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a forum for anti-authoritarian political opinion, research
and humor
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ELECTRONIC TEXT-ONLY VERSION
October 8, 1996 published weekly #5
In this issue
Nordstrom: A Floor Wax AND A Dessert Topping!
Attacking the Most Recent Immigrants
The Mexican Revolutions
Eat The Infrastructure!
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Why They Call It A "Menu"
Back text-only issues of Eat The State! are now available on
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Nordstrom: A Floor Wax AND A Dessert Topping!
The law is a flexible thing in downtown Seattle. If you're
homeless, begging is illegal. If you're wealthy, begging is
good business.
While the city has spent the last three years criminalizing
the homeless, it's been happily giving money away to the
Nordstrom family. Seattle's efforts to bankroll their move
into the old Frederick & Nelson building at 5th and Pine are
now reaching such levels of absurdity that about the only
perk left would be to finance a new retractable roof.
Most Seattleites will remember the special election the city
held, run by and for Nordstrom, to abolish the Pine Street
Pedestrian Mall. At the same time, the City Council greased
Nordy's wheels by declaring the F&N building "spot blight."
By doing so, the city qualified for a low-interest loan from
the U.S. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development. The city
then turned around and loaned the $24.2 million to developer
Jeffrey Rhodes, manager of the F&N deal.
The HUD loan program in question, intended to help the
economically disadvantaged, instead was used by the city to
funnel money to a company with $4 billion in annual retail
sales. Subsequent investigation by community activists,
including Friends of Westlake Park and the Washington Free
Press, revealed that: the city presented phony police
statistics to HUD to buttress its case that the area was
newly blighted by F&N's closing; Norm Rice pledged to HUD
that the building could not be sold without the loan, when
two offers were already on table from other parties, one of
them higher than Nordstrom's price; and that city officials
coached City Council members before a key 1994 hearing to
show as much unanimity and enthusiasm for Nordstrom as
possible.
Thus, a full block of prime real estate, in the heart of
downtown's glitzy new retail core, becomes "blight;"
Nordstrom pockets $24 million in government money intended
for the poor; and generous campaign contributions follow.
Now, just two years later, Nordstrom is asking the City
Council to declare the very same "blighted" F&N building a
"landmark." The City Landmarks Preservation Board has
already granted preliminary approval to the designation, and
will offer its final blessing at a public hearing scheduled
for October 16th. If the City Council rubber-stamps the
decision as expected, Nordstrom will, according to a report
in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, save about $1 million a
year in property taxes over the next ten years--while
schools and social services scramble for tax money. The P-I,
of course, did not bother to mention that the building has
already been declared a blight. Nordstrom advertises.
So is this mysterious building a blight, or a landmark? A
great floor wax, or a delicious dessert topping? A fecal
abomination to the eye, or a glorious, untouchable monument?
The city's 1994 loan application to HUD spoke of a rickety
structure with leaky plumbing, a fraying electrical system,
cracking walls and sagging ceilings. Now, it's being praised
for its glazed terra cotta, ornate cornices, black granite
accents and Victorian-pink Tennessee marble. Either way,
it's a government-financed cash cow for the wealthy.
The fix is in, but folks should probably show up anyway at
the October 16 hearing and voice their outrage at this tax-
funded hypocrisy. Or call the city's Landmarks Preservation
Board: 684-0228. Ask them! Floor wax? Dessert topping? Or
suggest that, if the city insists on being inconsistent
about downtown begging, we reverse the equation: make
Nordstrom illegal, and give the F&N building to the
homeless.
Attacking the Most Recent Immigrants
This week marks Year 505 of The Invasion. As any Native
American can testify, the nation-state is a wholly European,
and relatively recent, invention. One of this invention's
less noticed pernicious effects is that borders, for no
particular good reason, severely constrain the simple basic
right of anyone to live and travel wherever she or he wants
to and can go. Borders--whether they are to keep people out,
or keep people in--are about control.
