Author Archives: Becci

Happy holy days

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This morning I got an e-mail from Jeff, whose son died this year after being in a coma since July 2005, when he was hit by a drunk driver while cycling home. I’ve never met Jeff, an LA screenwriter, but he feels like a friend. Since the accident, he has recorded his family’s experience through a listserv for followers of Indian spiritual master Meher Baba, a community from around the globe to which we both belong. His posts have been devastating in their honesty, intimate and beautiful.

Jeff’s letters are a gift, a regular reminder to live well, love hard, and keep the faith. Here’s today’s e-mail.

Becci Robbins

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Dear friends and family,

We’re enjoying a bittersweet holiday season, our first without Danny. We often find ourselves shedding tears in unexpected times and places, as when I heard “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas” in the produce section the other day. Thankfully, we’re still receiving vast amounts of love from family and friends.

Initially, we decided not to get a tree or deck the house in the old, familiar ways, feeling that each ornament or mantle dressing would be too reminiscent of Danny spreading seasonal cheer to one and all with his music and humor. But our reluctance slowly diminished: Lynn went out and got a small tree which she and Katie trimmed. And one-by-one the boxes came in from the garage and decorations found their way to the usual places.

We also planned to forego our traditional trip the day after Christmas to New Hampshire, where we have a house alongside my mother’s place on a frozen pond in idyllic woods. The first day of every winter trip was spent shoveling snow and grooming a most excellent hockey rink. Each year, we’d drag a pair of small hockey goals out of the basement and spend days and nights on the ice. We’d play marathon hockey games with local friends or with whatever family members we could persuade to come out in the cold. But more often we played one-on-one, Danny and me, for hours and hours. Long after dark, we’d be out there using a clear plastic puck illuminated by a tiny glow-stick. In a good year, we’d enjoy moonlight as well. On more than one New Year’s Eve Lynn had to call us in at midnight for the family celebration.  It was the best.

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Warren Invocation Causing Rift With Progressives

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This piece quotes longtime SC Progressive Network member Rev. Candace Chellew-Hodge, associate pastor at Garden of Grace United Church of Christ in Columbia and author of Bulletproof Faith, A Spiritual Survival Guide for Gay and Lesbian Christians.

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By Sam Stein

Huffingtonpost.com

Ever since Barack Obama was elected president, the media has been pining to write a story about liberal dissatisfaction with his transition efforts. By and large, the meme has been blown out of proportion, as the press overestimated how divisive Obama’s cabinet choices were for progressives.

The press may now have its conflict moment. And it comes in the form of the spiritual leader chosen to launch Obama’s inauguration.

On Wednesday, the transition team and Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies announced that Rick Warren, pastor of the powerful Saddleback Church, would give the invocation on January 20th. The selection may not have been incredibly surprising. Obama and Warren are reportedly close — Obama praised the Megachurch leader in his second book “The Audacity of Hope.” Warren, meanwhile, hosted a values forum between Obama and McCain during the general election. Nevertheless, the announcement is being greeted with deep skepticism in progressive religious and political circles.

“My blood pressure is really high right now,” said Rev. Chuck Currie, minister at Parkrose Community United Church of Christ in Portland, Oregon. “Rick Warren does some really good stuff and there are some areas that I have admired his ability to build bridges between evangelicals and mainline religious and political figures… but he is also very established in the religious right and his position on social issues like gay rights, stem cell research and women’s rights are all out of the mainstream and are very much opposed to the progressive agenda that Obama ran on. I think that he is very much the wrong person to put on the stage with the president that day.”

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The wisdom of pardons

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By Kemba Smith

The nomination of Eric Holder as the next U.S. attorney general has renewed concerns about the end-of-term clemencies granted by President Clinton.

High-profile names such as Marc Rich grabbed headlines at the time, but many other people with no political influence benefited from the president’s mercy.

I am one of those people. If I had not received a commutation, my first-time conviction for a non-violent offense would have kept me in prison until 2016 (with good behavior) because of the harsh mandatory sentencing laws for crack cocaine. My 1994 prison sentence grew out of my boyfriend’s trafficking in crack. After he was murdered, the government charged me with conspiracy to distribute the crack that his drug ring distributed. During my court hearings, prosecutors acknowledged that I never sold, handled or used any of the drugs involved in the conspiracy.

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Congratulations, Donna!

