<HTML><FONT FACE=arial,helvetica><FONT SIZE=3>Doug:
<BR><BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">I don't know much about Owens, but he seems like a fairly interesting
<BR>guy. What's his story?
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<BR>Major was CORE member during the civil rights movement and a librarian who
<BR>was part of the insurgent African-American political community that emerged
<BR>in Brooklyn in the early 1980s [Al Vann, Roger Green, Velmanette Montgomery,
<BR>Et. Al.] He was State Senator, and defeated a first-class Black Democratic
<BR>machine hack who later went to jail, Vander Beatty, for the Congressional
<BR>seat; that pretty much broke the back of the old machine in the
<BR>African-American community. He was one of a very few Democratic Congressional
<BR>representatives who was prepared to identify himself as a democratic
<BR>socialist, and he joined DSA. He is not afraid of taking principled stands
<BR>that cause political problems for himself, like speaking out against
<BR>Farrakhan. But what really impressed me was the way in which he and his staff
<BR>were actively involved in community work, especially around education issues,
<BR>which is one of his major foci as a member of the House Committee on Labor
<BR>and Education. He was personally involved when I had to go to court to get an
<BR>injunction against the Board of Education for bringing in contracters who did
<BR>all sort of work releasing asbestos in my former high school, and he was
<BR>extraordinarily supportive for educational ventures in which we were
<BR>involved. I never ran into another politician who followed through like he
<BR>does on those issues. On the more humorous side, he likes to write socially
<BR>conscious "rap songs" and put them in the Congressional Record.
<BR>
<BR>Leo Casey
<BR>United Federation of Teachers
<BR>260 Park Avenue South
<BR>New York, New York 10010-7272 (212-598-6869)
<BR>
<BR>Power concedes nothing without a demand.
<BR>It never has, and it never will.
<BR>If there is no struggle, there is no progress.
<BR>Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation are men who
<BR>want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and
<BR>lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters.
<BR><P ALIGN=CENTER>-- Frederick Douglass --
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