Freep Heroes

Freep Heroes – Kevin Phillips and Paul O’Neill

American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune And The Politics Of Deceit In The House Of Bush by Phillips and The Price of Loyalty by O’Neill verify and document in detail everything the Free Press has been telling you about the Bush family since the first Gulf War. When those with well-established Republican credentials come forward to blow the whistle on the true “Axis of Evil” – Prescott Bush, George Herbert Walker Bush and George W. Bush – the Freep sees their actions as heroic. Even more heroic and necessary would be George W.’s impeachment for war crimes and lying to the American people to make his big oil buddies rich.

The Free Press Salutes

Staughton and Alice Lynd

This couple from Niles, Ohio are saluted for their efforts to uncover what really happened during the Lucasville prison uprising of April 1993. Staughton’s new book, which is excerpted in this issue of the Free Press, painstaking reveals the horror at the heart of Ohio’s prison industrial complex. The couple’s long commitment to social justice is an inspiration to us all.

Rachel Corrie

Dear Editor,

Only a few days before she paid the ultimate price, Rachel Corrie told reporters,” I feel like what I’m witnessing is a very systematic destruction of people’s ability to survive.”

Who was Rachel Corrie anyway? Who was she talking about? And why was she killed?

Rachel was 23 years old, an Evergreen State College student from Olympia,WA.

Rachel was a member of International Sorlidarity Movement (ISM) serving in Rafah, Palestine, a city located next to Egypt.

ISM is a group of international volunteers who partake in non-violent direct action resistance to the Israeli occupation. Members of the group live in Palestinian communities and get a first-hand account of the violence to which they are subjected every day by the Israeli military.

Irony and Ivory

Even though I’m not registered to vote (I think that will be my next project – voting rights for pigs), I do have an opinion on the elections this year. It’s intense primary season as I write this, and I did some digging to see how the Democrats stack up on animal rights. We all know that Bush would be bad on this issue, that’s a given. He’s bad on the environment which affects animals, he’s bad on war which kills animals, and he’s bad on human issues like jobs, health care and education. If he doesn’t care about people, I’m sure he doesn’t care about non-humans.

I did find this fact about his animal rights record: in October 2003, the Washington Post wrote: “The Bush administration is proposing far-reaching changes to conservation policies that would allow hunters, circuses and the pet industry to kill, capture and import animals on the brink of extinction in other countries.” The rationale is that selling endangered animals to the U.S. would provide money to “developing” nations so they can have better animal conservation policies. Excuse me? The irony of that makes my tail curl (pot-bellies have straight tails, by the way).

A Democratic Socialist's perspective: Privatizing America

Bush is privatizing America. Most Americans, and their elected representatives in government believe that the free market system provides superior results in education through competition, supports the best doctors and health care in the world, and the most effective military machine on Earth. However, an analysis of the current system reveals serious flaws. Not only does the privatization of public institutions threaten the quality and accessibility of service, it allows a government to skirt responsibility, evade public scrutiny and control, and increases campaign contributions from companies benefiting from government contracts.

The current presidential occupant’s faith in the private sector surpasses many of his predecessors’. It is critical that the citizenry understand the danger of unyielding faith in the effectiveness of private, for-profit companies due to its destructive and anti-democratic nature.

The Lucasville uprising

This excerpt is from a forthcoming book by Staughton Lynd, who requested portions of his manuscript be included in issues of the Free Press. Lynd, along with his wife Alice, have a lifetime of social justice activism. Staughton directed the Freedom Schools of the Mississippi Summer Project in 1964. He was one of the first Americans to visit and write about North Vietnam during the war in the winter of 1965-66. Staughton and Alice are retired lawyers in Niles, Ohio. Temple University Press plans to publish this exposé on the Lucasville uprising in August 2004.

