[LAAMN] the implacable war against immigrants
THIS 'IMPACABLE' WAR AGAINST MIGRANTS Review: The Immigrant War, by Vittorio Longhi - The Policy Press, c/o the University of Chicago Press, 2013 By David Bacon http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/19089-the-implacable-war-against-migrants The immigration debate in the United States almost always treats the migration of people into this country as something unique. It is not. The World Bank estimates the total number of people worldwide living outside the countries where they were born at 213,316,418 in 2010. A decade earlier it was 178,050,184, and a decade before that, 155,209,721. The number of people who have become cross-border migrants has increased by about 58 million people in 20 years. To be sure, the U.S. has become home to a large number - 42,813,281 in 2010, up from 23,251,026 two decades earlier. This increase coincided, by no accident, with the period in which the North American Free Trade Agreement went into effect, and neoliberal economic reforms were implemented in countries that have been the sources of migration to the U.S. Nevertheless, looking at the ways migration has affected other countries, and especially at the experiences of migrants themselves, it is clear that U.S. exceptionalism - the idea that this country is somehow unique and different from the rest of the world -has no basis in fact. Why, then, is the debate over this country's immigration policy conducted with such exceptionalist blinders? One book that helps to remove them is The Immigrant War by Vittorio Longhi, published this year by Policy Press at the University of Chicago. Longhi is an Italian labor and immigrant rights advocate, and he's looked at his own country, as well as France, the Persian Gulf states, and the U.S. All are the recipients of large numbers of migrants. The United Arab Emirates, for instance, has a migrant population of 3,293,264, almost triple the number, 1,330,324, of two decades earlier. The UAE began exporting oil in 1962, when its migrant population was only 65,827. Today the number of UAE citizens is only slightly more than 1.3 million. Who really produced the oil wealth of Dubai and Abu Dhabi? France today, with about 66 million inhabitants, has 8,264,070 migrants, up from 5,897,267 20 years ago. Italy, with almost 61 million people, has 4,463,413 migrants, up from 1,428,219 in 1990. Not surprisingly, Longhi finds that even when someone does succeed in crossing a border, even when they obtain a permit and find a steady job, they are still faced with this 'implacable war' against migrants. Migrants do the worst jobs at the lowest pay, he says, for which they face xenophobic propaganda that is so functional to what Michel Foucault would call 'biopower', or the 'subjugation of bodies and the control of populations.' Longhi quotes Foucault because sees anti-immigrant hysteria as part of a system of control. But what makes Longhi's view more than just one more litany of abuse are two elements. He sees this control -- the way migrants are employed -- as a system for extracting profits, not just the bad acts of evil people. And he shows that migrants can and do resist. They change from being passive victims to become new, conscious social agents, capable of fighting for their own rights and contributing to the revival of a wider protest. U.S. readers will be startled especially by his examination of the Persian Gulf, where the system of social control is the most elaborate, and is based on labor contracting through guest worker programs. Undocumented migration exists in the Gulf, but at levels much lower than in the U.S. or Europe. Longhi describes a brutal system in which the social exclusion, terrible living conditions and abuse reserved for migrants are possible thanks to the entry quota mechanism, to the criterion of kafala (sponsorship), which binds the migrant to a short-term contract with a sole employer. As a result, while the average per capita income of a Qatari citizen is $88.000, a contract construction worker from Nepal gets $3600, and a Filipina domestic worker $2500. The point is clear. An elaborate system for contracting labor exists to produce huge wage differentials, and therefore profits for employers. The consequences for workers are disastrous, despite the fact that families and whole towns in countries like the Philippines or Nepal have become dependent on the money sent home out of those low wages. Longhi also describes a reality even less well known - the rebellions of migrant workers in the Gulf, and the support they've received, not only from European unions, but from the barely-legal unions in those countries themselves. Protests in Bahrain, for instance, were organized with the help of that country's new union federation. Its leaders were among those demonstrating in the Pearl Square protests in Manama, put down by its monarchy with bloody violence
[LAAMN] fresno - the beauty of changing culture and pain of homelessness
FRESNO -- THE BEAUTY OF CHANGING CULTURE AND PAIN OF HOMELESSNESS Photoessay by David Bacon FRESNO, CA - 29SEPTEMBER13 - Fresno is a city with big contradictions. It is home to thousands of indigenous migrants from Oaxaca and southern Mexico, and hosts one of the oldest guelaguetza dance festivals in California. The festival celebrates the food, crafts, music and culture of Mixtec, Zapotec, Triqui and other indigenous Mexicans. There are so many migrants from Oaxaca living in California that there are at least seven guelaguetzas held throughout the state every year. But Fresno also has one of the largest populations of homeless people, per capita, of any city in California. People sleep under freeways, next to railroad tracks, and out in the open in many neighborhoods. Many camps and impromptu homes are hidden behind bushes and boards, and homeless Fresno residents say the police come down on them heavily, arresting them and confiscating their shopping carts and belongings. Outside the city, some ranchers and valley residents are proponents of extreme political conservatism. A few areas in the San Joaquin Valley continue to elect very rightwing representatives to Congress, despite a growing change in California's population demographics. Indigenous Mexican migrant families from Oaxaca at the annual festival of Oaxacan indigenous dance, food and culture, the Guelagetza. A mother gives her daughter a bite of her tlayuda, a large tortilla filled with beans, meat and cabbage, Oaxacan style. A dancer with the Ballet Folklorico Nueva Antequera performs in the Guelagetza in Fresno, one of many places in California where Oaxacans organize the festival every year. The Grupo Folklorico Donaji dances the jarabe from Ejutla, a town in Oaxaca. The Grupo Folklorico Donaji includes young people and children, who learn the dances of the many ethnic groups of Oaxaca, now living as migrants in the United States. A shopping cart with the possessions of a homeless man next to the railroad tracks and irrigation canal near the Fresno airport. Adam is a homeless man who lives in a tent next to the railroad tracks and irrigation canal near the airport. He takes care of a dog, Bullet, whose owner was picked up for being homeless and has been in jail for a week and a half. Adam, a homeless man, hopes to go to Visalia, another city in the San Joaquin Valley, and get a job as a security guard. Steve is a homeless man who keeps his possessions in a shopping cart, and pushes it down the street near the irrigation canal and the airport. Outside of Fresno is the Tea Party Junkyard, a pile of discarded farm equipment with lots of flags and huge placards with rightwing slogans. This one says, Roses are red, violets are blue, [President] Obama's a commie, [San Francisco Congresswoman] Pelosi is too. Interviews with David Bacon about his new book, The Right to Stay Home: KPFK - Uprisings with Sonali Kohatkar http://uprisingradio.org/home/2013/09/27/the-right-to-stay-home-how-us-policy-drives-mexican-migration/ KPFA - Upfront with Brian Edwards Tiekert https://soundcloud.com/kpfa-fm-94-1-berkeley/david-bacon-on-upfront-9-20 TruthOut with Mark Karlin http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/18972-mexican-communities-resist-environmentally-destructive-canadian-mining-companies Books by David Bacon THE RIGHT TO STAY HOME: How US Policy Drives Mexican Migration Just published by Beacon Press Illegal People -- How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants (Beacon Press, 2008) Recipient: C.L.R. James Award, best book of 2007-2008 http://www.beacon.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=2002 Communities Without Borders (Cornell University/ILR Press, 2006) http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/cup_detail.taf?ti_id=4575 The Children of NAFTA, Labor Wars on the U.S./Mexico Border (University of California, 2004) http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/9989.html For more articles and images, see http://dbacon.igc.org -- __ David Bacon, Photographs and Stories http://dbacon.igc.org __ [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] --- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --- Unsubscribe: mailto:laamn-unsubscr...@egroups.com --- Subscribe: mailto:laamn-subscr...@egroups.com --- Digest: mailto:laamn-dig...@egroups.com --- Help: mailto:laamn-ow...@egroups.com?subject=laamn --- Post: mailto:la
[LAAMN] a new bracero program will hurt farm workers
A NEW BRACERO PROGRAM WILL HURT FARM WORKERS By David Bacon New America Media, 9/16/13 http://newamericamedia.org/2013/09/a-new-bracero-program-will-hurt-farm-workers.php Most media coverage of immigration today accepts as fact claims by growers that they can't get enough workers to harvest crops. Agribusiness wants a new guest worker program, and complaints of a labor shortage are their justification for it. But a little investigation of the actual unemployment rate in farm worker communities leads to a different picture. There are always local variations in crops, and the number of workers needed to pick them. But the labor shortage picture is largely a fiction. I've spent over a decade traveling through California valleys and I have yet to see fruit rotting because of a lack of labor to pick it. I have seen some pretty miserable conditions for workers, though. As the nation debates changes in our immigration laws, we need a reality check. There is no question that the demographics of farm labor are changing. Today many more workers migrate from small towns in southern Mexico and even Central America than ever before. In the grape rows and citrus trees, you're as likely to hear Mixtec or Purepecha or Triqui - indigenous languages that predate Columbus - as you are to hear Spanish. These families are making our country a richer place, in wealth and culture. For those who love spicy mole sauce, or the beautiful costumes and dance festivals like the guelaguetza, that's reason to celebrate. In the off-season winter months, when there's not much work in the fields, indigenous women weavers create brilliant rebozos, or shawls, in the styles of their hometowns in Oaxaca, But the wages these families earn are barely enough to survive. As Abe Lincoln said, labor creates all wealth, but farm workers get precious little of it. Farm workers are worse off today than they've been for over two decades. Twenty-five years ago, at the height of the influence of the United Farm Workers, union contracts guaranteed twice the minimum wage of the time. Today, the hourly wage in almost every farm job is the minimum wage -- $8.00 an hour in California, $7.25 elsewhere under the Federal law. If wages had kept up with that UFW base rate, farm workers today would be making $16.00 an hour. But they're not. If there were a labor shortage so acute that growers were having a hard time finding workers, they would be raising wages to make jobs more attractive. But they aren't. And despite claims of no workers, rural unemployment is high. Today's unemployment rate in Delano, birthplace of the United Farm Workers, is 30%. Last year in the Salinas Valley, the nation's salad bowl, it swung between 12% and 22%. Yet growers want to be able to bring workers into the country on visas that say they have to work at minimum wage in order to stay, and must be deported if they are out of work longer than a brief time. The industry often claims that if it doesn't have a new contract labor program to supply workers at today's low wages, consumers will have to pay a lot more for fruit and vegetables. But low wages haven't kept prices low. The supermarket price of fruit has more than doubled in the last two decades. Low wages have a human cost, however. In housing, it means that families live in cramped trailers, or packed like sardines in apartments and garages, with many people sleeping in a single room. Indigenous workers have worse conditions than most, along with workers who travel with the crops. Migrants often live in cars, sometimes even sleeping in the fields or under the trees. Housing is in crisis in rural California. Over the last half-century, growers demolished most of the old labor camps for migrant workers. They were never great places to live, but having no place is worse. In past years I've seen children working in fields in northern Mexico, but this year I saw them working here too. When families bring their kids to work, it's not because they don't value their education or future. It's because they can't make ends meet with the labor of adults alone. What would make a difference? Unions would. The UFW pushed wages up decades ago, getting the best standard of living California farm workers ever received. But growers have been implacably hostile to union organizing. For guest workers and undocumented workers alike, joining a union or demanding rights can mean risking not just firing, but deportation. Enforcing the law would better workers' lives. California Rural Legal Assistance does a heroic job inspecting field conditions, and helping workers understand their rights. But that's an uphill struggle too. According to the Indigenous Farm Worker Survey, a third of the workers surveyed still get paid less than the minimum. Many are poisoned with pesticides, suffer from heat exhaustion, and work in illegal conditions. Give
[LAAMN] yesterday's internment camp - today's labor camp
YESTERDAY'S INTERNMENT CAMP - TODAY'S LABOR CAMP By David Bacon September 15, 2013, Tule Lake, CA Truthout Report/Photoessay http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/18770-yesterdays-internment-camp-todays-labor-camp A worker picks flowers and fruit off strawberry plants. In Modoc County, farm workers do a job few people have ever seen. For eight hours, they lie on padded platforms on each side of an elaborate metal apparatus, suspended just inches above rows of strawberry plants. As a tractor slowly pulls them through the field, the workers pick off the flowers and budding fruit -- not to harvest them, but to keep the plants from producing more. The plants they're tending in this unique operation are seedlings. Eventually they'll be uprooted, the dirt will be knocked off their roots, and they'll be sent to cavernous warehouses. There other workers will trim the roots to an even length. Then the plants will be packed into containers, and shipped to the strawberry growers of Watsonville, California, or Mount Vernon, Washington, or out of the country entirely. Workers' homes on the land that was formerly the Tule Lake Internment Camp. Today big commercial strawberry growers often don't grow their plants from seeds. It takes too long. In addition, growers formerly killed the nematodes that infect the roots of young strawberry plants by covering fields in plastic sheets, and then injecting methyl bromide or methyl iodide into the soil. Those two extremely poisonous chemicals are new being banned in state after state, because they contribute to depleting the ozone layer that protects life on this planet. So the seedlings are grown separately. Farm workers migrate from towns in more populated areas of California into this county, at the far northern end of the state, to lie on the platforms and pinch off the flowers. It's a good six months of work, explains Elpidio Gonzalez, one of the workers. I can go back to Stockton with enough money for the rest of the year, especially if I can find a little work in the winter pruning grapes. The only disadvantage is that there's really no place to live here for migrants. I share a trailer with a bunch of others, and we were lucky to find it. Older workers, with experience and skill, are needed for this job. Elpidio Gonzalez and his coworkers on the machine are Mexican immigrants, but most of them have been living in the U.S. for years. This industry, however, uses guest workers as well. The county's largest grower, Sierra Cascade, with a thousand acres planted in strawberry rootstock, brings laborers to Modoc directly from Mexico, using the H2A contract labor program. In 2006 Sierra Cascade was sued by those workers, represented by California Rural Legal Assistance, over bad housing and living conditions. A tractor carrying the workers on platforms moves through the field. Under the H2A program, growers have to provide housing, and give the workers a contract that specifies the months of work they'll get. Sierra Cascade began by putting them into a warehouse on the county fair grounds. There life was grim. During the first two weeks on many occasions we would have a cup of coffee for breakfast, a small portion of greasy tough meat with rice for lunch, and cereal, coffee and bread with jelly for dinner, recalled one, Ricardo Valle Daniel. After the workers got in touch with the CRLA lawyers, the food got better. But in the warehouse couples were housed in a cavernous room where many men and women were mixed together, despite company promises of family quarters. These workers had been hired under 9-week contracts, to trim the root of the plants after they'd been unearthed. The contracts specified they'd have to meet production standards requiring them to process over 1000 plants per hour - one every three and a half seconds. When some workers couldn't meet the quotas, even when they worked through their meal breaks, Sierra Cascade fired them and put them on busses back to Mexico. Although the legal case eventually improved conditions somewhat, a state court judge ruled that the production quotas were legal. The workers had no way to keep the company from firing (and deporting) them for not working at that rapid rate. Today Sierra Cascade continues to bring in H2A workers for its root-trimming operation, and the quota is still in place. Each wing of the machine holds platforms for four workers. Housing the workers in the fairgrounds was more than ironic. The Tule Lake grounds is home to a small museum devoted to the Tule Lake Internment Camp, where 18,000 Japanese Americans, most U.S. citizens, were imprisoned during World War Two. The museum preserves one of the hundreds of barracks that originally housed the internees. Visitors can peek through plexiglas windows and see the austere furnishings - military-style metal bed frames, unadorned table and chairs, a plain chest
[LAAMN] new david bacon book - the right to stay home
