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The Labor of Elections: A Look At the Democratic Candidates,
Union Support and Labor Issues From Iraq to the U.S.
Quitting America: The Departure of a Black Man from His Native
Land
The Labor of Elections: A Look At the Democratic
Candidates, Union Support and Labor Issues From Iraq to the
U.S.
"Super Seven" gets underway today with voters
in Arizona, Delaware, Missouri, New Mexico, North Dakota,
Oklahoma and South Carolina heading to polls and caucuses
to pick a Democratic presidential nominee. We speak with two
labor experts about some of the labor issues in the 2004 elections.
Voters in seven states across the country will be picking
a Democrat presidential nominee today in the biggest day of
the 2004 campaign so far.
Primaries or caucuses open in Arizona, Delaware, Missouri,
New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma and South Carolina. The
"Super Seven," as they are called, are seen as more
of a national test for candidates than the earlier votes in
Iowa and New Hampshire.
Senator John Kerry won both those state contests and is seen
as the front-runner to be selected to face President Bush
in the presidential election in November. Polls suggest Kerry
is in the lead or very close in all seven states.
Democratic National Committee Chairman Terence McAuliffe
has said he plans to urge every candidate who fails to win
today to pack up.
Senator John Edwards is betting his candidacy on South Carolina
and told the Washington Post that if he loses the state primary
to Kerry he will quit the race. Edwards is reported to have
spent more time in South Carolina than any of the other candidates
apart from the Rev. Al Sharpton who may get a boost to his
campaign from the large proportion of African-Americans in
the state.
Meanwhile, Kerry and Edwards got a boost to their campaigns
with a new CNN-USA Today-Gallup poll shows Kerry defeating
Bush in a presidential election by 53 percent to 46 percent,
and Edwards winning 49 to 48 percent.
Meanwhile, Howard Dean has largely written off winning any
state today except New Mexico and is preparing for what he
calls a final showdown with Kerry in Wisconsin on Feb. 17.
This according to the Washington Post.
This week, Dean's campaign, which has severely cut back on
spending, laid off more than a dozen staffers who worked at
headquarters and out in the field.
And Wesley Clark is looking to break through today with his
first win in Oklahoma, where polls show him in a virtual tie
with Kerry. The Post reports that if Clark goes winless today,
he will most likely drop out.
Sen. Joseph Lieberman and Rep. Dennis Kucinich are also still
in the race.
- David Bacon, veteran labor journalist who writes for
a number of publications, including The Nation, The Progressive
and the Pacifica News Service. He is also a programmer on
Pacifica station KPFA in Berkeley. He has a new book out
called "The Children of NAFTA"
- Clarence Thomas, former Secretary-Treasurer of the San
Francisco Longshore Union during the lockout in November
2002. With David Bacon, he was in Baghdad late last year
investigating worker and labor conditions there.
Quitting America: The Departure of a Black Man from
His Native Land
Longtime human rights activist and TransAfrica founder Randall
Robinson joins us in our firehouse studios to talk about U.S.
foreign policy in Africa and the Caribbean, why he refused
an honorary degree from Georgetown after the CIA's George
Tenet spoke there and his latest book "Quitting America"
which explains why he left the U.S. to live in St. Kitts-Nevis.
As we have pointed out before on the program, in his state
of the union address last month, President Bush did not mention
the word Africa once during the entire speech. In last year's
address, Bush's most prominent mention of Africa was the accusation
that Iraq had tried to buy uranium from Niger - an allegation
that later turned out to be entirely baseless.
Today we are going to take an extensive look at Bush's policies
toward Africa, African-Americans and the Caribbean with one
of the most well-known critics of US foreign policy toward
these areas of the world: Randall Robinson.
He is a longtime human rights activist who founded the organization
TransAfrica in 1977 to address U.S. policy toward Africa and
the Caribbean. Among his most well-known campaigns [ ] was
against the apartheid regime in South Africa and US support
for it. In 1994, Robinson made national headlines as he staged
a 27-day hunger strike to protest US actions in Haiti. He
is one of the people most credited with bringing the issue
of reparations for slavery into the mainstream with his book
"The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks."
Last year He once declined an honorary degree from Georgetown
University because George Tenet, the director of the CIA and
an ardent supporter of the invasion of Iraq, had been invited
the day before to speak at one of Georgetown's graduation
exercises. Three weeks before the Sept. 11 attacks, Robinson
officially "quit" the US and moved to St. Kitts-Nevis,
the small Caribbean island nation where his wife was born.
He has just written a new book explaining why he left. It
is called "Quitting America: The Departure of a Black
Man From His Native Land."
- Randall Robinson, founder of TransAfrica and one of the
leaders of the movement to change US policy toward the apartheid
regime in South Africa. He is well known for hunger strike
protests and sit-in demonstrations. His book "The Debt"
brought the issue of reparations into the mainstream. His
latest book is "Quitting America: The Departure of
a Black Man from His Native Land."
For a copy of today’s program, call 1 (800) 881 2359.
Our website is www.democracynow.org.
Our email address is mail@democracynow.org.
Democracy Now! is produced by Mike Burke, Sharif Abdel Kouddous,
Ana Nogueira, Elizabeth Press, Jeremy Scahill and Parvez Sharma.
Mike Di Filippo is our engineer.
Thanks also to Uri Galed, Angela Alston, Orlando Richards,
Simba Russeau, Johnny Sender, Rich Kim, Joe Murgio, John Randolph,
Chris Zucker, Karen Ranucci, Denis Moynihan, Eric Rweyemamu,
Jenny Filipazzo and Isis Phillips.
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