, cash and constant updating to rockets and grenades. very low budget, thrown together look; but stats that you can’t help but get pulled in.

Also at your disposal is the it’s a misleading look. Granted the graphAvalanche did a great job of making you handy grappling hook (which just has to ics are nothing to write home about, but fell like a bad ass, more than worthy of not bad either. Your character in the game, be the new standard in action games, I your playing time. help go back after this!). you can’t can’t Rico Rodriguez, is a fearless super spy I had to give Just Cause 2 a ratbut fell like Spiderman swinging from who looks like Al Pacino, has the charm of ing of 8.5/10. buildings and hanging from helicopters.

Bruce Campbell and sounds like Triumph ______ the insult comic dog. Fear not, however, as Rico can also tether two items together Hugh Starkey has lived in the valley his with his grappling hook, allowing you to it all is intentional and comes off like playwhole life, which is how long he’s been wreak havoc in pretty much any over the ing a very cheesy action flick, complete playing video games. That makes him top manner possible. Tether a guy from a with bad dialogue and all. wonder if he himself is living in a game… tree and shoot him, or tether two enemies Much like the recent Red together to send them colliding to an end.

Faction: Guerrilla, destruction of the Bad guys can be pulled from high locagames environment is the name of the tions or away from mounted guns. Throw game here. In order to get to “Baby” you

Just Cause 2

S

The Unnamed

by Joshua Farris (2010)

reviewed by N I CHO LAS N O CK E TBA CK

T

Sick of Your Family? Start Walking im Farnsworth has money, as most lawyers tend to, lives in an opulent home outside of Manhattan, has a wife with a hot body and teen daughter with a hot temper, as most teen girls do. But all is not gravy and biscuits for old Timmy. The “problem” lives in his head. While having the proverbial American Dream, the only thing on his mind…is walking.

He loves his wife, his family, his work, his home. He loves his kitchen. And then one day he stands up and walks out.

And keeps walking.

We’ve all had day dreams of getting up and walking away from our problems.

Many of us, in times of extreme stress, do in fact take a breather, if you will. Wife is bitching about things unimportant?…take a walk. Work making you feel like opening a vein?...take a walk, get some air. But for Tim Farnsworth, he hasn’t a choice— walking away IS the problem.

Imagine having a disorder that told your brain to leave, now, and you had no other choice but to obey. For Tim, this is reality.

The Unnamed follows the Farnsworth family as they struggle through an inexplicable disorder, an unnamed enigma.

After having a “fit” of unexplainable urging to walk, Tim will find himself miles from home and worn ragged, fatigued from fleeing, as it were.

Many of you Breaking Bad fans remember back when Walt had to do a shady drug deal and found himself naked and miles away from home in a mini mart. Well, it’s a similar feel here—wandering, though, for Tim is

either a necessity borne of illness or just a primal need to roam.

Ferris doesn’t make it easy for you, which is a good thing. There’s no clear, identifiable metaphor, which allows you to become the thinker— scary for some, enthralling for us (the Undercurrent readers). Basically, motifs range from constant anxiety, to troubled marriages, to pangs of loss

and family illness. And we’re really left wondering why—which, for me, is a draw. We have all, at some point in our lives, experienced a bout of true anxiety. Something from somewhere in our brains tells us that, unless we flee the situation, it’ll shut our body down.

You’ve felt the cold sweats, the rapid heartbeat, the drumming in your ears,

all spiraling your brain into a panicky crescendo that’ll drive you mad, or drop you cold. And if you’ve ever experienced this, you’re left wondering why me?

Ferris’ second novel finds him tossing out the more gimmicky platitudes of his previous Then We Came To The End. You’ll find yourself questioning your own life. And, like me, perhaps you’ll even buy yourself a new pair of walking shoes and hit the pavement with a new, liberating stride.

“Fuck you, Chase credit card bill, I’m walking to Firebaugh.” Wait, does Chase know where Firebaugh is?

N

The Ultimate Bread Recipe

add 1-2 tablespoons of sugar, the same amount of oil, and a half to 1 teaspoon of salt.

Stir in the additional ingredients while the mixture is still thin, before you add another cup each of white and whole wheat flour. You

by J E F F BAKE R can add a variety of things; sautéed onions, crushed garlic, various seeds, cracked wheat nuggets, etc. The final dough has about 5 cups of flour in it, counting what it picks up from the board.

Today I am making Focaccia so I am going to add 2 tablespoons of oil, 1 tablespoon of sugar, 1 teaspoon of salt and 1 teaspoon of rosemary. Stir those in first, and a half cup each of whole wheat and white flour.

It should be pretty thick after that. The object now is to get it thick enough to dump on the flowered bread board to knead. I flour my hands and dump a half cup of white flower on top of the dough and then start to knead it as I pick up flour from the board. It will be just right when it no longer tries to stick to the board or your hands. A full minute of kneading is fine.

