Sunday, September 27, 2009

Acorn: A successful model for grassroots organizers...

Ed Note:  I have chosen this piece for posting, in it's entirety, as opposed to a link, because I believe that there are some lessons for those of us involved in grass-roots organizing in many different demographics, regarding many varied social justice issue campaigns, to be reminded of, or to learn, anew.  I am not taking an editorial position on the specific recent charges against Acorn employees, and the organization, in general; truth will out, in the end. 

There are many parallels between Acorn and Vietnam Veterans Against The War, back in it's hayday, relating to empowerment. They rest in the organizational strategy, and democratic nature of the operational processes of the organization, as outlined (and editorially italicized) in David Morris' piece; organizers must be vested in the mission, and be allowed to be creative, in accordance with their demographic realities, and available resources. 

Acorn gets it, in this regard. In a successful grass-roots campaign, there is no room for political dogma, from either side of the aisle, only pragmatic programs and solutions; dogma is a hindarance, rather than enhancement to this process, i.e. the Cracker Swamp Manifesto, posted on these pages on June 7, 2006. The intense Federal backlash that Acorn is experiencing is a measure of their success in delivering blows against the empire, much as the Gainesville 8 Trial was to the VVAW; that is the real story, and Morris connects all the dots, in this powerful posting. WH

 ACORN: The Most Cost-Effective Investment the Government (and Foundations) Have Ever Made
By
                   David Morris                          
Posted on September 23, 2009

To understand the current attacks on ACORN, and the organization itself, we need to go back more than 60 years, to the 1930s and the New Deal, when for the first time, the federal government accepted responsibility for directly helping the non-working poor.

These programs were expanded in the 1940s, but in the 1950s, a backlash erupted against the poor, driven by several factors.

The postwar prosperity dramatically reduced the number of poor families, and an increasing number of black women were added to the welfare rolls, injecting race into the debate.

Meanwhile, a Republican White House mostly left welfare matters to the states.

The myth of welfare recipients as lazy, immoral chiselers began to circulate. States adopted punitive laws to reduce welfare rolls. Special units of welfare departments conducted "midnight raids" to see if the recipients were involved in a relationship with a man, something that would result in a cut-off of benefits. The average grant declined.

In desperation, low-income mothers in dozens of big cities organized for survival. They came together to collectively negotiate not only with welfare offices for benefits, but with utilities to eliminate deposits required from low-income households and with the post office to install locks on mailboxes in apartment houses to prevent the theft of welfare checks.

Several veterans of the civil rights movement worked to bring local welfare-rights organizations together into a national organization.

In June 1966, a coordinated national day of action brought tens of thousands of people into the streets in 16 major cities. Two months later, representatives of 75 local welfare-rights organizations convened in Chicago to create the National Welfare Rights Organization.

Led by George Wiley, a Ph.D. chemist and leader of the Congress of Racial Equality, NWRO was an unusual organization. It was a federation of local groups that coordinated local and national actions. Black women comprised a majority of its leadership.

NWRO's successes led to rapid growth. By 1969, it boasted over 500 chapters with 22,500 dues-paying families.

In the late 1960s, a growing number of people looked to create a broad-based anti-poverty movement, an idea embraced by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in his Poor People's Campaign, in which NWRO played an important role.

In 1972, when Wiley left NWRO, he told the New York Times, "The welfare-rights movement created a political and economic crisis around the issue of welfare which could have led to reform or repression. What we are witnessing is repression, and we need a broad, organized movement to counter it."

Wiley wanted to use the NWRO model to build a coalition of the working poor, unemployed, seniors and the lower middle class around issues such as national health insurance, consumer rights, housing and tax reform.

After a tragic accident took Wiley's life in 1973, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, created by two former NWRO organizers Wiley had sent to Little Rock, Ark., in 1970, became the primary vehicle for implementing his vision.

