Coming to Modesto: Cesar Chavez Park !!!!

Modesto’s second annual Cesar Chavez Community Day will be celebrated in a park named in memory of the farmworker organizers. On April 13th the City of Modesto will rededicated Fourth Street Park as Cesar Chavez Park. The celebration will be from noon to 5 PM and is free.

With the addition of the rededication, the program will be similar to last year’s tremendously successful event, says April Meyer of the Stanislaus County Office of Education which has spearheaded the local event. There will be music, children’s activities, and community awareness information booths. Entries in the Cesar Chavez essay and poster contest will be displayed and prizes awarded.

Once again Sandy Sample will be curating the Modesto Peace/Life Center photo and artifact display depicting farm labor life and the struggle to organize farmworkers for improve pay, working conditions, and food safety.

Peace Center Annual Meeting celebrates successes, needs more support

The Peace Life Center is not without controversy; instead it is a place where commitment to non-violent peaceful resolution of conflict is emphasized. On March 2nd, volunteers gathered to share successes and concerns at the center's annual meeting, welcomed by a clean office and brunch thanks to Bert Maldonado and Deborah Roberts. o Reports underscored the success of our work, including Peace Essay Contest (largest ever), Peace Camp, the Martin Luther King Jr. event with Danny Glover, Song Circle, the first ever in Modesto Cesar Chavez Celebration. Vigils for Peace in the Middle East, co-sponsoring of several speakers, a presence at several community events, and monthly publication of Stanislaus Connections, the newspaper of the Peace Life Center, distributed throughout the county at restaurants and other public places as well as by mail and on-line. o Finances: fundraisers in 2002 were: Pancake Breakfast, Harvest supper, and the McCutcheon concert and donations throughout the year.We spent $4643 more than we took in, though we have a reserve from the sale of our former center. Cash flow has been helped now that the League of Women Voters is sharing space with us and contributes to the rent. 

Since the resignation of part time office coordinator Monique Capp, we have struggled to maintain our work entirely as volunteers. The various committees all need to network with each other and to utilize Stanislaus Connections to publicize the issues we care about. It was agreed to expand the Board positions from a maximum of 11 to 15. Those continuing on the Board are: Jim Costello, John Lucas, John Frailing, Michael Napp, Dan Onorato, Joshua Pollock, Deborah Roberts, David Rockwell, and Sandy Sample. Selected as new members are: Karen Lee, Sasha Retford, Zachary Smith, Joe Tornberg. o Some worries: "We neglect fundraising and organization at our peril," said Ken Schroeder. Throughout the meeting concern was voiced for the need to keep in touch with our volunteers. If you have volunteered but not been contacted, or pledged support, don't despair, call us again, we need you.

Peace Camp help needed NOW!

By KEN SCHROEDER

Peace Camp is scheduled for June 28-30 at Camp Peaceful Pines in the high Sierra. This year is the 20th anniversary. Hundreds of adults and children have enjoyed the mountain setting and the gathering of people who share values of peace and justice. The traditions that we have all created over the years have made Peace Camp a unique experience.

Peace Camp is will take a very different, more relaxed form this year. The planning committee has dwindled to the point that there is not enough leadership for Camp to happen with guest speakers, hours of children’s activities, and other structured program. Informal discussion groups, hikes and strolls are on the unprogram. And yes, Deborah Roberts will be in the kitchen.  More volunteers and energy are urgently needed for Peace Camp.

In these trying times, as we do the hard work of speaking out for peace, it is important to find opportunities for renewal and to build community.

Fighting terrorism at home

By SASHA RETFORD

“At the very core of this issue is terrorism and our President keeps saying we should go after those training camps where ever those terrorists exist. A good place to start is right there in Georgia,” said Georgian priest Father Roy Bourgeois to a sympathetic crowd gathered at Modesto Junior College Monday evening, Feb. 25.

