by Adolfo Flores

Ken Burns

In spite of the release of Ken Burns’ World War II documentary Sept. 23 and an accompanying book Sept. 11, Latino advocates claim the battle against Burns and the Public Broadcasting Service is not over.

The Defend the Honor Campaign, which has been at the forefront of the battle, has maintained that the addition of 20minutes of material on the Latino experience in Burns’ 15-hour series is not enough.

The supplementary book, “The War: An Intimate History 19411945,” does not include any mention of the Latino contribution in WWI I, according to the advocates, who plan to target their immediate actions against these materials.

“We’re working hard to not make this book available in our libraries and schools, so that our children are not exposed to this incredible omission of our American patriots,” Gus Chavez, one of the founders of the Campaign, told Weekly Report.

Defend the Honor has reached out to several hundred school boards, mostly throughout California and to state legislators such as Speaker Fabian Núñez and Assemblyman Joe Coto.

Each school board in the state decides whether to use these materials, according to the advocates.

In San Antonio, Defend the Honor activists are also urging schools and libraries not to purchase the materials while urging people to “consider” boycotting products and corporate sponsors related to The War.

Members of the Campaign will hold a panel discussion and a public forum at the Gala Theatre Oct. 8 in Washington, D.C., to discuss how to approach similar situations to that encountered by The War.

To Burns and PBS, the controversy has long been resolved. When asked about the unresolved concerns of Latino advocates, Burns told Weekly Report, “If you were going to please everyone, it would be the blandest thing on earth. It wouldn’t be art anymore. It would be political correctness.”

Burns said he showed a preview including additional interviews with two Latino veterans to a group of Hispanic veterans in Oklahoma and said, “They loved it.”

During a presentation at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., Sept. 19, Burns said, “We spend our entire lives consumed with that which makes us different, and yet the purpose of art is to try to suggest ways in which we come together.”

But San Antonio members of Defend the Honor maintain the campaign’s struggle is not with the artistic aspect of the project.

“PBS officials stated in a news release…’PBS’s goal is for ‘The War’ to reach into every home end classroom so together we can better understand what we as a nation experienced in those difficult years and what we 1as a nation accomplished,” according to a Defend the Honor statement. “If these are the intentions of PBS, indirectly they are saying that Latinos did not make any contributions to World War 11 and have no right to be acknowledged in anyone’s home or classroom.”

In the 2005-2006 school year, 47.6 percent of enrolled students in California were Latino, according to the state’s Department of Education.’

Burns said during his presentation that initially he issued notices in the cities where the interviews were conducted, but that no Latinos came forward.

“There ere still a couple of fringe groups who refuse to be satisfied and who seem to enjoy the attention they receive by continuing to attack PBS,” KOCE, its station in Huntington Beach, Calif., PBS said in a statement.

“They say we’re a fringe group. This is the mainstream media you are talking about,” Maggie RivasRodríguez, co-founder of Defend the Honor, told Weekly Report. “We’re part of America.”

Hispanic Link.

by Marvin J. Ramírez

STAMP SYMBOL OF DESEGREGATION Two U.S. Postal Service employees hold the stamp that commemorates the desegragation of the schools in the U.S. (photo by Marvin J. Ramírez)

Many probably do know that once upon a time schools were segregated in the United States and people went to certain schools or not accepted in some, based on their color of their skin.

To those familiar with school desegregation in the U.S., they might have heard, that a court case called, Brown vs. Board of Education, was credited for legally ending school segregation.

When the United Supreme Court ruled in favor of the plaintiff, desegregation was outlawed in the country and most people looked at Brown vs. Board of Education case as the sole champion of desegregation. But just how and why this historical case was successful, is what many people might not know.

It was Mendez vs. Westminster the case that really desegregated the schools, as Brown vs. Board of Education used it as the test case to win.

In a ceremony at the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts, The United States Postal Service Service commemorated on Sept. 14, the landmark case, which desegregated the school, with the creation of a postal stamp.

The story began two years earlier when on March 2, 1945, five Mexican-American fathers (Gonzalo Méndez, Thomas Estrada, William Guzmán, Frank Palomino, and Lorenzo Ramírez) challenged the practice of school segregation in the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles. They claimed that their children, along with 5,000 other children of “Mexican and Latin descent,” were victims of unconstitutional discrimination by being forced to attend separate “Mexican” schools in the Westminster, Garden Grove, Santa Ana and El Modena school districts of Orange County.

On Feb. 18, 1946, Judge Paul J. McCormick ruled in favor of Méndez and his ­co-plaintiffs. However, the district appealed. Several organizations joined the appellate case as amicus curiae or friends of the court, including the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), represented by Thurgood Marshall. More than a year later, on April 14, 1947, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the district court’s ruling.

The Mendez decision set an important if indirect legal precedent for cases in other states and at the national level. On June 14, 1947, a statute allowing segregated schools for Asians and Indians was repealed (effective Sept. 19) by California governor Earl Warren, who later was appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1954, Warren was chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court when it issued its ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, declaring segregation illegal nationwide.

by the El Reportero news services

Alan García

Peru’s President Alan García is championing a new political and economic bloc, known as the “Pacific Arc”, comprised of Perú, Chile, México, Canada and Panamá.

The idea took root at the Apec summit in Sydney earlier this month during bilateral talks between García and his Chilean peer, Michelle Bachelet. Last week García elaborated on the details of the new integration plan, which he described as a “modern social model” using free trade and investment to redress social inequalities.

In this sense it is diametrically opposed to Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez’s Alternativa Bolivariana para las Américas (Alba), a model of regional integration on principles contrary to neoliberalism which nonetheless seeks the same outcome.

