Category: Amaya Larraneta
Bhopal Still Poisonous 20 Years Later
WASHINGTON, Dec 1 – Citizens of Bhopal, India awoke late in the evening of December 3, 20 years ago, with burning eyes, noses and mouths. Poison gas had leaked from a factory, a catastrophe that killed more than 3,500 within hours and thousands more in the intervening years. It was the worst chemical disaster in history.
And today, several activist groups said Wednesday, it continues to fester.
Amnesty International, Greenpeace and several other organizations advocating on behalf of Bhopal survivors launched a new campaign Wednesday, timed to coincide with the disaster’s 20 th anniversary, denouncing the pesticide plant as a continuing source of pollution.
“The abandoned plant is still leaking toxics to the drinking-water supplies of 16 residential communities, where 20,000 people live,” Rajan Sharma, primary attorney representing Bhopal survivors, told reporters.
Based in New York, Sharma’s legal team is in the midst of a battle to bring liability suits against Dow Chemical in U.S. and Indian courts, charging the company is responsible for the plant’s current leaks.
Dow Chemical, in a statement posted on its Web site, denied having any current responsibility over the Bhopal site, a location it transferred to the state of Madhya Pradesh in 1998.
“All the claims arising out of the release were settled 15 years ago . with the approval of the Supreme Court of India,” the statement said. In 1991, that court forced the company to pay an average of $500 each to the 570,000 people affected by the leak.
Bhopal survivors and officials from Amnesty International, Greenpeace and other groups described the compensation as insufficient and said Wednesday they were not willing to let the tragedy or its victims be forgotten.
Amnesty International, in a report called “Clouds of Injustice,” asserted that neither the company nor the Indian state has cleaned up the “the mess” 20 years later. The report also asked the government of India “to secure justice for the victims.”
More than 150,000 people are still suffering from illnesses stemming from the leak, the advocates said. “We demand medical care and economic and social support for them,” said Rachna Dingra of the International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal.
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Vets Remember at WWII Memorial
WASHINGTON, Nov 10 – On a chilly yet sunny Wednesday morning, dozens of white-haired men and women solemnly strolled around the recently opened World War II Memorial. Wrapped in warm coats, some walking with the help of canes and many wearing caps loaded with patriotic pins, the veterans’ eyes moistened as six-decades-old memories converged with the fresh images of the fight in Iraq.
This Veterans Day is the second consecutive the country celebrates at war, and it is expected to draw crowds to the monument plaza, the last to open on the National Mall, that pays tribute to the 16 million U.S. men and women who served in 1941-1945.
Among the first to arrive at the memorial was Edward Roser, a 76 year-old Navy Seabee veteran from West Shokan, N.Y. This year, Roser said, he plans to pay respects not only to the men he met while serving in the South Pacific but also to those deployed in Iraq.
“We all are veterans, we all do the same thing: defend our country,” a somber Roser said.
Amid heavy combat in the insurgent city of Fallujah -- and with over 1,140 combat deaths in the 21-month-long war in Iraq -- veterans present in the capital for the multiple wreath laying ceremonies taking place Thursday said they will have their minds and hearts with the families of those serving in the Gulf.
Walking along the sober granite plaza of the World War II Memorial in the company of his wife and daughter, Richard Neal, a veteran pilot from North Canaan, Conn., said he planned to say a Veterans Day “prayer for all the boys and girls in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
As with much of the country, conflicting views about the war in Iraq can be found in this veterans’ spot, which is located between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument.
While James E. Shugars, 78, a veteran from North Carolina, saw the action in Iraq “as an opportunity to get some democracy in an area a lot older than Western civilization,” fellow veteran George H. Smith, from Iowa, said he believed the country “should have never started the war. Instead we should have cooperated with the United Nations.”
Aside from their personal stances on the Iraq war, a common thought among World War II veterans is that their monument was long overdue. Approved by Congress in 1995, the $175 million monument was opened to the public on April 29 and dedicated in a ceremony that drew 150,000 veterans on Memorial Day weekend. And while the official Veterans Day ceremonies will take place across the Potomac River in Arlington National Cemetery, the new monument will have private ceremonies for veterans’ families.
“I wanted to come here ever since it was opened,” Neal said. “I just wished they would have built this place earlier so that more veterans could have seen it.”
Neal, who was deployed in England and will celebrate his 80 th birthday this weekend, is one of the 210,000 men and women from Connecticut who served in World War II.
Over 4,500 state residents died overseas.
The state’s commissioner of Veterans Affairs, Linda Schwartz, also said the memorial has come late for the majority of the people who served that war. “Around 1,300 World War II veterans are passing away every day,” she said.
