SC Prog Blog

By Sara Tansey
Jenkinsville, SC

For months, community members in Jenkinsville, SC, have been meeting, organizing, and growing more vocal about their frustrations with the local utility that wants to build two more reactors in a community that already hosts one unit. So when I spoke with community members who were itching to move beyond just organizing to Nuclear Regulatory Commission deadlines, we set a date two Tuesdays from that Sunday. At the time, I didn’t realize that was the Tuesday of my 21st birthday. When it hit me, I knew it was going to be perfect.

So last night, we met at the local park, proudly owned and operated by the same utility that owns and operates the nuclear facility in Jenkinsville. It boasts a “scenic view,” and it sure is a view. Down by the water’s edge are covered picnic tables, a bit of beach for the locals to enjoy, a fishing dock and right across the water sits VC Summer. Beautiful!

We gathered around one of the picnic tables, enjoyed the summer weather and a cooling breeze off of the lake. And as we — community leaders, youth activists and other no-nuke activists — plotted how to stop two more reactors from being built in this community, we pulled strength and determination from the vision of devastation that lay across the water.

A vision of economic and human health devastation. SCE&G has stated in their own environmental report that less than 10 percent of new jobs will go to residents of the county, let alone the surrounding community, and that they do not expect any economic stimulation for the Jenkinsville area as a result of expansion.

Furthermore, cancer rates have increased since the introduction of the first reactor, and many local residents live off of the land. They have home gardens, fish from the lake and rivers and hunt local game to feed their families.

So sharing that community and mutual passion, creating next steps and a plan we all worked on together, knowing that we were organizing to do something to humble that boastful and unsuspecting utility that built a park and thought their contributions to the community ended there, was the best 21st birthday gift I could have asked for. Knowing that each one of us sitting around that picnic table was determined with our lives to stop this proposed expansion gave me goosebumps that I blamed on the water’s winds and that, in this southern heat today, I cannot excuse away.

To learn more about the community organizing efforts in Jenkinsville, email Sara Tansey at Sara@climateaction.net and stay tuned!

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April 28 is Equal Pay Day, and workers across the country will commemorate the day by reaffirming their determination to make sure women are paid equally as men for the same work. Equal Pay Day symbolizes how far into the year a woman must work, on average, to earn as much as a man earned the previous year.

Equal Pay Day 2009 comes at an exciting time for those who support equal pay for women. President Barack Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act into law on Jan. 29 and established a White House Council on Women and Girls in March. Yet more than 45 years after the Equal Pay Act was signed, women in the United States still earn only 78 cents for every dollar a man earns — even with similar education, skills and experience. And African American and Hispanic women earn even less.

Members of the Coalition of Labor Union Women will commemorate Equal Pay Day with rallies around the country in support of the Paycheck Fairness Act and the Employee Free Choice Act.  CLUW is urging all workers to wear red on Equal Pay Day to symbolize how far women and minorities are “in the red” with their pay!

While the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act ensures workers can seek restitution for unequal pay, the Paycheck Fairness Act, which still needs Senate approval, would update the Equal Pay Act by creating stronger incentives for employers to follow the law, empower women to negotiate for equal pay and strengthen federal outreach and enforcement efforts. It also would close a significant loophole in the Equal Pay Act to allow for full compensation for sex-based wage discrimination. 

Says CLUW President Marsha Zakowski: Two bills in Congress would dramatically change the economic lives of women.  Union women earn, on the average, 32 percent more than unorganized women. The Employee Free Choice Act would allow women and men workers to form unions at their work places without fear of employer intimidation and unlawful firings. The Paycheck Fairness Act would correct wage discrimination.

You can act now to help women workers gain equal pay. Urge your state’s representatives and senators to vote for the Employee Free Choice Act and the Paycheck Fairness Act by calling the U.S. Capitol switchboard at 202-224-3121.

A recent study by the Center for Economic and Policy Research found that for the years 2004-2007, union women were much more likely to have health insurance (75.4 percent) and a pension (75.8 percent) than women workers who were not in unions (50.9 percent for health insurance, 43 percent for pensions).

