THE PEACE AND JUSTICE COALITION

UP FRONT News April 10, 2007
Published by Tom Weiss Editorial Advisor: Willard Whittingham
“The paper that can’t be bought and can’t be sold.” www.tomsupfrontnews.blogspot.com
DIVERSITY IN THE PEACE MOVEMENT IN NEW JERSEY:
THE PEACE AND JUSTICE COALITION
While New Jersey is sometimes the target of “Tonight Show” humor, when is comes to creating a very multiethnic peace movement, America’s reportedly most industrialized and most densely populated state may also be among its most well organized. The New
ark-based Peace & Justice Coalition is really a coalition, consisting of labor groups, religious organizations, student groups, politicians, educational groups - and UP FRONT News. In some contrast to the peace movement in New York City, the Peace & Justice Coalition, which has participation from North to South Jersey, is very African-American and economically diverse.
The Coalition emerged from the efforts of the People’s Organization for Progress,
which describes itself as “an independent, grassroots, community based, politically
progressive association of citizens working for racial, social, and economic justice and greater unity in the community.” Its goals include the “elimination of racism, inequality, poverty, sexism, unjust economic exploitation, all forms of social oppression, degrada-
tion, human misery, suffering and injustice.” It is the agenda of, among others Dr. Martin Luther King.
Like Dr. King Coalition, P.O.P. Chairman Lawrence Hamm, the lead organizer of the Peace & Justice Coalition, regards the War in Iraq as a community issue. It is a fact that
the war-makers reach out and into poor neighborhoods throughout the U.S. to lure young
people into becoming soldiers to die in Iraq and elsewhere. It is a fact that many young people perceiving and experiencing lack of meaningful opportunities in for example
both the inner city and rural America sign up and wind up getting maimed or dying in a war that is distinctly profit-motivated and being prosecuted by a number of draft dodgers
and politicians for whom war is vicarious.
And so the Peace & Justice Coalition has gathered a steadily increasing number of activ- ists, mostly from New Jersey, but some from New York. It is likely that among the rea- sons for the Coalition’s grass roots popularity is because, as far as I am able to tell, it practices small “d” democracy at its meetings. There are not only speeches; there is pub-
lic participation, Q&A, and the “open mike” is genuinely open. This contrasts with for example the dictatorship-like atmosphere governing meetings of example the rather warlike peace group ANSWER, a reality that explains to some degree problems that, to the gratification of the Cheney/Bush Administration, face the peace movement.
The Peace & Justice Coalition, which has had poet Amiri Baraka and ABC-TV “Like it Is” host Gil Noble, as speakers, has some Democratic politicians as members. The Coali- tion, however, calls for an immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, a position that goes well beyond that of most Senate and House Democrats and the leading presidential contenders. Like George Bush, Hillary Clinton is not popular here.
A tree may grow in Brooklyn but the grass roots are growing in the Garden State.
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THE DON IMUS SYNDROME

UP FRONT News April 11, 2007
Published by Tom Weiss Editorial Advisor: Willard Whittingham
“The paper that can’t be bought and can’t be sold.” www.tomsupfrontnews.blogspot.com
THE DON IMUS SYNDROME: WHY?
BECAUSE HE “COULD.” POWER, MONEY, AND EGO
When Bill Clinton was asked about why he committed one of his many sins, (I believe it was with Monica Lewinski), his response was, paraphrased, “Because I could.” What he was saying was, because I have political and economic power, I can at least try to get away with stuff that those with much less power cannot get away with. The Lewinski epi-sode was hardly a first in the history of sexual infidelity, but try and imagine the conse- quences for a regular proletarian having sex in his or workplace.
Don Imus, like so many before him, spouted his racist trash because, in his position of power and wealth, he “could.” Another truly negative role model, Fifty Cent, who has made millions by disrespecting others, including black women, got provocative media
coverage (I think it was the soft-cote porn sheet known as The New York Post) when he visited Finland and had a line of Nordic beauties do him in a Helsinki hotel room as his contribution to racial equality.
Systems such as capitalism, capital “C” Communism, and fascism, which are based
on inequality of rights right deriving from inequalities of economic and political power, inevitably bring about the sort of abuses of which people like Bill Clinton, Don Imus
and Fifty Cent are guilty. And it’s only sometimes that they get punished. Usually they get richer. It’s about the love of money. (See Timothy I, 6:10.)
There is a book called “Trance Formation”, by Cathy O’Brien and Mark Phillips (Reali- ty Marketing) that alleges that Dick Cheney is a rapist. There is a book entitled “The Big
gest Secret: The Book That Will Change the World (Bridge of Love), by David Icke and Samantha Masters that writes about a rather satanic retreat in California called Bohemian
Grove, which counts major political leaders such as Bill Clinton as among its visitors. If any of this is true, it’s because they “could.”
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THE QUINNBERG ADMINISTRATION