The aged men and women strolling along the wreathed columns shared the place with scores of high school students and eighth graders who didn’t pay close attention to the inscriptions on pride, freedom and brave actions but rather mingled and played by the fountain.
“Young people don’t know anything about what happened in the Second World War,” Smith said. “That is why it is so important that we have a memorial, like Vietnam and Korean veterans do.”
As Schwartz sees it, “the monument is necessary because if it wasn’t for that generation the world would be much different.”
Meanwhile Neal, Shugars, Smith and Roser, all veterans of the Second World War, returned the compliment to the men and women in Iraq. “They are worth all the respect we can give them,” Shugars said.
Hispanic Leaders Want Latinos to Flex Political Muscle
WASHINGTON, Oct 20 - For several weekends this August, Tedman Martinez of New London would go pick up his 71-year-old mother Zenaida Martinez at her home, which is only two blocks away from his house, to take her out. But they didn't go shopping, out to eat or to the movies. Instead they went voter-hunting.
Zenaida Martinez said that she and her son would stroll along Federal Street, Michael Road and Crystal Avenue - areas of the city where many of the Hispanic residents live- to "knock on every door" and talk to fellow Puerto Ricans and other Hispanic neighbors to ask them to register to vote.
The Martinezes are not affiliated with any political party. He works as a guidance counselor at New London High School, and she is a kindergarten teacher in the bilingual program at Edgerton School. Strong advocates of empowerment through voting, they volunteered in a statewide Hispanic voter registration drive last summer.
In New London, the group registered a total of 100 Hispanics.
"It is a small number," Tedman Martinez said, "but each vote counts."
The combination of Hispanics being the country's fastest growing population group and memories of the key role they played in Florida in the 2000 election has made the community one of the most sought-after in political campaigns this year.
There are 40 million Hispanics living in the United States today, five million more than in 2000, according to the Census. By 2050, the Census Bureau estimates, one in every four Americans will be Hispanic.
In Connecticut, Hispanics represent 10 percent of the population and, in New London, almost 20 percent. Still, they are the most underrepresented group among registered voters in the state, according to the Secretary of State's office.
The Martinez family knows registering Hispanics is not an easy task.
"Latinos need still a lot of motivation to go to vote," said Tedman Martinez. "They don't identify with the process. Many only see themselves as Puerto Ricans or Dominicans; they still don't think of themselves as Americans."
Another reason for their apathy, he suggested, is a lost faith in politicians, "given the corruption in many Latin American countries."
Nonetheless, Puerto Ricans, who constitute the biggest Latino group in Connecticut, have a record of high turnouts in the island's elections.
"In Puerto Rico 85 percent of the population votes, and here it is less than 25 percent," said Luis Martinez-Fernandez, director of the Latin American, Caribbean and Latino Studies program at the University of Central Florida.
"It is not easy to vote here," said Edna Negron, the director of the Puerto Rico Federal Affairs Administration in Hartford. "It is not a user-friendly system, plus there are so many different elections it is confusing: Every two years we have congressmen running, every four years, the President, every six, the senators, and then [there are] the local elections."
When the census has asked Latinos the reason why they don't vote, they often cite lack of time.
"They say their employers don't give the time," said Clarisa Martinez, Civic Participation director from The National Council of La Raza, the biggest national advocacy group for Hispanics, based in Washington, DC.
Hispanics, she said, "just like many other voters, tend to think politicians don't care about them and that even if they vote is not going to matter."
To curb this indifference, a vast Hispanic grassroots movement across the country has undertaken the strongest voter education and registration effort in election history, according to the William C. Velazquez Institute, a national Latino research group.
The institute estimated this week that the number of registered Hispanic voters nationwide would go from seven to 10 million and predicted the number voting this year would top the 5.9 million Hispanics who cast their ballots in 2000.
"I think we will have 7.5 to 8.4 million Latino voters this year," said the institute's president Antonio Gonzalez in a telephone interview from Los Angeles, "and 25 per cent of them are located in battleground states."
According to La Raza, the majority of the Hispanic population is concentrated in states that are not considered battleground, like California, New York and Connecticut. But the group argues that there are enough Latinos in the so called battleground states -Arizona, Florida, New Mexico, Nevada and Colorado - to play a pivotal role in the final outcome.
In New Mexico, for instance, 43 percent of the population is Hispanic.
"Latinos are going make a significant contribution to make outcome of the election," predicted Clarisa Martinez, of La Raza.
Gonzalez, head of the William C. Velazqez Institute, agreed. Polls in the five battleground states where Bush and Kerry are separated by fewer than six points, he said, do not track new voters and occasional voters, who are often Hispanics.
