Dayton took on one of the biggest opponents of Affirmative Action to head up DEED--- Mark Phillips a CEO with Krause-Anderson Construction. Now today Dayton is announcing like a billion dollars in in public works funding and Kraus-Anderson will be the general manager on most of these projects with their own CEO Mark Phillips doling out the money without affirmative action being enforced.
I don't know if you have ever been out to any of these public works construction projects here in Minnesota--- even highway and road work--- but they bring in people to operate equipment from Iowa, North and South Dakota, Wisconsin and even as far away as Texas when the law says Affirmative Action plans have to include studies, implementation, enforcement and final reports that people of color, women and the handicapped must be employed if the initial study proves that their are higher levels of unemployment than the average.
We are trying to pull together an interracial statewide committee to challenge this but we won't have a committee set up until well after these bonding proposals are already out. We didn't expect them to push these through so quickly.
All Affirmative Action programs and plans are supposed to be available to the public. I am going to be making the request early next week; it would be helpful if you took your camera/recorder down there and pushed from your end to see the affirmative action plans from both Dayton and Mark Phillips.
With a billion dollars we are talking thousands of jobs people of color, women and the handicapped are entitled to but will never get unless affirmative action is enforced.
Monday, January 31, 2011
A program for real change...
* Peace--- end the wars in Iraq andAfghanistan and shutdown the 800 military bases.
* A National Public Health Care System - ten million new jobs.
* A National Public Child Care System - three to five million new jobs.
* WPA - three million new jobs.
* CCC - two million new jobs.
* Tax the hell out of the rich and cut the military budget by ending the wars to pay for it all which will create full employment.
* Enforce Affirmative Action; end discrimination.
* Raise the minimum wage to a real living wage
* What tax-payers subsidize in the way of businesses, tax-payers should own and reap the profits from.
* Moratorium on home foreclosures and evictions.
* Wall Street is our enemy
* A National Public Health Care System - ten million new jobs.
* A National Public Child Care System - three to five million new jobs.
* WPA - three million new jobs.
* CCC - two million new jobs.
* Tax the hell out of the rich and cut the military budget by ending the wars to pay for it all which will create full employment.
* Enforce Affirmative Action; end discrimination.
* Raise the minimum wage to a real living wage
* What tax-payers subsidize in the way of businesses, tax-payers should own and reap the profits from.
* Moratorium on home foreclosures and evictions.
* Wall Street is our enemy
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Obama and the Republicans have joined hands to destroy Social Security
Obama and the Republicans have joined hands to destroy Social Security
This is from some discussions I have had with people on FaceBook and in my travels---
Michael, I kind of agree with you and disagree with you. I'll give you my reason (just thinking out loud here; let me know what you think--- others, too).
Social Security was envisioned by Frances Perkins, FDR's Secretary of Labor and the people's movement she took her positions from, thinking that Social Security would be a constantly evolving program continuing to make life better for people--- and it has done this to a great extent but it really hasn't "blossomed" in comparison to an increase in wealth created.
Hence, I agree that removing the "cap" on Social Security is needed--- no matter what else is done--- because it is another way to "tax the rich" as part of wealth redistribution which would really provide greater funds to expand the programs offered by Social Security rather than "stabilize" (or increase) Social Security's actual "pension payouts," which I think needs to be accomplished through:
1. Full employment;
2. A substantial upwards push in wages (more pay; more Social Security tax); and
3. Tying the minimum wage to a real living wage based upon real cost of living factors.
In fact, Social Security payouts should have been tied to real cost of living factors long ago not these phony "increases" that only assure pensioners become poor. In fact, the elderly are now being used as a huge pool of cheap labor to depress wages on a nationwide basis.
If there was full employment, this full employment itself would be a lever pushing wages constantly up resulting in very substantial increases in Social Security payroll taxes... the more wealth created by workers returned to workers in turn not only stabilizes the Social Security fund but enables larger payouts and program expansion.
Obama, the Democrats and the Republicans are moving in the direct opposite direction on all fronts when it comes to Social Security because they want to push workers back into the workforce until the day they die as a huge pool of very cheap labor... after all, if you are already getting a Social Security check plus you have to work, this miserly Social Security check is actually subsidizing the wages for some casino management, Wal-mart, McDonalds or the local convenience store/gas station.
The attack on Social Security is intended to create a massive vicious cycle designed to put in motion what is always Wall Street's PRIMARY agenda--- pushing wages down.
Follow the cycle through with the elderly being forced back into the workforce and this delays entry into the workforce of young workers--- thereby creating another huge pool of impoverished workers "hungry"for employment no matter how low the wages no matter how many jobs they have to work or how many hours they have to work every week.
We already see how this is playing out.
I can assure you that if you walk into any Wal-mart and go up to any "associate" they will tell you Wal-mart restricts their hours to far less than forty hours and their pay is far less than a living wage so they are working a second or even third job with each of those jobs fewer hours with less pay.
I know people working at Wal-mart who work other jobs for a total up to 16 and even 19 hours a day and they still qualify for Food Stamps! If they qualify for Food Stamps what are these people and the employers paying into the Social Security fund?
At the same time as workers are being impoverished (not receiving the wealth they are producing), we have a small minority amassing this tremendous wealth stolen from labor.
To my way of thinking, if the picture I have provided is correct, then these three steps are crucial to saving Social Security:
1. Full employment;
2. A substantial upwards push in wages (more pay; more Social Security tax); and
3. Tying the minimum wage to a real living wage based upon real cost of living factors.
Removing the "cap" would only be "icing on the cake" providing for expanded programs but do very little to keeping the Social Security system solvent but improve and expand the benefits.
I seriously doubt that removing the "cap" on Social Security can significantly aid in stabilizing the Social Security system or significantly increase benefits--- even if the "cap" were removed at say $50,000.00 with a steeply progressive increase on the highest incomes because their simply aren't enough people to tax at these levels.