The Right to Stay Home: How US Policy Drives Mexican Migration by David Bacon Beacon Press Publication Date: September 10, 2013 Hardcover: 978-0-8070-0161-5; E-book: 978-0-8070-0162-2 More than 25 years since the last major revision of national immigration policy, comprehensive reform is now being debated in Congress. Eleven million undocumented immigrants living and working in the U.S. hope it will lead to legal status, but many fear it will also increase the criminalization of migrant status and vastly expand guest worker contract labor programs. Now, in The Right to Stay Home: How US Policy Drives Mexican Migration, investigative reporter David Bacon exposes the way globalization and U.S. policy fuel the forces that drive Mexican migrants across the border. Through painstaking analysis and the voices of migrants themselves, Bacon reveals that the decision to come to the U.S. is rarely voluntary. Instead, the poverty that displaces indigenous communities across Mexico is the brutal consequence of globalization, as local economies crumble from the impact of trade agreements like NAFTA and economic reforms benefitting large corporations. Placing issues of displacement and human rights at the center of the U.S. immigration debate, Bacon examines the ways U.S. policy has criminalized migrants once they've been driven across the border. Bacon scrutinizes one of the most controversial pieces of U.S. immigration policy, vastly expanded in current legislation: guest worker visas. These visas grant the right to stay in the United States while working, but, he shows, lead to a corrupt system of recruitment and low wages, and the massive violation of labor and human rights.. Examining the roots of current systems in the Bracero Program, Bacon explains: No employer brings guest workers into the country to pay more than absolutely necessary. Despite these impacts, though, every major immigration reform bill proposed over the past decade has called for the expansion of guest worker programs-including the legislation currently on the table. The book, however, also documents a reality that Bacon asserts should reframe the immigration debate in the U.S. Indigenous Mexican communities that have been devastated by poverty and forced migration have organized a powerful new movement they call the right to stay home. He traces the development of this movement, which seeks political democracy and economic development, in the states of Oaxaca and Veracruz, and presents the voices of its most eloquent advocates. By looking at the roots of migration, U.S. policy can help to create a viable future in migrant-sending communities, while integrating and protecting the rights of immigrant families in the United States. Bacon investigates a series of factors, generated by increasingly rapid globalization as well as U.S. policy toward immigration and Mexico's economy, that have made it impossible for countless Mexicans to survive at home, including: o Low wages and rural poverty: Bacon explains that high-paying jobs are evaporating across Mexico, replaced by low-paying ones: 95 percent of the jobs created in Mexico in 2010 pay around $10 a day, he notes, and 53 million Mexicans (half of the country's population) lives in poverty. Since 2006, less than one third of those needing work have been able to find it. Bacon explains that waves of Mexico's economic reforms decontrolled prices and ended consumer subsidies, creating favorable conditions for corporate investment but increasing poverty, especially in rural and indigenous communities. o The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA): Bacon shows that NAFTA, introduced in 1994, crippled Mexico's economic sovereignty and steered its national policy toward export-based economic development, favoring large corporations producing for export. At the same time, massive imports devastated local Mexican economies, especially in farming, displacing millions of people. Since 1994, the number of Mexicans living in the U.S. rose from 4.6 to over 12 million - 11% of its population. o Tilting the Playing Field Against Workers: Industries expanding in Mexico because of NAFTA and corporate economic reforms, especially mining, have created hazardous conditions. One 2006 coal mine explosion in Coahuila killed 65 miners. When copper miners struck against levels of dust that cause silicosis, the Mexican government and one of the world's largest mining companies cooperated to bust their union. The book analyzes three of the sharpest government anti-labor campaigns - the labor law reform, the firing of 44,000 electrical workers, and attacks on the miners. Bacon show that this systematic suppression of labor rights in Mexico is a significant cause of migration to the U.S. Bacon underscores that Mexican migrants, once forced from their native lands
[LAAMN] should photographers try to depict reality or try to change it?
GETTING PAST THE ICON -- SHOULD PHOTOGRAPHERS DEPICT REALITY, OR TRY TO CHANGE IT? By David Bacon afterimage, the journal of media arts and cultural criticism, vol. 40, no. 6 http://vsw.org/afterimage/issues/afterimage-vol-40-no-6/ This Light of Ours: Activist Photographers of the Civil Rights Movement Edited by Leslie G. Kelen University Press of Mississippi, 2011 Copublished with The Center for Documentary Expression and Art 251pp,/$45.00 Photography in Mexico San Francisco Museum of Modern Art San Francisco, CA March 10 - July 8, 2012 Can photographers be participants in the social events they document? Eighty years ago the question would have seemed irrelevant in the political upsurges of the 1930s, in both Mexico and the United States. Many photographers were political activists, and saw their work intimately connected to workers strikes, political revolution or the movements for indigenous rights. Today what was an obvious link is often viewed as a dangerous conflict of interest. Politics compromise art. Photographers must be objective and neutral, or at least stand at a distance from the reality they record on film or the compact flash card. Now a book and a recent exhibition have provided both images and the narrative experiences of photographers that should reopen this debate. This Light of Ours, Activist Photographers of the Civil Rights Movement, was published recently by the University Press of Mississippi, and the exhibition, Photography in Mexico, ran at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art last year. The book and exhibit share a common discourse about the relation between documentary photographers and social movements. The book is an intensive look at the photographers of just one movement -- the civil rights movement in the U.S. south during the 1960s. The exhibit highlights the changing relationship between photographers and Mexico's social movements from the Revolution to the present. This Light of Ours is a beautiful collection of almost 200 black and white photographs, duo toned and reproduced in extraordinary brilliance. They were taken, not by mainstream media photographers who visited the south during the most intense moments of the upheaval of the 1960s, but by photographers who worked as part of the civil rights movement itself, especially the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee. Interviews with six of the nine photographers follow the photographs. Bob Fitch, who went on to document the farm worker movement in California after his years in the south, captures the perspective shared by these civil rights photographers and the impact the movement made on their lives. I did various kinds of organizing for the balance of my life and photographed those activities as I went through, he says in his interview. And I perceived myself as an organizer who uses a camera to tell the story of my work, which is true today.1 Ed Fondren, 104 years old, Bob Fitch, Batesville, Mississippi, 1966 To Fitch, work as a photographer springs from his work as an organizer. Both are a means to fight for social and racial justice. Because he's an organizer, he's there when friends carry El Fondren, 104 years old, from the courthouse after registering to vote (an act which cost people their lives in Mississippi at the time). Fitch's quick eye frames Fondren between two hands about to clap in celebration, with other hands reaching up. Like all the photos in the book, it's a document of a critical historical moment, and at the same time an inspiration to other Black farmers to go down to the courthouse. It is also a beautiful image.2 Fitch's organizer's perspective does not make him less of a photographer. His portrait of Cesar Chavez was used for the U.S. postage stamp. His image of Dorothy Day surrounded by helmeted sheriffs during the Coachella grape strike became one of the best-known photographs of the early years of the United Farm Workers. But Fitch's perspective puts him at odds with that taught in journalism schools and practiced in the mainstream media. Photographers today are expected to be objective observers of events, not active participants in them. In fact, participation in marches or demonstrations is held to so compromise a photographer that it is grounds for discharge at newspapers like the New York Times or Washington Post. Matt Herron, one of the best-known photographers in the book, describes three goals for his work as a SNCC photographer: I was a budding photojournalist, that was foremost, and that was how I was gonna support the family, he remembers. I was also a propagandist for the movement. When movement people wanted pictures I did it and they used them...I wanted to do social documentary work on the way of life that was southern, both black and white, and to try and document this weird culture that we'd thrust ourselves into.3 Black labor
[LAAMN] laundering the public image of worker-killing sweatshops
LAUNDERING THE PUBLIC IMAGE OF WORKER-KILLING SWEATSHOPS By David Bacon Truthout Analysis, 5/7/13 http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/16212-laundering-the-public-image-of-worker-killing-sweatshops At the Ali Enterprises garment sweatshop in Pakistan in 2011, 300 people burned to death - the largest factory fire in world history. Last year in Bangladesh workers jumped from the windows of the burning Tazreen factory because the doors were locked, falling to the pavement below as their sisters had done in the notorious Triangle Shirtwaist fire in New York City in 1911. In the Foxconn plant in China, where the iPads and iPhones are assembled, workers were pushed so hard that they began to kill themselves in 2010. And during the week of April 21, over 350 workers were killed when the Rana Plaza building collapsed. Factory owners refused to evacuate the building after huge cracks appeared in the walls, even after safety engineers told them not to let workers inside. Workers told IndustriALL union federation representatives they'd be docked three days pay for each day of an absence, and so went inside despite their worries. Not good for the corporate image of WalMart, whose clothes were sewn at Tazreen, or Apple, whose iPads and iPhones are put together at Foxconn. Not good for J. C. Penney, Benetton or the Spanish clothing brand El Corte Inglés, whose labels or cutting orders were found in the rubble at Rana Plaza. According to the International Labor Rights Forum, one of the factories in the Rana complex, Ether-Tex, had listed Walmart-Canada as a buyer on their website. When workers started committing suicide at Foxconn, protestors held signs with their names in front of Apple's flagship store, demanding better conditions. But the strategy employed by most large manufacturers is not to improve the conditions that kill workers. They are especially unwilling to recognize workers' unions that would act as monitors and enforcers of signed agreements guaranteeing livable wages and safety procedures that wouldn't put lives at risk. Chinese immigrants in San Francisco protest the suicides of Foxconn workers because of the long hours and bad conditions at the factory in southern China, where the Apple iPad is manufactured. Instead, the big label companies helped spawn an $80 billion industry in corporate social responsibility (CSR) and social auditing, according to a new report by the AFL-CIO, Responsibility Outsourced. Yet the experience of the last two decades of 'privatized regulation' of global supply chains has eerie parallels with the financial self-regulation that failed so spectacularly... That CSR industry, the report charges, helped keep wages low and working conditions poor, [while] it provided public relations cover for producers. One corporate CSR auditing firm, the Business Social Compliance Initiative (BSCI), had certified two factories in Rana Plaza, New Waves Style and Phantom Apparel. The website of another factory, Ether Tex, said the same firm had audited it as well, and that it had also passed inspection by a second corporate auditor, the Service Organization for Compliance Audit Management (SOCAM). The BSCI website admitted auditing the first two, but disclaimed any responsibility for the deaths of hundreds of workers in the premises it had certified. The reasons of the collapse of the factories seem to be related to the poor infrastructure of the Rana Plaza building, it said. BSCI focuses on monitoring and improving labour issues within factories and relies on local authorities to ensure the construction and infrastructure is secure. BSCI was set up by the Foreign Trade Association, a company group based in Europe in order to create consistency and harmonisation for companies wanting to improve their social compliance in the global supply chain, its website says. SOCAM, which reportedly also certified the Ether Tex factory, was created by the huge CA clothing manufacturer, based in the UK and Germany. The global proliferation of sweatshops has driven the income and working conditions of garment, electronics and other factory workers to the absolute rock bottom. Half a century ago, their conditions were much better. After the huge organizing drives of US workers in the 1930s and 40s, a critical mass of garment workers in the United States belonged to unions - enough so that workers' wages afforded them a secure and decent life. Most worked directly for manufacturers. And when those companies began to use contracting shops, workers' organized strength enabled them to force employers to agree to critical measures that protected their jobs. As the new AFL-CIO report relates, the key was the jobbers agreement. Each manufacturer or brand could only place orders with union contractors, which were guaranteed steady work to keep workers permanently employed. No new contractor could be used unless
[LAAMN] oaxacan teachers challenge the test
OAXACAN TEACHERS CHALLENGE THE TEST By David Bacon California Federation of Teachers website http://cft.org/key-issues/quality-education/mexican-educators-face-reform.html Recently an American Federation of Teachers resolution declared that U.S. public schools are held hostage to a testing fixation rooted in the No Child Left Behind Act, and condemned its extreme misuse as a result of ideologically and politically driven education policy. AFT President Randi Weingarten proposed instead that public education should be obsessed with high-quality teaching and learning, not high-stakes testing. In Seattle teachers at Garfield High have refused to give them. Many Mexican teachers would find these sentiments familiar. The testing regime in Mexico is as entrenched as it is in the United States, and its political use is very similar - undermining the rights of teachers, and attacking unions that oppose it. In Michoacan, in central Mexico, sixteen teachers went to jail because they also refused to administer standardized tests. But the teachers' union in the southern state of Oaxaca, Section 22 of the National Union of Education Workers (SNTE)., has not only refused to implement standardized tests - it has proposed its own reform of the education system, one designed by teachers themselves. Tranquilino Lavarriega Cruz, coordinator of the union's Center for the Study of Educational Development, has taught for 11 years in primary schools in poor communities. Today he works full time coordinating the Program for the Transformation of Education in Oaxaca (PTEO). The PTEO is a product of the vision of all the teachers in Oaxaca, he explains. It covers the infrastructure of schools, conditions of the students, evaluation, teachers' training, and compensation. The program is more than a written document. It seeks to transform people's lives. Nationalist governments after the Revolution of 1910-20 started Mexico's public education system. Today children start preschool at three, and move to a six-year primary school at 6. At twelve, they start secondary school, which ends when they're fifteen. These twelve years are mandatory. The Department of Public Education administers the national school system, while each state also has its own department. All Mexican teachers belong to the SNTE, the largest union in Latin America, and each state has its own section. The national union's leaders were loyal supporters of Mexico's ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) for over 70 years, but teachers' movements in many states fought to change what many viewed as a repressive bureaucracy. Today this internal movement fights for the democratization of the union and for educational reform, according to Manuel Perez Rocha, former president of the Autonomous University of Mexico City and one of the country's most respected educators. Over the last two decades, however, corporate influence has grown over Mexico's educational system. They started creating mechanisms for controlling the ideology of both teachers and students, Lavarriega says, trying to certify education in the same way they'd certify a product - to sell it. Perez Rocha sees parallels with the U.S. The Mexican right always copies the United State's right, he laughs. The politics of merit pay and the correlation with standardized exam results is identical between the two countries. The right wants to convert education into a commodity and students into merchandise -- 'Let's fill their heads with information and put them to work.' Nevertheless, he notes, there are important differences, because the national union in Mexico is an entrenched part of the power structure. In 2008 the recently-removed leader of the teachers union, Esther Elba Gordillo Morales, signed an agreement with then Mexican President Felipe Calderon called the Alliance for Quality Education (ACE). Just weeks after taking office, Mexico's new president, Enrique Peña Nieto, ordered her arrest on corruption charges, shortly after the Mexican Congress gave its final approval to an education reform program based on ACE that is hated by most of the country's teachers. Gordillo may prove to be guilty of the embezzlement charges leveled against her. But what placed her in the cross-hairs of Mexico's corporate elite was more likely her inability to keep teachers under control as protests against testing and U.S.-style education reform spread across the country. The ACE is based on a national standardized test for students called ENLACE. Pedro Javier Torres Hernandez, a biology teacher since 1989, has been working for twelve years on the union's alternative reform plan, most recently on its proposal regarding evaluations. He criticizes the ACE and the ENLACE test because they don't take context into account. A school in the city isn't the same as one in a remote community. Sixteen
[LAAMN] bangladesh disaster - who pays the real price of your shirt or blouse?
