HOME  E-DEMOCRACY 98  E-DEBATE WEB MN-FORUM

Thomas Fiske      Response 12

Question 12: Even as access to advanced technology and high speed Internet improves, many of the disparities in access between rich and poor, urban and rural Minnesota are growing. Should the state have a role in narrowing this gap? What would you do specifically as Governor to create more access to these tools for all Minnesotans?

The inequality in access to the internet and other high technology is
a reflection of the great economic and social inequalityin US
society. It is clearly in the rural areas, the Native-American
reservations, and the working-class, Black, Latino, Asian-American
and Native-American areas of the cities in which access to the
internet and other high technology is most lacking.

My campaign advocates vastly increased funding for schools, with
priority going to the economically worst-off areas. I support
affirmative action in admissions to college for women and oppressed
nationalities. We advocate free public education through the
university level and lifetime adult education. We advocate the
desegregation of the schools throughbussing.

Working people sense that these resources are possible for
education because of the big increases in labor productivity over the
previous decades, and yet we know that there is resistance to any
significant additional funding for education. Why? Because it is
viewed as an unnecessary cost of production and a wasteful expense by
the barons of the corporate world who dominate the Republican and
Democratic parties.

A similar approach should be made to funding internet access in
the public libraries. A vast increase in state and federal funds
should bemade available to get the public libraries on-line, with
priority going to the economically worst-off areas.

Finally, a large percentage of computers and other high
technology exist in individual homes. The inequality here also
reflects the inequalities ofincome and access to study among working
people. I advocate a shorter work- week with no cut in pay to lessen
the competition for the available jobs. This would shrink the number
of unemployed and underemployed and give access to time for leisure
and study to many working people who today are vastly overworked.

This question has been at issue in the strikes which have
occurred at US West and GM. Many of the telephone operators and
technicians at US West have been working twenty hours mandatory
overtime each week for over two years! Even since the strike, much of
this is still going on. It goes without saying how this limits one's
ability to read a book, get on the net, or even watch the news on TV.
It goes without saying how this limits one's ability to live like a
human being!

I support affirmative action in hiring and promotion of Blacks,
Native-Americans, Latinos, Asian-Americans and women. I support
federally fundedchild-care centers, which would begin to relieve the
double burden of holding a full-time job and raising a family and
allow a modicum of time for study and leisure.

The big barrier to these changes is the resistance of the ruling
rich who seek only to defend their profits. In the coming years
even questions of access to science will be battled out as class
questions. The battle against the teaching of "creationism" in the
public schools and the fight against pseudo-scientific theories of
"race" by right-wing academics will again be fought out.