The other thing that many people suggest is that the wealthy should not be entitled to Social Security to begin with; but, then this is no longer a "universal" social program and we all know what would happen if the reactionaries started running with this approach.
There is every indication that U6 unemployment at around 15% is the "new normal" and acceptable level of unemployment in this country by Wall Street, organized labor and the government--- even the AFL-CIO leadership is apparently willing to accept this as the "new normal" since all of their recommended "job creation programs" are aimed at "stabilizing" unemployment at 15% and Richard Trumka has signed a letter of agreement with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in supporting Obama's "job creation program" that accepts 15% unemployment.
I seriously doubt--- although I have not seen any calculations--- that Social Security can survive another three decades with unemployment at 15% no matter if you remove its "cap."
Social Security was envisioned by Frances Perkins, FDR's Secretary of Labor and the people's movement she took her positions from, thinking that Social Security would be a constantly evolving program continuing to make life better for people--- and it has done this to a great extent but it really hasn't "blossomed" in comparison to an increase in wealth created.
Hence, I agree that removing the "cap" on Social Security is needed--- no matter what else is done--- because it is another way to "tax the rich" as part of wealth redistribution which would really provide greater funds to expand the programs offered by Social Security rather than "stabilize" (or increase) Social Security's actual "pension payouts," which I think needs to be accomplished through:
1. Full employment;
2. A substantial upwards push in wages (more pay; more Social Security tax); and
3. Tying the minimum wage to a real living wage based upon real cost of living factors.
In fact, Social Security payouts should have been tied to real cost of living factors long ago not these phony "increases" that only assure pensioners become poor. In fact, the elderly are now being used as a huge pool of cheap labor to depress wages on a nationwide basis.
If there was full employment, this full employment itself would be a lever pushing wages constantly up resulting in very substantial increases in Social Security payroll taxes... the more wealth created by workers returned to workers in turn not only stabilizes the Social Security fund but enables larger payouts and program expansion.
Obama, the Democrats and the Republicans are moving in the direct opposite direction on all fronts when it comes to Social Security because they want to push workers back into the workforce until the day they die as a huge pool of very cheap labor... after all, if you are already getting a Social Security check plus you have to work, this miserly Social Security check is actually subsidizing the wages for some casino management, Wal-mart, McDonalds or the local convenience store/gas station.
The attack on Social Security is intended to create a massive vicious cycle designed to put in motion what is always Wall Street's PRIMARY agenda--- pushing wages down.
Follow the cycle through with the elderly being forced back into the workforce and this delays entry into the workforce of young workers--- thereby creating another huge pool of impoverished workers "hungry"for employment no matter how low the wages no matter how many jobs they have to work or how many hours they have to work every week.
We already see how this is playing out.
I can assure you that if you walk into any Wal-mart and go up to any "associate" they will tell you Wal-mart restricts their hours to far less than forty hours and their pay is far less than a living wage so they are working a second or even third job with each of those jobs fewer hours with less pay.
I know people working at Wal-mart who work other jobs for a total up to 16 and even 19 hours a day and they still qualify for Food Stamps! If they qualify for Food Stamps what are these people and the employers paying into the Social Security fund?
At the same time as workers are being impoverished (not receiving the wealth they are producing), we have a small minority amassing this tremendous wealth stolen from labor.
To my way of thinking, if the picture I have provided is correct, then these three steps are crucial to saving Social Security:
1. Full employment;
2. A substantial upwards push in wages (more pay; more Social Security tax); and
3. Tying the minimum wage to a real living wage based upon real cost of living factors.
Removing the "cap" would only be "icing on the cake" providing for expanded programs but do very little to keeping the Social Security system solvent but improve and expand the benefits.
I seriously doubt that removing the "cap" on Social Security can significantly aid in stabilizing the Social Security system or significantly increase benefits--- even if the "cap" were removed at say $50,000.00 with a steeply progressive increase on the highest incomes because their simply aren't enough people to tax at these levels.
The other thing that many people suggest is that the wealthy should not be entitled to Social Security to begin with; but, then this is no longer a "universal" social program and we all know what would happen if the reactionaries started running with this approach.
There is every indication that U6 unemployment at around 15% is the "new normal" and acceptable level of unemployment in this country by Wall Street, organized labor and the government--- even the AFL-CIO leadership is apparently willing to accept this as the "new normal" since all of their recommended "job creation programs" are aimed at "stabilizing" unemployment at 15% and Richard Trumka has signed a letter of agreement with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in supporting Obama's "job creation program" that accepts 15% unemployment.
I seriously doubt--- although I have not seen any calculations--- that Social Security can survive another three decades with unemployment at 15% no matter if you remove its "cap."
Monday, January 24, 2011
Where is the alternative program from the left?
Alan L. Maki
The left has been very slow to bring forward a program and platform that liberals can relate to. The majority of the working class is "liberal thinking." I think many on the left like Hedges tend to confuse "neo-liberalism" with "liberalism" and there is no kind of association between the two. The labor leaders Hedges refers to are "neo-liberals" not liberals... ditto for the Democratic Party.
Liberals are not the enemy. They are liberals because for one reason or another they are not acting on their liberal thoughts.
The left, on its own, is far too small to do anything on its own other than be a catalyst for change... at the point where liberals agree with leftists to act on the ideas we share we get a progressive movement/s.
It was such mass progressive movements that won the New Deal reforms of the 1930's and the important Civil Rights legislation of the 1960's.
Hedges gets away with this because it has been "New Left" thinking, which rejects "liberalism," that has dominated our movements for far too long.
Ironically, it has been many of the "gurus" of the New Left who reject liberals who have become the biggest supporters of the NEO-LIBERAL Barack Obama... but, turning so far left as Hedges does to make enemies of our liberal friends will not move us any further along the road to peace, social and economic justice and socialism.