BANGLADESH DISASTER - WHO PAYS THE REAL PRICE OF YOUR SHIRT OR BLOUSE? By David Bacon, The Progressive 4/26/13 http://www.progressive.org/bangladesh-disaster Seven hundred workers have died in factory fires in Bangladesh since 2005, the most recent being the 112 who burned or jumped to their deaths at the Tazreen factory on November 24th. Now hundreds more bodies are being pulled from the rubble of the Rana Plaza building, in an industrial district 18 miles from Dhaka. At Tazreen the owners didn't build fire escapes. They'd locked the doors on the upper floors to prevent theft, trapping workers in the flames. At Rana Plaza, factory owners refused to evacuate the building after huge cracks appeared in the walls, even after safety engineers told them not to let workers inside. Workers told IndustriALL union federation representatives they'd be docked three days pay for each day of an absence, and so went inside despite their worries. As a result, the death toll is already over 250 and more are still trapped under debris. Perhaps the building codes at Rana Plaza were not enforced, and permits never even obtained, because Sohel Rana, the building's owner, is reportedly active in Bangladesh's ruling party, the Awami League. At Tazreen the company was cited by fire inspectors, but never forced to install safety equipment. But Bangladesh's development policy is based on attracting garment production by keeping costs among the world's lowest. Safe buildings that don't collapse or trap workers in fires raise those costs. So do wages that might rise above Bangladesh's 21¢/hour -- not a livable wage there or anywhere else. The beneficiaries of those costs are the big brands whose clothes are sewn by the women in those factories. They give production contracts to the factories that make the lowest bids. Factories then compete to cut costs any way they can. Tazreen made clothes for Wal-Mart, among other big brands. The Rana Plaza building held several factories where 2500 women churned out garments. According to the International Labor Rights Forum, one of the factories in the Rana complex, Ether-Tex, had listed Walmart-Canada as a buyer on their website. Labor activists found other documents in the rubble listing cutting orders from Benetton and other labels. Workers have been trying for years to organize militant unions to raise wages and enforce safety codes. If they'd been successful, they would have had the power to make the factories safe. The morning after the Rana collapse, 20,000 poured out of neighboring factories in protest - other factory owners had ordered them to keep working as though nothing had happened. Meanwhile, the giant companies controlling the industry insulate themselves from responsibility for the conditions they create. And their most important accomplice is the corporate social responsibility industry. According to a report just released by the AFL-CIO, Responsibility Outsourced, just before a fire at the Ali Enterprises factory in Pakistan killed 262 workers in 2012, clothing manufacturers hired an auditing firm, Social Accountability International, to certify it was safe. SAI then subcontracted inspection to an Italian firm, RINA, which subcontracted it yet again to a local firm RICA. Ali Enterprises was certified that August. Nearly 300 workers died in a fire two weeks after, the report charges. Certifying factories that kill workers has become an $80 billion industry that helped keep wages low and working conditions poor, [while] it provided public relations cover for producers, Responsibility Outsourced says. Manufacturing work has left countries in which there were laws, collective bargaining and other systems in place to reduce workplace dangers, it says, while jobs instead have gone to countries with inadequate laws, weak enforcement and precarious employment relationships. This transfer was enabled by corporate-friendly trade agreements guaranteeing the products of these factories unfettered access to U.S. and European markets. They simultaneously put pressure on developing countries to guarantee the rights of foreign corporate investors and an environment of low wages, lax enforcement of worker protections, and attacks on unions. In Bangladesh, after the Tazreen fire, a binding agreement was developed by IndustriALL, the ILRC and other labor NGOs, that seeks to prevent fires and increase safety by guaranteeing workers' right to organize and enforce better conditions. Some companies, including PVH and Tchibo have signed on. Wal-Mart and Sears, however, not only refused, but would not even pay compensation to the Tazreen fire victims. As Bangladesh workers pull the bodies of their friends from ruin of Rana Plaza, people half a world away wearing
[LAAMN] demands rise on congress to guarantee immigrant rights
DEMANDS RISE ON CONGRESS TO GUARANTEE IMMIGRANT RIGHTS By David Bacon TruthOut (4/15/13) http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/15788-demands-rise-on-congress-to-guarantee-immigrant-rights In San Diego, California, nine activists completed six days of a hunger strike outside the Mission Valley Hilton Hotel on April 10 -- the day demonstrations took place across the U.S. demanding immigration reform. Hunger strikers were protesting the firing of 14 of the hotel's workers, after Evolution Hospitality, the company operating the Hilton franchise, told them that it had used the government's E-Verify database to determine that they didn't have legal immigration status. The company says that E-Verify is making them do this, even though many of the workers have been working here for years, said Sara Garcia, a supporter and hunger striker from House of Organized Neighbors, a local community organization. But they started firing them when the workers were organizing a union. I clean 16 to 18 rooms a day, and they pay me $8.65 an hour. No one can live on that, explained Leticia Nava, a fired worker. I'm a widow with three children who depend on me. What is happening is not just. We are immigrant workers, and the only thing we're asking is to work. That's not hurting anyone. Garcia and Nava accuse the company of using the government system for immigration enforcement in the workplace, a database called E-Verify, in order to retaliate against 14 women for their union support. But they also say that the E-Verify system is used much more extensively, to fire workers even where no union organizing is taking place. San Francisco demonstrators call for an end to immigration-based firings. Many companies are doing the same thing. They're manipulating the system because what they're really interested in is low wages, Nava charged. This isn't the first time this happened to me. I was fired the same way two years ago. Now my children are all scared because they see it's harder for me every day. Tomorrow I'll have to go out and find another job, and E-Verify makes that more and more difficult. The impact on us is not just money - it affects all aspects of my life. Nava and Garcia joined the tens of thousands of immigrants and immigrant rights activists who demonstrated on April 10, calling for the reform of U.S. immigration laws. Yet on the same day, legislators drafting reform proposals in the U.S. Senate proposed changes that would make Nava's experience more widespread than ever, which were then contained in a bill they introduced a week later. Both Garcia and Nava agreed that getting rid of E-Verify should be part of immigration reform. This part of the law is inhumane and unjust, Garcia says. It has economic, psychological and even moral effects. Instead of children worrying about schoolwork they're worried about how they'll survive or even just eat. Nava declared simply, This part of the law should be eliminated. Congress, however, proposes to exact a price for the legalization of undocumented immigrants. The Gang of Eight Senators drafting the reform bill announced they intend to expand the E-Verify system to cover all employers, and make its use mandatory. This was only one of a number of measures that would increase the severity of many of the anti-immigrant measures already part of U.S. law. Lorena Reyes, who was fired from her job as a housekeeper at the San Jose Hyatt Hotel because she supports the union and protested sexual harassment, marched for immigrant rights. The Hilton workers and their supporters, as well as the union helping them, UniteHere, all believe that immigration reform should include a legalization process. They want one that would give the 11-12 million undocumented people living in the United States a quick and accessible way to gain legal status. That demand ran through all of the hundreds of demonstrations around the country, from the 30,000 people on the mall in front of the Capitol Building in Washington DC to the thousand marchers in downtown San Francisco. It was a demand voiced by hundreds of janitors and security guards in Silicon Valley, and by teachers and elementary school students in Berkeley, California. The Senators, however, are proposing a plan that would require undocumented people to spend a decade in a provisional status before even being able to apply for permanent legal residence. Then they would have to maintain that status for another three years before they could apply to become citizens, and gain basic political rights. The citizenship process is so overloaded that processing applications now takes months, even years. And instead of anticipating the logistical bottleneck of millions of people applying for citizenship at the same time, the Senators declared
[LAAMN] for unionists, iraq's oil war rages on
For Unionists, Iraq's Oil War Rages On The leader of Iraq's oil union is being threatened with prison - again. By David Bacon In These Times, web edition, 4/2/13 http://inthesetimes.com/article/14808/for_unionists_iraqs_oil_war_rages_on/ Hassan Juma'a, head of Iraq's oil workers union Many Iraqi oil workers thought the fall of Saddam Hussein would mean they would finally be free to organize unions, and that their nationally owned industry would be devoted to financing the reconstruction of the country. But the reality could not have been more different. Earlier this month, the head of the Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions, Hassan Juma'a, was hauled into a Basra courtroom and accused of organizing strikes, a charge for which he could face prison time. The union he heads is still technically illegal: Saddam's ban on public-sector unions was the sole Saddam-era dictate kept in place under the U.S. occupation, and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki hasn't shown any interest in changing it since most U.S. troops left. Union oil workers in the Rumaila field And the oil industry? The big multinational petroleum giants now run the nation's fields. Between 2009 and 2010, the Maliki government granted contracts for developing existing fields and exploring new ones to 18 companies, including ExxonMobil, Royal Dutch Shell, the Italian Eni, Russia's Gazprom and Lukoil, Malaysia's Petronas and a partnership between BP and the Chinese National Petroleum Corporation. When they started, the U.S. military provided the initial security umbrella protecting all of their field operations. Contingency Operating Base Basra was fully functional and supplying security to oil companies through the beginning of 2010, after the contracts were awarded in 2009. Over time, its operations were reduced as the companies began supplying their own security, but the base is still the site of the U.S. Consulate in Basra. The Ministry of Oil technically still owns the oil, but functions more as the multinationals' adjunct, while stripping workers of their rights. Since 2003 the ministry has denied the union its right to exist and retaliated against its leaders and activists. As the oil corporations rush in to lay claim to developing fields, ministry spokesman Assam Jihad told the Iraq Oil Report in 2010, Unionists instigate the public against the plans of the oil ministry to develop [Iraq's] oil riches using foreign development. In 2011, Hassan Juma'a and Falih Abood, president and general secretary of the Federation of Oil Employees of Iraq, were first subject to legal action by the ministry and threatened with arrest. Many of the union's elected officers have been transferred from jobs they'd held for years to remote locations far from their families, in an effort to break up its structure and punish activists. The government doesn't want workers to have rights, because it wants people to be weak and at the mercy of employers, said Juma'a. The repression has been unsuccessful in stifling dissent, however. This year has seen escalations in both workers protesting broken promises of better wages and treatment, and in local farmers objecting to the seizure of their land and the lack of jobs to replace their lost income. Oil workers on the drilling platform In February hundreds of workers demonstrated on three separate occasions outside the building of the government-run South Oil Company in Basra, calling for its director and his aides to resign. The company, managed by the national oil ministry, promised to build housing for workers, an urgent necessity in a province still recovering from war. Workers said they hadn't been paid their normal bonuses for two years and accused the company of hiring temporary workers, and then keeping them in that status indefinitely instead of giving them permanent jobs. They also demanded better medical care, especially for those suffering the effects of exposure to depleted uranium. This heavy metal was used extensively in shells and other munitions by U.S. forces, and war remnants are still piled high in neighborhoods and across the countryside. In one of the largest protests, union members joined farmers in a demonstration at the West Qurna 1 field, operated by ExxonMobil. They demanded higher payment for land taken to develop the field, and for jobs created by oil development. Mohammed al-Traim, the sheikh of the Beni Mansour tribe, told the Iraq Oil Report, We have become farmers without land. Tank treads, shells and other war remains next to apartments in the middle of Basra A desperate situation Farming is the traditional occupation for most families in southern Iraq, who have been cultivating the soil there for thousands of years. The Iraqi government set up a committee to compensate them when oil companies moved in, but farmers accuse it of grossly undervaluing their land. Compensation for one donum (six-tenths of an acre
[LAAMN] corporate education reform hits san francisco community college
CORPORATE EDUCATION REFORM HITS SAN FRANCISCO COMMUNITY COLLEGE By David Bacon Truthout Report http://truth-out.org/news/item/15213-corporate-education-reform-hits-san-francisco-community-college SAN FRANCISCO, CA (3/18/13) - On March 14, the day before the Trustees at San Francisco Community College District handed in the report that may decide the life or death of California's largest community college, student and faculty marchers headed downtown to City Hall. A sinuous line of hundreds of chanting, banner-waving people stopped traffic on Mission Street, the main artery through the city barrio. Their mood combined equal parts of desperation at the prospect of the closure of the school, and anger and defiance at the kinds of changes that authorities are demanding to keep it open. Shanell Williams, urban studies major and president of the Associated Students at SFCC, told a rally at the march's starting point on the college's Mission campus that the required changes are part of a larger effort to turn students into commodities, and move towards the privatization of education. Next year students will be affected by the Student Success Act, she warned. Every student will have to have an education plan, there will be repeat limits, and a 90-credit cap on the Board of Governors fee waiver [that allows poor and working class students to petition to waive tuition fees]. Now is the time when they need more student services and support from the administration, but they're cutting part time counselors and taking other actions that will be even greater barriers. Closing San Francisco Community College became a possibility last spring when the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges sent a team to San Francisco, as part of a 6-year accreditation cycle. The district, the largest public school system in California, had been warned earlier about deficiencies and knew there would be problems. With 85,000 students and 1650 faculty, and an annual operating budget of $200 million, SFCC had never been sanctioned. But under the impact of cuts in state funding, last year it had a deficit of $6 million. In July, commissioners released a set of findings that found the district deficient in 14 areas, and put it on Show Cause status, the most serious sanction short of shutting down the college entirely. The commission gave the college credit for a very diverse faculty and high-quality libraries and counseling. Commissioners said, however, the college's governance, planning and leadership were inefficient, and that it had not documented adequately a set of assessments called Student Learning Outcomes. Finally, the commissioners said the district fiscal planning was poor. Over the past three years of the state's fiscal crisis San Francisco has endured a $53 million loss in revenue. Despite it, teachers and previous chancellors worked to maintain an adequate and accessible class level, and avoided layoffs through temporary cuts and concessions. But commissioners found there had not been enough cuts or cancelled classes, that too much (92%) of the budget was spent on personnel, and that too few administrators were on staff. After the commission made its report, California Community Colleges Chancellor Jack Scott went before the SFCC board of trustees, and as students hissed told them that what you have to do is do less than you did three years ago. There's no other way. Scott admitted all the community colleges have been faced with this very same problem. Statewide, community colleges have incurred $809 million in cuts since 2008-09. But many faculty and students believe that California's multiyear economic crisis is being used to enforce a series of changes intended to move the community college system towards privatization, and attack unions as obstacles that stand in the way. In this worldview education reformers are beginning to look at higher education like K-12, and propose similar measures, says Alisa Messer, president of the faculty union at SFCC, Local 2121 of the American Federation of Teachers. They see community colleges as a means to turn out hirable people, or students for four-year institutions. We see them as institutions serving the broader community. Our students move in and out, they have jobs and kids, some are learning English-as-a-Second-Language, while others are seniors interested in lifelong learning. Not everyone is coming for a degree. We need an accreditation process that takes this diversity into account. In an effort to comply with the accreditation commission's demands, however, the district brought in the Fiscal Crisis Management Assistance Team (FCMAT), a quasi-state agency, to make recommendations for fiscal reforms. In a January 31, 2013 report the district lists FCMAT's demands. They dovetail with the changes demanded by the accreditation commission. FCMAT told the district