"That is going to be a surprise factor," Gonzalez said.
Florida professor Martinez-Fernandez recalled what happened in 2000 as an example of the growing power of Hispanics.
"We all know that Gore lost because of several thousand Cubans votes," he said. "Back then, 30,000 Cubans changed their vote from 1996, when they supported Clinton, in part for the heavy handed way he dealt with the Elian Gonzalez issue." He referred to the Cuban boy whose mother died in a sunken boat while coming illegally to Florida and who became the center of a national controversy when the administration returned him to his father in Cuba.
Hispanics have traditionally voted Democratic, but now some experts suggest the group is less partisan than it once was.
Martinez-Gonzalez said that nationwide Latinos vote more Democratic but "they can swing easily." The last polls, he said, give Kerry 55-60 percent of the Latino vote and Bush 22 percent, with the rest undecided.
In this tight race both Democrats and Republicans have substantially increased the time, effort and money they invest in courting Hispanics.
A report in September from Johns Hopkins University noted that Kerry has personally addressed most major Hispanic associations and that Bush has hosted a record number of Hispanic leaders in the White House.
The report, which focused on campaign advertising, also added that a record amount of money was spent this cycle on Spanish language advertising. The report shows that Democrats spent about $4.7 million as of September and that Republicans had spent around $3 million and had a plan to match the Democrats.
Hispanic advocates said candidates are definitely more concerned this year with the Hispanic vote.
"They have changed their campaigns, not completely, but the small changes we've seen are because of the growth of the Latino electorate," said La Raza's Martinez.
"But they have tried to reach out to them with ads more than policies," she said.
"They should not only take pictures with us, but never forget that we are watching and they need that vote."
The Latino population is constant when identifying their top two issues as education and jobs, according to various experts on Hispanics in the United States.
"It's bread and butter; that is, how I am going to support my family and how my children are going to be better off than I am with a good education," said Clarisa Martinez, La Raza's civic director.
Tedman Martinez, who works in New London High School-where 40 percent of the students are Latino-says education is key.
Immigration laws, he said, are keeping Hispanics who are not citizens from going to college. "I know some mothers are even thinking of divorcing and remarrying an American citizen so they can provide a future for their children, and that is happening in New London."
Luis Miranda is a spokesperson for Sen. John Kerry's campaign. Miranda, who specifically deals with Hispanic media, said Tuesday that until Election Day John Kerry will be focused in the Latino community, "because he knows we can be decisive in this election." Their slogan for Hispanics is "Una Nueva Esperanza"-A New Hope.
The Kerry campaign, according to Miranda, doesn't take the Latino vote "for granted," but they admit they are spending the most of their time in states like New Mexico where Latinos are going to have greater impact.
The Bush campaign, whose slogan in the Latino community is "Nos conocemos"-We Know Each Other-is "focusing on faith and family values," according to Professor Martinez-Gonzalez. For the Republicans, the last stops this year also will be in New Mexico, Colorado, Florida, Nevada and Arizona.
Latino groups in Connecticut are feeling somewhat left behind.
"They almost never go to Connecticut," said Edna Negron, from the Puerto Rico federal office. "We are not in their maps, even if we have a large Latino population."
"Our community is awakening and can prompt dramatic changes in the state's political map," she warned.
Many of the local politicians, Negron said, don't realize "the potential of our vote. We are not in the radar. We are invisibles."
One of the most prominent Latino politicians in Connecticut, Hartford Mayor Eddie Perez, said the community needs more candidates to fight for the Hispanics.
Perez and several grassroots groups plan a Latino political training program in January to teach Hispanics from all over the state to run campaigns, raise money and be candidates.
"The goal is to have a Latino in one of the five statewide offices, like the attorney general, the secretary of the state, the lieutenant governor or comptroller," Perez said.
They also want to register 100,000 more Hispanics in the next two years, he said.
"We are beginning to remove the invisibility cloak that we have," said Negron. ###
Delahunt’s Contributions Top Competitor Four-Fold
WASHINGTON, Oct 18 – If cash contributions are a measure of popularity in the 10th district race, incumbent William Delahunt (D-Quincy) has four times the support of challenger Michael J. Jones (R-Plymouth), according to the most recent filings with the Federal Election Commission.
Delahunt’s campaign has raised more than $1 million to Jones’ $243,613, according to the Oct. 13 reports, the last filed before the election.
Both candidates received the majority of their funds from local individuals, but, while the incumbent’s supporters donated $562,192 for reelection, individual donors gave the Jones’ campaign $179,093.