Even accepting the logic of nation-states, however, the last
two years' worth of political attacks on immigrants in the
U.S. is hard to justify logically. Repeatedly, economic
studies show immigration--legal or not--is a net benefit to
the U.S. economy. Cultural diversity is as beneficial to the
social body as biological diversity is to an ecosystem. And
any definition of "legitimate" immigration boils down to a
question of who was here first, and who was invited here. By
those standards, anyone not full-blooded Native American is
occupying stolen land.
Since logic fails, we have instead the illogical reasons for
scapegoating immigrants: fear and racism.
Recent legislation targeting immigrants--starting most
notoriously with California's Prop. 187 and culminating so
far in the immigration reform bill passed as part of its
Continuing Resolution budget bill last week--is astonishing
for its nastiness and random cruelty. Since we are almost
all immigrants, and since we are certainly all humans, it
should alarm all of us.
Between anti-terrorism, welfare reform and the spending
bill, some of the new provisions Bill Clinton is signing
into law include:
* Non-citizens seeking asylum have to prove a "credible fear
of persecution" during an initial meeting with an INS
officer. Hearings will happen within seven days of arrival,
with no appeal.
* Non-citizens suspected of supporting or associating with
terrorist causes can be deported without the government
having to produce any evidence.
* Notices of deportation will only be issued in English.
* A number of types of INS abuse can no longer be challenged
in court.
* The government can terminate existing deportation cases
and immediately refile them under the new, harsher laws.
* States and schools must now share records with the INS.
* The number of border patrol agents will be doubled in four
years.
* Persons not hired because of an employer's perception of
their immigration status must now prove "intentional
discrimination."
* Relatives, including spouses, may not immigrate unless
their sponsor makes at least 125% of the poverty level,
about $17,000 a year. In other words, otherwise qualified
immigrants will be rejected if they are poor. This was
changed last week; originally the bill specified a 200%
requirement, or about $25,000 a year.
* Immigrants will be cut off of all food stamp assistance by
August 1997.
* Most non-citizens, including legal immigrants, can no
longer receive Social Security benefits, even if they have
paid into the system.
Ironically, some of the worst provisions--targeting legal
U.S. residents who are not citizens, denying education to
undocumented kids, mandating deportation for use of public
benefits, encouraging states to ignore due process and equal
protection--were dropped from the budget bill last week so
as to avoid delaying passage. Legislators decided not to
bash immigrants so they could go bash immigrants on the
campaign trail and get re-elected. On such whims are
thousands of family futures decided.
Clintonian reassurances that bad parts of these bills will
be fixed are bullshit. They are cosmetic changes to
enormously destructive acts. More will come, unless the
trend is stopped now.
There will be rallies in Washington D.C. and across the U.S.
on Columbus Day, October 12, to demand immigrant rights. In
Seattle, folks are meeting at noon at Victor Steinbreuck
Park (adjacent to Pike Place) and marching to Westlake Park.
Come show your solidarity, and bring friends.
After the march, there is a lot of work to be done. Word has
to get out about what changes have, and have not, taken
place; how peoples' lives will be affected; and how the
process can be reversed. Non-citizens in particular need
good information before making important decisions. For more
information and counselling referrals on these laws, contact
the Washington Alliance for Immigrant and Refugee Justice at
587-4009.
The Mexican Revolutions
"Austerity plans"--also known as "restructuring" or
"development"--are the U.S. backed schemes, enforced by the
International Monetary Fund, to require countries to slash
social spending and gut government services and business
regulations. The effect is to devastate the local economy
and make the country more "competitive" (i.e., vulnerable to
foreign profiteers). Government repression--to ensure cheap
labor and quell the riots generated by economic devastation-
-is almost always a key element.
The U.S. now essentially insists on an austerity plan as a
precondition for any country's access to international
credit and participation in the global economy.