I hope we get some real discussion on this... I might be wrong but I don't think I am and I welcome Hedges and his supporters to challenge me by explaining how the left is going to stop Obama and Wall Street and turn this country around.
A short while ago, Hedges seemed to lament and regret the demise of the Communist Party and the many united fronts and unions it led as part of "the people's front."
It is very unfortunate that a small group of right opportunists most likely employed by the FBI as part of its COINTELPRO operation, have hi-jacked the Communist Party USA but we are trying to correct this. In the meantime left wing people are going to have to muddle through this Wall Street assault on the world through wars and austerity at home by organizing some kind of socialist study and political action clubs in their neighborhoods, where they work and go to school.
For the open-minded on the left who aren't afraid to read the ideas of someone who has been viciously attacked from the left and the right I suggest they check out a book by the architect of the "people's front," Earl Browder, who wrote a book by the same name, "The People's Front." This book was the most widely read book among workers and farmers seeking real change. The Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party built the most powerful political organization that ever existed in the United States around the ideas embodied in this book... you can get the book through Internet used booksellers or order it through your local library usually through inter-library loan programs.
Liberals are not the enemy. They are liberals because for one reason or another they are not acting on their liberal thoughts.
The left, on its own, is far too small to do anything on its own other than be a catalyst for change... at the point where liberals agree with leftists to act on the ideas we share we get a progressive movement/s.
It was such mass progressive movements that won the New Deal reforms of the 1930's and the important Civil Rights legislation of the 1960's.
Hedges gets away with this because it has been "New Left" thinking, which rejects "liberalism," that has dominated our movements for far too long.
Ironically, it has been many of the "gurus" of the New Left who reject liberals who have become the biggest supporters of the NEO-LIBERAL Barack Obama... but, turning so far left as Hedges does to make enemies of our liberal friends will not move us any further along the road to peace, social and economic justice and socialism.
I hope we get some real discussion on this... I might be wrong but I don't think I am and I welcome Hedges and his supporters to challenge me by explaining how the left is going to stop Obama and Wall Street and turn this country around.
A short while ago, Hedges seemed to lament and regret the demise of the Communist Party and the many united fronts and unions it led as part of "the people's front."
It is very unfortunate that a small group of right opportunists most likely employed by the FBI as part of its COINTELPRO operation, have hi-jacked the Communist Party USA but we are trying to correct this. In the meantime left wing people are going to have to muddle through this Wall Street assault on the world through wars and austerity at home by organizing some kind of socialist study and political action clubs in their neighborhoods, where they work and go to school.
For the open-minded on the left who aren't afraid to read the ideas of someone who has been viciously attacked from the left and the right I suggest they check out a book by the architect of the "people's front," Earl Browder, who wrote a book by the same name, "The People's Front." This book was the most widely read book among workers and farmers seeking real change. The Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party built the most powerful political organization that ever existed in the United States around the ideas embodied in this book... you can get the book through Internet used booksellers or order it through your local library usually through inter-library loan programs.
Friday, January 21, 2011
China U.S. relations by Sidney Gluck
Dear colleagues,
There are discussions and negotiations going on between the US and China as a result of the US superpower turning on the military developments on both sides, even though China, in its planned economy, has maintained a purely defensive budget to protect its territory and now appears to be expanding its defenses to include the China Seas. This has been provoked by free movements of military naval ships in the waters, which includes getting Vietnam to allow all ships to stop in their ports.
The development of a bi-polar world in this century is inevitable because of the rise of China as an economic power and not in the direction of emulating superpower, which includes massive military arms and aggression. China never sent a soldier out of its country in five thousand years (with two weeks of exception in 1957 which were withdrawn under the direction of the UN). The main difference between the two countries lies in their economic structuring. In the United States, it all depends on investments based upon profitability for individual capitalist enterprises. On the other hand, in China, the economic development of the country is based upon a national plan, in 5-year divisions, and overrides all investments and social expenditures. These really are two kinds of economies. One, in fact, has made the military a major factor in its own productivity while neglecting industrial development for its citizens. In China, it is quite the opposite and will continue to be that way in the hopes that the current conference that is taking place, which was projected by the April 2nd, 2010 annual budget of the Pentagon, will be harnessed and bring sensibility and diplomacy to US-China relations, notwithstanding national differences.
The President of China is, at this moment, in conference with President Obama (we believe in order to develop diplomatic arrangements to deal with economic differences and avoid military conflict). In this regard, we have just received the Beijing Review, which contains two articles that will clearly introduce you to China’s economic plans. The subjects are “Mapping A Steady Course” and “A New Way To Trade”. We are sending you copies and would appreciate you comments.
Sincerely,
Sidney Gluck
Click HERE to view “A New Way To Trade” at
Click HERE to view “Mapping A Steady Course” at
The Real Economic Lesson China Could Teach Us
The Real Economic Lesson China Could Teach Us
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Highlighting today’s summit between Chinese President Hu Jintao and President Obama is China’s agreement to buy $45 billion of American exports. The President says this will create more American jobs. That’s not exactly right. It will create more profits for American companies but relatively few new jobs.
Nearly half of the deal is for two hundred Boeing aircraft whose parts come from all over the world. The rest involves agricultural commodities that don’t require much U.S. labor because American agribusiness is highly automated, and chemical and high-tech goods that are even less labor-intensive.
General Electric and other companies are signing up for deals with China involving energy and aviation manufacturing. But much of this will be done in China. GE’s joint venture with Aviation Industries of China, to develop new integrated avionics systems (which presumably will find their way into Boeing planes) will be based in Shanghai.
Here’s the real story. China has a national economic strategy designed to make it, and its people, the economic powerhouse of the future. They’re intent on learning as much as they can from us and then going beyond us (as they already are in solar and electric-battery technologies). They’re pouring money into basic research and education at all levels. In the last 12 years they’ve built twenty universities, each designed to be the equivalent of MIT.
