Citigroup shareholder meeting rocked by protest

New York City, New York, Apr. 17— Shareholders attending Citigroup’s (Citi) shareholder meeting this morning at Carnegie Hall were greeted by a lively protest with representatives from diverse organizations demanding that Citi go beyond the bottom line and clean up its act on environmental and social abuses worldwide. Student representatives also announced to gathering shareholders that an international Citi credit card boycott has been launched.

Calling Citi “the world’s most destructive bank,” students from national networks also announced their campus campaign to transfer student loan balances away from Citi and to challenge university relationships with the financial institution.

“Students customers are the backbone of the Citigroup machine,” declared Kelly Nagy, member of the Student Environmental Action Coalition. “We are waking up to the company’s environmental track record and policies and proclaiming, ‘Hey Citi, not with my money!’ ”

A broad coalition of groups, including Rainforest Action Network, NY National Organization of Women, Inner City of the Move, and United for A Fair Economy, held a press conference and protests outside of the shareholder meeting at Carnegie Hall this morning.

Today’s event caps a week of protests against Citi’s policies in more than 80 cities in 12 countries and a banner hang at the corporate headquarters yesterday in midtown Manhattan. Growing ranks of students and shareholders are joining the campaign to demand that Citi adopt comprehensive environmental and social criteria throughout their lending and trading business.

“Students are always on the forefront of every social change movement, so it’s no surprise that students are leading the way towards transforming the global financial system,” said Patrick Reinsborough, Organizing Director of the Rainforest Action Network. “Students today understand the connection between Citi’s leading role in rainforest destruction in South America, predatory lending in communities of color in the South Bronx, and sexual harassment in the workplace. They simply will not tolerate their money being put toward this systemic abuse.”

Citi shareholders were also greeted by the upbeat Red Dancing Umbrella Troupe, who co-opted Citi’s corporate logo-with campaign messages, while other protesters handed out custom-made fortune cookies decrying Citi’s environmental and social negligence.

Representatives from Rainforest Action Network on site today pointed to several examples of the company’s involvement in egregious projects, including mining in the fragile Amazon basin and expanding palm plantations in critical habitats of endangered orangutans in Indonesia. Protesters also highlighted Citi’s policies of redlining communities and ‘predatory lending’ in urban areas that disproportionately affect low-income people and target communities of color.

The international campaign targeting Citigroup is working to transform the funding practices of the corporate financial system. Rainforest Action Network calls for an immediate ban on funding development projects that result in the destruction of primary forests worldwide and a prioritization of lending for renewable energies and tree-free lumber and paper alternatives.

Source: Rainforest Action Network: www.ran.org

FCC moves to intensify media consolidation

New York City, New York, Apr. 20— The FCC (Federal Communications Commission) is moving to weaken or eliminate two of the few remaining broadcasting rules that protect some degree of media diversity.

On April 19, the FCC voted 3-1 in favor of eliminating the “dual network” rule, which had prevented one television network from buying another. This rule change will immediately benefit Viacom, which will be allowed to own CBS and part of the UPN network.

The other rule, expected to be lifted or amended in a matter of weeks, is the “cross ownership” rule, which prohibits a company that owns a local newspaper from owning a television station in the same market. Waivers have been granted in the past (Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. owns New York television station WNYW and the New York Post, for example), but watering down or eliminating the rule altogether has long been a goal of industry lobbyists.

This continues an intensely pro-business trend at the FCC, the government agency responsible for managing the broadcast spectrum and regulating the telecommunications industry. Under the impetus of the deregulatory Telecommunications Act of 1996, the FCC has overseen a period of intense corporate mergers. Since the Telecom Act, the number of television station owners in the US has dropped by half, while more than half of the 11,000 commercial radio stations have been sold.

The move to deregulate the media industry continued three years later, as the FCC in August 1999 changed its rules to allow networks to own two television stations in a given market. And last month, FCC chair Michael Powell approved a number of radio mergers that had been marked for public comment by previous Chairman William Kennard. The mergers given the green light by Powell would create local monopolies, where one company would control 50 percent of a given market’s ad revenue, or two companies would control about 70 percent of total ad revenue.

Powell has indicated that the cross ownership rule will fall as well: “I don’t know why there’s something inherent about a newspaper and something inherent about a broadcaster that means they can’t be combined.” Given that US newspapers are overwhelmingly local monopolies, of course, mergers between the newspaper industry and the increasingly concentrated broadcast media would mean a dramatic reduction in media diversity at the local level.