Led by Wade Rathke, ACORN had affiliates in 20 cities by 1980. Today, it has about 400,000 low- and moderate-income members in more than 100 cities in 40 states.
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ACORN is one of the few grassroots neighborhood organizations capable of wielding power on a national scale.
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It is unique in the combination of strategies it uses: organizing, direct action, lawsuits, lobbying and the provision of direct services.
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That ACORN is a federation of self-governing locals with a national board comprised largely of poor people seems to both amaze and gall the right.
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Early this year, the conservative blog, Provocateur said about ACORN's board members, "They rose through the ranks of ACORN, often starting as foot soldiers fighting for causes near and dear to them. Since ACORN is often associated with causes for poor, most of the board are themselves poor. As such, they are often rather unsophisticated, and thus will be overwhelmed by the sophisticated nature of the organization itself."
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ACORN has been a target of the right virtually since its founding. During the l980s and early 1990s, President George H.W. Bush's Department of Labor convened a grand jury to investigate ACORN's relationship to the progressive labor union SEIU.
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The investigation was dropped after Bill Clinton took office. The President George W. Bush's Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was forced to quit in part because he fired several U.S. attorneys who refused to go after ACORN's voter-registration efforts when they found no evidence of alleged voter fraud.
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ACORN's bottom-up and coordinated structure has enabled it to confront national corporations in a way few other organizations can.
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When Reagan and the first President Bush's regulators failed to enforce the Community Reinvestment Act, ACORN and other groups conducted their own studies.
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They identified banks with patterns of discriminatory lending, exposed these practices to the media and then demanded regulators do their jobs. The combination of publicity and confrontations led many lenders to agree to make loans to borrowers who could afford them.
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Later, ACORN helped to get the Treasury Department to reverse its 10-year-old ruling that federal rules pre-empted 35 state laws curbing prepayment penalties that were costing borrowers more than $2 billion a year.
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ACORN's provision of services has also enabled it to see national problems before they become national problems. Its mortgage counseling for lower-income households led it to sound the alarm about an industry that was manipulating families into taking out risky loans.
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ACORN called adjustable-rate mortgages with teaser rates ticking time bombs. It beseeched Congress to not deregulate an increasingly irresponsible banking industry.
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Conservatives call ACORN's confrontation tactics "shakedowns" or "extortions," for they often result in large corporations shelling out money.
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I call it justice.
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ACORN doesn't have the power to fine corporations or put their executives in jail for misdeeds. It only has the power to ask those who have done harm to pay to reduce that harm and prevent future injury.
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In its 1993 campaign against insurance redlining, ACORN targeted Allstate and held actions in offices in l4 cities.
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Allstate signed an agreement creating a $10 million program to offer below-market mortgages to low-income buyers.
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In 2000, ACORN began a national campaign to combat the predatory lending practices of Household Finance Corp., one of nation's largest subprime lenders. ACORN used lawsuits as well as direct action, resulting in a $150 million class-action settlement that included $72 million for a foreclosure-avoidance program.
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As ACORN grew, it often created tensions with existing organizations in its new cities. It got a reputation for not playing well with others. But few questioned its effectiveness.
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Sometimes the scope of ACORN's activities is breathtaking.
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In 2008, John Atlas and Peter Dreier, who have followed ACORN closely for many years, listed some local news stories about ACORN in the previous few weeks.
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The New York Times wrote about ACORN's successful campaign to save 5,881 rental units of working-class housing in Brooklyn.
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The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette recounted an ACORN demonstration at a local bank, with members blowing whistles and chanting “Criminal offenders, predatory lenders.”
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The Dallas Morning News reported on ACORN's campaign to expand health insurance in Texas, while dozens of papers highlighted ACORN's key role in a new national coalition of unions, consumer and religious groups to fight for universal health care.
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The New Orleans Times-Picayune described ACORN's ongoing work to rebuild homes in the Lower Ninth Ward neighborhood battered by Hurricane Katrina.
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The San Francisco Chronicle reported that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a bill pushed by ACORN that will help desperate California homeowners avoid foreclosures."
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Conservatives themselves reluctantly recognize ACORN's importance. In a 2006 Wall Street Journal column, Steven Malanga of the Manhattan Institute complained, "When Chicago's City Council this summer required big-box stores to pay new employees at least $10 an hour, supporters of the legislation held an impromptu celebration in the council galleries.
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"The hoopla was reminiscent of another scene five years earlier in New York, when opponents of Mayor Rudy Giuliani's effort to privatize failing public schools embraced in the streets after parents rejected the idea.
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"What linked these celebrations was the left-wing Association for Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) which led the campaign for the legislation and against privatization."
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Since the tax advice of a few ACORN employees is at the heart of the current controversy, it might be helpful to understand how and why ACORN became involved in tax assistance.
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In late 2003, ACORN launched a four-city program that offered assistance to families eligible for the Earned Income Tax Credit, the nation's largest income-support program. It did so in part because the IRS estimated that some 5 million qualified families failed to claim the credit.