For Focaccia, oil a cookie sheet and flatten the dough into an oval shape about one half to three quarters of an inch thick. Stick that in a warm place, I use a lightly-warmed oven. It should rise in about an hour. ast year, about this time, The when I start; I add 1 cup of flour and 1 teaWhile I am waiting, I mix Undercurrent ran an article about mak- spoon of sugar, then stir and add warm water three crushed garlic cloves into a ing cheese that prompted me to go until it is about the consistency of pancake small bowl with 3 tablespoons of through the enjoyable process of making batter again. Let it sit until the yeast has a olive oil that I am going to pour over cheese. I experimented with onions, garlic, thick layer of air bubbles. This is the most the top before baking. Today, I also smoke, and other flavorings providing me and important phase. Add 1 cup each of whole sliced a quarter of a cup of olives. my family with new treats from the kitchen. wheat and white flour. It will be over half full You can add tomato slices, garlic, The authors stated at the end of their article now, it is just the right amount of starter to other spices, and Mozzarella if you that they would enjoy reading about how to start bread. Let me diverge: I used to try to choose, Suit the occasion. The plainmake the ultimate bread. I wanted to share my make bread with the small amount of starter er version is easier to use for sandbread-making technique with an answering that recipes call for. I found out they take five wiches. article, but I wasn’t sure it was the ‘ultimate’ or six hours to rise. So I let the yeast froth up When the bread has risen bread. That is, until I started making Focaccia good before the next step. It rises in one or three times in size, take it out of the bread. two hours. If you try to make the bread before oven and set the oven temperature to the starter is very happy and yeasty, it may Before I begin, let me use this dis450 degrees. That high temperature result in a dense, heavy and disappointing claimer: I have not measured anything about is the key to the Focaccia crust. loaf. bread for years. I had to make bread and Setting the pan on the counter, I hold There are other methods to use to measure everything in order to write this. So, my hand with the fingers pointed make your bread rise faster. I don’t use them don’t take the measurements too seriously; downwards, like a spider, and poke your instincts will tell you the right amounts. because it defeats the purpose of making you holes in the top of the dough. Then, I own sourdough bread. If you buy a package The most important thing to me is drizzle the oil and garlic over the or two of yeast every time you make bread, it the starter. Mine is about one year old. Just bread and put an olive in each put a packet of dry yeast in a container with 1 costs as much as buying bread at the store. depression, if I have it.

Some recipes call for baking soda or baking cup of flour, 1 teaspoon of sugar, and some As soon as your oven is powder; I have tried them also, but the bread warm water, and let it set until it develops heated, put the pan in the middle of is not the same. People have made basic, simnice, frothy yeast. the oven and cook it for 12 minutes.

It picks up character with age, but can be used ple bread with a starter for centuries, so can When you start to smell it, or 12 right away. The starter works best if it is about we. minutes has passed, open it up and For a bowl, I use a very large oventhe thickness of a pancake batter ready to tap the top with a wooden spoon. proof ceramic bowl that is 4 inches deep and pour. I keep mine on the countertop in the You can tell when it is done. Take it winter and in the refrigerator during the sum- 10 inches across. I have seen other similar and out and use a flat spatula to separate useful bowls and wide style crock pot bowls mer. the bottom of the bread from the in the thrift shops that would be perfect. A For a container, I use a half gallon pan. With all the ingredients, this is hefty wooden or plastic spoon with a big hanTupperware brand plastic beverage pitcher. I very tasty just like it is. This makes like it because when the top is on, it still has a dle and medium-sized head helps to make the a nice light meal with a bowl of job of stirring in the ingredients easier. little breathing hole where the pour spout is. soup.

For added ingredients, the basic is to Say there is an inch of starter in the bottom I use this same mix, with-

L

out the topping for bread. I have used pans, but prefer to use my mixing bowl instead. I simply wash it out with cold water after kneading the bread on the board. Oil the bottom and sides of which ever container you use, and put the dough in to rise. As you first set the dough in the bowl, turn it over again; this gives it a light coating of oil on the top for a better crust. For the loaves of bread, you need to bake at a lower temperature. Set the over to 360 degrees and plan on cooking for a half hour. I set my timer for 20 minutes and then eyeball it for the last 5 or 10 minutes. It will give off a definite bread smell when it is done, and have a nice light brown crust.

Separate the edges from the side of the pan or bowl with a thin bladed knife.

Dump it out on a board and let it cool for a few minutes before cutting off the first slice, then butter it, and enjoy a long-time tradition.

This is my real reward for making bread.

Most of the time when I eat bread, I toast it first. Each time it is like that first slice out of the oven. Is this the ultimate bread? I doubt it.

Everyone’s tastes are different. But I suspect that the ultimate recipe is adaptable to different tastes.

Stephanie Allison “Tangled in the Mangroves”

inspiring! Also, Fresno City College’s art classes have all been great. I came to FCC with my A.A. in Art already, but I re-took a few of the classes and I loved every one of them. All of my teachers have been so wonderful and it inspires me even more to be an art teacher!

How would you describe your style?

I have a few different styles that I like to incorporate into my paintings, which creates my own unique style. I get really inspired by the colors of nature and animals, especially birds. I constantly experiment with different color combos and textures. I love fairytales and cartoons; you could call me a kid at heart for sure.

If someone wanted to see more of your work, how would they go about that?

Several of my original paintings are currently on display at The Next Door/Urban Ornaments located on 5th Street

in Old Town Clovis. You can also find me on Facebook by searching: Stephanie Allison. I update it daily with news and the latest paintings I’m working on. I also have prints available here: www.redbubble.com/people/stephallison and other products here: http://www.zazzle.com/steph_allison What if someone wanted to give you money for your work, how would one go about that?

Tell us about this particular cover image.

They could contact me through e-mail at: stephlovespurIt’s acrylic on canvas, titled “Tangled in the Mangroves”. ple@hotmail.com or find me on any of the websites I listThis painting came to me after watching a Discovery Channel show about mangroves. I was fascinated by the ed above.