UP FRONT News April 10, 2007
Published by Tom Weiss Editorial Advisor: Willard Whittingham
“The paper that can’t be bought and can’t be sold.” www.tomsupfrontnews.blogspot.com
THE QUINNBERG ADMINISTRATION
While I am not gay, I am 100% for gay rights, including marriage. I mention this so that, in response to my strong political opposition the prominent gay politician New York City Council Speaker and mayoral wannabe Christine Quinn, I am not accused of being anti-gay.
Christine Quinn developed her constituent power base as an advocate of both tenants rights and gay rights. What Ms. Quinn has essentially done, in her Hillary Clinton-like quest for increased power and wealth at any cost, is to use the gay rights issue as a Trojan Horse with liberal Democrats while turning her back on the poor and the near poor and showing a Michael Bloomberg-Republican hostility to human rights in general. At the same time she has shown herself to be greedy.
Christine Quinn became Speaker by virtue of a classic backroom power play that totally excluded millions of New Yorkers. By making a number of politically lucrative promises, e.g. Committee Chairmanships and the “lulus” (cash extras on top of salary) that go with them, to for example the political bosses in Queens and Brooklyn, Speaker candidates such as Leroy Comrie ad David Weprin from Queens and Bill de Blasio from Brooklyn were neutralized and Quinn was anointed as Speaker.
As Speaker Ms. Quinn, while ritualistically occasionally expressing some partisan reservations about some Bloomberg policies, has been an ally of a mayor who is actively trying to turn New York City over to the developers while patronizing the poor and the homeless. While Ms. Quinn for a time seemed to solidify her status as a tenants’ rights advocate by opposing Bloomberg’s plan to place Jets Stadium in her community of Chelsea, she had little choice since her entire neighborhood and all its elected officials opposed the Stadium. Her position was about as brave as that of a resident of Crawford, Texas endorsing George W. Bush. When it came to the threat to the South Bronx repre- sented by New York Yankee owner George Steinbrenner and his luxury box-rich new Yankee Stadium, Christine Quinn, like almost every other politician, endorsed a give- way that, aside from catalyzing over-development and gentrification in the South Bronx, also sacrificed two legendary City parks. And if one visits for example the Lower East Side of Manhattan, the proliferation of luxury commercial and residential development is suggestive of corporate-dominated areas of Westchester and Long Island. Under the Quinnberg Administration, very much like its predecessors, New York City is getting a great deal of what it least needs, luxury housing
Christine Quinn, who, like the billionaire Bloomberg, recurrently waxes political about
the poor, saw fit to ram through a conveniently compliant Council Intro. #458, whereby,
in a poverty-riddled city, the Council dramatically raised its own salary (for a part-time job) and that of a bunch of high level mayoral aides. The most vigorous opponent of that salary grab, by the way, was City Councilman Tony Avella, a candidate for Mayor, the job that Christine Quinn wants very, very much.
Christine Quinn is in many ways a wholly-owned political subsidiary of the classically opportunistic Hillary Clinton, a politician who has made a lot of money in the slave state known as Communist China, which practices Genocide in Tibet. That is why Ms. Quinn refuses to respond to my e-mail to her of January 30, 2006 and refuses to complete the critical missing piece, regarding opposition to the Beijing Olympics of 2008, that she left out of her pro-Tibet City Council resolution #802 a couple of years ago that I lobbied for.
It is a matter of record that, while the NYPD has a legitimate role to play when it comes to regulating traffic, police have misused permit matters. I was once arrested by the In-
spector of the 13th precinct for a public speaking permit violation. The inspector told me that he would deny me a permit request under any circumstances because he objected to the politics I was expressing. (I was speaking against the Iraq War, Dick Cheney, George W. Bush, and Hillary Clinton in Union Square.) Michael Bloomberg has already shown his Cheney/ Bush-like approach to the Bill of Rights in his handling of the RNC protests in 2004 (after he had the bad taste to invite NYC-disrespecting Bush and Cheney to have their convention here in the first place). The Speaker, in supporting the Bloomberg posi- tion on permit requirements for “marches”, speaks for the Quinnberg Administration.
Remember The Who. Let’s not get fooled again!
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