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ACORN tax preparers were trained and credentialed in coordination with the IRS. ACORN members went door to door to inform people about free tax services and the EITC.
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In a formal evaluation of the program, Fred Brooks, Robert Fisher and Daniel Russell found that it was ranked near or at the top of all free tax services in those cities. Canvassed respondents in New Orleans, for example, were five times more likely to choose free tax preparation compared to income-equivalent comparison group, saving them $200-$300 each.
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ACORN's tax assistance resulted in almost $4 million in tax refunds to low-income families. The next year, ACORN expanded its EITC assistance to 51 cities and generated $19 million in total refunds.
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In typical ACORN fashion, its tax-advice service led to direct action. ACORN discovered that poor people who file for the EITC often take out short-term, very-high-interest loans, called Refund Anticipation Loans to receive their money a few days or weeks sooner.
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In 2003, more than 50 percent of tax preparers' customers who received an RAL also received the EITC. By some estimates, the almost 200 percent annual interest customers paid on their RALs, plus the associated administrative fees reduced the EITC refunds lower-income households received by more than $500 million.
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In the 1990s, when RALs exploded, state attorneys general went after companies like H&R Block for unfair and deceptive practices.
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By 2000, according to the New York Times, Block had been sued no fewer than 22 times.
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But lawsuits didn't stop tax preparers, or even slow them down, because RALs were extremely profitable. In 1999, H&R block made a profit of over 50 percent on its sale of RALs. In 2004, Jackson Hewitt, the second-largest tax-preparation chain in the country, said that RALs accounted for 29 percent of the company's revenues.
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In January 2004, ACORN mounted coordinated actions against H&R Block in 43 cities, accusing it of stealing from low-income communities. Within a month, H& R Block and ACORN reached an agreement: H&R Block agreed to give ACORN money to expand its EITC outreach and eliminate its RAL application fee nationwide. It also agreed to hire and train ACORN members to be tax preparers.
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ACORN has reportedly received about $53 million since 1994 from the federal government, about $3.5 million a year. If so, it must be the most cost-effective investment the federal government has ever made, assuming the investment was made to help the poor.
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In 2005, ACORN did an analysis of how much money its activities had generated for low- and moderate-income households in the 10-year period from 1995 to 2004.
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One should, of course, approach the findings of an internal report cautiously. But its methodology is transparent and sound. It counts, for example, only those campaigns in which it played the lead role.
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The conclusion? Over 10 years, ACORN's direct services and local and state campaigns generated monetary benefits for lower-income households totaling some $15 billion, or $1.5 billion a year. This includes the impact of enacting living-wage or minimum-wage or predatory-lending ordinances or statutes.
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The recent video of an ACORN employee giving tax advice to a make-believe prostitute and her "pimp" to engage in a make-believe crime is certainly damning.
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But we should compare the swift punitive reaction by Congress and the media to that video with their reactions to real-world tax advice given by huge accounting firms to the richest of us that resulted in real-world millions of foreclosures and millions more plunging into poverty.
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We don't have the tape of executives at the giant accounting firm KPMG dreaming up a new intangible asset that would save its client WorldCom millions in state taxes.
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The new asset was called "foresight of top management." Shortly thereafter, the foresight of WorldCom's top management resulted in a 25-year prison sentence for WorldCom's CEO and five years for its CFO.
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On the anniversary of the September 2008 financial meltdown, a plaintive CNN headline asks, "Will any Wall Streeters go to jail for this? … Why vengeance over the financial crisis is so elusive."
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Or consider the reaction by Congress and the media to cases where the misdeeds of profit-making businesses actually kill people.
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There have been four documented fatalities of soldiers from electrocution while showering in Iraqi barracks whose electrical wiring was installed by KBR.
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Until 2007, KBR was a subsidiary of Halliburton. Unlike in the case of ACORN, after the allegations became public, the federal government didn't rush to cancel KBR contracts.
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Instead, the Republicans stayed mum, and the Pentagon paid KBR huge bonuses. In early 2009, the Pentagon awarded KBR a $35 million contract for more electrical work even while the company was under a criminal investigation for two electrocution deaths, according to Pratap Chatterjee, former executive director of CorpWatch and the author of Halliburton's Army.
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If the misdeeds of individuals at ACORN are the problem, ACORN's swift action in bringing on an independent board to conduct an internal audit is the answer, not cutting off funds or pillorying the organization.
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But improving internal controls isn't the right wing's end game. Destroying a remarkably successful 50-year-old grassroots model for defending the poor and workers is.
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An improved management structure may well be necessary.
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But the desperate situation facing tens of millions of households in the country, and the reticence of Congress and the White House to act firmly on their behalf, makes this a time when foundations, for example, should expand, not contract, their financial support to ACORN.
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And perhaps Congress and the federal government could pull a Halliburton and double ACORN's contracts after its missteps became known.
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David Morris is co-founder and vice president of the Institute for Local Self Reliance in Minneapolis and is director of its New Rules project.
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© 2009 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
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http://www.vetspeak.org/

