Just after 4am this morning, the Connecticut Senate voted 19 to 17 to repeal that state’s death penalty.  This follows the unexpectedly overwhelming 90-56 vote in the House last week. The bill is now on its way to the desk of Gov. Jodi Rell, who in media reports is saying that she still supports the death penalty and is suggesting that she may veto the bill.

There is no time to lose! If you live in Connecticut, please call Gov. Rell at 860-566-4840.

If you live elsewhere, please think about who you know who lives in Connecticut and forward this action request to them.  Then call them to alert them to your e-mail and ask them to both call 860-566-4840.

Letters, blog posts and comments expressing a similar sentiment on the web pages of Connecticut newspapers would be useful as well.

The public is invited to join legislators and social justice organizations at a press conference to speak against the discriminatory amendment that was added to H-3543. The event will be held tomorrow, May 19, at 11:45am in the upstairs lobby of the State House.

The original bill, which addressed violence between “dating partners” in grades 6-12, was amended on second reading to limit its application to “heterosexual dating relationship(s).”

“This well-intentioned bill has been subverted by legislators more concerned with scoring points in the culture war than in protecting the well being of this state’s children,” said Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter.

Rep. Cobb-Hunter and Rep. Ken Kennedy will be joined by Harriet Hancock of Columbia’s chapter of Parents, Family and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, and representatives of other Midlands social justice organizations to speak against the amendment.

The event is being organized by the SC Progressive Network. For details, call 803-808-3384.

Enough already!

By John Patrick Dawkins

Midlands Coordinator, SC Progressive Network

We get the message: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans-gendered and Queer citizens of South Carolina deserve no protections in the state, no rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness — or, apparently, a safe learning environment in one of the worst-performing public education systems in the country.

In 2006, the citizens of South Carolina passed Amendment 1 and changed the state constitution to codify bigotry directed towards the LGBTQ community. We cannot get married and, more pressingly, have no domestic partnership rights to protect our families. No joint health care. Hospital visitation denied in all but a few cities. Double taxation on our households, lack of spousal benefits. The list goes on.

In 2008, the LGBTQ youth were targeted. Something as simple as starting a Gay/Straight Alliance in a local high school (a space free of homophobia, where youth of any sexual orientation can be themselves in an otherwise hostile climate) was labeled an attack on “traditional family values and parents rights.” The LGBTQ community and its leaders, heterosexual supporters and other organizations fought for three months to overcome bigotry and create LGBTQ safe spaces in our public schools — a small yet significant victory.

Now they’re at it again.

H 3543 started out as a simple, common sense bill to protect all students from relationship violence. Our governing body found “…when a student is a victim of dating violence, his or her academic life suffers and his or her safety at school is jeopardized.” H 3543 has since become a platform for some of our elected officials to promote yet more religious bigotry and discrimination.

On Wednesday, Rep. Greg Delleney, (R-Chester) introduced an amendment to the bill that defined a dating partner as exclusively heterosexual, thereby limiting the protections afforded to LGBTQ youth and, furthermore, legislating the way all Queer relationships are defined. We cannot marry or join together in domestic partnerships, and now our casual relationships are no longer seen as dating.

The amendment passed with little opposition.

Bill sponsor Rep. Joan Brady (R-Richland) told one reporter, “Traditional domestic violence occurs in a man-woman, boy-girl situation.” She claims that, statistically, the majority of abuse happens in heterosexual relationships. Now, open LGBTQ folks make up roughly 10-15 percent of the population, so statistically you will see more abuse in heterosexual-defined relationships. This does not mean the percentage of abusive relationships are not the same between either group, nor that any one group of people should be denied the protections that are offered another.

Using Rep. Brady’s logic, we should rewrite the bill to exclude protections to our straight male youth who are faced with dating violence because, statistically, female-on-male violence is much less prevalent. As much as I would like to say violence does not happen in the LGBTQ community, as happy as it would make me to think that we, as a community, have overcome relationship abuse, the truth is that same-sex relationship violence is every bit as much a day-to-day reality to LGBTQ youth as it is to heterosexual youth.

If we truly want to curb violence in schools — and in society as a whole — we cannot allow elected officials to use legislation whose original intent is to protect, as a soapbox for their personal sense of morality. To do not only puts our youth at risk, it reinforces the systemic problem of homophobia in our state, granting justification to the hatred already aimed at LGBTQ citizens of South Carolina.