The greatest fund-raising difference between the two candidates came from political action committees, groups exclusively created to raise money for candidates. PACs dramatically favored Delahunt, giving the Quincy congressman $289,000 – more than Jones has raised all told. Jones only received $8,325 from PACs.
“We raised so much money because our opponent said he was going to excess one million and it seemed prudent,” Delahunt spokesman Steve Schwadron said Tuesday.
The Association of Trial Lawyers of America was Delahunt’s top campaign contributor, giving the maximum, $10,000. Schwadron said Delahunt’s seat on the Judiciary Committee has nothing to do with this contribution and others from legal firms, saying instead that it was a result of Delahunt’s 20 years in the legal profession.
“The people who grew professionally with him, who see his good job, are giving him money,” Schwadron said.
Nevertheless, Jones argued that Delahunt’s financial advantage derived from trial lawyers who don’t live in the district. He said that his financial base is more than 16,000 local small-dollar contributors.
Overall, Delahunt has received more than $100,000 from lawyers and law firms, according to the OpenSecrets.org, which tracks campaign finance statistics.
Jones’ top donors were consulting firms, with PriceWaterHouseCoopers giving $4,000.
Delahunt and Jones’ entered the final week of their campaigns with a stark difference in the amount of money each had left in the bank: While Delahunt still had $1.7 million, Jones only had $15, 970 left.
Jones promised a financial “October surprise” in the final week of the campaign.
“What you don’t see in the reports is the money I take out of my pocket,” Jones said. He added that he will use his own money to finance radio ads and a telemarketing campaign to turn out Republican voters.
Fallout in Congress on Vaccine Shortage
WASHINGTON, Oct 13 – September was fading away when Stephen Ostroff, a senior official of the National Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, sat in front of the Senate Special Committee on Aging and said, “October is the best month to get the flu vaccine, so let’s all roll up our sleeves and get vaccinated.”
Little did Ostroff and the CDC know that in October the country would face its worst flu vaccine shortage crisis ever.
On Tuesday, only two weeks after Ostroff’s team assured Congress that a record 100 million doses would be on hand nationwide to face this season’s influenza season, Rep. William Delahunt (D-Cape Cod) and 70 other House Democrats sent a letter to President Bush urging him to take emergency steps to ensure that flu shots would be provided for the most vulnerable, “the infants and the elderly.”
How did the country go from the biggest flu vaccine order to the biggest vaccine shortage?
After last year’s aggressive influenza season—when more than 100 infants died and 200,000 adults were hospitalized—the CDC decided to contract for the 100 million doses. The order went directly to the only two companies licensed by the Food and Drug Administration: California-based Chiron and Aventis Pasteur, a French company that manufactures flu vaccine in Pennsylvania.
Federal health officials had increased the number of doses from 83 million to 100 million because they didn’t want to face the same long lines that formed in flu clinics last year after a small shortage occurred.
For the 2004-05 influenza season, Chiron had negotiated to put about 50 million vaccine doses on the market. Aventis Pasteur would produce about 52 million, of which 4 million would go to a stockpile at CDC headquarters to be used in December –“if shortages occurred,” Ostroff told Congress.
On Oct. 5, with the flu vaccination season already in progress, the CDC was informed that British regulators had shut down Chiron’s manufacturing plant in Liverpool after finding several batches of contaminated vaccines.
The abrupt closing of the plant meant none of the doses Chiron had committed to supply would be delivered.. Suddenly, the bulk of the nation’s vaccine supply was cut in half.
A federal grand jury is investigating Chiron’s failure to supply the vaccine. The U.S. attorney in New York has issueda subpoena to the company, according to a regulatory filing posted by the company on Tuesday.
The shortage caught the government by surprise, officials said, even though in late August they learned of the contaminated batches and were told by Chiron that its supply would suffer some delay.
After learning of the shortage last week, the CDC, which tracks flu epidemics, quickly issued guidelines on who should receive priority in getting the vaccine. The center also urged state programs, public and private clinics and supermarkets to follow the “honor code” and to dispense the flu shot only to infants 6 to 23 months old, seniors 65 years and older, and adults with chronic diseases.
But Aventis by then had started shipping its supplies. By last week 30 million doses of its vaccine were sent to its clients. Aware of the shortage, people formed long lines to get a shot of the scarce vaccine. The majority of providers followed the CDC guidelines, but in some states the shortage prompted price gouging.
The American Society of Health-System Pharmacists, for example, said on Wednesday that doctors were being visited by opportunistic vendors who offered the flu vaccine for as much as 10 times the normal price.