Voices in Defense of Bolivia (Opinión first published in Counter Punch Newsletter)

The democratically elected government of Bolivia’s first indigenous president Evo Morales Ayma, which is heading a process of democratic change, is Washington’s immediate target in Latin America today. Bolivia is in Washington’s sight, not only because it is viewed as the weakest link of the growing axis of hope in the region, but because of its role as a catalyst for inspiring the struggles of indigenous peoples, regionally and internationally, for real social justice.

The US government, in collaboration with the gas transnationals, large agribusiness and the old political class of Bolivia, organized through the so-called “civic” committees of the wealthy departments of the Bolivian east have already begun to set in motion their plan aimed at destabilizing this government, potentially through a civil war as a pretext for foreign military intervention. This plan includes: the distribution of racist material inciting people to “bring down this Indian shit”, provoking violent confrontations, US government funding of opposition political parties and organisations, mobilisation of fascist youth groups, and the smuggling in arms to the country, amongst others.

The majority of Bolivians have vested their hopes for democratic change in the Constituent Assembly; convoked on August 6, 2006, with the task of enshrining in a new constitution the vision of a new Bolivia that has emerged out of years of struggle against neoliberalism.

The majority of Bolivians have made clear what form they want this new Bolivia to take: a plurinational, democratic and communitarian state which recuperates control over natural resources and recognizes autonomy, within the framework of national unity, at the departmental, municipality and regional levels as well as for the 36 indigenous nations which make up Bolivia.

The old ruling elites, whose positions of economic and political power were based on centuries of racist, apartheid-like oppression of the indigenous peoples are unwilling to accept even the tiniest reforms for the benefit of the indigenous majority, to accept the continuation, in any form, of this peaceful and democratic revolution even if it means drowning the country in blood.

It is crucial for the governments and peoples of the world to speak out against any attempts to trigger off a civil war, and any ensuing US/UN military occupation or military government, and reject the imposition of any illegitimate government in Bolivia.

Now is the time for all intellectuals, union militants, solidarity activists, political parties and progressive minded individuals who believe in real justice and equality to raise their voices in defense of the Bolivian government and its people.

(Opinion signed by people from 13 countries. To the signees visit:http://www.counterpunch.org/bolivia09212007.html.

by Mario Aguirre

Linda Chávez-Thompson

Linda Chávez-Thompson, the first person of color to hold one of the top three elective offices at the 10-million-member AFL-CIO, retired Sept. 21 after serving as its executive vice president for the 5last 12 years.

Chávez-Thompson, 63, a second-generation U.S. citizen of Mexican descent, plans to remain active with a variety of AFL-CIO responsibilities while representing it with allied organizations, she told Weekly Report during an interview at her Washington, D.C., office on her next-to-last day officially on the Job.

As the union’s executive vice president emeritus, she will remain in the capital and will travel over the next few weeks before rejoining family members and friends in San Antonio. Chávez-Thompson, who has 35 years of experience in the labor movement started working with the Laborers ‘local union in her native Lubbock in 1967. Soon after that she went to work for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees where she became the international vice president in 1988. In 1993 she became the first Hispanic woman elected to the union’s executive council.

“In everything she’s done over a lifetime of service, Linda has broken new pathways for the labor movement,” AFL-CIO, president John Sweeney said in a statement.

“Countless working women and men, not only in the United States but through out the Western Hemisphere, have a better life because of all she’s contributed. She’s inspired tens of thousands of people to contribute through their own actions, and wherever she’s gone, she’s earned tremendous affection.”

Now Chávez-Thompson says she hopes to dip into some pastimes which she was unable to indulge in before, such as starting a garden that doesn’t get taken over by weeds.

She emphasized her intention to continue working for immigration reform because “certain people, primarily Latinos, are being mistreated. Their rights are being abused. Their rights are being violated, and we have to stand up for them because they can’t stand up for themselves.

In her efforts to help immigrants withstand discrimination, she said her primary intention is to encourage Latinos to join the labor movement, and to urge union activists to dedicate themselves to the community.

Chávez-Thompson spoke openly to Weekly Report about the AFLCIO’s opposition to competition from non-union immigrant workers in the mid-9Os, and how it changed its ways in 2000, recognizing a lack of organizational support offered to immigrants.

During her 12-year tenure, Chávez-Thompson stood at the forefront in the battle against unfair trade policies that encourage companies to relocate overseas in search of the least expensive labor possible.

“If I’ve done even a very small piece of that, I consider the last 12 years of my life here in the labor movement well worth it,” she said. Throughout her career, Chavez-Thompson maintained a busy lifestyle with her two children and grandchildren. Her husband, Robert Thompson, long-time president of AFSCME’s San Antonio local, died in 1993.

In retirement, she says she will continue to chair the AFL-CIO Immigration Committee and serve as head of the Inter-American Regional Organization of Workers, the International Trade Union Confederation’s regional organization for the Americas.

She will also spearhead an organization that represents nearly 44 million workers in the Western Hemisphere—the United States, the Caribbean, Mexico, Central America and South America—a project that she says she is committed to for the next four years.

­She hopes her menu of commitments won’t give the weeds an opening to choke her Texas garden again. Just some flowers. No decision yet as to what kind. But no vegetables, although she does like squash.

Chavez Successor Elected Arlene Holt-Baker, the first African-American to hold such a top position with the AFL-CIO, was elected Sept. 21 by unanimous vote of the union’s board of directors to succeed Chavez-Thompson as executive vice president.

Hispanic Link.