According to mainstream U.S. media, Official Mouthpiece Of
The State, austerity plans are always successful. Even in
France, where the approach led to two million enraged
government workers shutting down the country in a general
strike last December. Even in Russia, where capitalist
"reform" has brought a(nother) genocidal tyrant, endemic
organized crime and the possibility of mass famine. Even in
Nicaragua, whose economy, after being saved from the
Sandanistas and popular will, has so utterly disintegrated
that it is now the second poorest nation in the Western
Hemisphere--after Haiti, where riots ensued last month after
the U.S. forced the Preval government to agree to fire half
its workers.
Now, Mexico has been declared a "success." Recent articles
in both the New York Times and Wall Street Journal have
concluded what Goldman Sachs and the Clinton Administration
have claimed all along: that last year's $52 billion U.S.
loan to Mexico, which came with conditions that essentially
gave Wall Street complete control of the Mexican economy,
was a stunning policy triumph. Mexico is paying back its
loan; investment banks are making lots of money; "our
friends" (Mexico's one-party business state) are still in
power; and everything's just ducky.
One other detail: Mexico's austerity plan, and the U.S.
bailout, have led to a complete collapse of the Mexican
economy. After a 20% devaluation of the peso, two million
Mexicans--the entire adult population of King, Pierce and
Snohomish Counties--were thrown out of work in 1995.
Unemployment has gotten still worse this year. Interest
rates and inflation rates have at times exceeded 100%.
Credit is simply no longer available, turning homeowners
out of homes and small businesses out of existence. The
invasion of foreign agribusiness and its reliance on
exported cash crops like coffee have contributed to food
shortages. Official corruption, political repression and
government-backed drug dealing have escalated. And a lot of
people in our neighbor to the south are talking, quite
soberly, about the need for a revolution.
Two groups are now the centers of international concerns
over possible civil war; they offer a sharp contrast in how
to approach the task of dismantling a corrupt state.
After their spectacular January 1994 attacks in Chiapas,
timed with the implementation date of NAFTA, it quickly
became apparent that Subcomandante Marcos's Zapatista Army
was not a military match for Mexico. Instead, the
Zapatistas, while noisily conducting and breaking off
negotiations with Mexico City, have quietly gone about
building a foundation for nonviolent revolution: holding
grass roots constitutional assemblies, creating a racially
and geographically diverse nationwide "Frente" (the FZLN),
courting international allies, and becoming a force in
mainstream Mexican politics.
This past summer, a new armed guerilla group, the EPR,
launched simultaneous attacks in six Mexican states. The EPR
promises a much more traditional Latin American approach to
revolution: terrorist attacks, armed struggle, no
compromise. EPR releases have mocked Marcos' "revolution
through poetry;" the FZLN has stated that it shares the
EPR's anger but has distanced itself from the strategy.
Meanwhile, marches involving tens of thousands have been
occurring in Mexico City on an almost daily basis. In every
state, campesino organizing, strikes, indigenous rights
battles and land reform struggles pressure the government
from below. None of this, remarkably, has trickled across
the free and open border into mainstream U.S. media.
Why should this matter to us in Seattle? Quite simply: with
free trade, Mexico's economy is our economy. The corporate
agenda for Mexico is the corporate agenda for Middle
America.
Policies pursued in Mexico, and the upheaval, displacement
and suffering they've created, are on the way in the U.S.
and Canada. It's not just that "our" government is imposing
this misery on Mexicans, and others around the globe, and
that we should help them; or that, with a long, porous
border, if Mexican cities start burning Los Angeles and
Houston will follow; or even that millions of people on the
"margins" of U.S. society are already being declared
dispensible. It's also that we, the vast majority of hard-
working, law-abiding, constitution-loving U.S. citizens,
also have our asses on the line. Like (other) immigrants,
like Mexicans, like the rest of the bloody world. The
Contract With America, the pain Bill Clinton creates and
feels, is our first taste of austerity. We're next.