Bourgeois, 63, was referring to the U.S. Army’s Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, formerly and better known as School of the Americas (SOA). The military school is funded by U.S. taxpayers to train Latin American soldiers in combat, infantry tactics, commando operations, counter-insurgency, and counter-narcotics at Ft. Benning, Georgia. For the past decade, Bourgeois has led the struggle to close the school whose graduates are responsible for many of the human rights violations and atrocities in Latin America.

Bourgeois spoke to about 115 people at the forum sponsored by the Modesto Peace/ Life Center, the Modesto Committee for Peace in the Middle East, Alternatives to War, and the MJC Student Activist Organization. He spent his morning speaking to seven groups of MJC students as well as speaking the night before at Our Lady of Fatima church.

“We must look at our foreign policy with critical eyes,” said Bourgeois. At a time when our military might greatly exceeds that of any other countries, Americans have never felt less secure. The Pentagon’s solution is to put even more money into developing more weapons. This “is not the answer,” explained Bourgeois, “violence will beget more violence.”

Bourgeois began to see the issue of violence as a “dead end street” and looked more seriously at his faith following his involvement in the Vietnam War. The former naval officer, bearer of a Purple Heart, was inspired by a missionary who was helping 300 children at an orphanage near his base. After returning home, Bourgeois entered the seminary for the Maryknoll Missionary order and was ordained into the priesthood in 1972. Spending his next five years working with the poor in the slums of La Paz, Bolivia, Bourgeois was able to experience first hand some of the effects of U.S. foreign policy. He was shocked to learn these kind and loving people were being oppressed by a dictator, Hugo Banzer Suárez, supported by the U.S. government and trained at the SOA.

The SOA has also graduated two notorious dictators, Manuel Noriega and Omar Torrijos of Panama. Amongst numerous of atrocities, its graduates have been linked to the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero and the 1980 rape and murder of four U.S. religious women in El Salvador. These events sparked Bourgeois’ campaign to shut down the SOA.

In 1990 Bourgeois founded the SOA Watch to expose and close the military school. What began with a small group of friends and supporters participating in a 35-day water-only fast has grown into a massive movement. Last November, despite official requests not to hold the annual demonstration, over 10,000 people showed up at SOA’s gates to protest. The diverse crowd included children, college students, and senior citizens. They have gathered every November to “use (their) voices for those whose voices had been taken away.”

Many spiritual leaders and members of different faiths have supported the movement to close the SOA. However, Bourgeois is disappointed that many prominent leaders have yet to sign on. Receiving a large applause from the audience, Bourgeois stated, “If we had women bishops, this school would have been shut down years ago.”

Bourgeois remains confident since many Americans and members of Congress have joined the movement. Urging the audience to encourage their representatives to support the current bill to shut down the facility, H.R. 1810, Bourgeois noted that Rep. Condit has yet to sign on as a sponsor.

The U.S. government claims that the school promotes democracy and human rights, despite a recent Pentagon report to Congress stating the mission of U.S. Southern Command (encompassing the SOA) includes “protecting the supply of strategic natural resources and access to the markets.” Bourgeois wondered, “How do you teach democracy behind the barrel of a gun?”

The writer recently joined the Modesto Peace/Life Center board and is active in Modesto’s newest peace group, Alternatives to War (ATW). ATW focuses on the underlying causes of war and works to educate the community on different aspects of U.S. foreign policy that should be changed in order to promote peace.

1 in 8 health care workers lack health insurance

By PHYSICIANS FOR A NATIONAL HEALTH PROGRAM

A study published in the Feb. 22, 2002, issue of American Journal of Public Health finds that one out of every 8 health care workers lacks medical issuance, far more than a decade ago. The children of health personnel also suffered declining health coverage over the decade and now account for one in ten uninsured children in the US.

