Dude, Where's My Country_ - Michael Moore [107]
10. How to Talk to Your Conservative Brother-in-Law
Regarding the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal, read Amnesty International’s “Life in the Balance” at www.amnestyusa.org/abolish/reports/mumia/ as well as other anti-death-penalty activism through Amnesty. Also look at The National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty at www.ncadp.org and the Death Penalty Information Center at www.deathpenaltyinfo.org.
The information about unions and pensions comes from David Cay Johnston and Kenneth N. Gilpin, “A Case Sounds a Warning About Pension Safety,” The New York Times, October 1, 2000; Peter G. Gosselin, “Labor’s Love of 401(k)s Thwarts Bid for Reform,” Los Angeles Times, April 22, 2002.
To read about the “buy American” campaign, look at Dana Frank’s book Buy American: The Untold Story of Economic Nationalism, Beacon Press, 1999; Peter Gilmore, “The Untold Story (and Failure) of ‘Buy American’ Campaigns,” UE News, United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America; Lisa Hong, “Is It ‘Buy American,’ or ‘Japan Bashing’?” Asian Week, February 7, 1992.
To help unionize your workplace, go to the SEIU (Service Employees International Union) at www.seiu.org or UE (United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America) at http://www.ranknfile-ue.org.
Before you give Bill O’Reilly too much credit, remember the following: He is against the death penalty. Reason given: “It’s not punitive enough.” Similarly, he opposes NAFTA because he objects to Mexicans crossing into the U.S. Let’s not forget that he has spoken about “Mexican wetbacks” on at least two occasions: The O’Reilly Factor, February 6, 2003, and in the Allentown, Pennsylvania, Morning Call, January 5, 2003.
Information about Nixon came from articles written by Deb Riechmann from the Associated Press: “Nixon Sought Release of Americans in China Before Historic Trip,” April 5, 2001, and “U.S.—Tale of a Treaty,” June 16, 2001; USA Today, “Title IX at 30: Still Under Fire,” June 19, 2002; Huw Watkin, “Burying the Hatchet,” Time magazine, November 20, 2000; The American Experience, PBS, 2002, as accessed on www .pbs.org/wgbh/amex/presidents.
Union and non-union worker salaries are found at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, United States Department of Labor, “Table 2. Median Weekly Earnings of Full-Time Wage and Salary Workers by Union Affiliation,” February 25, 2003.
Numbers given for people killed each year in the U.S. from air pollution come from Harvard School of Public Health press release, “Air pollution deadlier than previously thought,” March 2, 2000. The figures for health-care costs from air pollution are from the Centers for Disease Control, National Center for Environmental Health, Air Pollution and Respiratory Health Branch, www.cdc.gov/nceh/airpollution.
Discussions about Superfund come from a series of articles by Katherine Q. Seelye in The New York Times, “Bush Proposing Policy Changes on Toxic Sites,” February 24, 2002 and “Bush Slashing Aid for EPA Cleanup at 33 Toxic Sites,” July 1, 2002; Margaret Ramirez, “Report Links Superfund Sites, Illness,” Newsday, June 15, 2003. To demand industry and government accountability, contact The Center for Health, Environment and Justice at www.chej.org.
Information about spending on energy in the U.S. comes from the United States Department of Energy, “Table 1.5 Energy Consumption and Expenditures Indicators, 1949-2001,” and The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy Federal Fact Sheets, “Energy Efficiency Research, Development, and Deployment: Why Is Federal Support Necessary?” accessed on