Julie Gerberding, the director of the CDC, said Tuesday that price gouging was “immoral” and called for state-by-state prosecution of those who were profiting from the shortage.
The 70 House Democrats who called up on the President to take emergency steps to respond to the shortage, also called for a federal investigation of flu vaccine price gouging. “This is not a state-by-state issue, it’s a federal issue,” said Steve Schwadron, spokesman for Delahunt.
Delahunt’s office spokesman also accused the Bush Administration of “not paying enough attention” to the crisis and claimed “every day of inaction exacerbates the problem,” he said.
The letter called on the government to gather all the unused vaccine in the market and redistribute it to the neediest. “People are in panic, they are scared, and that is not right,” Schwadron said.
On Tuesday, the CDC unveiled a two-phase plan that would redirect the 22.4 million unshipped doses of Aventis vaccine to the neediest patients and to those states that were heavily reliant on the Chiron vaccine.
Gerberding said that initially 14.2 million doses will go to pediatricians, long-term care facilities, Veterans Hospitalsand state programs.
Massachusetts could benefit some from this reallocation; 462,000 doses, or 73 percent of its publicly contracted supply, was to have come from Chiron.
The CDC will keep 8.2 million doses to be distributed after the flu season starts to areas where the disease is more prevalent or where a large percentage of the high-risk population has not received shots.
But Gerberding acknowledged that not everybody in need of a flu vaccine will get one this year.
With the flu season just beginning, and “with isolated cases in the New York-New Jersey area,” according to CDC spokeswoman Christine Pearson, the agency is asking patients to seek medical help, when they get the first symptoms, “since there will be plenty prophylactic medicines available,” Gerberding said.
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Connecticut May Benefit From Vaccine Reallocation
WASHINGTON, Oct 12 - September was fading away when Stephen Ostroff, a senior official of the National Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, sat in front of the Senate Special Committee on Aging and said, "October is the best month to get the flu vaccine, so let's all roll up our sleeves and get vaccinated."
Little did Ostroff and the CDC know that in October the country would face its worst flu vaccine shortage crisis ever.
On Tuesday, only two weeks after Ostroff's team assured Congress that a record 100 million doses would be on hand nationwide to face this season's influenza season, Rep. William Delahunt (D-Cape Cod) and 70 other House Democrats sent a letter to President Bush urging him to take emergency steps to ensure that flu shots would be provided for the most vulnerable, "the infants and the elderly."
How did the country go from the biggest flu vaccine order to the biggest vaccine shortage?
After last year's aggressive influenza season-when more than 100 infants died and 200,000 adults were hospitalized-the CDC decided to contract for the 100 million doses. The order went directly to the only two companies licensed by the Food and Drug Administration: California-based Chiron and Aventis Pasteur, a French company that manufactures flu vaccine in Pennsylvania.
Federal health officials had increased the number of doses from 83 million to 100 million because they didn't want to face the same long lines that formed in flu clinics last year after a small shortage occurred.
For the 2004-05 influenza season, Chiron had negotiated to put about 50 million vaccine doses on the market. Aventis Pasteur would produce about 52 million, of which 4 million would go to a stockpile at CDC headquarters to be used in December -"if shortages occurred," Ostroff told Congress.
On Oct. 5, with the flu vaccination season already in progress, the CDC was informed that British regulators had shut down Chiron's manufacturing plant in Liverpool after finding several batches of contaminated vaccines.
The abrupt closing of the plant meant none of the doses Chiron had committed to supply would be delivered.. Suddenly, the bulk of the nation's vaccine supply was cut in half.
A federal grand jury is investigating Chiron's failure to supply the vaccine. The U.S. attorney in New York has issued a subpoena to the company, according to a regulatory filing posted by the company on Tuesday.
The shortage caught the government by surprise, officials said, even though in late August they learned of the contaminated batches and were told by Chiron that its supply would suffer some delay.
After learning of the shortage last week, the CDC, which tracks flu epidemics, quickly issued guidelines on who should receive priority in getting the vaccine. The center also urged state programs, public and private clinics and supermarkets to follow the "honor code" and to dispense the flu shot only to infants 6 to 23 months old, seniors 65 years and older, and adults with chronic diseases.
But Aventis by then had started shipping its supplies. By last week 30 million doses of its vaccine were sent to its clients. Aware of the shortage, people formed long lines to get a shot of the scarce vaccine. The majority of providers followed the CDC guidelines, but in some states the shortage prompted price gouging.
The American Society of Health-System Pharmacists, for example, said on Wednesday that doctors were being visited by opportunistic vendors who offered the flu vaccine for as much as 10 times the normal price.