Their goal is to make China Number one in power and prestige, and in high-wage jobs.
The United States doesn’t have a national economic strategy. Instead, we have global corporations that happen to be headquartered here. Their goal is to maximize profits, wherever they can make the most money.
They’ll make things in America for export to China when that’s most profitable; they’ll make it in China and give the Chinese their know-how when that’s the best way to boost the bottom line. They’ll utilize research and development wherever around the world it will deliver the biggest bang for the dollar.
Meanwhile, Republicans and deficit hawks are cutting publicly-supported R&D. And cash-starved states are cutting K-12 education, and slashing the budgets of their great public research universities, such as the one I teach at.
No contest.
And no hyped-up trade deals are going to change this fundamental imbalance.
Some say all we need to do is put our currencies in better balance. But even if the Chinese upped the value of the yuan and the US (courtesy of the Fed) reduced the value of the dollar – so everything they bought from us was cheaper and everything we bought from them, far more expensive – they’d still win. We’d have more jobs than now because our exports would be more attractive in world markets, but those jobs would summon fewer goods from around the world. In other words, we’d be poorer.
Let’s get real. We’re losing ground. The U.S. labor force is now smaller than it was before the Great Recession began and most American families are worse off. December’s unemployment rate dropped to 9.4 percent from 9.8 percent but almost half the improvement was due to 260,000 people dropping out of the labor force.
Average hourly wages grew by three cents in December; weekly wages, by $1.02. And almost all the gains in income occurred at the top. The major assets of rich Americans are financial – whose values have increased as corporate profits have grown. The major assets of the middle-class asset are their homes, whose values continue to drop.
The President now says the answer is to help American business. “We can’t succeed unless American businesses succeed,” he said recently. “And I’m going to do everything I can to promote their ability to grow and prosper.”
But the prosperity of America’s big businesses has become disconnected from the prosperity of most Americans.
Republicans say the answer is to reduce the size and scope of government. But without a government that’s focused on more and better jobs, we’re left with global corporations that don’t give a damn.
China is eating our lunch. Why? It has a national economic strategy designed to create more and better jobs. We have global corporations designed to make money for shareholders.
Nearly half of the deal is for two hundred Boeing aircraft whose parts come from all over the world. The rest involves agricultural commodities that don’t require much U.S. labor because American agribusiness is highly automated, and chemical and high-tech goods that are even less labor-intensive.
General Electric and other companies are signing up for deals with China involving energy and aviation manufacturing. But much of this will be done in China. GE’s joint venture with Aviation Industries of China, to develop new integrated avionics systems (which presumably will find their way into Boeing planes) will be based in Shanghai.
Here’s the real story. China has a national economic strategy designed to make it, and its people, the economic powerhouse of the future. They’re intent on learning as much as they can from us and then going beyond us (as they already are in solar and electric-battery technologies). They’re pouring money into basic research and education at all levels. In the last 12 years they’ve built twenty universities, each designed to be the equivalent of MIT.
Their goal is to make China Number one in power and prestige, and in high-wage jobs.
The United States doesn’t have a national economic strategy. Instead, we have global corporations that happen to be headquartered here. Their goal is to maximize profits, wherever they can make the most money.
They’ll make things in America for export to China when that’s most profitable; they’ll make it in China and give the Chinese their know-how when that’s the best way to boost the bottom line. They’ll utilize research and development wherever around the world it will deliver the biggest bang for the dollar.
Meanwhile, Republicans and deficit hawks are cutting publicly-supported R&D. And cash-starved states are cutting K-12 education, and slashing the budgets of their great public research universities, such as the one I teach at.
No contest.
And no hyped-up trade deals are going to change this fundamental imbalance.
Some say all we need to do is put our currencies in better balance. But even if the Chinese upped the value of the yuan and the US (courtesy of the Fed) reduced the value of the dollar – so everything they bought from us was cheaper and everything we bought from them, far more expensive – they’d still win. We’d have more jobs than now because our exports would be more attractive in world markets, but those jobs would summon fewer goods from around the world. In other words, we’d be poorer.
Let’s get real. We’re losing ground. The U.S. labor force is now smaller than it was before the Great Recession began and most American families are worse off. December’s unemployment rate dropped to 9.4 percent from 9.8 percent but almost half the improvement was due to 260,000 people dropping out of the labor force.
Average hourly wages grew by three cents in December; weekly wages, by $1.02. And almost all the gains in income occurred at the top. The major assets of rich Americans are financial – whose values have increased as corporate profits have grown. The major assets of the middle-class asset are their homes, whose values continue to drop.
The President now says the answer is to help American business. “We can’t succeed unless American businesses succeed,” he said recently. “And I’m going to do everything I can to promote their ability to grow and prosper.”
But the prosperity of America’s big businesses has become disconnected from the prosperity of most Americans.
Republicans say the answer is to reduce the size and scope of government. But without a government that’s focused on more and better jobs, we’re left with global corporations that don’t give a damn.
China is eating our lunch. Why? It has a national economic strategy designed to create more and better jobs. We have global corporations designed to make money for shareholders.
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Milton Rogovin, Photographer, Dies at 101
Milton Rogovin, Photographer, Dies at 101
by Benjamin Genocchio
New York Times
January 18, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/19/arts/design/19rogovin.html
Milton Rogovin, an optometrist and persecuted leftist who
took up photography as a way to champion the underprivileged
and went on to become one of America's most dedicated social
documentarians, died on Tuesday at his home in Buffalo. He
was 101.
He died of natural causes, his son, Mark Rogovin, said.
Mr. Rogovin chronicled the lives of the urban poor and
working classes in Buffalo, Appalachia and elsewhere for
more than 50 years. His direct photographic style in stark
black and white evokes the socially minded work that Walker
Evans, Dorothea Lange and Gordon Parks produced for the Farm
Security Administration during the Depression. Today his
entire archive resides in the Library of Congress.