What projects are you working on or dreaming up for tangled roots and mysterious world that thrives beneath the near future? the branches. The female image represents a Mother This year is the Friends, Family & Fictional Characters – Nature type figure. The mangroves are growing out of 100 Girls in 2010 project. I hope to show the paintings her hands and into the water and the earth. The birds in next year at a location to be announced. Right now I’m the painting can all be found in various tropical manon #16, and you can follow my progress on Facebook. groves. Nature is definitely my biggest inspiration, whether it be flowers, animals or just the colors found in I’m also working on a painting for the Without Color group show at Chris Sorensen’s gallery/studio, and the nature.

What got you started in your artistic endeavors? opening reception is on June 1st with ArtHop. It will be I dabbled in watercolors, crayons and markers through very different for me to not be able to use any color elementary school like most kids. But I started to realize I besides black, white and grey. This fall I’ll be doing The had a real interest and talent in art when I started to help Pink Show again, which benefits breast cancer research out with the family business, which was making pottery and is also at Chris Sorensen’s gallery opening on and selling at various craft and Renaissance Fairs. I made ArtHop, October 7th. ornaments and sculptures and sold them at the shows also.

Please provide a short bio.

It was actually quite a little business I had going for I’m originally from the Central Coast. Growing up surmyself at a young age! My 8th grade art class exposed me to acrylic paints, and from there I started painting all of the wood furniture that I had in my room. I’ve painted my dresser so many times I can barely open it. I took all the art classes I could take in high school, and then majored in art in college. Now, I’m working on getting my credentials so I can eventually teach painting.

How long have you been creating art here in Fresno?

I’ve lived in Fresno for about 5 years now, and it wasn’t long after I moved here that I realized there is a really great art community. I had never had a public showing before moving to Fresno, and I had no clue where to start.

I started to paint more often to build up an inventory of paintings. My mom suggested I join Fresnoarts.net, and then I found out about ArtHop. Since then I have shown at several different locations around town. Each show I learn more and grow as an artist.

Has Fresno or the Fresno art scene had any influence or effect on your work?

The Fresno art scene has absolutely had an effect on my work. I love going out to ArtHop, it’s definitely very

Top : “Wasting Time”

Bottom Left: “The Yellow Owl”

rounded by an artistic family of painters and potters, it was hard to not become interested in art. I doodled my way through school, excelling in all of my art classes; I realized that I wanted my future career to have something to do with creating. After getting my A.A. degree in Art from Hartnell Community College, I was unsure of where to go from there. I moved to Fresno in 2005 for a change of scenery and found my calling, which is to be an art teacher. I also started showing my work publicly, which has been a great motivation. It really inspires me to create more when I see that my artwork puts a smile on people’s faces. Currently, I’m working towards getting my credentials and master’s degree. I also have a full-time day job as a secretary. A big thank you to my friends and family for being so supportive of my artwork through the years.

Bottom Right: “Say something interesting”

Jackfruit Fishless Tacos

Ingredients: white wine (any cheap bottle of wine will do; you’re adding so much to it that the quality of the wine is largely lost), vodka, soda or mineral water, oranges, lemons, apples, nectarines, sugar and agave nectar.

I

by J ES SI HA F E R

first encountered jackfruit at a great, unpretentious little vegan restaurant in LA called Pure Luck. Their jackfruit was prepared as carnitas in tortas and in tacos, a unique “meat substitute,” with a more tangy flavor and a light, almost flaky texture. To then make “jackfruit fishless tacos” at home wasn’t really my idea, but it made a lot of sense.

Jackfruit is the world’s largest tree-borne fruit, at 10 inches in diameter, and it is native to Southeast Asia.

Jackfruit is a good source of dietary fiber, vitamin A, vitamin B-6, and more. You can find it canned at Fresno’s local Asian supermarkets. One can of jackfruit makes enough for two to four people.

Start by getting the other taco components ready first: shredded cabbage, lime wedges, canned pickled jalapenos with carrots, and some cilantro.

Mix some mayo (Veganaise), ketchup, lime juice, and spices (a little cayenne, a little cumin, garlic powder, and some pepper) for the sauce; refrigerate this until you’re ready to put the tacos together.

Set out some corn tortillas to warm later.

Drain the water from an opened can of jackfruit, and slice some of the bigger pieces of jackfruit depth-wise.

You’re going for pieces that are roughly 2 inches long, 1 inch wide, and 1 inch deep.

Set the jackfruit aside. Start heating some oil in a cast iron pan. In a small bowl, combine about 1/3 c of flour, a little salt and pepper, and a little cayenne.

Gently coat the jackfruit pieces in the flour mixture.

When the oil is hot, fry the jackfruit for about 3 minutes on each side, or until golden brown. After the jackfruit has been fried on both sides, cool them on a cooling rack or paper towels (a cooling rack is better, though). As you fry the jackfruit, start warming the tortillas; I find that a crepe pan doubles nicely as a “tortilla warming pan”.

In each tortilla, line up 2 or 3 pieces of fried jackfruit, then top with cabbage, pickled jalapenos/carrots, cilantro, and sauce, finishing it with a squeeze of lime.

Sangría

I

always get caught up on etymology.

In this case, it’s less etymology and more simple translation (well there’s a little etymology).

Sangría comes from sangre, meaning blood, with sangria meaning “bleeding” for the color of the drink, which looks a lot like blood due to the dilution of the wine.

Originating in Spain, sangría is essentially a wine punch made from light, fruity red wines, sweetened and flavored with diced or sliced fruit. It is simple to make and easier to drink, especially as the weather turns from rainy to warm and, very soon, hot.