[LAAMN] u.s.-style school reform goes south
US-Style School Reform Goes South By David Bacon The Nation, April 1, 2013 edition http://www.thenation.com/article/173308/us-style-school-reform-goes-south?page=full Just weeks after taking office, Mexico's new president, Enrique Peña Nieto, ordered the arrest of the country's most powerful union leader, Elba Esther Gordillo. The move garnered international headlines and was widely cast as a sign that the government was serious about cracking down on corruption. But virtually no one in Mexico believes that was the real reason for her arrest. The timing alone suggests a different interpretation. Gordillo, president of the National Union of Education Workers (SNTE), was charged with embezzlement and removed from office in late February-shortly after the Mexican Congress gave its final approval to an education reform program that is hated by most of the country's teachers. Gordillo was a longtime ally of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), the party not only of Peña Nieto but of the disgraced former president of Mexico, Carlos Salinas de Gortari, who imposed her as the union's president in 1989, after forcing her predecessor to resign. Although Gordillo was forced out of the party several years ago in a power struggle, she remained one of the most powerful politicians in Mexico. An anti-democratic union leader, Gordillo may prove to be guilty of the charges leveled against her. But what placed her in the cross-hairs of Mexico's corporate elite was more likely her inability to keep teachers under control as the country moves forward with its latest neoliberal reform-this time of its schools. One leader of the progressive opposition within the SNTE, Juan Ortega Madrigal, warned that Peña Nieto is totally wrong if he believes that he can silence the voices of 500,000 teachers by decree, adding that they would not abandon the defense of public education. Teachers backed up that sentiment with a two-day national strike. Rubén Núñez Ginez, the head of Oaxaca's teachers union, said they would not permit a law to take effect that attacks public education and the rights of teachers. Since the fall, teachers have been demonstrating and striking against the PRI's proposal, which would tie their jobs to standardized tests and remove the voice of the union in hiring. But the corporate offensive to gain control of the country's schools was launched long before Peña Nieto took office. Just months after Waiting for Superman hit US movie screens in 2010, ¡De Panzazo! premiered in Mexico City. Both are movies produced by neoliberal education reformers who believe teachers and unions are responsible for the failings of the education system. And their near-simultaneous release and ideological resemblance was no coincidence: in Mexico City, ¡De Panzazo! was screened not in a movie theater, but in the twenty-fourth-floor offices of the World Bank. One can see similarities to the U.S. documentary, Waiting for Superman, an article on the bank's website noted, especially in its suggestion that teachers' unions bear a significant responsibility [for the failings of public schools.] Luis Hernández Navarro, opinion editor of the Mexico City daily La Jornada, saw the similarities too. Both have two central elements in common, he wrote. They criticize public education in their countries, and they're financed and backed by important people in the business world. A network of large corporations and banks extends throughout Latin America, financed and guided in part from the United States, pushing the same formula: standardized tests, linking teachers' jobs and pay to test results, and bending the curriculum to employers' needs while eliminating social critique. The medicine doesn't go down easily, however. In both countries, grassroots opposition-from parents and teachers-has been rising. In Seattle, teachers at Garfield High have refused to give the tests. In Michoacan, in central Mexico, sixteen teachers went to jail because they also refused. * * * Today, the most powerful organized resistance comes from the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca. Here, teachers have proposed education reform that gives more voice to teachers, students and parents, allows them to work creatively together, and enhances critical thinking. Because of political changes in Oaxaca, they have the power not just to propose ideas like these but also to implement them. Explains Oaxacan teacher Pedro Javier Torres, We have enough schools, although not all completely adequate. The problem is the quality of the education-the same problem as in the United States. How do we offer a student a quality school? What kind of teacher do we want, and who will determine this? Teachers have an answer to this question, but so does Mexico's corporate elite. In Search of Business Sustainability, a report by the Intelligence Unit of the British magazine The Economist
[LAAMN] san francisco community college fights for its life
SAN FRANCISCO COMMUNITY COLLEGE FIGHTS FOR ITS LIFE By David Bacon Published in Perspective, the publication of the Community College Council of the California Federation of Teachers, March 2013 http://cft.org/uploads/periodicals/perspective/CFT_perspective_March2013_R9_lowres.pdf For the last year, faculty at San Francisco Community College have been under siege, not just from a newly-hostile administration, but from an accreditation commission that has threatened the district's very existence. To protect their institution, instructors, supported by students and community leaders, have given up wages, campaigned for ballot measures to secure new funding, and supported changes to meet more stringent fiscal requirements while maintaining their vision of community-centered education. Unfortunately, they have not been met halfway. Instead, AFT Local 2121 has been forced to fight at a time when cooperation is needed to save the school. Our hope was that the college would look at a long-term plan that would stabilize it, says Alisa Messer, local union president. What we have, however, is an administration that isn't interested in talking with us. In the spring of 2012, the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges sent a team to San Francisco, as part of its normal 6-year accreditation cycle. The district, which had been warned earlier about deficiencies, knew there would be problems. But SFCC, with 85,000 students and 1650 faculty (1100 of whom belong to the union), had never been sanctioned. It is the largest public school system in California, with an annual operating budget of $200 million. But under the impact of cuts in state funding, last year it had a deficit of $6 million. In July, commissioners released a set of findings that found the district deficient in 14 areas, and put it on Show Cause status, the most serious sanction short of shutting down the college entirely. The commission gave the college credit for a very diverse faculty and high-quality libraries and counseling. Commissioners said, however, the college's governance, planning and leadership were inefficient, and that it had not documented adequately a set of assessments called Student Learning Outcomes. Finally, the commissioners said the district fiscal planning was poor. Over the past three years of the state's fiscal crisis San Francisco has endured a $53 million loss in revenue. Nevertheless, teachers and previous chancellors worked to maintain an adequate and accessible class level. Layoffs were avoided by temporary cuts and concessions. But commissioners found there had not been enough cuts or cancelled classes, that too much (92%) of the budget was spent on personnel, and that too few administrators were on staff. Faculty reacted with shock, and community leaders questioned the need for putting the college itself in danger. California's community college system Chancellor Jack Scott said it would be a disaster but urged trustees to implement the commission's recommendations, including cuts to programs and even closing campuses. Trustee Chris Jackson asked, Where will the students go? Just prior to the release of the commissioner's report, the union and the district agreed to more emergency measures to meet the fiscal crisis caused by the loss of state funding. Local 2121 agreed to a 2.85% wage cut for the 2012-2013 school year. Then faculty and students hit the road to campaign for state Proposition 30, which would prevent further funding cuts, and a citywide Proposition A, intended to plug the hole in the district budget. The political leaders who place the measure on the ballot, including district trustee Anne Grier, said in their ballot argument that funds from Proposition A would be used to: maintain core academic courses, including English, math, and science; provide workforce training, including nursing, engineering, business, and technology; provide an education that prepares students for four-year universities; keep City College libraries and student support services open; keep technology and instructional support up to date, and offset State budget cuts. Proposition A's opponent, the Libertarian Party, tried to use some of the accreditation commission's arguments to discredit it, including the charge that 92% of the budget was used for salaries, and that department heads had too much power. The district produced budget projections, given to the union and public, that sought to show the possible results of the passage of the propositions, as well as their defeat. In the worst case, if both 30 and A failed, the district projected a shortfall of $24.5 million. Without just Prop. A the hole would the $10 million. But if both passed, it said, there would be a small surplus of $726,658.. In late October the state community college chancellor
[LAAMN] mercado workers protest sexual harassment and firings
MERCADO WORKERS PROTEST SEXUAL HARASSMENT AND FIRINGS By David Bacon, TruthOut Report, Monday, 25 February 2013 http://truth-out.org/news/item/14751-in-oakland-mercado-chain-workers-protest-sexual-harassment-firings Valentine's Day sometimes brings chocolates and sometimes flowers. But Valentine's Day in Oakland, California, brought angry women out to the Mi Pueblo supermarket in the heart of the barrio. There they tried to speak to the chain's owner, Juvenal Chavez, not about love, but about the sexual harassment of women who work there. As they gathered next to the parking lot holding pink placards, Latino families in pickup trucks and beat up cars honked and waved. Laura Robledo then stepped up to an impromptu podium and told her story. As she spoke, her teenage daughter held her protectively around the waist, and stared angrily at the doorway where managers stood waiting for trouble. Robledo used to work at the Mi Pueblo market in San Jose. She lost her job when she complained to the company that she'd been sexually harassed by a coworker. I had two witnesses who heard everything he said, she recalled angrily. The words were so low and degrading it was horrible just to hear them. He even tried by force to kiss and embrace me. So she complained to the company. That was unusual, because workers at the markets complain about intimidation by managers, and that those who complain lose their jobs. Fear at Mi Pueblo has been high since last August, when the company announced it was using the E-Verify database to check employees' immigration status. Then in October company lawyer Julie Pace said the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency was auditing Mi Pueblo's personnel records. Almost all the chain's workers are immigrants. In each store employees were herded into meetings, where they were shown a video in which Juvenal Chavez told them that if their immigration status was questioned they would be fired. The possibility of losing one of our employees will hurt my heart, he assured them. And it will feel like losing a family member. When Robledo went to the company to report the harassment, however, she says it didn't feel at all like a family. They said they'd investigate it, she recounted. But they did nothing. After two weeks they gave me a letter saying they'd finished their investigation and that nothing had happened and that workers were always treated with respect. For me this was terrible. I felt very humiliated because I could see they didn't respect my rights as a woman. Robledo was a new employee, having only started working at the store that October. The harassment began almost immediately, she says. Despite getting the letter claiming she had no basis for her charges, she continued working. Robledo is a single mother of three children, and couldn't afford to quit. The company then made that decision for her. I worked a couple of weeks after getting the letter, she recalls. Then they accused me of getting into an argument with another worker, which wasn't true. It was just a pretext. They fired me because I kept complaining about sexual harassment. They knew that because I know my rights and I'm willing to defend myself that eventually I'd expose the truth. Perla Rodriguez, a spokesperson for Mi Pueblo, would not comment on Robledo's case for legal reasons, but she said that workers participate in mandatory courses in preventing sexual harassment. We have all the policies and procedures in place that afford all our team members the opportunity to report any incident or concern so that our human resources department can investigate and take any corrective action that is necessary. As the Valentines Day crowd grew, with her daughter beside her Robledo led a group of a hundred coworkers and supporters through the parking lot, to the doors of the supermarket. There they found that beefy security guards had closed them. They stood in front glaring at the women, who chanted and shook the pink placards and the carnations they'd handed out as an ironic comment on the Day of Love at Mi Pueblo. Robledo tried to explain that she was just there to give a letter to the store manager, asking for a meeting with Juvenal Chavez. The letter protested the injustice of her firing, while her alleged harasser continues to work. Every Sunday, it said, during your radio program we hear you saying that Mi Pueblo is a safe and dignifying place to shop and work. But the reality is that we are under a lot of pressure to make sure your company achieves its weekly and yearly sales goals. As a result, we suffer accidents and stress levels skyrocket. She pointed out that while each employee produces an average of $125,000 in annual sales, many of us depend on subsidized public programs to make ends
[LAAMN] let's stop making migration a crime
LET'S STOP MAKING MIGRATION A CRIME By David Bacon Truth-Out oped, February 15, 2013 http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/14569-lets-stop-making-migration-a-crime We need an immigration policy based on human, civil and labor rights, which looks at the reasons why people come to the U.S., and how we can end the criminalization of their status and work. While proposals from Congress and the administration have started the debate over the need for change in our immigration policy, they are not only too limited and ignore the global nature of migration, but they will actually make the problem of criminalization much worse. We need a better alternative. This alternative should start by looking at the roots of migration - the reasons why people come to the U.S. in the first place. Movement and migration is a human right. But we live in a world in which a lot of migration isn't voluntary, but is forced by poverty and so-called economic reforms. Our trade policy, and the economic measures we impose on countries like Mexico, El Salvador or the Philippines make poverty worse. When people get poorer and their wages go down, it creates opportunities for U.S. corporate investment. This is what drives our trade policy. But the human cost is very high. In El Salvador today, the U.S. Embassy is telling the government to sell off its water, hospitals, schools and highways to give U.S. investors a chance to make money. This policy is enabled by the Central American Free Trade Agreement, whose purpose was increasing opportunities in El Salvador for U.S. investors. It was imposed on the people of that country in the face of fierce popular opposition. Alex Gomez, a leader of Salvadoran public sector unions, came to San Francisco in February to explain what the consequences of this latest free trade initiative will be. He says if these public resources are privatized, tens of thousands of workers will lose their jobs, and their unions will be destroyed. They will then have to leave the country to survive. According to Gomez, four million have already left El Salvador. Two million have come to the US, not because they love it here, but because they can't survive any longer at home. These migrants come without papers, because there are no visas for two million people from this small country. The North American Free Trade Agreement did even more damage than CAFTA. It let U.S. corporations dump corn in Mexico, to take over the market there with imports from the U.S. Today one company, Smithfield Foods, sells almost a third of all the pork consumed by Mexicans. Because of this dumping and the market takeover, prices dropped so low that millions of Mexican farmers couldn't survive. They too had to leave home. Mexico used to be self-sufficient in corn and meat production. Corn cultivation started there in Oaxaca many centuries ago. Now Mexico is a net corn and meat importer from the U.S. During the years NAFTA has been in effect, the number of people in the U.S. born in Mexico went from 4.5 million to 12.67 million. Today about 11% of all Mexicans live in the U.S. About 5.7 million of those who came were able to get some kind of visa, but another 7 million couldn't. There just aren't that many visas. But they came anyway because they had very little choice, if they wanted to survive or their families to prosper. Our immigration laws turn these people into criminals. They say that if migrants without papers work here it's a crime. But how can people survive here if they don't work? We need a different kind of immigration policy - that stops putting such pressure on people to leave, and that doesn't treat them as criminals if they do. What would it look like? First, we should tell the truth, as the labor-supported TRADE Act would have us do, which was introduced into Congress by Mike Michaud from Maine. We should hold hearings as the bill says, about the effects of NAFTA and CAFTA, and collect evidence about the way those agreements have displaced people in the U.S. and other countries as well. Then we need to renegotiate those existing agreements to eliminate the causes of displacement. If we provide compensation to communities that have suffered the effects of free trade and corporate economic reforms, that were intended to benefit U.S. investors, it would be more than simple justice. It might give people more resources and more of a future at home. It makes no sense to negotiate new trade agreements that displace even more people or lower living standards. This administration has negotiated three so far, with Peru, Panama and South Korea. It is now negotiating a new one -- the Trans Pacific Partnership. These are all pro-corporate, people-displacing agreements. We should prohibit these and any new ones like them. Instead, we need to make sure all future trade treaties require adequate farm prices and income in farming