Julie Gerberding, the director of the CDC, said Tuesday that price gouging was "immoral" and called for state-by-state prosecution of those who were profiting from the shortage.
The 70 House Democrats who called up on the President to take emergency steps to respond to the shortage, also called for a federal investigation of flu vaccine price gouging. "This is not a state-by-state issue, it's a federal issue," said Steve Schwadron, spokesman for Delahunt.
Delahunt's office spokesman also accused the Bush Administration of "not paying enough attention" to the crisis and claimed "every day of inaction exacerbates the problem," he said.
The letter called on the government to gather all the unused vaccine in the market and redistribute it to the neediest. "People are in panic, they are scared, and that is not right," Schwadron said.
On Tuesday, the CDC unveiled a two-phase plan that would redirect the 22.4 million unshipped doses of Aventis vaccine to the neediest patients and to those states that were heavily reliant on the Chiron vaccine.
Gerberding said that initially 14.2 million doses will go to pediatricians, long-term care facilities, Veterans Hospitals and state programs.
Massachusetts could benefit some from this reallocation; 462,000 doses, or 73 percent of its publicly contracted supply, was to have come from Chiron.
The CDC will keep 8.2 million doses to be distributed after the flu season starts to areas where the disease is more prevalent or where a large percentage of the high-risk population has not received shots.
But Gerberding acknowledged that not everybody in need of a flu vaccine will get one this year.
With the flu season just beginning, and "with isolated cases in the New York-New Jersey area," according to CDC spokeswoman Christine Pearson, the agency is asking patients to seek medical help, when they get the first symptoms, "since there will be plenty prophylactic medicines available," Gerberding said.
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Delahunt Continues ‘Iraq Watch’
WASHINGTON, Oct 6 – It is 11.30 p.m. when hundreds of congressmen call it a day here in the House of Representatives after a busy Monday of bill passing and amending, but two men remain on the floor. They are Jay Inslee, a Democrat of Washington, and William Delahunt of Cape Cod. They have gathered to talk about the situation in Iraq as they have been doing on a weekly basis when Congress is in session for the past 17 months.
They call it Iraq Watch, a special session started by four House Democrats to publicly raise concerns about how the George W. Bush administration is handling the war and to suggest new policies.
After 36 weeks of these hour-long discussions, which are broadcast by C-SPAN, Delahunt defends their importance, arguing that the war “is still a pressing national issue and it is our responsibility to keep questioning, not once in a while, but weekly, what is happening there even if we are busy.”
Delahunt likes to remember the genesis for the Iraq Watch was in Falmouth on a September afternoon in 2002 when hundreds of residents filled the Morse Pond School auditorium to discuss the reasons to go into Iraq.
“It was a beautiful summer day,” recalls Delahunt, “and I expected 15 to 20 people to show up. But I remember being somewhat taken aback by the full auditorium.”
Delahunt told the 300 people there, “I have heard nothing that would cause me to support a resolution to support a war.” The next month he voted against the authorization of forces.
But not a single Iraq watch discussion, which started in May of 2003 in the House, has drawn nearly as many people as gathered in Falmouth.
The sessions have never exceeded a dozen representatives. In the beginning there were Joseph M. Hoeffel III of Pennsylvania, Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, Neil Abercrombie of Hawaii and Delahunt.
This year two more Democratic House Members have joined the group: Jay Inslee of Washington and Ted Strickland of Ohio. But all along, Delahunt has been the most consistent.
“I felt I needed to communicate my view as well as those of who voted against the war,” Delahunt says. His colleague Joe Hoeffel agrees. “We felt increasingly frustrated with the mess in Iraq and decided to speak out and raise questions, worries and concerns,” Hoeffel says.
In each meeting and for an hour, using the rigorous House protocol, the gentlemen yield each other time to review the latest news from the front line, to highlight what they consider the Bush Administration’s “failures” and “misjudgments,” and to embrace the courage of the troops serving overseas.
Asked why so few of the 205 Democrats in the House attend their weekly meetings, Delahunt says Iraq Watch takes “a lot of time and effort” but argues he is committed to it because “it is kids from Cape Cod that are dying and it is essential that we are learning what is happening there and why it is happening.”
Delahunt has described the Iraq Watch as “a conversation among friends” that gets broadcast by C-SPAN. The participants don’t know how many people watch them each week, but their offices on Capitol Hill receive letters and phone call from all across the nation, their spokesmen say.
During these 17 months, only a handful of Republicans have showed up for Iraq Watch. Greg Crist, spokesman for the House Republican Conference, says they don’t attend because each party holds its own special sessions. “This week we have chosen to debate Iraq and other themes like John Kerry’s lack of leadership, the 9/11 report, or jobs and the economy,” Crist says, “and Democrats will not come.”