Mr. Rogovin (pronounced ruh-GO-vin) came to wide notice in
1962 after documenting storefront church services on
Buffalo's poor and predominantly African-American East Side.
The images were published in Aperture magazine with an
introduction by W. E. B. Du Bois, who described them as
"astonishingly human and appealing."
He went on to photograph Buffalo's impoverished Lower West
Side and American Indians on reservations in the Buffalo
area. He traveled to West Virginia and Kentucky to
photograph miners, returning to Appalachia each summer with
his wife, Anne Rogovin, into the early 1970s. In the '60s he
went to Chile at the invitation of the poet Pablo Neruda to
photograph the landscape and the people. The two
collaborated on a book, "Windows That Open Inward: Images of
Chile."
In a 1976 review of a Rogovin show of photographs from
Buffalo at the International Center of Photography in
Manhattan, the critic Hilton Kramer wrote of Mr. Rogovin in
The New York Times: "He sees something else in the life of
this neighborhood - ordinary pleasures and pastimes,
relaxation, warmth of feeling and the fundamentals of social
connection. He takes his pictures from the inside, so to
speak, concentrating on family life, neighborhood business,
celebrations, romance, recreation and the particulars of
individuals' existence."
Milton Rogovin was born on Dec. 30, 1909, in Brooklyn, the
third of three sons of Jewish immigrant parents from
Lithuania. His parents, Jacob Rogovin and the former Dora
Shainhouse, operated a dry goods business, first in
Manhattan on Park Avenue near 112th Street and later in the
Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn. After attending Stuyvesant
High School in Manhattan, the young Mr. Rogovin graduated
from Columbia University in 1931 with a degree in optometry;
four months later, after the family had lost the store and
its home to bankruptcy during the Depression, his father
died of a heart attack.
Working as an optometrist in Manhattan, Mr. Rogovin became
increasingly distressed at the plight of the poor and
unemployed - "the forgotten ones," he called them - and
increasingly involved in leftist political causes.
"I was a product of the Great Depression, and what I saw and
experienced myself made me politically active," he said in a
1994 interview with The New York Times.
He began attending classes sponsored by the Communist Party-
run New York Workers School, began to read the Communist
newspaper The Daily Worker and was introduced to the social-
documentary photographs of Jacob Riis and Lewis Hine.
Mr. Rogovin moved to Buffalo in 1938 and opened his own
optometric office on Chippewa Street the next year,
providing service to union workers. In 1942 he married Anne
Snetsky before volunteering for the Army and serving for
three years in England, where he worked as an optometrist.
Also in 1942, he bought a camera.
Returning to Buffalo after the war (his brother Sam, also an
optometrist, managed the practice in his absence), Mr.
Rogovin joined the local chapter of the Optical Workers
Union and served as librarian for the Buffalo branch of the
Communist Party.
In 1957, with cold war anti-Communism rife in the United
States, he was called before the House Un-American
Activities Committee but refused to testify. Soon afterward,
The Buffalo Evening News labeled him "Buffalo's Number One
Red," and he and his family were ostracized. With his
business all but ruined by the publicity, he began to fill
time by taking pictures, focusing on Buffalo's poor and
dispossessed in the neighborhood around his practice while
living on his wife's salary as a teacher and being mentored
by the photographer Minor White.
His wife, a special education teacher, was a collaborator
throughout his career and helped him organize his
photographs until her death, in 2003.
Mr. Rogovin's photographs were typically naturalistic
portraits of people he met on the street. "The first six
months were very difficult," he recalled in a 2003
interview, "because they thought I was from the police
department or the F.B.I."
But he gradually built trust, giving away prints of
portraits in exchange for sittings. He never told his
subjects what to do, allowing them to pose in settings and
clothing of their own choosing.
"These aren't cool sociological renderings but intensely
personal evocations of a world whose faces are often missing
in a culture that celebrates the beautiful and the
powerful," Julie Salamon wrote in The Times in 2003 on the
occasion of a Rogovin exhibition at the New-York Historical
Society.
Mr. Rogovin began his Storefront Church series in 1961 at
the invitation of a friend, William Tallmadge, a professor
of music at the State University of New York at Buffalo who
was making recordings at a black church on the city's East
Side. The success of the series encouraged Mr. Rogovin to
devote more and more time to photography and persuaded him
that photography could be an instrument of social change.
In 1972 he earned a Master of Arts in American studies from
the University at Buffalo, where he taught documentary
photography from 1972 to 1974. The next year he held his
first major exhibition, at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in
Buffalo.
In the next years his photographs were published in several
books and widely exhibited; a show of his work is currently
on view at the Gage Gallery in Chicago. Many are in the
collections of museums, including the Bibliothèque Nationale
in Paris, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the J. Paul
Getty Museum in Los Angeles and the Victoria and Albert
Museum in London. The Library of Congress acquired his
archive in 1999.
In addition to his son, of Forest Park, Ill., Mr. Rogovin is
survived by two daughters, Ellen Rogovin Hart of Melrose
Park, Pa., and Paula Rogovin of Teaneck, N.J.; five
grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.
In his later years, as his health declined, Mr. Rogovin used
a wheelchair and no longer took photographs. In 2009 he was
nominated for a National Medal of Arts but was not selected.
His activism, however, was undimmed - he attended political
rallies and antiwar protests into his final years - and his
social conscience remained acute.
"All my life I've focused on the poor," he said in 2003.
"The rich ones have their own photographers."
==========
The Working-Class Eye of Milton Rogovin
January 20 - June 30, 2011
Gage Gallery
Monday - Friday, 9-6 p.m., Saturday, 10-4 p.m.
Roosevelt University
18 S. Michigan Ave.
Chicago
Opening Reception with
Presentation by Mark Rogovin
Thursday, Jan. 20, 5 - 8 p.m.