There are many different sangría variations depending on the type of wine used, the fruit and whether or not you fortify your sangría. There are as many variations as there are with wine, and maybe even fruit. On a recent trip to Puerto Rico, I drank a lot of sangria, and every glass was different from the last. So, when the time comes to make some sangria, be creative. I’ve provided a recipe below that I really like. It’s a white wine sangría, so it’s not quite traditional, but I like it.

l In a large pitcher, pour 1 1/2 liters of white wine (I used a sauvignon blanc, chardonnay also works well) l Next, pour 9 ounces of vodka (6 shots.

Here’s where it gets interesting. You could probably double or triple that without much notice up front, but after a few glasses…) l Add 1/3 cup of sugar l Add 7tbl of agave nectar (agave is becoming more readily available and affordable) l Add 5cups of orange juice (preferably fresh), then give the whole thing a good mix l Slice up 2 apples, 2 oranges, and 2 nectarines and add to the sangria

You’re done. Take a glass, add some ice, and pour yourself some sangría.

Leave a little room on top for some fruit and a splash of soda water (don’t add

the soda water to the pitcher, it will only fizz out). *Oftentimes, the sangría is allowed to sit for a couple of days so that the fruit can begin to ferment. This adds a very distinctive flavor that I’m not at all fond of. I prefer to drink it right after preparation.

E

d—Labor. I’m no expert in labor or the labor movement. I admit this openly, and right up front. I tend to support the labor movement, and have defended it in online arguments against people who only see the labor movement as lazy, bloated and worthless. But, I recently ran into an issue where my clear waters have become muddied: the introduction of Fresh & Easy to Fresno. You see, I mainly shopped at Food Maxx, which is an offshoot of Save Mart, which is a union shop. The prices were cheap and the variety good. The union issue never came into play. Fresh & Easy opened in town and the prices were low; the locations were good but they’re not unionized. In fact, for the first few weeks of being open, customers were greeted by protesters with signs and handbills. And online, I was actually arguing with people who were pro-union. I was on the other side. Okay, not completely, because I still am for unions, and I was more trying to get the anti-Fresh & Easiers to elucidate their points on why Fresh & Easy was going to cause the downfall of humanity in Fresno by being non-unionized. This also sparked an argument with a non-online friend. Adam, you were there. And basically, I realized I’ve come to the point of not caring about unions; or, perhaps the realization that I never cared. I mean, I appreciate the benefits for my friends who are in unions, but as for myself, I’ve never been in one. My current job isn’t unionized. My wife’s job isn’t either. In fact, most of the people I know aren’t in union jobs. Would I like a union protecting my job? Sure, but I’m not going to boycott a store because they aren’t unionized. I see the benefits for those in union jobs, and the protections they give for many industries and workers and I appreciate it. But when it comes down to it, I don’t know if I am actually willing to make any choices strictly because of the union issue. What do you think, Adam, are unions important to you? Would you choose a place based on its union/nonunion status?

Adam—I think I’m about where you are.

Here’s where I stand. I think unions are great where they can be implemented. Reading recently about the tragedy that occurred at Upper Big Branch coal mine in West Virginia and how Don Blankenship’s anti-union, antiregulatory, anti-safety methods probably played a part, I see where they are needed as

bers and not focusing on those who want us to react against an answer to bald-faced, people-killing non-union shops just because they’re non-union. Oh, and I’m business ethics. Especially, in this instance, after reading that union-mines sure some very smart people will be correcting our union posihave a much safer track record than non- tions very soon. union mines because the workers are protected from intimidation for pointing out unsafe working conditions and the like. But here’s the thing. I hate, hate, hate arguments from emotion and that to me is what picketing outside of places that are non-union seeks to do. Blankenship is a greedy asshole, to be sure, and he got his riches by bullying people; by intimidating his employees. Forcing the consumer public to intimidate non-union shops by not shopping there is the same sort of bullying in my eyes, the voting with your feet kind of mentality. This is the way we make society better and ensure safer workplaces and fair wages: education. You send organizers to meet with non-union workers to explain to them the pros and cons. You educate the public with facts and information. You see things like the United Mine Workers of America sending their emergency response teams to a non-union mine to help them because union or not, they are Fresno’s LQGHSHQGHQW ¿OP VRXUFH SUHVHQWV human beings who need help. That is what turns me on to unions. Not people )UHVQR standing outside of Fresh & Easy with )LOPZRUNV signs, essentially trying to get people to shut down a place of business that, like it or not, provides jobs for local people in a time when jobs are scarce. I’d rather have a shitty non-union job than none at all. People are desperate, and the way for unions to work now is to be a voice of reason, not emotion.

)ULGD\ -XQH

Ed—Those are all going points. I definitely agree with the part about recognizing those unions that are making a positive impact, often quietly changing the lives of the mem-

7RZHU 7KHDWUH ‡ ( 2OLYH $YH ‡ DQG S P

Tickets available online at FresnoFilmworks.org ‡ $GYDQFH WLFNHWV E\ FDVK RU E\ FKHFN DW WKH 7RZHU 7KHDWUH ER[ RI¿FH 7LFNHWV FRVW JHQHUDO VWXGHQWV VHQLRUV ‡ Save the date for our next screening: July 9, 2010

mean, take two Polaroid photos into the bedroom. Have her close her eyes then put both photos on the bed. When she opens them and stops giggling, she’ll say “what’s this about?” Photo A will have a small white cat with a bonnet on its head, while photo B will have a copious amount of poop. Tell her, “Like Hanna Montana, let’s make the best of both worlds. In twenty ten, it’s all about gettin’ fecal felined.” Now, if she goes for it, she’s a keeper and will be willing to do whatever you want at anytime. If she stomps out in a huff, congrats, you’re newly single. Either way, you win.

