UEPI News and Commentary

Happy MLK Day

Many of you have seen the LA Times' 4-day series last week criticizing the United Farm Workers.  In response, I wrote this op-ed, published in the Sunday LA Times (yesterday), criticizing the paper's general coverage of labor and workplace issues.

On a positive note, the NY Times Magazine yesterday ran a great cover story on the growing "living wage" movement around the country, focusing on ACORN staffer Jen Kern.
And Holly Sklar has a great article about Dr. King's views about economic justice and labor on the TomPaine website.

The new (Winter 2006) issue of Dissent has my tribute to Rosa Parks.

CommonSense last week published a tribute to civil liberties and housing activist Frank Wilkinson by Jan Breidenbach and me.  It was also published in The Nation as part of Katrina Vanden Heuvel's column.

Also in The Nation, I recommend "A Top Ten List of Bold Ideas" by Gar Alperovitz and Thad Williamson. Even if you don't agree with all of these ideas it is important for progressives to create a positive forward-looking agenda, not just be against things.

Something to be against, though, are the huge tax break for the wealthy, including that part of the homeowner deduction that goes to the richest folks with the biggest homes. My article in the current issue of Shelterforce examines President Bush's tax reform task force and its recent recommendation to reform what I call the "mansion subsidy":

Finally, I recommend a new report by Columbia University economist Joseph E. Stiglitz and Harvard lecturer Linda Bilmes, who estimate the cost of the war in Iraq at $2 trillion - four times more than the Bush administration's projections.

Frank Wilkinson's Legacy

The obituaries for Frank Wilkinson,  who died January 2 at 91, primarily focused on his role as a leading opponent of McCarthyism, the House Un-American Activities Committee, and government spying on citizens. In 1958,  Wilkinson was one of the last people ordered to prison for defying HUAC.  He appealed his contempt citation all the way to the Supreme Court, which ruled 5 to 4 against him. After spending nine months in federal prison in 1961, Wilkinson through the National Committee Against Repressive Legislation, spend more than a decade fighting to dismantle HUAC, which was finally abolished in 1975. Wilkinson also fought the FBI.  He sued the FBI to obtain its files on him, eventually getting 132,000 documents,  which revealed that the agency had been spying on him for 38 years. A federal judge order the FBI to end its surveillance of Wilkinson.