Hoeffel says he wished more Republicans would take part in the sessions. “That way we could have had debates,” he said, “but they see it as an attack on their president, not as a critique of the policies in Iraq.”
With no Iraq Watch sessions scheduled before the election, the group of Democrats involved has announced that no matter who is elected president, they will be back on the House floor to debate the war.
“Here we can inform ourselves, our colleagues, and help educate the American people,” Delahunt says.
Connecticut’s 3,900 Soldiers Could Vote in November
WASHINGTON, Oct 5 – With more U.S. citizens serving abroad this election day than in any since the Vietnam War – 500,000 military personnel, 3,900 from Connecticut alone -- the Defense Department and the Connecticut Secretary of State are taking steps to make sure every one will be able to cast their ballot.
In 2000, 29 percent of the military ballots nationwide were disqualified because they were post-marked after the deadline, arrived late or did not arrive at all. This year U.S. officials are determined not to let it happen again.
Earlier this year, the Pentagon proposed that military personnel be allowed to vote either by email or fax. Twenty-three states have agreed to allow the military to vote by fax, while Missouri and North Dakota will allow e-mail voting.
But the Connecticut state legislature rejected the proposal, meaning that military personnel will still have to vote by absentee.
“The soldiers that use fax or e-mail will have to sign a waiver of their right to privacy” explained Lt. Col. Ellen Krenke, a Pentagon spokeswoman, “because their local election official will have to see what they vote for.”
A spokesman for the Connecticut Secretary of State said Tuesday that the legislature had been concerned that fax and e-mail voting would violate voters’ privacy.
Krenke dismissed concerns that service members will hesitate to vote if they have to do it more publicly.
Sam Wright, the director of the Military Voting Rights Project in Washington, supports the new systems proposed by the Pentagon.
“They guarantee the servicemen participation,” he said. “Sometimes the mail can take weeks, because it is very difficult to deliver them to someone that is constantly moving.”
The Connecticut Secretary of State’s office, which oversees elections, started sending the military absentee ballots overseas “a month ago,” said staff attorney Bernie Liu.
“The military is very good at returning them quickly,” he said. The deadline for the ballot to arrive is Election Day before the polls close. This year, the Department of Defense is using overnight mail which they hope will reduce to two to three days the time ballots take to get home.
Of the Connecticut men and women deployed overseas, 1,421 are assigned to Iraq and Afghanistan and 2,525 are in bases elsewhere in the world, according to the latest Pentagon figures.
Officials said it is still not too late to request an absentee ballot, which can be done by fax. Each service member can fax the local town clerk, who will then mail the ballot.
Democrat Party chairman George Jepsen expressed hope Tuesday that service members in this election will move away from their traditional support of Republicans.
“They are feeling let down by the Bush administration, which is pressing them into duty, sending them without the adequate protective gear and forcing them to stay longer overseas,” Jepsen said in a phone interview from his Hartford office..
But Connecticut Republican campaign officials said they were confident the military vote will remain in their column, pointing to a recent poll which gives the GOP at least 60 percent of the military vote.
“The soldiers don’t appreciate the idea that [Democratic presidential nominee John F.] Kerry did not vote for supplying funding to support the troops,” said Brian Farnen, executive director of the State Republican Party, during a telephone interview, “That hurts them greatly.”
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100 Million Vaccines on Hand for the Flu Season
WASHINGTON, Sep. 28 - One hundred million influenza vaccine doses will be available nationwide for this year immunization campaign, a record number prompted by the shortfalls that led last season to long lines of people waiting for their shots.
From last fall to this spring, influenza killed more than 36,000 people and caused 200,000 hospitalizations, according to the latest National Centers for Disease Control and Prevention figures.
In Connecticut, where the flu symptoms hospitalized countless people, elderly residents are already worried about the vaccine's availability.
"We started to get calls daily in early September," Nancy Turner of the New London
Department of Health and Social Services, said in a telephone interview Tuesday. "It is mainly seniors worried about a shortage in the supply."
The preoccupation is shared by other states. The memories of the long lines and the tales of family members debating who should get the last vaccine have been refreshed as the flu season arrives.
Testifying before a congressional committee Tuesday, Stephen Ostroff, the deputy director of the CDC's National Center for Infectious Diseases, linked the shortfall to an unusual early onset of the virus and to the fact that vaccine manufacturers had cut down their supply after two earlier mild flu seasons.