—Kisses, Nocky

I

Dear Nocketback, ’ve been wanting to break up with my girlfriend for some time now. I’ve given her the old “it’s not you, it’s me” thing as well as “we’re slipping away emotionally.” I even tried telling her I might be gay, but every time I try, she creates this sexual fantasy that drives me crazy (I mean ridiculous stuff— incestuous stuff). I can’t say no to the sex. HELP A BROTHA OUT! —Weak in the Knees

N

Dear WINTK, o beuno, my man. This is a critical time in the relationship and we all get burnt out after a while. However, all is not lost. Your boy’s got your back. Let’s find a way to get you some freedom, as well as snacking on your wan-ton taco platter at home. For lack of info, let’s call her Binky. So, after Binky hooks you in with some Oedipal feast, try introducing some really off-color material into your sexual diet. By this, I

I

baby-sitting while she gets stuffed like a Mandarin dumpling by her ex-boyfriends…or current. Why do you think she has 2 kids at this point? I mean, she’s probably waiting for the next.

Here’s what happens if you stay: she’ll get knocked up by some random cock, you’ll get stuck watching them because you’ll think it’s yours, and the cycle will continue, like the Tour De France. GET THE F OUT! Make believe you have a job interview, “something along the lines of 6 figures,” tell her, and watch her face light up. When she kisses you good luck and sends you off, drive north on 41 until you don’t smell cow any longer.

—Ships ahoy, Nocky

Dear Nocketback, have some family problems and there’s no one else I can turn to at this point. I am dating this girl with two kids, one’s 11 and the other is 3. We’ve been together for almost a year and she loves me and all that, but I really can’t stand these kids. They drive me up the wall. I’m a cab driver for all of them. I have to cook two separate meals for each kid and I have to watch them when she goes out with her gay, guy friends. I try to talk to her but she just turns it back on me and makes it my fault, then starts crying. What can I do, I am ready to leave, maybe?

—Three’s a Crowd

Choose Your MisFortune

I

Dear 3’s a C, t sounds to me like you’re the woman in this scenario and if you don’t evacuate the situation like Big Pun on ExLax, you’re gonna commit suicide. Trust me; I’m in purgatory as you’re reading this. Firstly, you’re not watching the kids while she “hangs with her gay guys,” you’re

Then look over at page 29 and see what your misfortune holds

B. Door front Bus Number: 28 C. 8 min. from Downtown Fresno driving D. 11 min. from Fashion Fair driving

Some 411

The Garage Sale sells jazz music CD’s by local musicians.

Tip

A clearance table is set up inside the front area of the shop.

In the Bucket

The Thrift Bucket is a monthly thrift card on thrift shops in the local area. Each month, a Thrifty Buyer Guest and I will visit a local thrift shop to see what we can buy, reuse and reinvent. Our TBG of the month is Amber Fargano.

Thrift Store

The Garage Sale Thrift Store 816 E. Fern Avenue

Distance

A. 2 min. from Fresno City College driving

During our visit, I spend $8.99 and buy: women’s blouse ($3.00), women’s knit button-up sweater ($3.99), 2 books ($2.00).

My 2 cents

The Garage Sale Thrift Store has a very helpful and bargaining volunteer. The thrift store is new and may seem small. However, like all thrift stores, you must look intently for the item you are searching for.

My guest and I choose our thrift store adventure by picking a thrift store name out of a bucket. If you’d like to submit a name to the Thrift Bucket, email mchelle01@gmail.com.

Y/N

1-5

Men's Clothes

Y

4

Children's Items

Y

2

Books

Y

3

Furniture

Y

2

Some furniture

Fabrics

Y

1

Sporting Goods

Y

1

A few items, not much at all

Ceramics/Crafts

Y

3

Jewelry

Y

3

Category

Women's Clothes

Y

4

Comments

Nice office attire. Not much of size range Comfortable clothes, good condition Rack of children’s clothes Dollar books

A growing section

Rack of children’s clothes

A selection of handmade and used jewelry

Plants as Therapists

I

have an odd (but not surprising if you know me) confession to make – I’m a self-help junkie. I wander into bookstores with admittedly false, but lofty, intentions to check out gripping titles in the “new fiction” section, but invariably I end up in the “self help” (by the way it’s now called “self improvement” – much more empowering, yes?) aisle – glued to the floor for, well, hours – hell-bent on finding some careful arrangement of words that will recognize and then subsequently release some locked-up pain I have been harboring.

I even like books about other people’s self-improvement journeys – albeit they are a bit unrealistic in terms of really helping me help myself. Yeah, if I had a giant publisher’s advance, a ticket to Europe and meetings lined up with various gurus I’d feel a whole lot better too! I was thinking of writing a novel about all the lessons you could learn by hanging out at Walmart; partially to be a smart-ass, but more so because I don’t think you need a wad of cash, a guru or someone else’s “proven 10 steps” to realize some important stuff about life or free up your mind. But then again, I don’t want to support the giant behemoth evil Walmart, and really maybe lessons and answers are even closer, in your own proverbial backyard – literally. So my dear readers, I am going to share with you some lessons I have learned from the beautiful living beings that surround us all – plants.

‘Bloom where you are planted’ is B.S.: Perhaps you have heard this saying. I hate it. To me it is the equivalent of saying that maybe your life totally sucks, but you should ‘bloom’ and thrive anyway. Garbage. Any gardener knows that plants can be really picky customers and certainly will not bloom or thrive wherever you plant them. Some like acid soil in partial shade with temperatures of 70-80 at 60 percent humidity… Some

like almost no water and as much heat as the sun can dish out.