The study, by Harvard researchers Drs. David Himmelstein, Steffie Woolhandler, and Harvard medical student Brady Case, analyzed data from a national survey of approximately 150,000 US residents conducted annually by the Census Bureau. 1.36 million health care personnel were uninsured in 1998, up 83.4% from 1988. The proportion uninsured rose from 8.4% to 12.2%. Declining coverage rates in the growing private-sector health care workforce-and falling health employment in the public-sector, which provided health benefits to more of its workers-accounted for the increases.

The authors argue that the growth of for-profit medicine during the 90s, and price pressures from managed care, led many health institutions to cut workers’ benefits. In effect, investors and executives gained at the expense of health personnel and their children. In 1998, 1.12 million uninsured children lived in households with a health care worker, accounting for 10.1% of all uninsured children in the U.S.

The study analyzed all employees in physicians’ offices, hospitals, nursing homes and other health services settings. Physicians, nurses, managers, aides, food service, cleaning, building service, and laundry workers, and clerical and administrative support workers were among the groups examined. Insurance coverage fell for virtually every health occupation in every type of institution, though some groups fared worse than others. The number of uninsured health workers in the private sector doubled over the last decade while in the public sector the figure declined. In 1998, 20.0% of personnel in nursing homes were uninsured-more than in other health settings.

Among occupational groups aides experienced the highest rate of uninsurance-23.8%. Even among physicians, more than 1 in 20 (5.4%) were uninsured. Black and Hispanic personnel were at least twice as likely as white health personnel to lack insurance. Geographic variations were considerable; Texas had the worst record.

The falling coverage over the past decade is particularly worrisome because it occurred during a record economic boom. An even steeper increase in uninsurance is likely in the current recession.

“Over the past decade we’ve learned that for-profit hospitals and dialysis clinics have high death rates; that for-profit HMOs and nursing homes score lower on quality; and that health care fraud is epidemic. Now we learn that market medicine means not only poor care and high prices for patients, but mistreatment of health workers.” said Brady Case, a medical student at Harvard and lead author of the study. “It’s perverse. The health care system, squeezed by Wall Street, is consigning its own workers and their families to the ranks of the uninsured.”

Dr. Don McCanne, President of Physicians for a National Health Program, commented: “In denying care to caregivers, our health system defies the Golden Rule. And it’s not only wrong, but dangerous. When a nurse with a cough or a kitchen worker with hepatitis can’t afford care, patients are at risk. It’s time for the U.S. to adopt a single payer national health insurance program.”

Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) is an organization of over 9,000 physicians that support universal access to health care. For local contact information or copies of “No Care for the Caregivers: Declining Health Insurance Coverage for Health Care Personnel and Their Children, 1988-1998” (Am J Public Health, March 2002) call the PNHP, (312) 782-6006.

--Submitted by Betty Vencill

Senator Bob Kerrey on prescription drugs

Excerpts of testimony of Bob Kerrey before the U.S. Senate Fiance Committee, representing the Concord Coalition, on “The Administration’s FY 200s Budget Proposals for Prescription Drugs,” Marrch 7, 2002.

The Concord Coalition has been the leading voice for responsible restraint in the funding of our programs of social insurance, Medicare and Social Security. Former Sen. Kerrey, in representing the Coalition, has clearly stated that a universal health insurance program is probably the most fiscally responsible approach to “matching our appetite for quality with our capacity to pay.”

You have invited me to testify on the question of adding a prescription drug benefit to Medicare. My simple advice is don’t do it. Not unless you are prepared to make fundamental reforms in the way Americans finance the cost of their health care.

Members of the Finance Committee, I do not think that doing nothing is an option. Americans can afford a prescription drug benefit but I do not believe we can afford to add it to Medicare as it is currently structured. More challenging, I do not believe we can solve this problem by focusing on benefit changes or reductions in reimbursements to providers. Instead I believe we need to focus our attention on fundamental reform of the way Americans become eligible under Federal law for health insurance.