For a full calendar of exhibit events:
www.roosevelt.edu/gagegallery
Gage Gallery exhibit featuring photography by Milton Rogovin
opens Thursday on heels of 101-year-old Rogovin's death
Posted: 01/18/2011
http://www.roosevelt.edu/News_and_Events/News_Articles/20110104-MiltonRogovin.aspx
A one-of-a-kind, vintage photo exhibit that tells compelling
stories about work and working-class people through the eyes
of renowned photographer Milton Rogovin opens Thursday, Jan.
20 at Roosevelt University's Gage Gallery, 18 S. Michigan
Ave., Chicago.
Renown for his photography chronicling work and workers from
around the world, Rogovin, 101, died Tuesday at his home in
Buffalo, NY. Read the New York Times obituary to learn
more about this celebrated artist and photographer.
The debut exhibit, The Working-Class Eye of Milton Rogovin,
features some striking images of workers from the
photographer's collection that have never been seen before
by the public. An opening night reception for the exhibit
will be held at 5 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 20 at the Gage
Gallery.
"Milton Rogovin is known all over the world for his
photography of working-class people," said Roosevelt
University Professor and Gage Gallery Director Michael
Ensdorf of Rogovin, who is frequently compared to the great
social documentary photographers of the 19th and 20th
centuries.
Born in 1909 in New York City, Rogovin went to Buffalo, New
York, for work as an optometrist. Involved in political work
as well, Rogovin looked to socialism as a model for
improving the lot of workers and was called before the House
Unamerican Activities Committee in 1957. As a result of
this, Rogovin's business dwindled and he decided to pursue
photography as a means to express the worth and dignity of
people who make their livings under modest and difficult
circumstances.
"Over the years, people have asked permission to show
specific series of my father's work or they have said, `You
decide what you want exhibited," said Mark Rogovin, son of
the documentary photographer. "This show is different and
very exciting for my family because it is one of those rare
times when organizers of a show took the time to choose the
images themselves and to exhibit them uniquely through the
lens of the working-class eye."
Rogovin opened his father's vast collection to Ensdorf, who
curated the new exhibit, in consultation with Roosevelt
labor historians Erik Gellman and Jack Metzgar. The three
Roosevelt professors spent more than four months sifting
through more than 1,000 photos of working-class people taken
by Rogovin during the last half century in order to present
the exhibit that is unlike any previous Rogovin show.
Sponsored by Roosevelt's College of Arts and Sciences, the
Chicago Center for Working-Class Studies and the Labor and
Working-Class History Association, the exhibit will run
through June 30. It is made possible by the generous
financial support of Roosevelt alumna Susan B. Rubnitz.
Exhibit viewing hours are from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Mondays
through Fridays and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturdays. For more
information, visit www.roosevelt.edu/gagegallery.
Opened in 2000, Roosevelt University's Gage Gallery is
Chicago's premier space for social documentary photography.
Located in the heart of downtown Chicago and across the
street from Millennium Park, the gallery hosts a number of
free, educational exhibits annually, and two of its recent
exhibits - Eugene Richards' A Procession of Them: The Plight
of the Mentally Disabled and Documenting the Global
Recession have been rated among the top five documentary
photography shows exhibited in 2010 in Chicago by New City
magazine.
by Benjamin Genocchio
New York Times
January 18, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/19/arts/design/19rogovin.html
Milton Rogovin, an optometrist and persecuted leftist who
took up photography as a way to champion the underprivileged
and went on to become one of America's most dedicated social
documentarians, died on Tuesday at his home in Buffalo. He
was 101.
He died of natural causes, his son, Mark Rogovin, said.
Mr. Rogovin chronicled the lives of the urban poor and
working classes in Buffalo, Appalachia and elsewhere for
more than 50 years. His direct photographic style in stark
black and white evokes the socially minded work that Walker
Evans, Dorothea Lange and Gordon Parks produced for the Farm
Security Administration during the Depression. Today his
entire archive resides in the Library of Congress.
Mr. Rogovin (pronounced ruh-GO-vin) came to wide notice in
1962 after documenting storefront church services on
Buffalo's poor and predominantly African-American East Side.
The images were published in Aperture magazine with an
introduction by W. E. B. Du Bois, who described them as
"astonishingly human and appealing."
He went on to photograph Buffalo's impoverished Lower West
Side and American Indians on reservations in the Buffalo
area. He traveled to West Virginia and Kentucky to
photograph miners, returning to Appalachia each summer with
his wife, Anne Rogovin, into the early 1970s. In the '60s he
went to Chile at the invitation of the poet Pablo Neruda to
photograph the landscape and the people. The two
collaborated on a book, "Windows That Open Inward: Images of
Chile."
In a 1976 review of a Rogovin show of photographs from
Buffalo at the International Center of Photography in
Manhattan, the critic Hilton Kramer wrote of Mr. Rogovin in
The New York Times: "He sees something else in the life of
this neighborhood - ordinary pleasures and pastimes,
relaxation, warmth of feeling and the fundamentals of social
connection. He takes his pictures from the inside, so to
speak, concentrating on family life, neighborhood business,
celebrations, romance, recreation and the particulars of
individuals' existence."
Milton Rogovin was born on Dec. 30, 1909, in Brooklyn, the
third of three sons of Jewish immigrant parents from
Lithuania. His parents, Jacob Rogovin and the former Dora
Shainhouse, operated a dry goods business, first in
Manhattan on Park Avenue near 112th Street and later in the
Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn. After attending Stuyvesant
High School in Manhattan, the young Mr. Rogovin graduated
from Columbia University in 1931 with a degree in optometry;
four months later, after the family had lost the store and
its home to bankruptcy during the Depression, his father
died of a heart attack.
Working as an optometrist in Manhattan, Mr. Rogovin became
increasingly distressed at the plight of the poor and
unemployed - "the forgotten ones," he called them - and
increasingly involved in leftist political causes.
