Mission NOT Accomplished!
Fed-up with the lies of the administration and the recruiters at her son’s high school, meet activist Vicki Impoco, Brevard NOW’s newly appointed anti-war campaign chairperson!
I recently stopped by my son's High School during his lunch hour. I was overcome by a feeling of sadness when I saw a Marine Recruiter in full dress blues circulating amongst the students.
Military Recruiters have infiltrated our High Schools and are there on a daily basis. They recruit our precious children with empty promises of adventure, and free college tuition when in reality they will almost certainly wind up in Iraq. As I looked at their innocent faces I thought how many more will be sacrificed for this Presidents illegal, immoral, and unjust war. We read daily reports of White House authorized leaks, corruption, manipulated intelligence, torture, and greed. Iraq teeters on the brink of Civil War, threats of a preemptive strike against Iran, and the call by top retired Generals for Rumsfeld’s resignation fill the headlines. This Administration erodes the very freedoms they claim we are fighting for.
A majority of Americans and 72% of our Troops support a responsible withdrawal from Iraq in 2006 yet this President continues his "Stay the Course" mantra. The Iraq War has cost 250 billion dollars and counting (enough to eradicate global hunger for 20 years).
Military fatalities in Iraq continue to mount and 94% have occurred since Bush's proclamation "Mission Accomplished" 3 years ago on the USS Abraham Lincoln.
Together we have helped make the anti-war perspective the majority. We must transform this consciousness into empowerment. We must unite and mobilize like the millions of immigrants nationwide and become a political force that cannot be ignored. PLEASE pledge to join us May 3rd 6-8pm at the "Peace Corner" for a "Mission NOT Accomplished" rally. RSVP now by emailing: sabletide@yahoo.com
Working Dead
by Brian C. Williams
I grew up in a small coal mining town in Virginia. Some of the old miners would throw around phrases from the times of crawling through mines only of the size where you had the room to barley crawl around within. I will not go into mentioning the word rats because those stories still get to me when I think of the ones my father told me. One of the sayings I heard over and over in my childhood days was subjected to a man who was, “Working Dead.” That phrase has been coming up in my mind a lot of late.
All my life I had watched my father work hard to the bone of exhaustion every day of his life. From being in the Air Force (from stories I have been told) to working in the mines, to his time driving an 18-wheeler. (They just call them tracker and trailers where I’m from.) Now, when he is only getting by, he and my mother on social security, I begin to see what “Working Dead” meant. It was not a saying for a person while they are working. It was one for the time afterwards. The saying came after doing some digging on my part from when miners had worked themselves into being so sick they found themselves on their deathbeds. But the mining companies could say, “Well, you have a son don’t you?” and so you would be Working Dead through your son, or your daughter, or your wife. These companies where not sexist in those fashions. Yea, them.
The recent mine disasters in places like West Virginia are not an out of the blue set of accidents by any imagination. I grew up in this sort of lifestyle. It happens all the time. I have lost more than a few family relations to these sorts of events. As usual though in this country, no issue is addressed until the media decides to put their camera on it. Sort of distorts reality, don’t you think? Maybe just a little. But that whole mess is another open bucket to spill over into another discussion for another day.
To spend your childhood years in a mining town you learn two things right away. One that there is most defiantly a difference between working hard and doing a hard days work. And two that someone can without one thought live off of the blood and sweet of others and not be grateful in the slightest.
I find myself now in a “Work Free State” I find myself now calling it a “Working Dead State” because I have seen in the short six years that I have been in Florida what they really mean. From working fast food jobs where they where able to stretch child labor and just labor laws to the max, I saw that because of the power of state laws, federal labor laws can fall to the side street. And I am all for statehood and the one of a kind individuality we have as united states under a federal government. But the only time I think the federal government should override state laws is when they are costing lives for no other reasons than prejudice, hate, or greed in this case.
Though, my point of this writing is a question I have in my brain, in there with old phrases like “Working Dead”, in there notions like fair pay, fair trade, and a good days pay for a good days work. In there with my frustrations from past work experiences in the entertainment industry, in the publishing industry, in factory work- I just want to ask when money matters and when people matter?
That is a long-winded way to ask a question but I am long winded and when I get on a subject I tend to wonder about a bit before getting to my point. But unlike our government I do not wonder around a bit and then change the subject before you have the chance to make a difference. I guess West Virginia’s governor is talking about shutting down all mines until found safe? Funny how they just this year turned up unsafe. Isn’t it amusing how worried everyone is about these hard working people and their jobs¼no it isn’t and it never has been. Only now we have cameras pointed in the direction of coal. No one cared when it was such a big money maker for the country in the past. I bet if these people where dying for oil everyone would turn a blind eye...wait, we do have people dying for oil and for the most part the cameras are not there. Men and women working hard for a good days pay. When does money matter and how about people?
Facing the Frightening Facts About AIDS and Doing Something About It
by Desiree Nall
Everyday AIDS kills 8,000 people. AIDS targets no particular group of people, it doesn’t discern between nationalities, ethnicities or sexual orientation. And by the end of 2003, 37.8 million people were living with HIV/AIDS, including 17 million women and 2.1 million children under the age of 15. HIV continues to penetrate the very fabric of our society like no other disease in our history. Some estimate that, by 2010, deaths from the AIDS/HIV pandemic will approach those of the bubonic plague, which killed 93 million people.
December is World AIDS month. It’s a month for reflection A time to remember those lost to AIDS, and, particularly, to make changes that allow us to better fight the epidemic in order to save future lives.
One sadly neglected aspect of the fight is comprehensive sex education, which is vital in the fight to prevent the transmittal of AIDS/HIV.
Comprehensive sex education not only teaches people about the basics of sexuality, but also educates them about potentially negative outcomes of unprotected sex. Factual dialogue about abstinence, condoms, and dental dams is essential in halting the transmittal of AIDS/HIV. But without the tools/equipment, how can people protect themselves?
Another important prevention method is providing adequate support for AIDS/HIV programs and organizations which provide support for individuals who choose abstinence, and condoms and dental dams to those who are sexually active. Unfortunately, it’s estimated that the current supply of condoms is 40% short of what is needed. Moreover, while comprehensive prevention programs could avert 29 million of the 45 million new infections predicted by 2010, such programs reach fewer that 1 in 5 of the people who need them.
Considering that Florida ranks 3rd in the nation in the number of AIDS cases, there is no time to waste. Civil leaders, activists, and concerned citizens must unite to make this issue a top priority and support legislation which funds AIDS/HIV programs.
Here in Brevard, we must all turn our attention to the need for comprehensive sex education in our schools and support calls for allowing qualified educators, such as those offered by Planned Parenthood of Greater Orlando, to discuss both the value of contraceptives as well as abstinence with our children.