Saturday, September 19, 2009

Agent Orange: The tragedy continues....

The Damages Continue
Relief possibly in sight, still more to do, and so little time
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By
Chuck Palazzo
Interim Agent Orange Editor, VVAW Member
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Toxin in Agent Orange still polluting South Vietnam, study says.  Link to the story:
http://www.wafb.com/Global/story.asp?S=11113506
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It’s absolutely no surprise that even to this day, environmental tests confirm extremely high levels of dioxin, the toxic ingredient that made Agent Orange what it was – an insidious poison that was sprayed for years in Vietnam as well as other countries for a variety of reasons– but especially in Vietnam. The base referred to in this article is Da Nang. That’s where so many of us flew in and out of, were stationed in or around, and where this poison was mixed, stored and loaded onto aircraft for eventual spraying in Vietnam.
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The earth was sprayed and contaminated, trees and plants defoliated, wildlife sprayed and killed, and worse, Americans as well as Vietnamese have suffered premature deaths, diseases they would not have been stricken with if not exposed to Agent Orange. They as well as their offspring continue to suffer as this toxic cocktail continues its journey from generation to generation. Dioxin levels at this location, to this day, continue to exceed ALL international standards and guidelines for toxic chemicals.
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"The work we have done really demonstrates that this is a manageable problem," said Thomas Boivin, president of Hatfield. "We now know where the contamination is coming from; we just need the international financial support to get on with the cleanup."
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We have known for years. It’s been well documented. In fact, the US Government, while they still contend they did no wrong in spraying Agent Orange on the Vietnamese as well as Americans and our allies, actually outlawed the use of Dioxin in the US for that very same reason. After years of disagreement on how to handle the ongoing problem, the US and Vietnam finally agreed to work together and come up with a solution in 2006. Yep, that’s not a typo folks – 2006. 31 years after the fall of Saigon.
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How toxic is toxic?
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Between 1961 and 1971, the U.S. military released more than 19 million gallons of herbicides in South Vietnam to destroy enemy crops and deny a very formidable foe cover by defoliating dense mangrove forests and triple canopy jungles.
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What some people knew at the time and people at the very top of the US Government and War Machine was that some of the herbicides contained a highly toxic form of dioxin, known as TCDD. The toxin was a byproduct created while manufacturing mixtures such as Agent Orange, the most widely used of a handful of herbicides contaminated with TCDD. Unintended? Perhaps. But known to be toxic and by more than just a few folks? Absolutely!
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Environmental scientists from a Canadian firm (Hatfield) last week presented the findings from the study, which documents that high levels of TCDD from the herbicides still contaminate soil inside a former U.S. airbase in Da Nang as well as sediment from a lake that abuts it. And this is just Da Nang – one of 3 hotspots identified within South Vietnam that was sprayed and that is still contaminated. Approximately 10 percent of South Vietnam was sprayed during those years.
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The study uses TCDD's chemical fingerprint to trace its movement through the food chain, from the soil and lake sediment to the fat of fish and ducks to the blood and breast milk of humans.
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Where are we today?
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Plain and simple, we are worse off than we were when we started a series of lawsuits, blogs, demonstrations and everything else we possibly could do to seek justice from the US Government.
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The VAVAO brought suit, after numerous other failed attempts to make things right against the US Federal Government. The arrogance of successive administrations in Washington was nail after nail in the coffins of those who suffered and eventually died.
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The then President of the Veterans For Peace (VFP) David Cline, was quoted as stating: “While the chemical companies had responsibility and should be held liable, the primary responsibility lies with the U.S. government which ordered the continued use of these poisons” after they were known to be toxic. “Our demand has always been testing, treatment and compensation for Agent Orange victims” by the U.S. government.
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Progress was made with passage of the Agent Orange Act in 1991 admitting that these chemicals cause a long list of diseases, he continued. Unfortunately, David succumbed to his many ailments, primarily directly linked to Agent Orange, before any major laws were enacted, and funds granted to help us all – which we still await. David was a dedicated activist as well as a decorated combat hero. His mission, and his legacy, were and are to make things right and make the US accountable for these and so many other wrongs.
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Judge Jack