[LAAMN] making a life, but not a living
MAKING A LIFE, BUT NOT A A LIVING By David Bacon Oxnard, CA http://truth-out.org/news/item/13696-making-a-life-but-not-a-living-in-the-fields-lucrecia-camachos-story Lucrecia Camacho comes from Oaxaca, and speaks Mixteco, one of the indigenous languages and cultures of Mexico that were hundreds of years old before the arrival of the Spaniards. Today she lives in Oxnard, California. Because of her age and bad health, she no longer works as a farm worker, but she spent her life in Oxnard's strawberry fields, and before that, in the cotton fields of northern Mexico. She told her story to David Bacon. I was born in a little town called San Francisco Higos, Oaxaca. I've worked all of my life. I started to work in Baja California when I was a little girl. I've worked in the fields all of my life, because I don't know how to read or write. I never had an opportunity to go to school. I didn't even know what my own name was until I needed my birth certificate for the immigration amnesty paperwork after I'd come to the U.S. When I was seven, my mother, stepfather and I hitchhiked from Oaxaca to Mexicali, and I lived there for two years. I spent my childhood in Mexicali during the bracero years. I would see the braceros pass through on their way to Calexico, on the U.S. side. I would beg in the streets of Calexico and they would throw me bread and canned beans on their way back home. I also begged in Tijuana. I'm not ashamed to share that because that is how I grew up. I began working when I was nine years old. In Culiacan I picked cotton, then I went to work in Ciudad Obregon, Hermosillo and Baja California. I would get three pesos a day. From that time on, I have spent my entire life working. Lucrecia Camacho When I was thirteen my mother sold me to a young man and I was with him for eight months. I soon was pregnant. After I started having children they were always with me. In Culiacan I would tie my young children to a stake in the dirt while I worked. I tried to work very fast, so that the foreman would give me an opportunity to nurse my child. After I came to the U.S. I did the same thing. I took them to the fields with me and built them a little shaded tent on the side of the field. Every time I completed a row, I would move them closer to me and watch them while I worked. I nursed them during lunch and they would fall asleep while I worked. It was always like that. In Baja California we didn't even have a home. But my mother also was always with me. It was like I was the man and she was the woman. I gave her all my wages. In Mexico my children struggled in school, because we never stayed in one place too long. I would take them out of school one or two months and them put them back in when we returned. It wasn't until we arrived here in Oxnard that they went to school regularly. So not all of them were able to go to school. My oldest son never did. I come from a Mixteco town in Oaxaca, but I didn't know how to speak Mixteco when I was young. I learned it later. As a child I spoke Spanish. Two years after my father passed away I came to the U.S., in 1985. I'd borrowed a lot of money for my father's burial and couldn't pay it back. I didn't want to come to the U.S. because I didn't want to leave my children, but my mother convinced me. I left the kids with her. I became a legal resident in the amnesty program. My employers in Arizona and Gilroy gave me the employment proof I needed, and my two youngest children and I were able to file our paperwork. They became legal residents first and I completed my paperwork in 1989. I didn't want to leave my mother alone, so I brought her in 1994. My mother died seven years ago, but she was always with me in good times and bad. I had children and she cared for them. She wanted to die in her hometown, so I had to grant her that last wish. I even have great grandchildren now. I began working here in the fields in Oxnard when I first arrived in 1985 and worked until last year. I already had seven children by the time I got here. At first they stayed behind with my mother in our little town. Then I brought them in 1989 by paying a coyote. I have a sister who lives in Tijuana and first I brought them from Oaxaca to her home. I'd go to Tijuana every week or two to take them money for food. From there I brought each of them across, one by one. In those times, it cost $1,600 for each one. Now they charge $7,000, which is nearly impossible to pay because we don't make that much money. It's a sad situation. We want a better life, so we come here. We earn a living, but with a lot of hard work and sweat. It was very hard for me because I have ten children and have always been their mother and father. Lucrecia Camacho and three of her grandchildren Timoteo
[LAAMN] it's the only job I can do - a young mother's farm work story
IT'S THE ONLY JOB I KNOW HOW TO DO By David Bacon Madera, CA New America Media, 12/31/12 http://newamericamedia.org/2012/12/the-only-job-i-can-do--a-young-mothers-farm-work-story.php Lorena Hernandez is a young farm worker and single mother from Oaxaca. Today she lives in Madera, California, with her daughter and aunt. She told her story to David Bacon. To go pick blueberries I have to get up at four in the morning. First I make my lunch to take with me, and then I get dressed for work. For lunch I eat whatever there is in the house, mostly bean tacos. Then the ritero, the person who gives me a ride to work, picks me up at twenty minutes to five. I work as long as my body can take it, usually until 2: 30 in the afternoon. Then the ritero gives me a ride home and I get there by 3: 30 or 4 in the afternoon. By then I'm really tired. Lorena Hernandez I pay eight dollars each way, to get to work and back home. Right now they're paying six dollars for each bucket of blueberries you pick, so I have to fill almost three buckets just to cover my daily ride. The contractor I work for, Elias Hernandez, hooks us up with the riteros. He's the contractor for fifty of us farm workers picking blueberries, and I met him when a friend of my aunt gave me his number. I've known Elias two years now, since the first time we worked putting plastic on the grape vines. On that job, which lasts a month, we put pieces of plastic over the vines so that it looks like an igloo. They do this so the grapes won't burn from the frost. The grapes are almost ready to pick when we do this, but we don't pick them. Other people come after us to do that. I pick grapes for raisins or wine with another contractor. I've worked with many contractors doing many different jobs. Sometimes I work a lot with the same contractor, but sometimes it changes -- it depends on how they treat me. I also try to find work that's easier. To me the contractors are all the same, but some treat us better than others, so I go with them. Lorena Hernandez picking blueberries I try to find work that will allow me to make enough to pay for my lunch, ride and rent. I have a daughter, Liliana, who's four, so I also have to make enough to pay for the babysitter. That's why I'm picking blueberries - to support her. I pay the babysitter eight dollars a day, but when my aunt isn't working, she takes care of Liliana. My daughter's still asleep when I go to work, because we leave so early. We start working at six, so I sleep on the way myself, and wake up when we get to the field. There the contractor gives us our buckets and we wash our hands before picking the fruit. The job isn't that difficult, and I love seeing the buckets fill up. Right now there are a lot of blueberries on the plants, so we can make more buckets. Sometimes we return to a field as many as four times. First we pick the ripe blueberries and then go back, because the green ones continue to ripen with the heat. Lorena's hands, after a day picking blueberries Each bucket has to weigh twelve pounds. This is the second year I've picked blueberries, so since I don't have much experience I can only fill fifteen or sixteen buckets. When the ripe fruit is scarce, I can only pick thirteen. Those with more experience can do up to twenty buckets a day. To pick a lot, you have to skip your lunch break. After a day of picking blueberries, my hands feel tired and dirty and mistreated. We immediately wash them with cold water, but later they hurt a lot. They don't give us gloves because they say they will damage the fruit. Yadira weighs the buckets. She is fair and doesn't give special treatment to anyone. The grower didn't want to put anyone in this position who was related to the contractor, so that there wouldn't be favoritism for certain workers. Elias works directly with the owner. He's been good to work for -- he always has water in the field, and he follows the law. Yadira, the checker, weighs the buckets of berries picked by a worker Elias one of the better contractors. He respects the rules, and everything is always on the up and up. He jokes around with us, but he does his job. I joke with him too. I tell him that if one day he doesn't provide us with water, I'll go to the Farm Workers Union or Cal OSHA. Some contractors know how to treat their workers and others don't. That's when you change jobs, when you see how a contractor treats you. Some only need men in their crews, so we women have to look elsewhere for work. We know how contractors are because other workers tell us, so we avoid the bad ones. In general, the contractors I've worked for have been fair. The ones with many years of experience know how to talk to workers. And as workers, we understand that when we're doing something wrong, the foreman has a valid reason to bring it to our attention. But they are not permitted
[LAAMN] who's responsible for the bangladesh factory fire - article and photoessay
WHO'S RESPONSIBLE FOR THE FIRE THAT KILLED 112 GARMENT WORKERS? By David Bacon Progressive Media Project, 11/28/12 The day after Black Friday demonstrations of workers and supporters in front of hundreds of Walmart stores across the US., a fire killed 112 workers making clothes for Walmart at the Tazreen Fashions factory in Bangladesh. This was the most recent of several such factory fires, leading to the deaths of another 500 young women. These fires are industrial homicides. They can be avoided. The fact that they're not is a consequence of a production system that places the profits of multinational clothing manufacturers and their contractors above the lives of people. The same profit-at-any-cost philosophy is leading to growing protest among workers who sell those garments in U.S. stores over their own wages and conditions, especially at Walmart. The Bangladesh fire tells us a lot about the conditions under which the garments consumers bought this Black Friday were made. Reports from the scene say there were no fire escapes. Several young women jumped from the windows to get away from the flames, as their sisters did a century ago in New York City, in the Triangle Shirtwaist fire. Most Tazreen workers were trapped inside and burned to death. Walmart has a grading system for its contractors, and had put the Tazreen factory on orange status (green for good, yellow for not so good, orange for a warning, and red for a contractor whose orders are cut off). Yet the company's inspectors must have seen that there were no fire escapes, and kept giving Tazreen orders. The reason is clear. Wages are 21¢ an hour. Contractors like Tazreen compete against each other to get the orders. In a garment factory, the main way they cut costs is by cutting wages and expenses like safety. Workers have been trying to win the right to organize militant unions to raise those wages and improve working conditions. If workers had been successful, they would have had the power to force the company to build fire escapes and make the factory safe. But police in Bangladesh have been putting down demonstrations by workers in this region for months. One worker activist, Aminul Islam, was tortured and killed this year. The government uses low wages to attract manufacturers like Walmart. It does not enforce safety regulations, as the fires clearly show. Walmart then uses the labor of the women to boost its profits, and has the same attitude towards their efforts to organize unions that it does towards the efforts of its employees in the U.S. Total opposition. This is not just Bangladesh's problem, however. The system for garment production worldwide has nations competing in the same way -- Bangladesh vs. China, for instance. Factory fires are the logical result because safety, unions and higher wages are costs that will make a country uncompetitive. It's also a U.S. problem. According to the Economic Policy Institute, Wal-Mart's trade deficit with China alone cost 200,000 U.S. jobs between 2001 and 2006. Garment manufacturing in the U.S. has practically disappeared. Manufacturers claim that if wages and safety costs rise, so will the prices of garments in U.S. stores. Yet if wages of 21¢ an hour were doubled, it would add only a few pennies to the cost of even a cheap teeshirt. Walmart customers on Black Friday spoke out in favor of higher wages and more rights for Walmart's store workers. They would support the same for factory workers in Bangladesh. The obstacle is the contractor system, competition between contractors and countries, and a policy of suppressing unions. The system of self-policing hailed by Walmart and large manufacturers does not change this situation. It is a fig leaf. Instead, countries like Bangladesh and the U.S. should implement the international accords that, on paper, guarantee workers the right to organize unions. Consumers also have power. They can refuse to purchase garments made in factories like the one that killed 112 young women, or that are sold in stores that deny workers the right to organize. Whether at a sewing machine in Bangladesh or at a cash register in California, workers have the right to a safe job, a decent standard of living, and to organize. We need a system for producing and selling clothing that reinforces those rights, not one that works against them. __ BLACK FRIDAY PROTESTS HIT WALMART STORES ACROSS THE U.S. Photoessay by David Bacon In These Times, web edition http://www.inthesetimes.org/article/14226/the_walmart_black_friday_protests RICHMOND, CA (11/24/12) - On past Black Fridays, the U.S.'s annual post-Thanksgiving shopping celebration, Walmart stores have seen such a crush of shoppers that people have been trampled trying to get through the doors. On this Black Friday, however, shoppers saw protesting workers at over 1000
[LAAMN] there is no one face of hunger -- photographs in addison st. windows
