Tidbits for July 5, 2010

1. RE: What's Eating You? - Bugs, Bacteria, and Zombies
2. NYC Rally at Major League Baseball Headquarters
3. Barbara Zeluck Presente!

===
1.

Date: Mon, 5 Jul 2010 
From: Ellen Schwartz
RE: What's Eating You? - Bugs, Bacteria, and Zombies

No, ladies and gentlement, women and men, comrades and
all, I beg to differ. I am sure the entire funeral
industry stands with me on this.  Brian's big argument
is that "Just four minutes after death, oxygen deprived
cells begin to digest themselves and spill their
contents."

Yeah, but there's enough of the circulatory system left
so that hours after death, embalming fluid can flow
through the veins of the deceased and retard decomp to
the point where our dead person can get up and walk
without large parts of his skin sloughing off.  Except
they are often fairly rotten.  In the very best of the
zombie movies, "Night of the Living Dead," a police
officer is interviewed on TV early in the zombie
attacks, about why the zombies move slowly, and he
says, "Well, they're dead, they're all messed up."   So
decomp is proceeding, but slowly.

Now how can that be, absent embalming fluid? Nobody,
not even George Romero, has explained the process of
zombification. (Or warp drives, either, now that I
think of it.) The movies show us clearly that one
doesn't have to be embalmed in order to be a zombie. If
you get bitten by a zombie, you become one. And I
believe people can rise up from their graves and be
zombies.  I am not sure if that happens in the same
movie, so there may be dueling theories on the
mechanism of zombies.

For people who aren't embalmed, it's easy to figure
out. It's usually alien spores or something. So
obviously, the spores are acting as retardants to the
decomposition process, like embalming fluid, taking
over the remaining cells in whatever condition they may
be when spore-takeover happens.  They lumber and
shuffle because driving a dead person is like riding a
bicycle with flat tires, bent rims and a twisted fork. 
A lot of work. And the SPORES need what all life needs:
to feed and reproduce; and to provide fuel for the
bodies. Obviously they can't eat their vehicles, and it
would be impolite to eat someone else's vehicle (i.e.,
another zombie), but they can eat living people.  They
can digest the meat and send it through the circulatory
system the same as embalming fluid flows, to sustain
both spores and remaining cells. Which then DON'T HAVE
TO DIGEST THEMSELVES!  Q.E.D.!

I have no explanation for zombies that can run, but
obviously Mr. Switek isn't as much of a scientist as he
claims, or he would have realized the above by himself.

Ellen Schwartz

===
2.
NYC Rally at Major League Baseball Headquarters:

Move the 2011 All-Star Game Out of Arizona And Protest
Anti-Immigrant Arizona Laws! Support Immigration Reform
not Racial Profiling!


WHEN:  THURSDAY JULY 8TH @ 12NOON

WHERE:  MLB Headquarters - 245 Park Ave (46th and Park Ave),
Manhattan

WHY:  Let's send a message to Arizona: we oppose the
un-American law (SB1070) that threatens civil rights
and undermines basic notions of fairness. We call on
MLB to do the same.

This rally is co-sponsored by (list in formation): The
New York Immigration Coalition, American Immigration
Lawyers Association New York Chapter, African Services
Committee, Asian American Legal Defense and Education
Fund, Bill of Rights Defense Committee, Boycott Arizona
NYC, Cabrini Immigrant Services, CAIR-NY, CARECEN,
Democracy for New York City, Greater New York City for
Change,  Greater New York Labor-Religion Coalition, La
Union de La Comunidad Latina, Left Labor Project, Long
Island Immigrant Alliance, May 1 Coalition for Worker
and Immigrant Rights, Minkwon Center for Community
Action,  NAACP New York State Conference, New Immigrant
Community Empowerment, New York Civic Participation
Project, New York Civil Liberties Union, New York
Communities for Change, Northern Manhattan Coalition
for Immigrants Rights, Organization of
Chinese-Americans New York Chapter, Queens Community
House, Rockland Immigration Coalition, Sikh Coalition,
Working Families Party

For more details/to co-sponsor the rally, contact
[log in to unmask] or 212-627-2227 X246 at The New York
Immigration Coalition.



Background Information:

What is SB 1070?

SB 1070 is a law passed by the Arizona state government
that requires police to ask any person who looks
"reasonably suspicious" for their immigration papers.
In effect, it will force the police to engage in racial
profiling that will target Hispanics and other people
of color living or visiting the state. It will also
marginalize immigrant communities in the state and will
drive a wedge between them and law enforcement
officials.

Why Major League Baseball?

