“The most important thing at the summit will be a mutual declaration of cessation of violence against each other,” said Saeb Erekat, a Palestinian negotiator. Erekat said the agreement also includes the establishment of joint committees to determine criteria for the release of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails, and to oversee the gradual withdrawal of Israeli forces from Palestinian cities on the West Bank. An Israeli government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed the cease-fire agreement, adding that the deal would also include an end to Palestinian incitement.
Author Archives: Josh Eidelson
The race to replace Ben Healey begins:
Daniel Weeks ’06 and Rebecca Livengood ’07, who both attended the first meeting of the newly selected Ward 1 Democratic Committee, announced their candidacy yesterday. Though they are the only candidates who have declared that they are seeking the party’s nomination at this time, others can come forward until March 23, when the committee will convene to decide on a nominee…Livengood said she has been involved with New Haven politics through the Undergraduate Organizing Committee, the Fair Share Coalition and the Community Organized for Responsible Development. She said she has worked on issues like pushing a bill that was passed in the state legislature on climate change and promoting the expansion of the Homebuyer Program…
“Over the past three years, having gotten really involved in local politics here, I feel really invested in this city even though I’m not from here,” Weeks said. “New Haven is an amazing city. It’s much more progressive than you typically see, and I think it offers us — if we’re willing to get involved — a remarkable laboratory to experiment with progressive ideas.” If elected alderwoman, Livengood said she would be interested in working on homelessness and affordable housing initiatives, pressuring the state to pass domestic partnership legislation, pushing for community benefits surrounding hospital development, and environmental issues — particularly the city’s commitment to increasing its use of renewable energy sources. “I’m really excited about mobilizing students on Yale’s campus to work on New Haven issues,” Livengood said.
Russ Feingold agrees that the Democrats need a common touch and a Contract with America:
Talking at length about his political plans and the future of his party, Sen. Russ Feingold said he would consider running for president in 2008 if there is enough encouragement and interest from Democrats and if he thinks he has a real shot at winning the nomination…”If at some point people say, ‘Hey, we think you ought to run for president’ (and) it’s a serious thing, I’m going to listen. I would only run if I honestly believed that I was the guy that really could win, that I was the person who was the best candidate to run,” said Feingold…Feingold is in the process of setting up what is known as a leadership PAC, or political action committee, a common vehicle for potential national candidates to make campaign donations and fund travel…Feingold said his double-digit victory in a swing state, despite Republican fire over his opposition to key Bush policies such as the Iraq war, the USA Patriot Act and the No Child Left Behind education law, “gives me a little bit of a forum to say, ‘Look, Democrats ought to be proud of their views, and stand tall to defend them.’ “That makes me think more about what we could do nationally if we had more of that kind of approach”
…he suggested that the Democratic Party’s prospects for victory in 2008 would have less to do with tacking to the left or to the center, what region its nominee comes from or whether the candidate is from inside or outside Washington than with choosing somebody who can “connect” with voters. He mentioned President Bush, former President Bill Clinton and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger as three politicians with different backgrounds and politics who shared that ability. He also acknowledged that the Democrats’ past two nominees, Kerry and Al Gore, were perceived as lacking that touch. “It’s the person people can relate to, the person that makes them feel comfortable, seems to be sincere, maybe has some of the straight-type qualities of McCain,” Feingold said. “That’s the kind of person I want to be our nominee. Whether or not I would ever fit that bill I think is a very open question,” said the senator, although he said, “I hope that’s my strength.” Saying Democrats have a tendency to “talk about wonky lists of issues instead of the real pain that families are feeling,” Feingold cited the 1994 Republican Contract with America as an example of effective communication. “I didn’t agree with them, but they had this nice direct way of talking about how the average person really feels about their government. And about common-sense solutions . . . It was a way of talking about things that made you feel that they had actually listened to people first.”
Hey, we think you ought to run for President.
In today’s Times, Dr. Katharine O’Connell calls for faith in women:
Pam Palumbo, director of the Bowie Crofton Pregnancy Center and Medical Clinic, is quoted as saying, “Faith plays the role in what we do here.” But crisis pregnancy centers actually function in the absence of faith – in women, that is. I am a doctor, and when a woman comes to me seeking an abortion, I provide her with medically accurate information regarding all options. I then do my best to help the woman come to the decision that is in her best interest, whether it is to have an abortion or to move forward and carry the pregnancy to term. The Bowie center, you report, “distributes leaflets that state there is a link between abortion and a greater risk of breast cancer.” But the National Cancer Institute and other groups have concluded that there is no link. By providing women with misinformation, these centers show that they do not trust women to make decisions about their own health care.