There is No One Face of Hunger Photographs by David Bacon Addison Street Windows 2018 Addison Street in Berkeley, CA, between Shattuck and Milvia November 1 - December 15 This gallery is in windows on the sidewalk, so the photographs can be seen 24 hours a day Hunger is faced by people in every neighborhood in our community, every day -- young and old, working and unemployed. Today 16% of Californians struggle with how they'll afford their next meal. Meanwhile Congress debates and passes bills that make massive cuts in nutrition programs. These photographs document a social fact that many would rather not see -- that people in this richest of all countries go hungry. But these photographs also document what we as a community can do to care for each other and ensure that everyone can eat, while we struggle for a society and world in which no one will go hungry. This show is a cooperative project between documentary photographer David Bacon and the Alameda County Community Food Bank and shown with the support of the Civic Arts Program of the City of Berkeley, Greg Morozumi, curator. Cornerstone Baptist Church, Oakland Families line up on the sidewalk outside a storefront where church members bag food, and then distribute the bags. Davis Street Family Resource Center, San Leandro As she reaches out her hand to that of an older man who volunteers every week bagging food, a woman shows that often getting food means more than just not going hungry. Across lines of race and age, providing and receiving food shows we care for each other. Mary Katherine, Oakland Mary Katherine lives with her son in a single room occupancy hotel in downtown Oakland. The room where she lives has no kitchen or refrigerator to store food, and often has to choose between buying food and buying medicine. She depends for meals on St. Mary's Center. Project Help, Oakland In this East Oakland neighborhood, the line for food stretches around the edge of the parking lot of a laundromat, and on down the block. Good Samaritan, Oakland Chinese women and children come from this neighborhood of East Oakland where people need food. More than 60% of the people getting food from local food distributions in the county are children and seniors. Hope for the Heart, Hayward While their parents line up for food, the children from immigrant Mexican families watch a volunteer in a clown costume try to entertain them. Davis Street Family Resource Center, San Leandro Beverly Cherkoff in front of the van where she lives. She makes meals in her van from the food she gets in the distribution, and serves it to other hungry people in the area where she parks it. Columbian Gardens, Oakland Mexican immigrants in Oakland and the East Bay make up a big percentage of families who don't have enough food. Many single mothers especially work fulltime and earn so little that they need food programs. Nnekia, Oakland Nnekia was an on-call worker for several years at the NUMMI auto assembly plant in Fremont. When it closed, even though she was working another job as well, she had to move in with her mother. Both depend on the Cornerstone Baptist Church food distribution. Hope for the Heart, Hayward So many people need food in this working class neighborhood that they line up the night before the food distribution and sleep on the sidewalk. A young woman wakes up after spending the night in line. _ HUNGER BY THE NUMBERS Some 16% of all families are food insecure -- they don't have the money to buy enough food at some point duirng the year. That amounts to 49 million people, including over 16 million children, almost a quarter of all the children in the United States. About a third of those families simply didn't get enough food to eat - these families went hungry. That includes 12 million adults, and 5 million kids. Hunger isn't really spread evenly, as is obvious when you think about it. More in Oakland. Less in Lafayette. Over a quarter of all Black and Latino households are food insecure - compared to 16% in general. And over 13% of all familes made up of single moms and their children are not just food insecure, but outright hungry. Some 42.2% of food insecure households hav incomes below the official poverty line-$21,834 for a family of four. So over half of all hungry families actually have incomes OVER the poverty line. Millions of families not officially in poverty still don't have enough money to buy the food they need. Breadwinners in hundreds of thousands of California families have lost their jobs. Families that formerly had no trouble feeding themselves, and even went out to eat in restaurants, can't put enough food on the table at home at some point to keep everyone from getting up hungry. So people go to food banks, food pantries and soup kitchens to try to make up for what they can no longer buy. Across the country, almost five
[LAAMN] the story of a walmart strike
THE STORY OF A WALMART STRIKE By David Bacon TruthOut OpEd http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/12822-anatomy-of-the-walmart-strike-one-day-at-a-time SAN LEANDRO, CA (11/17/12) -- On past Black Fridays, the nation's annual post-Thanksgiving shopping celebration, Walmart stores have seen such a crush of shoppers that people have been trampled trying to get through the doors. On this coming Black Friday, however, shoppers are more likely to see protesting workers.. People have been criticizing the chain's low wages and unfair competition with local businesses for years. But for a long time the company has been able to keep its workers from joining in. Where it could, Walmart has tried to give itself a paternalistic, we're-all-one-big-family face. Where that hasn't worked, it's resorted to the age-old tactics of firings and fear. But Walmart workers are waking up. Supported by a number of unions, they've organized a series of work stoppages, the latest and most extensive of which will take place on Black Friday. They call their organization OURWalmart (Organization United for Respect at Walmart). Strikes at Walmart stores are usually short walkouts by groups of mostly-young people, propelled by pent-up anger at abuse by managers and wages so low no one can really live on them. My heart goes out to these workers. I, too, was fired more than once for trying to organize a union where I worked. I remember how it felt to be an open activist in a plant where the company made no secret of its hatred for what we wanted - a union. So when I went to take pictures at a walkout at the San Leandro Walmart, I wanted to make visible the faces of people with the courage to defy their boss. And I wanted to see how people who like that union idea, as I do, can help keep the company from firing them. This is what I saw. We got together in the parking lot of the BART rapid transit station a few blocks from the store. Several dozen supporters joined a handful of workers who'd already been fired, along with a couple of associates (as the workers call themselves) from other Walmarts in the area. Together marched down Hesperian Boulevard, through the parking lot, to the doors. Once enough people had gathered, both fired and currently employed workers held a brief memorial for Enrique, an associate who'd recently died. Inside the store, they'd set up a small memorial outside the break room. The crowd outside walked solemnly through the doors and down the aisles heading for it, carrying Enrique's photograph in front. Raymond Bravo, who works in the Richmond store, and other workers held a banner as they walked past the shelves and shoppers. Misty Tanner later told me she'd been fired after several years at Walmart, most recently as a member of a crew doing renovations at the store in Richmond. What must she have felt, walking through the aisles of Walmart, where she'd been terminated not long before? These fired workers are very present in the minds of those still working. I remembered my own experience, after I and several friends were terminated and blacklisted at a Silicon Valley semiconductor plant. We tried not to disappear too. It wasn't just that we didn't want to feel the company had beaten us. We found it actually reduced the fear among the union supporters who were still working. They could see we didn't just disappear (what the company undoubtedly wanted). We refused to become a bad dream to frighten people. Everyone knew we'd been fired anyway. Remaining present in people's lives meant we weren't a dark secret people feared talking about. I could see that the Walmart workers, both working and fired, still cared for each other. They too were not about to forget what the company had done, or let anyone else forget either. At the door to the break room, a worker who'd clocked out, Dominic Ware, stood by as we laid our carnations on the floor in memory of Enrique. Two store managers stood by watching us. Another followed us, yelling in a loud voice that we had no right to be there. He was especially bothered by photographs, and kept putting his hand in front of the camera to stop me from taking them. It was pretty obvious that they wanted to disrupt what was intended to be a respectful and solemn remembrance for Enrique. Even further, they tried to make absolutely sure that every worker in the store knew exactly how much the company hated what was happening. Dominic stayed calm, an example to his coworkers that no one needed to be frightened. Supporters and workers together put their flowers on the store floor. I wondered how long it would take for managers to remove them, and all the evidence of this job action. Misty Tanner, a Walmart worker fired because she wants the right to organize
[LAAMN] blood on the silver - the high cost of mining concessions in oaxaca
BLOOD ON THE SILVER Assassinations and Violence - the High Cost of Mining Concessions in Oaxaca By David Bacon, NACLA Report, online edition http://www.nacla.org/news/2012/11/9/blood-silver-high-cost-mining-concessions-oaxaca SAN JOSE DEL PROGRESO, OAXACA (11/12/12) - In the front room of Avigahil Vasquez Sanchez home in San Jose del Progreso, she's installed half a dozen little phone booths, used by town residents who have no phone of their own. Outside the windows above the telephones, the tree-lined street she lives on leads out to fields at the foot of cloud-topped hills. San Jose, at the edge of a valley an hour south of Oaxaca's capital city, is a pretty town. But this seemingly peaceful environment is deceptive. Since a mine began operation nearby, residents passing in the road view each other with suspicion. The fear is palpable in Vasquez' home as well. And one evening last March her fears became real. She remembers waiting at home for her brother Bernardo to return from the Oaxaca city airport: He called us at six that evening. I asked him to wait for us in the airport, because there were people looking for him. The day before a stranger had been asking for him, and that night a woman came asking to make a phone call. We didn't realize what was about to happen, that she was just finding out the time he'd be leaving Oaxaca. At all the crossroads on the highway there were people watching to see when he'd pass by. After stopping at a gas station he saw there was a car following him. Then there was another car beside him. He thought it might be one of the taxi drivers from our town, but it wasn't. When the car pulled along side him they began to fire. The shots hit him in the back, and they forced him off the road at the crossroads to Santa Lucia, where he fell over the wheel. My cousin was sitting beside him, and was shot in the leg. - Avigahil Vasquez Jaime Vásquez Valencia, a passing taxi driver, stopped to help. He put Vasquez and his wounded brother and cousin into his taxi and drove them to the closest town. By the time they arrived, however, Bernardo Vasquez was already dead. Paramedics took his two wounded companions to the Specialties Hospital in San Bartolo Coyotepec. The assassination was planned. We knew he was bothering the mine, because he was getting a lot of threats. He was very quiet about it, but he told me, 'I know I'm going to die, because the mine doesn't like what I'm doing.' Most threats came on the phone. They'd say, 'You know, Bernardo, you're going to die.' There was a threat written on the wall of the spillway below the dam, saying 'Your end has come.' Leaflets would appear in town, saying, 'The end of Bernardo Vasquez has come.' When we'd tell him to be careful he'd say, 'I have to stay here. If my death is coming, I accept it.' He came to help people wake up, and because of his bravery, many people followed him. - Avigahil Vasquez Avigahil Vasquez Sanchez is the sister of Bernardo Vasquez, assassinated in March. The office of the group resisting the mine is in her home. The civil war inside San Jose del Progreso began when Fortuna Silver, a company directed by Peruvian mining engineers and backed by Canadian investors, decided to open a modern mine in an area where small-scale prospecting had taken place for many years. What the company and its Mexican subsidiary, Compañía Minera Cuzcatlan S.A. de C.V., envisioned was far from a small operation, however. In 2006 the Federal government granted the company a concession covering 58,000 hectares of land (143,321 acres, or 223 square miles.) On its website, the company refers to this area as brownfields. Today it excavates and crushes 1500 tons of rock per day, extracting silver and gold in chemical leaching processes. San Jose's residents are Zapotec farmers who speak an indigenous language that is centuries old. The farming community constitutes an ejido, an association formed by Mexico's land reform laws. The mining project drove a deep wedge between town residents, at a time when many communities in Oaxaca were already divided between different political parties. The town's political authorities are supporters of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). The party governed Oaxaca for seventy years. Its last governor, Ulises Ruiz, put down an uprising that grew out of a teachers strike in 2006 with massive violence. When town residents began questioning the mine project, the municipal president Venancio Oscar Martínez Rivera referred to them scornfully as APPO sympathizers, referring to the organization that fought the governor in the streets of Oaxaca city. Christina Pagano, a Fortuna Silver spokesperson, says The company gained authorization to use land from the San Jose del Progreso Ejido via two public assemblies held by the Ejido members in 2006 and 2007. But Avigahil
[LAAMN] guest workers and a union for tobacco workers
GUEST WORKERS AND A UNION FOR TOBACCO WORKERS By David Bacon TruthOut Report, October 29, 2012 http://truth-out.org/news/item/12276-north-carolinas-tobacco-workers-stand-to-benefit-from-states-strong-farmworker-union North Carolina has one of the lowest percentages of union members in the country. Yet in this non-union bastion, thousands of farm workers, some of the country's least unionized workers, belong to the Farm Labor Organizing Committee. That gives the state a greater percentage of unionized farm workers than almost any other. The heart of FLOC's membership here are the 6000 workers brought to North Carolina with H2-A work visas every year, to pick the cucumbers that wind up in the pickle jars sold in supermarkets by the Mt. Olive Pickle Company. Not all farm workers, or FLOC members, are guest workers with H2-A visas, however. In fact, a report last year by Oxfam America, A state of fear: Human rights abuses in North Carolina's tobacco industry, estimates that of the 100,000 farm workers in the state, only 9% have H2-A visas. Almost all the rest have no legal immigration status. Nevertheless, when workers fall under the union contract, FLOC represents them, regardless of whether they have visas or not. Some contract growers employ both H2-A and undocumented labor - the union doesn't ask. This is the case for every farm worker union in the country. If a union only tried to represent workers with visas, it would have no power. Only a small minority of the workforce would qualify for membership, and in a given workplace, workers would be divided against each other. The ability of a union to unite workers in action in a workplace is the basis of its strength, and its ability to protect rights and win better conditions. In North Carolina, FLOC has a total of 7,000 members, and 80% work in tobacco fields, for the same growers who raise the cucumbers for Mt. Olive pickles. That gives the union a base for organizing the tobacco industry, using the same corporate and boycott strategy it used to gain its original agreements here with the Mt. Olive Pickle Company. This time FLOC's adversaries are the world's largest cigarette manufacturers - Philip Morris, Lorillard Tobacco Company and Reynolds American. None of them actually own land or grow tobacco themselves. They contract with growers and buy what they produce, at a price these manufacturers totally control. Some growers contract for workers through the North Carolina Growers Association, where the union has its contract. Other growers hire workers themselves, usually through labor contractors. The NCGA workers all have H2-A visas, while those working for labor contractors are mostly undocumented. Some growers do both. Conditions for tobacco workers are worse than those for farm workers anywhere else in the country, says Baldemar Velasquez, FLOCs president. Velasquez says he's out to organize all workers, regardless of status. Just because someone's undocumented doesn't mean they don't have rights, he emphasizes. The hands of Ruben Barrales, a farm worker from Xalapa, Veracruz, show the juice and dirt from tobacco plants. The rancher discourages him from wearing gloves, saying that it would cause him to harm the plants. As a hot August sun beats down on a field in Nash County, Manuel Cardenal moves down his row almost at a run. He pauses for a second in front of each tobacco plant, breaking off the new shoots at the top. He calls them rotoños. They have to be removed so that the growing strength of the plant will flow into the leaves below, making them broad and heavy. Cardenal understands the way tobacco plants grow, and knows what must be done to make them productive. He used to have a farm of his own in Esteli, the best-known tobacco region of Nicaragua, a country famous for cigars. Five other workers like him race down their own rows, deftly choosing and plucking out the right parts of the right plants. To do this well, rancher Corey (they don't actually know his full name) says they have to use their bare hands. Gloves would be too encumbering, he says, and might damage the plants. In addition, they're being paid a piece rate. The workers have to work fast just to make the minimum wage. Corey says the whole field has to be finished by the end of the day. By one in the afternoon, the temperature has reached 102 degrees. Cardenal's arms shine with sweat. Since six that morning, when they went into the field, the hands of all six workers have been covered with a sticky green tar -- the residue of tobacco juice and gum from the leaves. The same thing that gives cigarettes and cigars their kick, the nicotine, is not just present in the tar, but permeates even the dust in the air. Anyone walking into the field starts to feel that heady sensation you
[LAAMN] dos exposiciones de fotos en mexico / two photo exhibitions in mexico