We believe standards rewarding hard work and committing
to fairness and equality are as relevant to meaningful
immigration reform as they are to our national pastime.
SB 1070 is a step in the opposite direction.  Major
League Baseball is uniquely positioned to show that
Americans support the civil rights of everyone: The
2011 All-Star Game is currently scheduled to take place
in Phoenix, AZ. We are calling on MLB Commissioner Bud
Selig to not hold an All-Star game in Arizona unless
the law is revoked.

27% of MLB players are Latino and 28% are foreign born-
when SB 1070 goes into effect this year, these players
could be unjustly targeted by Arizona police. The Major
League Baseball Players Association has already
publicly denounced the law because of the negative
impact it could have on its members. The MLB has a
similar responsibility to show not only these players,
but also the millions of Hispanic and immigrant fans of
baseball, that it values their support and
contributions to the sport and is prepared to take a
stand for them.  Moving the All-Star game from Phoenix
will send the message that baseball, the quintessential
American sport, will not accept the un-American
treatment of its players or its fans.

There is a long history of sports leagues and
organizations standing up for what is right: from the
international boycott of South Africa during Apartheid,
to the NFL's refusal to hold a Superbowl in Arizona
when the state did not acknowledge Martin Luther King
Jr. day.  The MLB itself is tied to the struggle for
civil rights in America, beginning with Jackie Robinson
as the first African-American player in 1947.  We call
on Commissioner Bud Selig to continue in this tradition
of demonstrating that the sport values fair play both
on and off the field.

The MLB should refuse to hold the All-Star game in
Arizona until all baseball players and their fans can
live and visit Arizona with the confidence that their
civil rights will be upheld and the police will not
single them out because of the color of their skin.

What's the Solution?

The organizers of this campaign to move the All-Star
Game out of Arizona believe that beyond the repeal of
SB1070, our federal government must act now to fix the
broken immigration system.  Instead of forcing local
police to go after immigrants, President Obama and
Congress should enact legislation that legalizes youth,
farmworkers and undocumented immigrants; unites
families; and respects rights.  Immigration reform is
key to our nation's security and prosperity.

For more details/to get involved in the action, please
contact [log in to unmask] or 212-627-2227 ext. 246 at
the New York Immigration Coalition

===
3.

Barbara Zeluck Presente! 

Barbara Adler Tucker Zeluck
August 18, 1923 - June 5, 2010

http://www.solidarity-us.org/current/barbarazeluck

Our comrade Barbara Zeluck died at her home June 5 in
New York City. She recently successfully battled a case
of septicemia that occurred while she was in hospital
for a urinary tract infection. Friends and comrades
have been visiting her in the weeks since. A memorial
event is being planned for mid-September.

Born in 1923 into a coal mine owning family in
Birmingham, Alabama, Barbara traveled far -- socially,
politically, and geographically -- in her life. She
joined the Communist Party while a student at Vassar in
the early 1940s. Like many others, she left it
following the suppression of the 1956 Hungarian
revolution and the revelation of Nikita Khrushchev's
"secret speech" outlining Stalin's crimes. She was
subsequently a member of the Socialist Workers Party,
the International Socialists, Workers Power and then
from 1986 until her death a founding member of
Solidarity.

Her journey through the U.S. left was always grounded
in her commitment to a vision of socialism achieved
through the action of a self-organized working-class.
Likewise, her belief in radical democracy and her
anti-capitalist politics guided her work in the women's
movement in the 1970s and 1980s when she was deeply
involved, through CARASA (the Coalition for Abortion
Rights and Against Sterilization Abuse), in efforts to
build a movement for reproductive rights led by working
class women of color.

The political causes Barbara was involved in ranged
from opposition to the Vietnam War to support for
self-determination for Palestine to support for a
single-payer health care plan. In her later years, she
remained a stalwart member of Solidarity and provided
much needed political and financial support to efforts
promoting rank-and-file organization within unions.

She helped build the White Lung Association to fight
the outrages of corporations who visited the white
deaths of mesothelioma and asbestosis on hundreds of
thousands of workers and workers' families. This
passion was inspired by the death of Barbara's husband
Steve Zeluck, a veteran teacher unionist and longtime
socialist militant, who contracted mesothelioma from
exposure to asbestos decades earlier as a shipyard
worker.

Beyond Solidarity we knew Barbara through her vast
knowledge and love of opera (she shared tickets for
terrific seats at the Met with many over the years) and
her work around occupational health and safety.

Barbara had a long and active life, unwavering in her
support for radical social change and movements that
she felt were dedicated to mobilizing the working class
and raising class consciousness. She always believed
that a better world was possible. It would be wonderful
to hear from those who worked with and knew about
different aspects of her life. Please send any memories
you would like to share with Solidarity and her
daughter Merry and son Paul to Marsha Niemeijer,
[log in to unmask]

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