Phoebe writes to the Register about the challenges faced by women and people of color at Yale:
During the first decade of Richard Levin’s presidency at Yale, 87 percent of new women hired, and even higher percentages of black women and international women, were forced into the increasing number of nontenured positions. Levin blames the lack of female faculty members and faculty members of color on the “relatively small number” choosing to get doctorates. But those women of color in nontenure-track positions certainly were not promoted; often, as was the case with chemistry professor Connie Allen, beloved teacher and one of shamefully few women of color in the sciences, they were not even retained. So long as the university refuses even to hold an open forum on these issues, much less meet its graduate teachers’ demands for fair pay, fair grievance procedures, and fair recognition of their majority-certified union, how will that “relatively small number” ever increase?
And Sociology graduate students write the YDN:
Yale is a part of society, and the reduction of social inequality should be a priority for all members of our community. We are deservedly proud that Yale leads in scholarship and research. Our institution has also exercised leadership in community and social programs, both on- and off-campus. But we can still do better. How else can one explain the extreme dearth of individuals from disadvantaged groups on our campus, particularly among tenured faculty, other than by concluding that Yale hasn’t done enough to find and keep those with quality ideas and scholarship? Surely Kirchick doesn’t mean to imply that they don’t exist? The issue is not that diversity problems are not “Yale’s fault.” It is that getting real outcomes at Yale is everyone’s responsibility. We’re not talking about quotas. We’re talking about a change in the process. That’s why GESO and Local 35 asked for something simple: a public forum. In the interest of realizing a fairer and more equitable society, we reiterate the simple request that prompted Mr. Kirchick’s dismissive and mean-spirited column. We call on the administration to enter into an open discussion with the Yale community on this issue.
The New York Times Magazine gives all-too rare front-page coverage to Andy Stern’s push to reform the AFL-CIO:
”Our movement is going out of existence, and yet too many labor leaders go and shake their heads and say they’ll do something, and then they go back and do the same thing the next day,” Stern told me recently. He is a lean, compact man with thinning white hair, and when he reclines in the purple chair in his Washington office and crosses one leg over the other, he could easily pass for a psychiatrist or a math professor. He added, ”I don’t have a lot of time to mince words, because I don’t think workers in our country have a lot of time left if we don’t change.”
A week after the election in November, Stern delivered a proposal to the A.F.L.-C.I.O. that sounded more like an ultimatum. He demanded that the federation, the umbrella organization of the labor movement, embrace a top-to-bottom reform, beginning with a plan to merge its 58 unions into 20, for the purpose of consolidating power. If the other bosses wouldn’t budge, Stern threatened to take his 1.8 million members and bolt the federation — effectively blowing up the A.F.L.-C.I.O. on the eve of its 50th anniversary. Stern’s critics say all of this is simply an excuse to grab power. ”What Andy’s doing now with his compadres is what Vladimir Putin is trying to do to the former Communist bloc countries,” says Tom Buffenbarger, president of the union that represents machinists and aerospace workers. ”He’s trying to implement dictatorial rule.” Stern says he is done caring what the other bosses think. ”If I don’t have the courage to do what my members put me here to do, then how do I ask a janitor or a child-care worker to go in and see a private-sector employer and say, ‘We want to have a union in this place’?” Stern asks. ”What’s my risk? That some people won’t like me? Their risk is that they lose their jobs.”
Good news is, the Times is highlighting something going on in the labor movement, and in a way that may challenge some of its readers’ conceptions of labor as so 19th-century. Bad news, as Nathan ably argues, is that Matt Bai insists on divorcing Stern from the larger movement he’s part of, framing him instead as a lone brave dissenter from a ubiquitous orthodoxy of inertia. As Nathan writes:
The author repeatedly refers to “union bosses”, the old cliche that tries to compare union leaders to corporate executives. Except a top union leader can’t fire members or force them to go on strike or approve a contract. It’s ultimately a phrase that is used to ignore the crucial difference in the role of workers in unions versus corporations: workers get a vote in a union. Yet nowhere in the piece is any internal life of unions acknowledged. In fact, in a massive piece, other unions’ leaders are mentioned but only one other union official in all of SEIU is mentioned, namely Anna Burger, who is described as Andy Stern’s “political aide”, ignoring her position as a separately elected top official of the union with a quite independent biography. Nowhere mentioned are key local SEIU leaders like Dennis Rivera, head of New York’s 200,000-member SEIU 1199, which is notoriously outside of the national office’s control, or Sal Roselli, leader of California’s nursing local…
Navel-gazing and blaming various union leaders for failures of the union movement is a daily parlour game among union activists. John Sweeney won election as AFL-CIO leader in 1995 centered on exactly such criticisms of business-as-usual in the union leadership. And serious changes were made. New resources were devoted to organizing, AFL-CIO foreign relations were completely remade, and a host of other changes were made. All Andy Stern is arguing is that not enough was done. But he’s continuing an argument that’s decades old, which is why other unions could easily contribute alternative proposals for change. Instead of emphasizing the substance of differences over where the labor movement needs to go, the magazine piece lazily sets up Tom Buffenbarger, leader of the Machinists union, as a stereotypical “old union” resister to change.