The third and final reading of the bill is on Tuesday, May 19.

By Brett Bursey

Director, SC Progressive Network

Bills for early voting took torturous turns in both the House and Senate in the last two weeks.

Rep. David Mack’s bill (H 3608), which was written by the Progressive Network, passed out of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Election Law but stripped of the provision that allowed citizens to register during the two-week early voting period.

What looked like a partial victory suffered further defeat when the full House Judiciary Committee amended Mack’s bill to a three-day early voting period and limited all absentee voting to mail-in ballots.

The bill that has gone to the House floor is more restrictive than the present law that allows 30 days of in-person absentee voting at the county election commission office, which caused long lines during the 2008 election. The current version, championed by Rep. Alan Clemmons, would not allow in-person voting at county offices by the elderly and infirm except during the three-day period when everyone else is trying to vote.

To add insult to injury, House rules prohibit Rep. Mack from removing his name from his  own bill that now restricts voting rather than making it easier.

In the Senate, early voting had four hearings in a subcommittee chaired by Sen. Chip Campsen that allowed much more debate. The Network’s bill (S 369 — a companion bill to Rep. Mack’s), sponsored by Sen. Phil Leventis, was supported by testimony from the director of Mecklenburg County’s Board of Elections, who told the committee that One Stop Vote Centers in the Charlotte area had bipartisan support and saved money.

The Network’s early voting bill, introduced in 2007, has been modeled after the NC practice that allows early voting at multiple locations and also allows citizens to register. Mecklenburg County is a good example for South Carolina, as it uses the exact same voting machines as we do.

In subcommittee, Campsen pushed for three days of early voting, restricted to the county office. When the vote was called, we were gratified by the vote of Sen. Ray Clearey, who voted with Sen. John Scott for 15 days of early voting at multiple locations.

This victory was tempered by the majority vote that photo IDs would be required of voters. This recommendation was passed out of the full Senate Judiciary Committee on May 14, over the objection of Democrat senators.

While debate on both the House and Senate versions of the bill are scheduled for May 19, legislation on early voting is not expected to pass this year.

As long as photo ID is tied to the early voting bill, Democrat senators are promising to kill the bill. While photo IDs would only prevent someone from impersonating another voter at the polls — a crime punishable by 10 years in prison and that has never happened in South Carolina — it has become the holy grail for Republicans.

The practical outcome of the early voting debate is going to be a trade-off for how many days of early voting we get for accepting photo IDs provision.

Democrats see voter suppression as the issue; Republicans see fraud as the issue. Sadly, partisan concerns are inhibiting reforms. The loser is, as usual, the citizens of South Carolina.

For more information on the Network’s voting reform initiatives, click here.

Contractors used substandard materials
By James Rosen
jrosen@mcclatchydc.com

WASHINGTON — Contractors at the Savannah River Site — one of the country’s major nuclear-weapons complexes — repeatedly procured dangerous construction materials and components that failed to meet federal safety standards, according to a recently completed internal government probe.

One of the substandard materials revealed at the Savannah River Site on the South Carolina-Georgia border “could have resulted in a spill of up to 15,000 gallons of high-level radioactive waste,” the inspector general of the U.S. Energy Department found.

The five-month investigation also disclosed the purchase of 9,500 tons of substandard reinforcing steel at the SRS site near Aiken.

The faulty steel was discovered after a piece of it broke during construction of a facility that will convert spent weapons plutonium and uranium into mixed-oxide — or MOX — fuel for civilian reactors.

Replacement of 14 tons of the substandard “rebar” — the reinforcing steel — that had already been installed cost $680,000 and caused new delays in completing the $4.8 billion MOX facility, the investigation disclosed.

Among other questionable components identified in the probe were piping, steel plates, an unusable $12 million “glovebox” (used to handle contaminated materials), furnace module doors and robots used to eliminate human exposure to radiological and chemical materials.

In an April 23 memo to Energy Secretary Steven Chu, Inspector General Gregory Friedman said contractors and subcontractors that build, supply and install equipment at SRS facilities ignored safety regulations developed by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.

“We identified multiple instances in which critical components did not meet required quality and safety standards,” Friedman wrote to Chu.

The Savannah River Site produced tritium, plutonium-239 and other materials used to make nuclear weapons from 1954 to 1991, when the United States stopped making atomic bombs with the end of the Cold War.

Continue reading →

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.”