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On Dec. 6, friends, family and colleagues gathered at ILA Hall in Charleston to honor SC AFL-CIO President Donna Dewitt for her years of service to the labor community in South Carolina. The event was also a fundraiser, with the $30,000 raised going toward a new building, which will be named for Donna. 

Donna is Co-chair of the SC Progressive Network. We couldn’t be more proud of her accomplishments nor more grateful for our long association.

SC Professional Firefighters President Mike Parrotta and SC AFL-CIO President Donna Dewitt. To see more photos of the event, click here.

Women in unions earn more, get better benefits

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A new report by the Center for Economic and Policy Research documents a large wage and benefit advantage for women workers in unions relative to their non-union counterparts.

The report found that unionized women workers earned, on average, 11.2 percent more than their non-union peers. In addition, women in unions were much more likely to have health insurance benefits and a pension plan.

“For women, joining a union makes as much sense as going to college,” said John Schmitt, a senior economist at CEPR and the author of the study. “All else equal, joining a union raises a woman’s wage as much as a full-year of college, and a union raises the chances a woman has health insurance by more than earning a four-year college degree.”

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Problems voting?

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The public is invited to share any problems they encountered while registering or voting in the recent election in front of a panel of county election officials, council members, legislators and voting rights advocates. Data collected at the forums will be used to help shape voting reforms so that future elections will run more smoothly. Speakers will be allotted three minutes each. For more information, call the SC Progressive Network at 803-808-3384 or e-mail network@scpronet.com.

Town Hall Meetings

Columbia: Dec. 4, 5:30-7pm, Council Chambers, 2020 Hampton St.

Charleston: Dec. 9, 5:30-7pm, Charleston City Council Chambers, 4900 LaCross Rd.

 

Voters wait up to four hours to vote absentee in Richland County on Oct. 31. For more photos, click here.

DHEC deja vu

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By Becci Robbins

Today The State newspaper wrapped up DHEC Under Fire, an “exclusive” series exposing the failure of the state agency charged with protecting South Carolina’s environment. It was oddly familiar. In 1999, the alternative newspaper POINT ran a similar package. I remember it well; I was managing editor and wrote most of the stories. You can read them here.

This was the introduction we ran:

This issue is dedicated to South Carolina’s environment. Seems that while we weren’t looking, this state became the country’s garbage dump. We hope this issue of POINT gives you something to think about and, just maybe, something to fight for.

By way of full disclosure, readers should know that the publisher and editor of POINT have for the past year been working with grassroots groups from across the state on an initiative to restructure DHEC, the state’s environmental agency.

Some will argue that our connection to the project renders us incapable of covering this story without bias. Perhaps.

But we believe our experience lends us a valuable perspective that we could not have as a member of the “straight” media. For many months, we have been meeting with lawyers, legislators, community leaders and environmental activists, some of whom go way back with DHEC. We have heard them talk with the freedom they would not if they were “on record.” While we have not used any quotes from those meetings or discussed what went on in them, the discussions deepened our understanding of how DHEC works — and how it doesn’t.

Finally, we invite anyone at DHEC, including those who declined to be interviewed, to respond to our coverage in this issue. We will gladly publish any written responses in the next POINT.

While it’s good to see The State finally give DHEC the sort of scrutiny it deserves, it’s too bad it took them so long to do it. Frankly, it’s no surprise. The State, ironically, has a long history of doing what it now accuses DHEC of doing: coddling industry and putting the interests of big business above the public interest.

The paper has been unable, or unwilling, to connect the dots that draw the clear picture of systemic problems that allowed DHEC to operate so irresponsibly and with such devastating consequences. There is no excuse. We sent the newspaper the same press releases we sent the rest of the media informing them about our grassroots campaign and legislation designed to reform the environmental agency. They ignored us. No telling how much pollution went unchecked as a result.

The State’s reporters said they interviewed 200 people to write their recent DHEC series. Not one of them was from the SC Progressive Network, the organization that initiated the move to reform the agency and called the first meeting of legislators and activists to explore the issue. That’s shoddy reporting, at best. At worst, it reveals a pettiness unbecoming of the state’s main newspaper.

POINT cover, Winter 1999

Employee Free Choice Act

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AFL-CIO:

In this economic crisis, working families are struggling. CEOs are raking in hundreds of times more than their employees earn and then giving the boot to workers who try to exercise their freedom to form unions. CEOs wouldn’t work a minute without a contract — but they do whatever it takes to keep their workers from gaining contracts. Three minutes of your time today could help restore the balance to our economy.

Watch this video, then click here to sign our petition.