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That brings us to recent days. On March 10, 2005 Judge Jack Weinstein of Brooklyn Federal Court dismissed a lawsuit filed by the Vietnamese victims of Agent Orange against producers of chemicals defoliants/herbicides, denying millions to those poisoned by the rainbow defoliants. Good ole boy, Judge Jack Weinstein threw out the lawsuit that was initiated by the VAVOA, rejecting their argument that Agent Orange was a weapon subject to the Geneva Convention and their use against civilians was a war crime. Weinstein held that Agent Orange did not target people in Vietnam but was instead a “defoliant” aimed at Vietnam’s jungle.
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 Judge Jack, please allow us to spray you from head to toe with Dioxin – an eye for an eye? Certainly not. But The Honorable Judge needs to feel it and needs to pass it on to his offspring – then perhaps his head will come out of the sand. And guess who appointed Judge Weinstein? Our old friend and former US President, Lyndon Johnson. Starting to see a pattern evolve here brothers and sisters? Gulf of Tonkin lie and farce – thank the former President for that lie that caused the US to become more deeply involved in the Vietnam War.
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An additional case against the manufacturers filed by US veterans in the mid-1990s was dismissed at the same time. Both dismissals were upheld by an appeals court in 2008 and an appeal of the Vietnamese case to the US Supreme Court was dismissed in March 2009.
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The Recent International Tribunal
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Most recently, an International Tribunal convened in Paris. Rena Kopy, our sister member of the VVAW was selected to represent our organization as well as all of those affected by Agent Orange – US Veterans, allied Veterans as well as the Vietnamese and of course their offspring. The Tribunal, amongst other things, found in our favor:
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The US government is guilty of crimes against humanity for using Agent Orange in Vietnam according to a ruling by the International People’s Tribunal of Conscience announced in Paris on May 18. The verdict, reached after a two-day trial held May 15 - 16, found the US guilty of violating International Law by using Agent Orange to conduct illegal chemical warfare. Millions of gallons of the chemical were sprayed over Vietnam despite knowledge that it contained dioxin, one of the deadliest substances known to science. Dow Chemical, Monsanto, Uniroyal Chemical and 29 other chemical manufacturers were found guilty of collusion with this criminal act.
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After hearing testimony from 27 victims and expert witnesses, the tribunal ruled that Vietnamese Agent Orange victims and their families are entitled to full compensation from the US government and the companies that manufactured and supplied the chemical. The judgment also requires the defendants to restore the environment to pre-war conditions and remove all traces of dioxin from Vietnam. Additionally, it concluded that the Vietnamese State should be compensated for the costs of caring for victims and restoring the environment.
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To implement the verdict, the tribunal advised formation of an Agent Orange Commission to determine the amount of compensation for individual victims as well as their families and communities; to assess the amount needed to provide victims with health care, counseling, and other social services; and to project the cost of studying contaminated areas and conducting clean up operations. The amounts would be paid into a trust fund by the US government and the chemical companies. The defendants were not present at the trial, having ignored the summons and complaint sent to them by the Peoples’ Tribunal.
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The People’s Tribunal was organized to keep the issue of justice for Agent Orange victims alive in the court of international public opinion despite legal roadblocks erected by US courts. The tribunal was formed under auspices of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers, a non-governmental organization of progressive lawyers and judges founded in 1946. The IADL has consultative status with UNESCO and ECOSOC.
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Next Steps
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Indeed a good question and sadly, not an easy one to answer. We must continue our fight, brothers and sisters, and never give up. Write and call your congressional representatives, the press, the President himself. I leave you with this tidbit of information. The US has allocated $3million in funds earmarked for the cleanup of Da Nang and the surrounding area of the former airbase. Earlier this year, President Obama signed a bill allotting $6million in assistance for dioxin cleanup efforts – it’s not clear to me, however, if the $6million includes the original $3million or is an additional $3million to the already allocated $3million. In either case, it’s a pittance of what is really required. 
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Someone please correct me if I am wrong, but Vietnam has not seen a penny of this funding to date. I hope I am wrong, but I can’t find any evidence indicating otherwise. As my good friend and fellow activist who lives here in Vietnam as well, points out to me, the boondoggle that Bush Jr. orchestrated as a “good will” gesture towards the citizens of Vietnam cost the United States a $3million hotel and related expense bill. Thank you Chuck S. for continuing to remind us of that fact – as sad as it is, it's fact.
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The US remains an imperialistic and arrogant country and refuses to admit its wrongs and remain true to its commitments - to its own veterans, our allies, and the people and environment that we so wrongly maimed, killed and destroyed.
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Semper Peace!
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www.VetSpeak.org