The CDC believes 185 million doses - 85 million more than will be available -- would be necessary to provide immunity to all the people whose health status makes them more susceptible to serious complications by the flu Ostroff said, but added that the hundred million shots would meet the demand.
But, in case of shortage, the CDC has purchased 4.5 million shots, Ostroff told the Senate Special Committee on Aging.
Ostroff recommended that people 65 and older or with chronic illnesses, should get the vaccine. Medicare covers 100 percent of the cost for people on its rolls.
"Only about 64 percent of those over age 65 were immunized for influenza in 2002," he said. Of the 36,000 Americans who died from the flu last season, 32,000 were 65 or older.
This year, the CDC has broadened the vaccine recommendations to children 6 to 23 months old, their families and their caregivers because babies are at increased risk for influenza-related hospitalization.
From October 2003 until January of this year, 93 children died from chronic diseases that started as flu. One such incident involved a Connecticut 11-year old who had not been vaccinated and died last December, according to the Connecticut Department of Public Health.
Influenza is an infection of the respiratory tract that is highly contagious, spreading from person to person through coughing and sneezing. The main symptoms are fever, headache, dry cough, sore throat, runny nose and muscle aches.
This season, more than 95 percent of the flu vaccines will be offered by the private sector. In Connecticut, the Department of Public Health will provide it only to children eligible for Medicaid's Vaccine for Children Program.
Health officials say the best months to get the immunization shot are October and November, though it is never too late. "Now it is the time," Ostroff said. "Let's roll up our sleeves and get vaccinated."
Growing Up Indian is “Cool”
WASHINGTON, Sep 21 - Brianna Rocha, an 8-year-old Eastern Indian Pequot from Moosup, walked along the Mall guided by her tribe's leader, Chief Hockeo, to express how "proud" she is to be an Indian.
Brianna-dressed in regalia costume and wearing her hair braided and a beaded headdress with the name Pequot inscribed in yellow-said she does not feel her tribe is endangered and she can't recall having experienced discrimination.
On the contrary, she said her classmates think it is actually "very cool" to be an Indian.
At Washington's Mall, Brianna and her friends, Chenoa Sebastian, 9, and her brother Marcus, 11, were amazed by the colorful procession of their people, thousands of Indians who gathered here to celebrate the inauguration of the eagerly awaited National Museum of the American Indian.
Brianna is part of the seventh generation of the Eastern Pequot, a tribe that has its reservation in North Stonington and was federally recognized in July 2002.
More than 40 Eastern Pequot members traveled to Washington to "represent the tribe," Chenoa explained.
According to The Eastern Pequot chairwoman, Marcia Jones Flowers, the tribe has 1,135 members spread through New England.
A dozen of their representatives on the Mall ditched class Tuesday, but they did so with the blessing of all their teachers.
"Almost all of them must write papers later to explain to their classmates what they saw here in Washington," Flowers said.
Teenager Shianne Sebastian, of North Stonington, attends Wheeler Middle School, but she said she came to Washington because she did not want to miss such a historical event. But she promised her classmates and her teacher "lots of pictures."
"I am here because I want to show who I am and I want to be proud of it and keep the traditions alive," Shianne said.
Shianne, Sherelle Sebastian and Natasha Gambrell constitute the tribe's teenagers dance group. They have learned how to perform the Blanket Dance, and they show their art every chance they have.
All have won awards in the Native American Drum and Songs World Championship, a contest held annually by the Mashantucket Pequots.
Brianna's mother, Dawnrae Rocha, has taught her daughter the Blanket Dance too. "It is like a butterfly coming out the cocoon," Brianna said. Dawnrae Rocha interjects that the lesson of the dance is the blossoming of a teenager, the portrayal of her change from girl to woman.
The group's dance rehearsals; the annual powwow, which the Pequots celebrate the last weekend of July; and their relations with other tribes make these teenagers different.
Ceremonies help them keep up with their heritage, one they say they are proud of.
"We are the people who were here before the colonists; we come from a long way," Shianne said. Nevertheless the Pequots remain in the same land their ancestors occupied before the Europeans came.
Amid their tradition, the young people learn to respect their elders and listen to the elders' stories of the past.
"They talk of the Pequot War of the 1600s, and that way we don't forget our history," Shianne said.
But Brianna, Shianne and the rest have a difficult duty: to carry on with the Indian culture and the Eastern Pequot tradition in modern times.
Far from their tribe's land, Lillette Hill, a freshman studying political science at Temple University in Philadelphia, says she does all she can not to lose track of the Pequot.
"For us the tribe is a sense of family, a sense of togetherness," said Hill, who came to Washington for the museum opening. "We learn about the traditions since we are babies, and I am sure my children will learn them too."