Prosecutors have called it “the longest prison riot in United States history.”1 More accurately, the Director of the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction (ODRC) refers to “the longest prison siege in U.S. history where lives were lost.” A 1987 rebellion at the United States Penitentiary in Atlanta seems to have lasted a few hours longer.2

Drug War briefs

Since 1998, the Higher Education Act (HEA) has contained a provision that denies federal financial aid to student applicants who have drug-related convictions, including possession of marijuana. According to the U.S. Department of Education, this drug provision has harmed more than 128,000 students, particularly racial minorities and the underprivileged. (Please see www.mpp.org/USA/news_2471.html for one example of the damage done by the drug provision of the HEA.)

Now is the best opportunity to repeal the drug provision, as Congress is required to reauthorize the HEA this year. To that end, Students for Sensible Drug Policy, the Drug Reform Coordination Network, the Drug Policy Alliance, the Marijuana Policy Project (MPP), and other organizations are asking you to call on Congress to repeal the HEA drug provision.

Ohio EPA, Columbus: Improve planning for Darby

Under pressure from the Ohio EPA to come up with an area wide plan for sewer development and water quality, the City of Columbus designated a large area of the Darby watershed to be an Environmentally Sensitive Development Area (ESDA). To formulate special standards for development in this pristine area, Columbus agreed to create an External Advisory Group (EAG).

The Sierra Club’s position is that water quality of the Darby Creeks will be preserved only by following the best scientific guidelines available. The process currently being used to determine protection standards for the ESDA is fatally flawed for several reasons.

The process is controlled by the City of Columbus. Don Armour of Fuller, Mossbarger, Scott & May, an engineering firm working for the City of Columbus, was designated by the city as the facilitator. As facilitator, Armour has the ability to control the agenda and the discussion.

Taft pays $125 million for radioactive jobs program

Ohio has lost 233,000 jobs in the last three years thanks in part to the Bush administration recession and free trade policies. Bush’s and Ohio conservative Governor Robert Taft’s solution to jobs in Ohio is to put together a $125 million “wealthfare” package to bring 500 jobs to Piketon, Ohio in the rewarding field of uranium-enrichment. The State of Ohio is paying $250,000 per job to create some of the most deadly polluting jobs on the planet.

Following the Cold War, Ohio had to remove 20 or so feet of soil from the Fernald site where a uranium-producing plant existed. The region has one of the highest rates of cancer in the world and is responsible for most of the radioactive contamination in the Buckeye State.

Governor Taft’s office failed to comment on whether he and President Bush would be bribing other privatized companies producing toxic and hazardous cancer-causing agents to stimulate jobs for the 2004 election.

You can help stop sewage overflows!

On Nov. 24 Columbus passed a water/sewer rate increase that will raise the average bill by about $40/year. Yet the City is a long way from spending our ratepayer dollars in an economic and environmentally beneficial manner. The Club’s work has the potential to redirect the spending of billions of dollars. Make out a tax-deductible check to the Sierra Club Foundation and mail it to: Sierra Club Treasurer, 6760 Hayhurst St., Worthington, OH 43085. We have a generous donor who will match all donations up to $2000!

We urge you to become involved in the Sierra Club’s Sewers Campaign, whether it’s donating a few hours or a few dollars. You can help by writing Mayor Michael Coleman at 90 W. Broad St., Columbus 43215 or calling him at 645-7671. Tell him: “For Our Health, Stop Sewage Overflows.” Or send him an email at mac@cmhmetro.net. You can also send an email from the Sierra Club Ohio Action Network. 

Ohio University’s Dysart Woods settlement went against OU’s expert opinion

Ohio University’s (OU) agreement to drop the appeal against Ohio Valley Coal Company’s permit to undermine the old growth forest at Dysart Woods went against its top scientists working on Dysart Woods, the land’s supervisor Brian McCarthy and the land’s caretakers. The decision also went against the OU Ecology Committee decision, and numerous resolutions by Student Senate, Faculty Senate and Graduate Student Senate.

OU Professor Brian McCarthy said that he made it clear to the university, as the lead professor at OU studying Dysart Woods and the supervisor of the land laboratory, that he opposed the university’s dropping its appeal. McCarthy is the expert witness for the Dysart Defenders appeal.

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