Equal Pay Day originated in 1996 as a public awareness event to illustrate the gap between men’s and women’s wages. The day, observed on a Tuesday in April, symbolizes how far into the year a woman must work, on average, to earn as much as a man earned the previous year. (Tuesday is the day on which women’s wages catch up to men’s wages from the previous week.)

By Clayton Seufert, Charleston

Moments before the gavel fell on the South Carolina Democratic Convention on Saturday, the Democratic Party faithful decided to send a loud message; that their party supports collective bargaining and expects Democratic elected officials to do the same.

As the convention leaders moved to complete their scheduled business, and took up a planned addition to the platform stating the party’s support of the federal Employee Free Choice Act, the convention members decided they had a little more to say. 

Progressive Caucus leader Brett Bursey addressed the Chair and read a motion to amend the planned resolution to not only include the party’s support of the pending legislation, but added that the party “opposes all state legislative efforts to obstruct the Act, or to impose further burdens on the democratic rights of working people to organize.”  These changes, clearly aimed at bills currently being discussed in the General Assembly, designed to urge defeat or attempt to circumvent the Employees Free Choice Act if passed.

One such bill, H. 3305, aims to take away from workers the choice the Act gives them between majority sign-up and an election by changing the SC Constitution.  H. 3305 was initiated by Republican legislators, but given some support by a limited number on the Democratic side of the aisle. 

The decision of those Democratic legislators didn’t seem to sit well with the convention delegates — as the motion to add the stronger language against state laws subverting “workers rights” was seconded by nearly all present, had zero discussion against and passed with “none opposed.”

Celebrate May Day

And Help Support the SC Progressive Network!

May 1  •  5:30-9pm

Modjeska Simkins House, 2025 Marion St., downtown Columbia

$5 donation at the door

$25 buys you admission, Network membership and 3 drink tickets

(Wow! What a great deal!)

• Door prizes, costume contest, games and general tomfoolery 

• Dress as your favorite revolutionary hero

• Dance around the May Pole

• Nationally renowned poet and performer Stacie Boschma

• Revolutionary Dance Hall with DJ Pandora N’A Box

• Affordable cash bar, free hors d’oeuvres

Proceeds benefit the SC Progressive Network!

For details, call 803-808-3384 or email network@scpronet.com or jpdawkins@gmail.com.

Help us fight to get the Federal hate crime laws passed. Tell your legislator to act!

Last week I sent a letter and a copy of the actual voice mail left the night of Sean’s murder to our SC representatives in the House and Senate, as well as to President Obama and First Lady Obama to ask for their help to get this legislation passed.

Thank you,
Elke Kennedy
Sean’s Last Wish

Elke’s son, Sean Kennedy, was murdered last year in Greenville. He is featured in the video. Take action by clicking here.

By Brett Bursey
Director, SC Progressive Network

The last couple of weeks of hearings in the House and Senate on voting reform legislation have gone a little better than expected. Not to say we are winning, but we have mixed results. We can anticipate that there will be an early voting bill passed out this session. The best version (the one we sponsored), H-3608 (Mack-D Charleston) was the only one of six early voting bills to come out of subcommittee. We had to give up the Same Day Registration aspect of the bill that allowed citizens to register to vote between 15 and three days before the election to get it out of subcommittee. Rep. Bakari Sellers (D-Orangeburg), who is on the House Judiciary Election Laws subcommittee, did a magnificent job moving the bill to the full committee.

Our sponsor of the Early Voting bill in the Senate, S-369 (Leventis, D-Sumter) testified at a Senate Judiciary subcommitee April 2 about the practicality and benefits of registering voters during the early voting period. We presented Michael Dickerson, the Ex. Director of the Mecklenburg Co. Board of Elections, to testify about how that county, with 600,000 voters, runs its early voting system. Dickerson told the subcommittee (Senators Campsen, Cleary, and Scott) that the county that includes Charlotte uses the exact same machines to vote as we do in SC. Dickerson said that the system has bipartisan support, the citizens and the election workers love it, and it saves money.