Guarding and protecting the public interest is supposed to be central to the FCC’s mission, but Powell has expressed some confusion about the very concept. When asked in February what he thought the term “public interest” meant, he responded: “I have no idea. The public interest at its core is the same thing as my oath of office: a commitment to making sure the American consumer is benefited.... I try to make the best judgment I can in ways I think will benefit consumers. Beyond that I don’t know. I’m still trying to figure it out.”

Powell is not always so confused about whose interests he represents:

Appearing before the House subcommittee on telecommunications, Powell referred to broadcast corporations as “our clients.” Powell has also mocked the concept of unequal access to technology, often referred to as the digital divide: “I think there is a Mercedes divide,” he said. “I’d like to have one; I can’t afford one.”

The FCC’s actions under Powell are discouraging for those who advocate for media diversity. “Powell has been very clear about his intentions to turn over more and more of the publicly owned broadcast spectrum to already huge media corporations. These moves reaffirm those corporate-friendly principles,” said Jim Naureckas of FAIR. “The FCC’s total lack of interest in protecting Americans as citizens or consumers is shocking and disgraceful.”

Source: Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR): www.fair.org

Report finds one in six US children lives in poverty

By Sue Pleming

Washington, DC— One in six children in America lives in poverty and poor and middle-income families are finding it harder to make ends meet, according to a report released on Thursday.

The Children’s Defense Fund annual “green book” on the state of America’s children, said government poverty figures for 1999 showed over 12 million of America’s children lived below the federal poverty level of $13,290 a year for a three-person family.

“It’s time, it’s time to build a mighty movement for children in the richest and most powerful nation on Earth,” said Marian Wright Edelman, founder of the Children’s Defense Fund, a non-profit pressure group.

The US child poverty rate is roughly twice as high as the rates in Canada and Germany, the report said, and at least six times higher than France, Belgium or Austria.

In an era of unparalleled prosperity, the fund said so many children lived in poverty because of their parents’ low-paying jobs, more single-parent families and a lack of strong government support for low and moderate-income families.

“Parents are in the work force but are not able to earn enough to lift them out of poverty. We need to get people into higher-paying jobs and get them good child care, good health care and other things,” said Susan Martinez, vice president for policy at the fund.

Children living with married parents were far less likely to be poor -- 8.4 percent of children in married-couple families were poor in 1999 compared with 42 percent of all children with a single mother, the report said.

The report said two out of three mothers worked outside the home in March 2000, up from fewer than one in two 20 years ago. The biggest employment rise was among low-income, single mothers, it said, adding that they were spending more and more on child care costs but not earning better wages.

Poor families spent 35 percent of their income on child care compared with 7 percent by richer families, the fund said.

Highlighting a child care crisis in America, the report said nearly 7 million children aged 5 to 14 cared for themselves on a regular basis without any adult supervision while a parent was at work.

Inadequate health care coverage

The report also pointed to inadequate health care coverage for millions of children but said there had been an improvement in recent years. In 1999, 10.8 million children aged 18 and under lacked health coverage, down from 11.9 million in 1998.

Children of color were far more likely to be uninsured, with one out of six black children and one out of four Hispanic children not covered compared with one out of 11 white children. Children in immigrant families, in particular, are likely to lack health coverage and access to health care.

However, the report said there had been some success in immunization programs with 80 percent of 2-year-olds being fully immunized compared to only 55 percent in 1992.

In addition, a drop in juvenile crime rates over the past 15 years was reported, but the arrest rate for girls had risen.

Looking at child welfare statistics, the report said nearly 3 million children were reported abused or neglected each year, and that 40-80 percent were involved in alcohol and substance abuse, yet only one in four received treatment.

The report’s findings regarding education were distressing, with only 31 percent of fourth-graders reading at proficient levels and 2.2 million new teachers needed.

“We’ve sent humans to the moon, spaceships to Mars, cracked the genetic code and amassed tens of billions of dollars from a tiny microchip,” said Edelman. “Why can’t we teach all of our children to read by fourth grade?”

Source: Reuters

Sodexho-Marriott kicked off campus at American University

Apr. 9— The latest of a series of successful student campaigns to kick private prison profiteers off campus has prevailed at American University. In a letter sent via email to all AU students today, Don Myers, Vice President of Finance and Treasurer, announced that the contract with Marriott Food Services will end this year, and that the “social responsibility” of the multinational corporation played an important role in the administration’s decision. Marriott is the parent company of the Correctional Corporation of America (CCA), a private prison conglomerate. On April 10, the university administration at Oberlin College in Ohio announced that they too would end their contract with Marriott Food Services.

“We’ve shown that student activists can hold prison profiteers accountable,” says Adam Choka, who was part of the student effort at AU to dump Marriott. “People who profit off of people’s misery in private prisons will pay a price in lost student meal plan contracts.”