Facultad de Economia Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico El Area de Conocimiento de Economia Internacional de Posgrado Academia de Economia Politica y el proyecto PAPIIT IN304312 Invitan a la Muestra Fotografica Migracion de Jovenes Mexicanos en Estados Unidos de David Bacon Que tiene como objectivo visibilizar a traves de imagenes, las condiciones de vida que tiene los jovenes mexicanos que trabajan en los campos agricolas de California. Desde 3 de octubre hasta 1 de noviembre En la sala de la Facultad de Economia, UNAM Mexico, DF The Economics School National Autonomous University of Mexico The Postgraduate Study Area for the International Economy The Academy of Political Economy and the Project PAPIIT IN304312 Invite you to the Photographic Exhibition The Migration of Mexican Youth to the United States By David Bacon Making visible through images the living conditions of young Mexicans who work in the fields of California. From October 3 to November 1 In the entrance hall of the Economics Faculty, UNAM Mexico City, DF El Instituto Oaxaqueño de Atención al Migrante (IOAM) Les invita a la exposición de fotografias Sobreviviendo: la vida de los jornaleros agrícolas y sus familias en EU del fotoperiodista David Bacon Palacio Municipal de la Ciudad de Oaxaca de Juarez Plaza de Danza, Centro Historico Oaxaca 8 de octubre hasta 8 de noviembre La mayoría de las personas tiene la idea de que ir a EU es como ir a barrer los dólares y todo es fácil de conseguir, cuando realmente las personas tienen que vivir bajo los árboles, en casas hechas de cartón o a la intemperie para mandar el dinero a sus familias -- el titular del IOAM, Rufino Domínguez Santos. Esta exposición consta de un total de 18 fotografías a gran formato y a color, es itinerante y por ello recorre los municipios identificados en tener el mayor índice de expulsión de migrantes hacia Estados Unidos, con el fin de sensibilizar y hacer conciencia en la población sobre las condiciones de vida de los migrantes. The Oaxaca Institute for Attention to Migrants Invites you to the photographic exhibition Surviving: the life of farmworkers and their families in the U.S. By photojournalist David Bacon City Hall of Oaxaca de Juarez Plaza de Danza, Centro Historico Oaxaca October 8 to November 8 The majority of people have the idea that by going to the U.S. you rake in the dollars and everything is easy to get, when in reality people have to live under trees, in houses of cardboard, or outdoors, in order to send money to their families -- Rufino Dominguez Santos, director of IOAM This exhibition contains 18 large color photographs, and is a traveling show, going especially to those towns identified as ones sending the majority of people to the United States. Its purpose is to make people aware of the living conditions of migrants. Entrevista de David Bacon con activistas de #yosoy132 en UNAM Interview of David Bacon by activists of #yosoy132 at UNAM (in Spanish) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyF6AJQa9pofeature=relmfu For more articles and images, see http://dbacon.igc.org See also Illegal People -- How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants (Beacon Press, 2008) Recipient: C.L.R. James Award, best book of 2007-2008 http://www.beacon.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=2002 See also the photodocumentary on indigenous migration to the US Communities Without Borders (Cornell University/ILR Press, 2006) http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/cup_detail.taf?ti_id=4575 See also The Children of NAFTA, Labor Wars on the U.S./Mexico Border (University of California, 2004) http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/9989.html Two lectures on the political economy of migration by David Bacon http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GgDWf9eefEfeature=youtu.be http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pd4OLdaoxvgfeature=related -- __ David Bacon, Photographs and Stories http://dbacon.igc.org __ [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] --- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --- Unsubscribe: mailto:laamn-unsubscr...@egroups.com --- Subscribe: mailto:laamn-subscr...@egroups.com --- Digest: mailto:laamn-dig...@egroups.com --- Help: mailto:laamn-ow...@egroups.com?subject=laamn --- Post: mailto:la...@egroups.com --- Archive1: http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn
[LAAMN] mexico's labor law reform sparks massive protests
MEXICO'S LABOR LAW REFORM SPARKS MASSIVE PROTESTS A plan to gut labor protections has spurred unrest in Mexico's streets. By David Bacon In These Times, web edition, 10/16/12 Economics students at the National Autonomous University of Mexico march from the Plaza of Three Cultures to the Zocalo to protest a proposed labor law reform and to mark the anniversary of the October 2, 1968 massacre. MEXICO CITY-As the Mexican Senate tried to convene last week, unionists, youth protesters from the #YoSoy132 movement and social activists of every stripe blocked the chamber's doors, trying to prevent legislators from meeting to consider the reforma laboral. On October 2, tens of thousands marched from the Tlatelolco (Plaza of Three Cultures), where hundreds of students were shot down by Mexican Army troops on the same date in 1968, to the Zocalo at the city center. Reverberating chants signaled an equally massive rejection of this deeply unpopular proposal. The Mexican Senate has begun its 30-day consideration of a proposed reform of the country's labor laws. Its provisions will have a profound effect on Mexico's workers, changing the way they are hired, their rights at work, and their wages. Benedicto Martinez Orozco, co-president of one of the country's most democratic unions, the Authentic Labor Front (FAT), calls it a monstrous law. The basic thrust of the reforma laboral is greater flexibility for employers. It would replace pay per day with pay by the hour. At Mexico's current minimum wage of about 60 pesos per day, this would produce an hourly wage of 7.5 pesos, less than 60 cents. Employers would gain the legal right to hire workers indirectly through labor contractors. If workers are fired for protesting or organizing against the new regime, or for any other illegitimate reason, employers' liability for back pay would end after a year. In the ears of U.S. workers, the wages may sound low, but the kind of flexibility the reform envisions has been the norm in workplaces north of the border for decades. Not so in Mexico, however. In the wake of the Mexican Revolution, and then in the radical upsurge that followed in the '30s and '40s, Mexican workers won a broad set of rights and protections. On paper, the rights of Mexican workers are far more extensive than those of their U.S. counterparts. In the Federal Labor Law, which the reform would amend, the workday was officially set at 8 hours, and workers could only be hired by the day, not by the hour. Minimum wages were set as well. Employers had to give workers permanent employment status quickly, and hiring through contractors was prohibited. If workers were fired unjustly, they could collect back pay for the time they were out of work. If they were laid off, their employer had to pay severance based on their length of service. Companies had to declare their profits, and share them according to a set schedule. Employers have never liked these laws, but the political offensive to change them grew much stronger as Mexico opened its economy to foreign investors. Over time those rights were eroded in fact, if not yet in law. As the maquiladora factories on the U.S./Mexico border grew to employ 2 million workers (before the current recession), the actual conditions of employment changed, despite what the law said. Workdays extended well past eight hours. Workers were routinely cheated out of profit sharing. When they tried to organize independent unions, their legal right to bargain and strike was violated with impunity by employers, the government and unions connected to Mexico's old ruling party, the PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party). Using labor contractors was illegal in theory, but it became the employers' weapon of choice in the fierce labor battles of the past decade. The five-year strike by copper miners in Cananea, just south of the Arizona border, was declared illegal a year ago. Then Grupo, Mexico, the huge corporation that owns mines on both sides of the border, brought in strikebreakers using contractors. Humberto Montes de Oca, international secretary of the Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME), notes bitterly that Cananea was the birthplace in Mexico of the fight for the eight-hour day, in the famous uprising of 1906 that heralded the beginning of the Mexican Revolution. Now if you go to Cananea, he says, you find subcontracted workers in the mine putting in 12-hour days with no overtime pay. In the heart of the town where the eight-hour-day struggle started, workers now have a 12-hour day. Montes de Oca's own union suffered a similar fate. In 2009 Mexican President Felipe Calderón dissolved the state-owned Power and Light Company of central Mexico and declared that the union no longer existed. The SME, one of the country's oldest and most democratic unions, has been
[LAAMN] the bloody price of colombia's free trade agreement
THE BLOODY PRICE OF COLOMBIA'S FREE TRADE AGREEMENT By David Bacon September 28, 2011 Truthout News Analysis http://truth-out.org/news/item/11817-blood-gold-and-coke-the-price-of-free-trade-in-columbia Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos has restarted talks with the country's main guerilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), for which he's received laudatory press outside of the country, and a more cautious response inside it. The government and FARC representatives hold their first meeting October 8 in Oslo. London's Financial Times called Santos a strategic thinker with canny political antennas' and praised him for establishing business friendly policies leading to economic growth fueled by rising foreign investment. Colombia's key business friendly policy has been the negotiation of a free trade agreement with the United States, begun by Santos' predecessor, Alvaro Uribe. In May, U.S. President Barack Obama gave Colombia a clean bill of health, and allowed the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement to go into effect. Opening Colombia to foreign corporations and investment, however, has had a bloody price, paid by its union leaders, farmers and social movement activists. Uribe and Santos promised the treaty signalled an end to the killings, but attacks on movement leaders continue nonetheless. Before it was signed, businesses operating in Colombia (including such U.S. corporations as Exxon and Drummond Coal) already had duty-free access to the U.S. market for most goods. When the agreement went into effect, U.S. exporters of manufactured goods and agricultural products gained duty-free access to the market in Colombia. U.S. miners lost jobs when Drummond Coal began supplying the generating stations of Alabama Power with Colombian coal. Now Colombian farmers and workers are suffering the same displacing fate as U.S. exports flood Colombia. In addition to opening the Colombian market, the agreement also facilitates investment in large mines and other mega projects, leading to the uprooting of rural communities, and the privatization of public services. The consequences of these neoliberal policies have been devastating for many sections of Colombian society, from AfroColombian communities to trade unionists. In January three Afro-Colombian organizations joined with the Washington Office on Latin America to write to the U.S. Congress, outlining the dangers their communities face in the province of Cauca. In an effort to convince Congress that the guerilla war in Colombia was winding down, and thereby set the stage for negotiating the FTA, former President Uribe announced the demobilization of rightwing paramilitary groups that have terrorized community activists and trade unionists for over two decades. In their letter, the three AfroColombian leaders call the demobilization a sham. In 2004 and 2005, they say, paramilitaries operating in this area participated in a deeply flawed demobilization process with the government. The demobilization and reintegration process did not put an end to the violence. Many of these men left the AUC paramilitaries to create new groups with a very similar modus operandi and agenda, such as the Black Eagles and Rastrojos. ... In many cases, locals identify these men as the same ones who demobilized... In this area of Colombia, settled by fleeing African slaves centuries ago, foreign corporations have begun to develop industrial gold mines and hydroelectric power projects. Companies interested in exploiting natural resources in northern Cauca took advantage of the conflict and insecurity to expand their operations, the letter continues. By 2009, there were 35 mining concessions in the municipalities of Suarez and Buenos Aires. In addition, the Spanish company Union Fenosa was involved in developing a huge dam project in the same region. Paramilitaries then began terrorizing community leaders in Suarez, Buenos Aires and La Toma, to force people to give up their land. The letter signers -- Clemencia Carabali of ASOM, Francia Marquez of the Community Council of La Toma, Charo Mina Rojas of the Black Communities' Process International Working Group, joined by Gimena Sanchez and Anthony Dest of the Washington Office on Latin America -- say paramilitary violence is connected to these corporate mega projects. Undermining the historical rights of AfroColombian communities, and displacing their residents, creates the space for investors to move in. The violation of Afro-Colombians constitutional rights will be exacerbated with the implementation of the U.S.-Colombia FTA, they warned. In an interview, Carabali recalled the impact of dam construction. My family was affected just like hundreds of other families living in that community, she recalled, because many lost their farms, which
[LAAMN] mi pueblo workers condemn e-verify
MEXICAN SUPERMARKET WORKERS AND UNION CONDEMN E-VERIFY Photographs by David Bacon SAN JOSE, CA (9/26/12) -- Mexican supermarket (or mercado) workers, supporters and union organizers marched through the Latino immigrant community on San Jose's East Side, from Guadalupe Church to the Mi Pueblo supermarket. They protested the use of the E-Verify immigration screening system by the Mexican market chain, and accused the chain's owners of using immigration enforcement to terrorize workers during their effort to organize a union in the stores. Mi Pueblo Foods management announced earlier this month that they had decided to voluntarily implement the controversial Federal immigration program, in which employers contact a database maintained by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement, to verify the immigration status of job applicants. Some workers also say the chain is demanding that current employees reverify their immigration status. Mi Pueblo management says it is obligated to use the E-Verify system. But a reporter from the Los Angeles Times quoted a spokesperson from the Department of Homeland Security, who asserted that this government agency does not force employers to use the E-Verify program. Father Jon Pedigo, the parish priest at Guadalupe Church, compared the situation of the workers to that of the Israelites in Egypt, saying they are exploited as workers in the U.S. much as the Israelites were by the Pharaoh. He condemned the use of E-Verify, saying it made workers more vulnerable to pressure by employers. Workers have been trying to join Local 5 of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union for the past two years, in a bitter campaign that has seen the firing of hundreds of Mi Pueblo employees. They and their supporters demanded that Mi Pueblo sign the Mercado Code of Conduct, and announced they plan to boycott every Mi Pueblo Foods store starting on October 8th, 2012 at 12:00 noon. For more articles and images, see http://dbacon.igc.org See also Illegal People -- How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants (Beacon Press, 2008) Recipient: C.L.R. James Award, best book of 2007-2008 http://www.beacon.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=2002 See also the photodocumentary on indigenous migration to the US Communities Without Borders (Cornell University/ILR Press, 2006) http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/cup_detail.taf?ti_id=4575 See also The Children of NAFTA, Labor Wars on the U.S./Mexico Border (University of California, 2004) http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/9989.html Two lectures on the political economy of migration by David Bacon http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GgDWf9eefEfeature=youtu.be http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pd4OLdaoxvgfeature=related -- __ David Bacon, Photographs and Stories http://dbacon.igc.org __ [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] --- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --- Unsubscribe: mailto:laamn-unsubscr...@egroups.com --- Subscribe: mailto:laamn-subscr...@egroups.com --- Digest: mailto:laamn-dig...@egroups.com --- Help: mailto:laamn-ow...@egroups.com?subject=laamn --- Post: mailto:la...@egroups.com --- Archive1: http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn --- Archive2: http://www.mail-archive.com/laamn@egroups.com --- Yahoo! Groups Links * To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/ * Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional * To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/join (Yahoo! ID required) * To change settings via email: laamn-dig...@yahoogroups.com laamn-fullfeatu...@yahoogroups.com * To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: laamn-unsubscr...@yahoogroups.com * Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
[LAAMN] whenever I got out of school, it was straight to the fields