Sen. Campsen (R-Charleston) has a voting reform bill that calls for early voting as we experienced it in 2008, but without having to have an excuse. Campsen’s bill calls for early voting only at the county election office — no satellite facilities — and includes photo ID’, doing away with fusion voting, and increasing the penalties for fraud. It is the worst bill we can come out of this session with, but will still be better than what we have by allowing “no excuse early voting.” The election workers testified that Campsen’s bill would overwhelm the county offices and make the elderly and infirm wait in line with thousands of other voters.

Hearings in the Senate will continue, probably on April 16, and we will continue to argue for our early voting bill that calls for satellite facilities, and same-day registration. We are considering offering as a compromise applying photo ID requirements to those who register at the early voting centers. This would impact only a small percentage of voters (in Mecklenburg, only 2,000 out of 120,000 were Same Day Registrants), not impact the elderly, rural and minority voters who may not have photo IDs, and give the Republicans who demand photo IDs a face-saving victory. Accepting any form of photo ID is controversial among our allies, and we need to reach a consensus on this.

The bill to restrict petition candidates (S-590 & H-3208) will probably pass the House and is in the Senate subcommittee. The Senate sponsor of the bill, Brad Hutto (D-Orangeburg) assures us that he will narrow it to only apply to citizens not being able to sign a petition for a candidate for an office they voted for in a primary. The bill would currently prohibit a voter from signing a petition for a candidate for ANY office if they voted in a primary, even if there were no candidate for the office they wanted to sign a petition for.

The bill calls for petition candidates to have to file notice of their intention to run by March 30, prior to the general election. This deadline has been held unconstitutional by the courts, and Sen. Hutto is willing to consider moving the filing date for petition candidates back to the Aug 15 deadline for third-party candidates.

By Charlie Smith, Charleston, SC

A distant relative of mine on both my mother’s and father’s sides of the family (yes, I am a native South Carolinian) was once elected to the office now held by Governor Mark Sanford. One of the sayings that got him elected and kept him in office as a noted 20th century…yes 20th Century…Governor and later U.S. Senator was his declaration that “To educate a nigger is to ruin a good field hand.” Sayings like this and equally offensive daily rants during his tenure as Governor and later as US Senator were designed to pit poor white upstate millworkers and sharecroppers against African Americans and against the evil politically dominant Charleston “aristocrats” and “dandies”; the kind of man he described as “…some fellow who does nothing, lives on his daddy’s name and doesn’t pay his debts.”; and more colorfully as those who “fiddled away their nights watching decadent theater shows, yelling with delight at a foul mouth Yankee woman and a man dressed as “The Pink Lady.”

As governor, Coleman Livingston Blease fought with all his might against a law that would require all children under the age of fourteen in South Carolina to attend school. He preached against this legislation to poor whites ranting that “The Bible says a great deal about obedience to parents and reverence for parents and believing in the Book and its teachings, as I do. I say to the parents, and for the sake of their children, our country and for their future, keep within your own control the rearing and education of your own children.”

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Speech delivered by the Rev. Dr. Neal R. Jones, Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, (a member of the SC Progressive Network) at the April 1 People’s Stimulus Rally

A great teacher once told a story that went something like this: Once upon a time, a man was traveling down a winding, dangerous road, and he was set upon by thieves, who beat him and robbed him and left him half dead. By chance, a priest was traveling down that same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. Later, a Levite came down the road, and when he saw the man, he too passed by on the other side. Then a Samaritan came upon the man, and when he saw him, he had compassion, and he went to him, bound up his wounds, and took him to an inn where he could be cared for. Jesus concluded his Parable of the Good Samaritan by telling his listeners, “Go and do likewise.”

This story was told long ago, but it is as current as today’s news. For the people of South Carolina have been left lying in the ditch, beaten down by the second highest unemployment rate in the country. We have been robbed of our health insurance. Over 300 persons per day are losing their health insurance in South Carolina, so that 16 percent of us are uninsured, one of the highest rates in the country. We have been wounded by a ìcorridor of shameî that runs through the heart of our state, where our neediest children have been consigned to a ìminimally adequateî education, as if that were morally adequate. We have suffered from a minimum wage that is not a livable wage and does not reward the hard work or respect the dignity of working people.  In the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, all Americans are hurting, and South Carolinians are hurting the most.

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