Though intuition is often a good guide when making decisions sometimes it fails us. In this case intuition signals that we should narrow the scope of our Federal health care entitlement programs in order to save money. However, I believe the counter-intuitive choice, namely to expand the entitlement, is the least costly choice.

I urge you to consider that for budgetary, economic and moral reasons we cannot get from where we are now to where we want to go by adding a new and expensive benefit to an entitlement program. Nor can we get there by just reforming existing programs. We can only get there by fundamentally altering the way we become eligible for insurance in the first place.

Beginning with a universal entitlement does not mean higher spending or more governmental interference with the choices made by patients or providers. In truth it could mean a lot less of both. It would mean that we would start thinking about ourselves as a single group of 280 million Americans who are all part of the same health system and who all need to face the challenge of

ACTION: For more info: http://finance.senate.gov/hearings/testimony/030702bktest.pdf

--Submitted by Betty Vencill

CSUS V-Day raises $12,735 and awareness to stop violence against women 
By INDIRA CLARK 

The Vagina Monologues played to cheering crowds at CSU Stanislaus. Performances of Eve Ensler's play sold-out in Turlock during the university's first V-Day Campaign. Plays about vaginas are not the normal local theater fare. Playgoers approached with a combination of curiosity and trepidation. Apprehension soon melted into pleasure. Along with the sobering moments there's a lot of laughter in the delightful play, and the Turlock audiences were treated to some sparkling new talent . Patricia O'Donnell of the Theater Department who both directed and performed in the play, saw the staging of The Vagina Monologues as more than just doing a play. Violence against women happens right here, too, she said. She spearheaded CSU Stanislaus' participation in V-Day. Seeking to bring an end to violence against women through education and fundraising activities, CSU Stanislaus is one of more than 360 college campus to in participate V- Day in 2002, according to Professor Renny Christopher, Coordinator of Gender Studies Program and a member of the V- Day planning committee of women and men from the university faculty and staff and students. 

Dr. Cecil Rhodes, CSUS Interim Provost spoke at V-Day on the Quad about the importance of this event. Sororities hung "Rape Free Zone" tape, handed out congressional v-cards, Hershey-s kisses with abuse statistics, breast cancer information and more. The Haven Women's Center of Modesto and CSU Stanislaus' Public Safety representatives gave presentation on self-defense, rape prevention and domestic abuse. Turlock Police and Community Services staff and officers handed out information, CSU Stanislaus Public Safety Chief Larry Plant spoke about date rape on campus. "The Clothesline" set up by Haven (t-shirts decorated by survivors of violence or the families of those who didn't survive) was so moving and frighteningly brought home the extent and ramifications of abuse in OUR community, said O'Donnell. "Our opening night post-performance discussion moderator, Valerie Broin, Professor of Philosophy, braved asking anyone in the audience who was a survivor of abuse or knew someone who had been abused to stand. It was a very poignant moment when nearly everyone in attendance stood." 

The National V-Day campaign allows The Vagina Monologues to be performed royalty free, with the stipulation that proceeds of fundraising go to local causes. CSU Stanislaus' Theater department donated productions costs. In all CSU Stanislaus, raised $12,735. Ninety percent will go to The Haven, A Woman's Center of Merced County, and The Women's Center of San Joaquin County in Stockton. "In accordance with the request of the National V-Day College Campaign, 10% of the proceeds will go to the RAW (Revolutionary Women of Afghanistan) to support their ongoing fight for safety and justice for women there," according to Christopher. "From the very successful first V-Day on the Quad to sold-out houses for The Vagina Monologues, a fascinating post-performance discussion and numerous classroom discussions, it has been thrilling and exhausting emotionally and physically, but also very encouraging and inspiring," said O'Donnell. CSU Stanislaus President Hughes will present is on April 24th, a fitting date since April is Sexual Abuse Awareness Month, observes O'Donnell. President Hughes asked that The Vagina Monologue be performed again next year.