"I was a product of the Great Depression, and what I saw and
experienced myself made me politically active," he said in a
1994 interview with The New York Times.
He began attending classes sponsored by the Communist Party-
run New York Workers School, began to read the Communist
newspaper The Daily Worker and was introduced to the social-
documentary photographs of Jacob Riis and Lewis Hine.
Mr. Rogovin moved to Buffalo in 1938 and opened his own
optometric office on Chippewa Street the next year,
providing service to union workers. In 1942 he married Anne
Snetsky before volunteering for the Army and serving for
three years in England, where he worked as an optometrist.
Also in 1942, he bought a camera.
Returning to Buffalo after the war (his brother Sam, also an
optometrist, managed the practice in his absence), Mr.
Rogovin joined the local chapter of the Optical Workers
Union and served as librarian for the Buffalo branch of the
Communist Party.
In 1957, with cold war anti-Communism rife in the United
States, he was called before the House Un-American
Activities Committee but refused to testify. Soon afterward,
The Buffalo Evening News labeled him "Buffalo's Number One
Red," and he and his family were ostracized. With his
business all but ruined by the publicity, he began to fill
time by taking pictures, focusing on Buffalo's poor and
dispossessed in the neighborhood around his practice while
living on his wife's salary as a teacher and being mentored
by the photographer Minor White.
His wife, a special education teacher, was a collaborator
throughout his career and helped him organize his
photographs until her death, in 2003.
Mr. Rogovin's photographs were typically naturalistic
portraits of people he met on the street. "The first six
months were very difficult," he recalled in a 2003
interview, "because they thought I was from the police
department or the F.B.I."
But he gradually built trust, giving away prints of
portraits in exchange for sittings. He never told his
subjects what to do, allowing them to pose in settings and
clothing of their own choosing.
"These aren't cool sociological renderings but intensely
personal evocations of a world whose faces are often missing
in a culture that celebrates the beautiful and the
powerful," Julie Salamon wrote in The Times in 2003 on the
occasion of a Rogovin exhibition at the New-York Historical
Society.
Mr. Rogovin began his Storefront Church series in 1961 at
the invitation of a friend, William Tallmadge, a professor
of music at the State University of New York at Buffalo who
was making recordings at a black church on the city's East
Side. The success of the series encouraged Mr. Rogovin to
devote more and more time to photography and persuaded him
that photography could be an instrument of social change.
In 1972 he earned a Master of Arts in American studies from
the University at Buffalo, where he taught documentary
photography from 1972 to 1974. The next year he held his
first major exhibition, at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in
Buffalo.
In the next years his photographs were published in several
books and widely exhibited; a show of his work is currently
on view at the Gage Gallery in Chicago. Many are in the
collections of museums, including the Bibliothèque Nationale
in Paris, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the J. Paul
Getty Museum in Los Angeles and the Victoria and Albert
Museum in London. The Library of Congress acquired his
archive in 1999.
In addition to his son, of Forest Park, Ill., Mr. Rogovin is
survived by two daughters, Ellen Rogovin Hart of Melrose
Park, Pa., and Paula Rogovin of Teaneck, N.J.; five
grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.
In his later years, as his health declined, Mr. Rogovin used
a wheelchair and no longer took photographs. In 2009 he was
nominated for a National Medal of Arts but was not selected.
His activism, however, was undimmed - he attended political
rallies and antiwar protests into his final years - and his
social conscience remained acute.
"All my life I've focused on the poor," he said in 2003.
"The rich ones have their own photographers."
==========
The Working-Class Eye of Milton Rogovin
January 20 - June 30, 2011
Gage Gallery
Monday - Friday, 9-6 p.m., Saturday, 10-4 p.m.
Roosevelt University
18 S. Michigan Ave.
Chicago
Opening Reception with
Presentation by Mark Rogovin
Thursday, Jan. 20, 5 - 8 p.m.
For a full calendar of exhibit events:
www.roosevelt.edu/gagegallery
Gage Gallery exhibit featuring photography by Milton Rogovin
opens Thursday on heels of 101-year-old Rogovin's death
Posted: 01/18/2011
http://www.roosevelt.edu/News_and_Events/News_Articles/20110104-MiltonRogovin.aspx
A one-of-a-kind, vintage photo exhibit that tells compelling
stories about work and working-class people through the eyes
of renowned photographer Milton Rogovin opens Thursday, Jan.
20 at Roosevelt University's Gage Gallery, 18 S. Michigan
Ave., Chicago.
Renown for his photography chronicling work and workers from
around the world, Rogovin, 101, died Tuesday at his home in
Buffalo, NY. Read the New York Times obituary to learn
more about this celebrated artist and photographer.
The debut exhibit, The Working-Class Eye of Milton Rogovin,
features some striking images of workers from the
photographer's collection that have never been seen before
by the public. An opening night reception for the exhibit
will be held at 5 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 20 at the Gage
Gallery.
"Milton Rogovin is known all over the world for his
photography of working-class people," said Roosevelt
University Professor and Gage Gallery Director Michael
Ensdorf of Rogovin, who is frequently compared to the great
social documentary photographers of the 19th and 20th
centuries.
Born in 1909 in New York City, Rogovin went to Buffalo, New
York, for work as an optometrist. Involved in political work
as well, Rogovin looked to socialism as a model for
improving the lot of workers and was called before the House
Unamerican Activities Committee in 1957. As a result of
this, Rogovin's business dwindled and he decided to pursue
photography as a means to express the worth and dignity of
people who make their livings under modest and difficult
circumstances.
"Over the years, people have asked permission to show
specific series of my father's work or they have said, `You
decide what you want exhibited," said Mark Rogovin, son of
the documentary photographer. "This show is different and
very exciting for my family because it is one of those rare
times when organizers of a show took the time to choose the
images themselves and to exhibit them uniquely through the
lens of the working-class eye."