People are the same way… and the lesson is know yourself… and try to create as near to ideal conditions for yourself as you can.

Case in point: I worked for a few weeks as a bill collector… I am a super-sensitive, people-pleasing artistic person… Yea, I sucked at this job because it was the opposite of what conditions I needed to thrive. Now I teach senior citizens art… and am happily blooming away!

Broadcast as many seeds as you can: Many plants manufacture tons and tons of seeds, and proceed to try and spread them as far and wide as possible… sometimes even employing a bit of trickery! They produce so many seeds because most of them will get eaten, or will get pulled up as soon as they germinate, or will be (eek) poisoned by an overzealous gardener.

However, a few will find good conditions (see above) and grow and bloom. Using this lesson in life may look like sending out lots of resumes for a job, learning many different techniques for a task, or meeting new people hoping to find love. The more you put yourself out there the better chance you have of something taking root and growing something beautiful in your life.

Chop, dig, uproot… revive: Plants are survivors… much tougher and sturdier than many of us give them credit for.

I have known people that treat them as if they were made of (super thin) glass, but really many plants can take a ton of punishment and pop right back up… with vigor! Laughably, this is usually found out by people who don’t want a plant around anymore… the darn thing won’t go away. I was talking to a fellow orchid grower and marveling about the punishment I had given a particular plant and it was still just fine! He told me orchid plants were at one time used as packing material in cargo ships. They spent months with no water, light or care, but were snatched up and grown by orchid enthusiasts when they reached their (cargos’) destination! Furthermore, plants often use the opportunity of being pruned or dug up to strengthen itself and fight harder for its life. All of us have had times where we felt beaten down and defeated, but take a note from plants… take it as an opportunity to regroup and double your efforts to keep growing.

Manipulate others: Plants have truly ingenious ways of getting things done… most notably when they are trying to reproduce. Some flowers only give out fragrance when the insects that are their main pollinators are active (usually in mornings or evenings), some plants flowers actually mimic the reproductive parts of their pollinator insect to attract them! The lesson here is to know what you want, and think about how best to get it to come to you. For example, in business if you are jobhunting you would want to research what kind of job you want, think about what potential employers want, and then play up those parts of you as you apply and interview.

Mix and match: I at one time had two varieties of a particular plant… one with a single pink flower that I really loved and one with a double dark purple and white flower I honestly wasn’t super crazy about. This particular kind of plant has tons of flowers and seeds, and readily self-sows. The next season I was surprised to see that the two varieties had mixed, and I had endless variations of their combination whose beauty far out-

Gardening continued next page...

Gardening conitunued...

weighed the original two parents. Variety is the spice of life, as they say, so don’t be afraid to mix things up that you may not think really go together. After all, someone had to be the first to try strawberries and balsamic vinegar, or cranberries and blue cheese… This could apply to art, music, cooking… anything. Actually, I am reading a book that combines all three at once… brilliant! The best combinations are ones that take from and then transcend the originals.

Don’t resist the seasons: Wintertime is always hard for me; the monotone cold grayness is a little too much for me to bear after about 2 weeks. The last two have been particularly awful, and the low angle of the sunlight and denuded trees make

it all the worse. This year, I looked out my windows and lamented… I thought I might go out and sing to the trees…” April in Paris… chestnuts in blossom…” and I imagined that my breath would swirl around the crooked branches and they would suddenly come into full green life. I looked out again and it seemed like the trees smiled at my impulsiveness, and went back to sleep - and I smiled at them - it was just what they were supposed to be doing. My lesson was not to wish myself (and the rest of the world) out of the season… to sit with it, accept it and realize it has its own purpose.

There are countless things to learn from plants and nature in general; actually they could probably unlock all our most vexing issues. So remember when you are anxiously cruising the “self improvement” section or jumping

Misfortune Cookies

by Nick Nocketback

1 2

Your moon is behind Pluto this month; thu s, Uranus will seem darker The devil wears Pr Now loo ada, but k down Jesus w at your ore s feet. Yo u do the andals. math.

3 4

5

Do not be frightened by jungle fever, it’s not even e a real ailment. Now that you know, prepare for romanc on the 31st of May Smoking pot is so 1996, try dry ru bbing it into your like a Tennessee skin rib rack

ted t of unwan tiful harves un bo a ! u w waxed no ill bring yo Summer w middle...get around your irs ha n w ingro

on the newest help-yourself bandwagon: Answers are as close as your backyard. All you need is a pair of eyes and an open mind. _______ Christy Cole can be found at random local bookstores searching for a self improvement book about people who fantasize about singing to plants. She is a teacher and can be reached at callansmama@hotmail.com.

Two poems by Jason Crockford An Affair To Remember Song of Fall Fragment: A Vision of Sorrowful Beauty. found by JA SON C ROC KFO RD by J ASON CR OC KFOR D I found this poem one day while riding the FAX, route 28. It was hidden in the crevice of one of the seats, tied neatly up in what appeared to be a lock of dark brown hair. I have managed to transcribe only a fraction of the poem because of water (tear?) stains that have made much of it indecipherable. The full manuscript is close to five pages in length.

It is important to note that while I do have misgivings about publishing an anonymous manuscript, I feel the merit of the poem is so high that I am willing to accrue any charges of indiscretion that will invariably be leveled at me by some readers. To these readers I offer my most sincere apologies.