Let's all of us--poor, better off, white, black, brown,
yellow, red, queer, straight, citizen, non-citizen, worker,
student, parent, unemployed, housed, homeless, young, old,
healthy, ill, male, female, both, neither--get busy, get
organized and assert our right to share in this world's
riches. Hanging separately sucks.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
"I don't fuck with the past, but I fuck plenty with the
future." - Patti Smith
Eat The Infrastructure!
Along with mutating, chemical-resistent insects and
drug-resistent bacteria and viruses, here's another case of
nature out-evolving humankind.
A breed of termites in China has apparently given up on wood
and begun feeding instead on concrete and cement. Iron,
copper, and aluminum are also reported to be compatible with
the insects' new diets. The critters are now reported to be
infesting many of China's larger cities and causing enormous
damage to office buildings, roadways, and the like. Can a
creature that nibbles silicon be far behind?
RECLAIM OUR HISTORY
Indigenous peoples' edition
Oct. 8. 1793. Council at Buffalo Creek. Iroquois meet with
representatives of U.S. to appeal for an end to murder and
thievery by whites after Peace of 1784.
Oct. 9. 1776. San Francisco de Assisi mission started at
present site of San Francisco. We oppose them.
Oct. 10. 1946. ARROW (American Restitution and Righting of
Old Wrongs) formed in Washington DC, with Will Rogers, Jr.
at its head.
Oct. 12. 1492. Columbus sights land in the Bahamas. Disaster
ensues. 1873. Makah reservation established on Olympic
Peninsula, eighteen years after signing treaty. 1992:
Millions across Western Hemisphere rally for indigenous
rights. 1992: 150 occupy site of Univ. of Arizona/Vatican
telescope project being erected on sacred land. Mt. Graham,
Arizona.
Oct. 13. 1805. Palouse tribe meets Lewis & Clark where the
Palouse River now meets the Snake. 1965: Nisqually hold
"fish-in" on Nisqually River; Janet McCloud (Tulalip) is
arrested and jailed until trial. 1972. Burns (Ore.) Paiute
reservation established, after land allotment in 1897. 1976:
Mesquakie tribe awarded $6.6 million for lands taken in KS,
IA, MO & IL between 1804 and 1867.
Oct. 14. 1981: Amnesty International accuses U.S. of holding
American Indian Movement activist Richard Marshall as a
political prisoner.
ACTIVIST CALENDAR
Thu. Oct. 10. Day of National Concern on Gun Violence. 323-
2303.
Thu. Oct. 10. 7:00 PM, CAMP (722 18th Ave.). Community
Meeting on Police Dogs. Moderated by Larry Gossett. Info:
ACLU, 624-2184.
Fri. Oct. 11. National Coming Out Day.
Sat. Oct. 12. Noon, Victor Steinbreuck Park. Rally and
march. Immigrant Rights are Human Rights! Info: Wash.
Alliance for Immigrant and Refugee Justice, 587-4009.
Sat. Oct. 12. "You Can't Beat A Woman - March Across the
Nation" national community actions on domestic violence.
Info: Washington NOW, 360-253-7147.
Sun. Oct. 13. Noon, Gasworks Park. "Columbus Got Lost" Peace
Concert. Free, bring non-perishable food bank donations.
789-5651.
Mon. Oct. 14. Day of Solidarity with Indigenous Peoples and
in support of Leonard Peltier. Poetry, music, speakers. 4-6
PM, Federal Bldg., 2nd & Madison. 325-2952.
Wed. Oct. 16. Hearing on landmark status for Nordstrom (see
article this issue). Landmarks Preservation Board: 684-0228.
For an excellent and much, much longer compilation of
upcoming and ongoing progressive events in Seattle, check
out Jean Buskin's Peace Calendar:
http://weber.u.washington.edu/~buskin or e-mail her at
bb369@scn.org.
The tiny print: EAT THE STATE! is a shamelessly biased
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imperialism, militarism, racism, sexism, heterosexism,
environmental destruction, television, and large ugly
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