Rogovin opened his father's vast collection to Ensdorf, who
curated the new exhibit, in consultation with Roosevelt
labor historians Erik Gellman and Jack Metzgar. The three
Roosevelt professors spent more than four months sifting
through more than 1,000 photos of working-class people taken
by Rogovin during the last half century in order to present
the exhibit that is unlike any previous Rogovin show.
Sponsored by Roosevelt's College of Arts and Sciences, the
Chicago Center for Working-Class Studies and the Labor and
Working-Class History Association, the exhibit will run
through June 30. It is made possible by the generous
financial support of Roosevelt alumna Susan B. Rubnitz.
Exhibit viewing hours are from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Mondays
through Fridays and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturdays. For more
information, visit www.roosevelt.edu/gagegallery.
Opened in 2000, Roosevelt University's Gage Gallery is
Chicago's premier space for social documentary photography.
Located in the heart of downtown Chicago and across the
street from Millennium Park, the gallery hosts a number of
free, educational exhibits annually, and two of its recent
exhibits - Eugene Richards' A Procession of Them: The Plight
of the Mentally Disabled and Documenting the Global
Recession have been rated among the top five documentary
photography shows exhibited in 2010 in Chicago by New City
magazine.
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Will Obama protect Social Security?
Barack Obama on Social Security:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v
Barack Obama on single-payer universal health care:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v
Do you trust trust this Wall Street flim-flam man and con-artist when he says he will protect Social Security?
Barack "Liar" Obama
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v
Barack Obama on single-payer universal health care:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v
Do you trust trust this Wall Street flim-flam man and con-artist when he says he will protect Social Security?
Barack "Liar" Obama
Monday, January 3, 2011
Primary Obama and unite around a people's agenda for real change
I don't think we should get hung up too much on "who" the candidates are to get rid of Obama. As working people who are liberals, progressives and leftists we need to be advancing an alternative to Wall Street's agenda of war abroad and austerity at home; an agenda that places human need before war and corporate greed; we need to create jobs by putting people to work solving the problems of people and society--- pay for it all with the "peace dividend" coming from ending these dirty wars, taxing the rich and taxing Wall Street profits.
There are two really pressing needs the American people have right now:
1. Acceess to health care
2. Child care
With National Public Health Care and National Public Child Care systems we put ten-million and three-million people to work. Combine this with restarting WPA to maintain and upgrade our infrastructure and the CCC to see to it that our forests are adequate for future needs and we have a full-employment economy.
Taking such an alternative agenda into our neighborhoods, schools and places of employment we develop the kind of liberal-progressive-left movement from which leaders will come forward who will become our candidates for public office.
This is a bunch of crap having to rely on well-heeled "professional" politicians to support who don't even have the common human decency to step forward to run when they know it is the right thing to do.
Let's concern ourselves with re-building the historic liberal-progressive-left coalition around an alternative agenda and then we have a solid block of voters with votes that we can at least "bargain" with.
The agenda I have proposed is not something I just thought up out of thin air; it is the result of talking face-to-face with thousands of people and it is actually part of the unfinished agenda from the New Deal that Frances Perkins advocated--- peace, health care, child care, jobs for all.
Any candidate who can't support this kind of agenda does not deserve the votes of liberals, progressives or the left and as a group/coalition we shouldn't give in to supporting candidates based upon "promises" to support reforms like EFCA which we have all now clearly seen was used as a gimmick by these Wall Street politicians to divide the working class which is mainly very liberal, quite progressive with a growing left wing.
I don't see why we shouldn't be pushing the only candidate who has a chance to defeat Obama on this short notice in the 2012 Primary--- Hillary Clinton with the understanding that we are supporting her in the Primary with one clear purpose: defeat Obama; as we tell her we are walking in the General Election unless she agrees to our alternative agenda.
Let's get real here; no Democrat--- not anyone of them--- can win a Primary or General Election without the votes of liberals, progressives and the left... all bring very important things into the political process; number one of which is a desire for peace and re-ordering the priorities of this country away from war and military spending and towards meeting the needs of the people.
There are two really pressing needs the American people have right now:
1. Acceess to health care
2. Child care
With National Public Health Care and National Public Child Care systems we put ten-million and three-million people to work. Combine this with restarting WPA to maintain and upgrade our infrastructure and the CCC to see to it that our forests are adequate for future needs and we have a full-employment economy.
Taking such an alternative agenda into our neighborhoods, schools and places of employment we develop the kind of liberal-progressive-left movement from which leaders will come forward who will become our candidates for public office.
This is a bunch of crap having to rely on well-heeled "professional" politicians to support who don't even have the common human decency to step forward to run when they know it is the right thing to do.
Let's concern ourselves with re-building the historic liberal-progressive-left coalition around an alternative agenda and then we have a solid block of voters with votes that we can at least "bargain" with.
The agenda I have proposed is not something I just thought up out of thin air; it is the result of talking face-to-face with thousands of people and it is actually part of the unfinished agenda from the New Deal that Frances Perkins advocated--- peace, health care, child care, jobs for all.
Any candidate who can't support this kind of agenda does not deserve the votes of liberals, progressives or the left and as a group/coalition we shouldn't give in to supporting candidates based upon "promises" to support reforms like EFCA which we have all now clearly seen was used as a gimmick by these Wall Street politicians to divide the working class which is mainly very liberal, quite progressive with a growing left wing.
I don't see why we shouldn't be pushing the only candidate who has a chance to defeat Obama on this short notice in the 2012 Primary--- Hillary Clinton with the understanding that we are supporting her in the Primary with one clear purpose: defeat Obama; as we tell her we are walking in the General Election unless she agrees to our alternative agenda.
Let's get real here; no Democrat--- not anyone of them--- can win a Primary or General Election without the votes of liberals, progressives and the left... all bring very important things into the political process; number one of which is a desire for peace and re-ordering the priorities of this country away from war and military spending and towards meeting the needs of the people.
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