In moonlight once, I saw a child, And she called me by my name: She wore a crown of lilies wild, And here eyes were made of flame.

“A child sleeping on the breast, “An old man, tired, finding rest; “A woman’s beauty as she smiles, “Two old friends meeting, passing wiles; If you will be a poet true, Then hark! To what I now tell you: Bind with these things holy despair, And pour on them all sorrow’s care,

And then immortal they will be, Though hidden where no man can see” And then she laughed, and grabbed my hand Though I did not yet understand.

—Within my heart the world is young, And youth and beauty never sung, But always something on the verge So long as sorrow it does urge.

—O then I would be lonely still, For death it cannot do me ill; So long as beauty, sorrow plays, It will be with me all my days

The leaves are dying, men are too, So sing we merrily!

For leaves come back, But men we’ll lack— And we’ll sing merrily Autumn is come, and men will run, To save their aching bones; Hear you theses moans, Or dulcet tones, Of Autumn as she comes?

Song of joy, or song of dread, Both by golden leaves are fed; Yet one will die, The other fly, And we’ll sing Merrily.

And we’ll dance Merrily.

Men are grown old, The flower cold, And youth it is a-frost; Yet watch men strive, When worms will thrive And feast upon their bones, And we’ll sing merrily.

O sweet decay, Stay but a day, Let men not be afraid; O well! It’s done, The song is run!

So sing we Merrily, and rave; So sing we merrily.

by JO N FER N AN DE Z

American Football

My wife doesn’t understand. After a decade of courtship followed by 3 years of mostly blissful marriage she still doesn’t get it. Anita and I met in 1990.

If you were to ask her to recall a significant world event from that year she would likely mention either the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq or Nelson Mandela’s release from imprisonment in South Africa.

My first thought would be that 55-10 is one heck of a Super Bowl pasting. My second thought would be that the Raiders were in Los Angeles and it just felt wrong. I’m still trying to repress the memory that 1990 was also the year the Rams began their slide into mediocrity.

One of us has our priorities all screwed up, but I love her just the same.

I allow her to use the terms ‘obsession’ and ‘addiction’ in reference to my love for the great game of football, because I don’t expect her to understand. She couldn’t if she tried. She wasn’t there with me in Long Beach, grinning like an idiot, out of breath, chasing and being chased, getting knocked down and getting back up again, me and my friends, from dawn ‘til dusk, at the drop of a hat.

She’s never seen Triangle Park.

Triangle Park

quarter to waste on it, except for one time, and it was taken at gunpoint, then James Galloway took it back, and I’ll get to that story later.

On Spaulding Street in the heart of Long Beach’s Lower East Side there still stands a tenement row where I lived and loved the late ‘60s, the entire decade of the ‘70s and early part of the ‘80s. Across the street from those projects still stands Triangle Park, though my brother told me last week that I would hardly recognize it were I to return to my hometown and visit. I will likely never see it again. I have no intention of returning there, nostalgia be damned. Let the past remain the past, let the future remain uncertain and let the present reveal itself as the moments allow.

The vast majority of the families in my neighborhood consisted of a single mom struggling to feed and clothe a surprisingly large amount of children. Neighbors were really neighbors back then, watching out for each other’s kids and actually spending time together. All the neighborhood boys could usually be found across the street at Triangle Park, playing football. It was our game. There were no basketball hoops at Triangle Park; nobody could afford a baseball mitt and football allowed us to beat the snot out of each other without getting in trouble with the grown-ups. Most of the time. When one of us got in trouble we were all in trouble, the game called off, the park emptied. Cue the sound of crickets chirping.

This was serious football, folks. None of that lame two-hand tag or sissy grab-the-flag girlie football.

This was “momma said knock you out” football, the way the game was meant to be played. My brother Joe and I were pretty much top dogs until the Galloways moved into apartment #4.

Kids today make me want to puke. I look at them wasting their youths in a dimly lit room, sitting three feet away from a TV screen playing video games and it makes me want to hurl. That’s no way for a kid to spend his days. No wonder people in this country are growing up so fat and weak. I think that one of the best things a parent can do for their children today is take a Louisville You Can Run But You Can’t Slugger® to that PS2, shove a football Hide in their kid’s gut and drop them off at the park. Give ‘em some sunshine and exercise. I’m forever grateful that in my In 1970 The Beatles broke up, Jimi youth video games were a plague yet to Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Sonny Liston be unleashed on the children of the died, Monday Night Football debuted world. There was only pinball, and I’m grateful also that none of us ever had a

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and four students were slain at Kent State University. More significant to the children of Triangle Park, in 1970 Connie Galloway and her five boys moved into the ‘hood.

The Galloway boys in descending order of age are Ralph, James, Perry, Alvin and Johnny. All of them, save Johnny, look like they were carved from granite. I wish I had a picture because words fail. Try to imagine what Shannon Sharpe would look like if he took better care of himself. These guys are built like cartoon superheroes. Note I refer to them in the present; my brother Joe still visits The Beach and the Galloways and thus keeps them a part of our lives. I’m grateful for this as the Galloways were the best childhood friends a kid could ever hope for.

I could feel the entire neighborhood shift and sway, and realign itself around these guys. We were very fortunate in that Connie raised them every bit as well as my mother raised us; they were good-hearted, friendly and great fun to be with. Alvin Galloway remains the best childhood friend I ever had. The Galloway boys would come over to our house once a week and my mom would cook dinner for them, then later that week Connie would fix dinner for us. They always drank Kool-Aid and I wondered if that was what made them so freakishly muscular (though I didn’t put it that way). I asked Connie and she laughed. She said they were strong like that because she worked their butts off. I never told that story to my mom.