Donnie Fowler, Howard Dean’s last serious opponent in the race for DNC Chair, has dropped out and endorsed Dean:
With Howard Dean as its next chair of the DNC, the Party will have someone who not only understands change, but knows how to make it happen. As a presidential candidate and as a candidate for Chair, Dean has brought with him a grassroots movement that will reinvigorate the Democrats with new activism and new voters. As a former governor and former Chair of the Democratic Governors Association, Governor Dean also knows the value of respecting and including those who are most loyal to the Party. It’s the best of the new and the traditional. And the Democratic Party will be better for it. This is why I endorse Governor Dean for DNC Chair and hope to contribute to his and the new DNC’s successes
Good news for progressives, for Democrats, and for Americans.
Slavery (of speech) is freedom (of speech):
Concerned that Ohio college students’ young minds are being indoctrinated by left-leaning college faculty, four Republican state senators have introduced an “academic bill of rights for higher education” that would limit what professors could say in their classrooms. It also would give students and faculty a formal grievance procedure if they feel they’ve been discriminated against…
Lest we think Bush hates all journalists:
Called on last week by President Bush at a press conference, Gannon attacked Democratic Senate leaders and called them “divorced from reality.” During the presidential campaign, when called on by Press Secretary Scott McClellan, Gannon linked Senator John F. Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, to Jane Fonda and questioned why anyone would dispute Bush’s National Guard service. Now, the question of how Gannon gets into White House press conferences is coming under intense scrutiny from critics who contend that Gannon is not a journalist but rather a White House tool to soften media coverage of Bush. The issue was raised by a media watchdog group and picked up by Internet bloggers, who linked Gannon’s presence in White House briefings to recent controversies over whether the administration manipulates the flow of information to the public.
As MediaMatters notes, Gannon always seems to be there just when you need him most…
Not much new to say about the State of the Union Address because, well, it didn’t say much new. Substance-wise, it was more of the same, rhetorically, it was flat, and as for the delivery – well, no surprises there. Bush is still trying to pull a fast one on the American people with his social security numbers; when he said that FDR could not have imagined today’s economy, it was hard not to wince at the steady rollback of the New Deal of which Bush’s agenda is but the latest example. His allusions to FDR in defending his foreign policy were equally unpersuasive. If Bush expects plaudits for courage for politely suggesting to his allies in Saudi Arabia that their people get more opportunities to express themselves (meaning what? Voting for American Idol?), then we really are defining deviancy down. The moment shared between the Iraqi and American women was indeed poignant. It was, I couldn’t help thinking, an interesting echo of the moment shared between grieving Iraqi and American mothers in Farenheit 9/11. Whether one agrees more with George Bush’s or Michael Moore’s view of the architects and consequences of that war, there’s a great deal of chosen and unchosen sacrifice and suffering that should be sobering for all of us. Bush’s stated commitment to the advancement of liberty, of course, didn’t stop him from once more floating the writing of bigotry into the constitution. Just another reason that Bush’s eager exclamations of liberty fell as flat as his last line about the long and twisting road to freedom, a pale shadow of a truly great American’s promise (more urgent and more seemingly distant than ever) that “The arc of history is long, but it bends towards justice.”
A new court decision allows Yale to take a strong stand on military recruiting:
Only days before the Judge Advocate General recruiting season is set to begin, Yale Law School officials announced yesterday they will bar military recruiters from the school after years of legal wrangling and campus protests. This decision, which was announced through a school-wide e-mail, came in response to a Connecticut District Court ruling on Monday in a lawsuit filed by Yale faculty members against the Department of Defense. After reviewing summary judgment claims, U.S. District Judge Janet Hall ruled that the Solomon Amendment — which blocked federal funding to schools that banned military recruiters from campus — was unconstitutional as applied to the Yale Law School. In her decision, Hall said the amendment “is not narrowly tailored to advance a compelling government interest, and thus unjustifiably burdens the Faculty Members’ First Amendment right of expressive association.” Law School Dean Harold Hongju Koh, a plaintiff in the suit, praised the decision. “I think the message here is if the government is asking you to support discrimination you should say no, and I think in this we are vindicated,” said Koh, who was a plaintiff in the suit.
Josh Eidelson 