Campaign to rid US campuses of prison profiteers

On March 28, 1998, the French multinational Sodexho Alliance (SA) took over the North American operations of Marriott Management Services from the Marriott Group, making it the largest institutional provider of food services in North America, with $4.5 billion in annual revenues. The merger also tied student meal plans at the nation’s largest college campuses to the incarceration of people for profit, as Sodexho-Marriott owns the largest block of stock in CCA. Private prisons have been condemned for being poorly managed and largely unregulated, while private prison guards are underpaid, unorganized and minimally trained. As a consequence, mistreatment of prisoners and escapes are all too common. In Youngstown, Ohio, mismanagement of DC prisoners has led to a series of scathing reports that have been issued by Congress and local corrections officials.

For the last two years, students across the country have been part of a national campaign to kick Marriott Food Services off their campuses. The Not With Our Money campaign has organized students to reject Marriott meal plans, and has sponsored sit-ins and protests across the United States, Canada, and Europe to compel universities to end their contracts with Marriott.

Info: Not with Our Money Campaign: www.nomoreprisons.org/nwom.htm, or Kevin Pranis at 917-860-4635.

Maryland bans genetically modified fish

By Alex Dominguez

Baltimore, Maryland, Apr. 12— The governor signed a law banning the raising of genetically modified fish unless they are in ponds or lakes that do not connect to other state waterways.

Growers also must ensure that the fish cannot escape by any other means, such as by birds dropping them after plucking them from the water.

The law signed by Gov. Parris Glendening on Tuesday is believed to be the first of its kind in the nation, said its sponsor, Democratic Delegate Dan Morhaim.

Morhaim said Thursday that he believed it was important to pass a law specifically applying to transgenic species — those whose genes have been modified. State law already regulates raising of hybrids of native species, such as rockfish.

“All the laws that have been written have not included the recent ability we’ve acquired to manipulate species genetically,” Morhaim said. “So, I felt it was necessary to be explicit about that part.”

Genetically modified salmon raised in the Pacific Northwest have been released into the wild and are destroying the native species, he said.

“I thought it was time to act to prevent something like this” from happening here, he said.

Source: Associated Press

Update on the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal

Statement of The Mobilization to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal

With Mumia’s life in the balance, May 12 will be a critical day of national and worldwide mobilization to demonstrate the broad support for Mumia’s justice and freedom.

There are some critical issues of which we have recently become fully aware, particularly regarding Mumia’s appeal scenario. If Mumia loses his upcoming appeal before Judge William H. Yohn in the Federal District Court, under the 1996 Effective Death Penalty Act he does not have an automatic right to appeal to the next level, that is, to the US Court of Appeals. He must first receive from Judge Yohn a “certificate of appealability” of Yohn’s own ruling. Without this “certificate” Governor Ridge can immediately issue a third warrant for Mumia’s execution by lethal injection, and Mumia could be murdered shortly thereafter.

Furthermore, we have learned that Judge Yohn is not legally required to grant Mumia a hearing to present oral arguments on his 29 point habeas corpus petition. Yohn can simply issue a written decision and end the matter.

On April 6, Judge Yohn granted Mumia’s request to change legal counsel. However, he only gave Mumia 30 days to do so.

However important these legal matters are, we have long known that Mumia’s freedom does not rest on legal issues alone. In truth, his life is in our hands ... in our capacity to build a massive social movement for justice on his behalf that cannot be denied.

Source: The Mobilization to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal alerts@freemumia.org

ChoicePoint sells personal data to FBI

Washington, DC, Apr. 13— As reported in the Wall Street Journal on April 13, the FBI, the IRS and other government agencies frequently purchase information concerning US citizens from private companies. The Privacy Act of 1974 places restrictions on the collection, use and dissemination of personal information by government agencies only and places no limitations on the private sector. Therefore government agencies have begun to rely on the huge databases that are freely maintained by private companies in order to retrieve information — such as birthdates, Social Security numbers, credit histories, purchasing habits, financial and medical records — that they could not otherwise legally collect.

One of the largest providers of these kinds of services is ChoicePoint, Inc. This publicly-owned company offers easy searching and “look-up” services for government officials. It even maintains customized Web sites for the FBI, the INS and the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

These activities (and its role in the Presidential election controversy in Florida last year) have earned ChoicePoint a special kind of notoriety. At Privacy International’s Big Brother Award ceremony held in Cambridge, MA on March 7, ChoicePoint received the “Greatest Corporate Invader” award “for massive selling of records, accurate and inaccurate, to cops, direct marketers and election officials.” Source: Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC): Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC): www.epic.org