Ralph, James and Perry were the oldest and the strongest of the Galloways but it was James who changed the game forever.

I’ve never in my life, before or since, seen anyone who could run as fast as James Galloway. It wasn’t even funny. Once again words fail; you had to be there.

All along one side of Triangle Park there was a chain-link fence separating the park from the railroad tracks. On the other side of the tracks there was a field where the rocks were a gravel and dirt composition that would break apart on impact. These were perfect for rock fights because the enemy could never pick them back up and return fire with them. Alvin and I were in that field one day gathering ammo when two older kids just suddenly appeared and said, “Give me your money.” Well, I’d found a quarter in a pay phone slot just that morning. Alvin knew I had it and said, “All we have is a quarter.” It was stupid for him to say that because 99.9 percent of the time nobody our age in that neighborhood ever had any money. If only Connie hadn’t taught him the

value of honesty.

I wasn’t about to give these idiots my quarter and told them as much. Alvin and I could both run fast. That’s when we saw the gun. That’s also when I gave the guy my quarter. Both these guys took off running with their gun and my quarter and I just looked at Alvin with a look I imagine to be one of dull shock.

Alvin recovered first. He yelled at me, “Let’s go tell James!” Not “go tell mom” or “go tell the cops” but go tell James, because he’s the sheriff around these parts. It took us about 10 minutes to find James and another five to take him to the scene of the crime and relate our story. He didn’t question our honesty or accuracy but instead just asked, “Which way did they go?” Then, when we pointed the way, he just sped off down the track, his shadow struggling to keep up. We figured these guys were long gone.

James came back about half an hour later with one of the bad guys in a headlock.

The guy was actually bigger and older than James but still way out of his league. He’s bleeding, sweating and crying. James wasn’t even breathing hard. The guy had our quarter; James made him apologize to us, give it back and sit down quietly until the police arrived. Apparently, the two split up when they saw James closing on them, but the cops later tracked down the guy with the gun. Alvin and I couldn’t stop thanking James. James laughed it off. He said it was fun.

James changed all of our games.

When it was too dark for football we’d play a variation of “tag” and kids of all ages could play this game. We called it “Catch One Catch All” and it was just tag except that “it” stayed “it” the whole game, and every time someone got tagged, they were also it, until there was just one guy running from all the “its” like Charleton Heston in “The Omega Man.” James was never caught. Ever. We even changed the name of the game to “Catch One Catch James.”

We also found a way to make dodge ball more fun. We’d play this game in the parking lot, which was always empty because nobody owned a car. We’d bisect the “court” in two with a chalk line, choose teams and grab every large ball in the neighborhood-volleyballs, basketballs, those red rubber kickballs and, of course, footballs.

The object of the game is to hit the guys on the other side of the line. If you hit someone, they’re out. If they catch the ball, the guy who threw it was out. When James threw the ball and it went by you, you could hear it whistle. It was a scary game when James was on the other team.

Veteran’s Park

Eventually we all moved away from Spaulding Street and Triangle Park, but we took our footballs with us and took our game to another, larger park in North Long Beach.

This area wasn’t far enough North to be Compton. This was an area called Signal Hill, the park was Veteran’s Park and the Spaulding Street gang played on.

As we got older, we also got bigger and stronger and more and more often there would be casualties, mostly broken arms and legs. We were on a first-name basis with some of the ambulance drivers. Neither myself, my brother nor any of the Galloways were ever one of those casualties, but a few times we were the cause.

After a while, word got out and strangers would petition to play. We’d never let them because this was our game. It’s a big park, go play with yourselves. Finally, one day a dozen or so guys pulled up and basically called us out. Us against them. We had no choice.

This was going to be ugly and I was going to be a spectator. This would be firststring only. Most of these guys were grown men and I was, well I was 14.

I sat under a tree from which hung my brother’s friend Andy’s pit bull, locked onto a stick tied to a rope about 20 feet above my head. He’d stay there all day, happy as can be.

The word was out on James.

The other guys kicked off as far away from him as they could but James caught it anyway and started up the makeshift left sideline. Nobody on our team even moved; there was no point in blocking for James. You just got in his way. The 11 guys on the kickoff team swarmed towards the return man. Then Ralph shouted out, “Show ‘em James!” and all hope faded for the challengers.

It was surreal. James suddenly shifts from forward to reverse like a motorcycle in the movie Tron.

Ankles protest as 11 guys suddenly realize they’re running the wrong way. James cuts a sweeping arc to the right sideline and rockets off downfield. There are still five or six guys who have the angle on him – then suddenly it’s too late, he’s gone, untouched. All ten of the other guys on our team are either on their backs or their knees and all of them are laughing.

James actually played a little pro ball, as a cornerback with the USFL’s Los Angeles Express. He was

briefly a teammate of Steve Young.

A New Beginning

It’s a funny feeling, looking back like this. It makes me feel young again yet at the same time I feel aged beyond years. An eternity seems to have passed since that day at the railroad tracks when James brought me back my quarter. I can never have those days back, but I think about them often. I can relive them through the games I watch on TV or at the stadiums. I can relive them through my own sons. As soon as I find where they’ve hidden my Louisville Slugger.® _____ Jon Fernandez teaches building trades to incarcerated youth, and helps them realize they are worth more than they’ve been led to believe. He wrote the above story a little over seven years ago, when he first started noticing kids were getting fatter and lazier, and lonelier. Every word is true.