WHENEVER I GOT OUT OF SCHOOL, IT WAS STRAIGHT TO THE FIELDS The Story of Javier Mondar-Flores Lopez By David Bacon New America Media 8/27/12 http://newamericamedia.org/2012/08/the-story-of-javier-mondar-flores-lopez.php Three bills now making their way through Sacramento promise to dramatically improve conditions for California farmworkers, including one that requires overtime pay for shifts above eight hours. The overtime benefits bill is currently awaiting Gov. Jerry Brown's signature. For Javier Mondar-Flores Lopez, an indigenous Mixtec farmworker in Southern California, the bills are welcome news. A recent high-school graduate, Lopez has worked in the fields since he was in elementary school. He lives in an apartment with his family in Santa Maria, California, but has become an activist and plans to go to Los Angeles. He told his story to David Bacon. Thanks to Farmworker Justice for its support in documenting this story. Javier Mondar-Flores Lopez SANTA MARIA, CA -- Growing up in a farmworking family -- well, it's everything I ever knew. Whenever I got out of school, it was straight to the fields to get a little bit of money and help the family out. That's pretty much the only job I ever knew. In general we would work on the weekends and in the summers. When I was younger it would be right after school, and then during vacations. My sister Teresa slept in the living room and one night when I was doing my homework at the table, I could hear her crying because she had so much pain in her hands. My mother and my other sister complained about how much their backs hurt. My brother talked about his back pain as well. It's pretty sad. I always hear my family talk about how much they're in pain and how's it's impossible for me to help them. I always moved. In my high school years, I moved six times. In junior high I moved three times and in elementary school I'm not sure. I went to six different elementary schools. For a while we went to Washington to work, but aside from that it's always been in Santa Maria. We'd move because the lease ended and we couldn't afford the rent, so we tried to look for a cheaper place. Hieronyma Hernandez picks strawberries in a crew of indigenous Oaxacan farm workers in a field near Santa Maria. Many members of the crew are Mixteco migrants from San Vincente, a town in Oaxaca, Mexico. The earth in the beds is covered in plastic, while in between the workers walk in sand and mud. Working bent over the plants all day is very painful and exhausting. We always lived with other families. The first time I can remember we lived with four other families. The second house we lived with five families. Each family gets their own room and does their own cooking. They get their own space in the kitchen cabinets and the refrigerator. When they cook in the morning before work it gets pretty chaotic in there. It's hard sharing the bathroom with so many people in the house. They try to kid around about it. I remember I was always a morning student, so I would wake up and take a shower. My older siblings would tell me to get out because I already had a huge line waiting for me to finish. It was always in and out, flush after flush. In the morning people are rushing to work so they try and make the best out of it. Plus you can't be late or you lose your job. Sabina Cayetano and her son Aron live with other members of her family in one room in an apartment in Santa Maria. Many Mixtec families live here, and in the spring and summer they work picking strawberries. The first time I worked in the fields was when I was seven, in Washington, where I picked cucumbers. It was summer. We didn't go to school in Washington [but] the foremen never said anything because my brother knew them. He worked in the crew, so the foremen were OK with it. There were other kids there as well. It wasn't a huge company, just a small rancher. When they paid by the hour we couldn't work. If [workers] were paid by the hour and they were slow, the foreman would send them home and not let them work anymore. They would only let kids work if they were doing piece rate. We were actually really slow because we were only in third or fourth grade. Three Zapotec farmworkers from Santa Maria Sola in Oaxaca walk out of a field, after having asked the foreman of a crew picking strawberries if there was any work for them. The first [paycheck I received] was for $40. I was crying because I counted my boxes that day and I knew how much I had earned that week. When the foreman gave me my pay he said I hadn't worked [more than that]. I was in fourth grade. I was crying because I had worked and really wanted my money. I wanted to buy something with it. Finally he paid me my money in a white envelope. I was pretty happy. When we got older, we did get more money. We got to earn our own money
[LAAMN] workers protest misery at subway, and get fired
WORKERS PROTEST MISERY AT SUBWAY, AND GET FIRED By David Bacon Working In These Times http://www.inthesetimes.com/working/entry/13660/workers_try_to_organize_airport_subway_get_fired/ OAKLAND, CA (8/9/12) -- Oakland is suppossed to be a union town, but out at the Oakland airport, workers say they're getting fired for trying to join one. The airport is administered by the Oakland Port Commission, whose members, appointed by the Mayor, are mostly viewed as progressives. The commission has passed a living wage ordinance that not only sets a level much higher than state or national minimum wage laws, but also requires companies who rent space to respect the labor rights of their workers. One of the workers fired in recent weeks is Hakima Arhab, who says she lost her job at the Subway concession after she complained about violations of the ordinance, and because she and her coworkers are trying to join UNITE HERE Local 2850. She told her story to journalist David Bacon. Hakima Arhab, fired Subway worker. I worked at Subway for a year and a half. When I got the job there I thought that I would have a better life. It should be a good job. I thought I'd have more money, and be able to afford a few more things for myself, and be able to send money to my home country, because I have family there. When I started at the airport I was getting $12.82 an hour, and then it went up to $13.05. Most people go through the airport and see us from one side of the counter, but from our side it feels really different. It turned out to be like working in hell. When the airport was busy, there were huge long lines - sometimes it seemed like a hundred people. We had to wait on them, and make the orders up at the same time. Sometimes I thought I'd fall down from being so tired, but I'd eat something sweet and go back to my job. The schedule was always changing, and it turned out to be just a part time job. They kept cutting peoples' schedules. Whenever we would hear that they were going to hire someone, everyone would get scared because we were afraid our hours would be cut. They'd hire people and give them our hours. Then they told us that if we worked two days in the airport, we should work outside too. The owners have many other Subway stores, so they'd pressure me to work for them outside the airport. And it was a hard job too. But I did it because I was scared that if I didn't they would fire me from the airport job. They expected me to work outside the airport if I wanted a full time set of hours, but the work outside was at a different wage. That work only paid minimum wage -- $8 an hour. They'd send me around to all their stores. Sometimes I'd open one store, and then go close at another one. I worked overtime, but they didn't pay me overtime pay. They'd give you separate checks, so you'd never get overtime pay. I was very angry about that, but they refused to give me a full schedule at the airport. They even wanted me to work seven days a week, but since they wouldn't pay overtime, at first I said no - that was too much. Many of my coworkers did, though, because they couldn't afford to say no. If you said no, then the owners would cut your whole schedule. So I also just shut up and worked too. And the worst part was that sometimes when I'd work fifty or sixty hours, they wouldn't pay for all those hours. They'd be short an hour or an hour and a half. I knew some other workers who work at HMS Host concessions right next to us, and I knew they had a union. Last spring I got very sick, but I still had to work, because otherwise, how was I going to pay for my rent or my food? I was so, so angry. One of them asked me, Hakima, do you want to speak to the union? I told her, Yes, I want to do it. So I set up an appointment with the union, and asked them to help us - myself, my coworkers and all the workers who work hard in the airport without benefits or sick days. That's how it happened. Finally I filed a complaint with the government, with the Port of Oakland. But they didn't take it seriously. It was like they were just playing around, and told us it would take months to investigate. And I needed my job, especially after I was fired. On May 29 I took unpaid vacation, for twenty days. The owner agreed that I could do that when I told her four months before. But I filed the complaint before I took the time off. She found out, because the Port gave her the names of the people who complained. So when I came back on the 19th, she gave me a check for the days I worked before the vacation. She told me, Hakima, you know, I'm very very slow right now. I don't have any more hours for you. I told her, No, no, no. Don't play with me. I know you just took in $5500 - you're making the highest amount ever here in the airport
[LAAMN] three thousand san francisco janitors prepare for a strike
THREE THOUSAND SAN FRANCISCO JANITORS PREPARE FOR A STRIKE By David Bacon TruthOut Report http://truth-out.org/news/item/10816-three-thousand-san-francisco-janitors-prepare-for-a-strike SAN FRANCISCO, CA (8/9/12) - The national confrontation between janitors and some of the world's richest property owners has arrived San Francisco, where on Wednesday over two thousand building cleaners shut down the city's main artery, Market Street, in a huge march. Later twenty-seven workers and supporters were arrested in a financial district intersection, as they blocked it in an act of civil disobedience. Among the many banners carried by the marchers, by far the most common was one that said We Are Ready to Strike the 1%. It clearly summed up workers' anger, which made this march even larger than one three days earlier, and others organized during the weeks prior. A strike is on the near horizon in San Francisco, according to Olga Miranda, president of Service Employees Local 87, one of the oldest janitors' unions in the country. Our members are determined to go on strike, and we've already called for a strike vote, she shouted over the chants of marchers. They're telling us the union must lead, and going on strike is our recommendation. The local already took a vote to authorize a strike when its contract expired on July 31 with the city's main building service employers, Able Building Maintenance, American Building Maintenance and the San Francisco Contractors Association. That was fine with janitor Mohamed Ismael, who said, A strike is possible. We don't like to go on strike, but if they don't make a reasonable proposal, if they tell us this is what you're going to get, if we go to the end of the line, then it's better for us to go on strike. At issue in San Francisco is the same sticking point in most union contract negotiations - healthcare costs and wages. San Francisco janitors are the second most highly paid in the country, after New York City, but the city's living costs are so high that few can afford to live there. Ismael was fortunate enough to find affordable housing in the city 20 years ago. But now the contractors are demanding that workers pay $600 a month for family healthcare coverage, and he has a wife and four children. They offer a raise of 50¢ an hour, which would total about $85, resulting in an effective wage cut of $515 a month. If they do this, there is no way I could live as a human being in San Francisco, Ismael says. I would have to leave. Miranda claims bitterly they're forcing families out of their homes. We have these benefits because our union has been here for 78 years. We're saying, don't take away what we already have. They're offering 50¢ and they have revenues of millions. We absolutely cannot afford to pay this. Olga Miranda, President of Service Employees Local 87 Ismael works at Embarcadero Center 4, one of four huge office and retail buildings on the San Francisco waterfront owned by Boston Properties, which reported total revenue of $1.7 billion in 2011. At night the buildings are outlined in lights, a signature element of the city skyline. Inside, Ismael runs floor polishers and cleaning equipment, empties waste baskets, and washes down bathrooms for Able Building Maintenance, his direct employer and the company with the cleaning contract for 4 Embarcadero Center. But the real wealth and power in relation to the janitors belongs to Boston Properties and other real estate investment groups. They dictate the terms of the contracts for cleaning the offices of their tenants, another extremely wealthy group that includes banks like Wells Fargo and other major corporations. Nevertheless, cleaning contractors are hardly mom and pop operations, and haven't been for decades. They're large corporations themselves. Able and its main San Francisco rival ABM, clean buildings for real estate trusts throughout the U.S. and all over the world. Like their banner says, janitors are up against the 1%, whether they're direct employers or the financial interests behind them. Warren Delahoussaye works at 50 California Street, a tall office building owned Shorenstein, whose founder Walter Shorenstein started the San Francisco office property boom decades ago. This trust is now the biggest player in the city's commercial real estate market, and has expanded to own buildings around the country. The Shorenstein real estate portfolio now tops $6 billion. These corporations and the wealthiest 1% whose offices and buildings we clean, can afford to do right by San Francisco families, Delahoussaye says. If San Francisco's 3000 union janitors go on strike, it will be the first time since 1996, and the largest janitorial strike since the huge Los Angeles walkout of 2000
[LAAMN] mexican farmers up against canadian mining goliaths
MEXICAN FARMERS UP AGAINST CANADIAN MINING GOLIATHS By David Bacon Truthout Report http://truth-out.org/news/item/10501-canadian-mining-goliaths-devastate-mexican-indigenous-communities-and-environment An assembly last fall in Oaxaca of the Binational Front of Indigenous Organizations, calling for a sustainable development policy that would support farmers. OAXACA, MEXICO (7/20/12) - For over two decades in many parts of Mexico, large corporations -- mostly foreign-owned but usually with wealthy Mexican partners - have developed huge projects in rural areas. Called mega-projects, the mines and resource extraction efforts take advantage of economic reforms and trade treaties like the North American Free Trade Agreement. Emphasizing foreign investment, even at the cost of environmental destruction and the displacement of people, has been the development policy of Mexican administrations since the 1970s. When the National Action Party defeated the old governing Party of the Institutionalized Revolution in 2000, this economic development model did not change. In fact, the PAN simply took over the administration of this development policy, and even accelerated it, while in the Mexican Chamber of Deputies the two parties cooperated to advance its goals. But while these projects enjoy official patronage at the top, they almost invariably incite local opposition over threatened or actual environmental disaster. Environmental destruction, along with accompanying economic changes, cause the dispacement of people. Families in communities affected by the impacts are uprooted, and often begin to migrate. Nevertheless, the projects enjoy official support, and are defended against rising protests from poor farmers and townspeople by the Federal government. This economic model could have changed in Mexico's national elections at the beginning of July, had a party won that was committed instead to providing poor and indigenous communities with jobs and social services, to raising rural income, and to protecting labor and social rights. This was the program put forward by Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the candidate of the leftwing Democratic Revolutionary Party. The PRD did not win, however. Instead, the Mexican election campaign looked increasingly like those in the U.S., in which the two conservative parties, the PRI and PAN, were fueled by enormous corporate contributions. Heavy television coverage by two captive corporate networks excluded the left entirely, while impartial polls announced the inevitability of the PRI's return. And in the end, a wave of old-fashioned vote-buying backed up the media circus. The return of the PRI to power does not change Mexico's social reality, especially not its corporate-dominated development policy. The cost of this policy has become most obvious, and the conflicts over it the sharpest, in rural communities faced with huge industrial mining projects. Under a new PRI administration, these conflicts will almost certainly spread, particularly given the party's history of using force against popular movements. In Oaxaca and southern Mexico, growing anti-mining movements give a preview of what's on the horizon. Sharp conflicts have already broken out over mines in Oaxaca, where in one community indigenous leaders have been assassinated and the town deeply divided since the mine began operation. The companies and their defenders promise jobs and economic development. But affected communities charge that far more people lose jobs and their livelihoods because of their negative environmental and economic consequences. In Oaxaca, Vancouver-based Fortuna Silver, Inc. began drilling exploration holes in a previously mined area of San Jose del Progreso. San Jose is a small town in the municipality of Ocotlan, an hour south of the state's capital. Its 1200 residents speak Zapotec, an indigenous language that was already centuries old when the Europeans colonized Mexico. Fortuna Silver began exploration in 2006, and five years later its mine went into full production. According to Flavio Sosa Villavicencio, a state deputy from the Party of Labor (PT), the company told him that in 2012 Fortuna expected to produce 1.7 million ounces of silver and 15,000 ounces of gold. Sosa Villavicencio said annual profits from the mine would reach 468 million pesos, or $39 million. San Jose del Progreso lies in a valley filled with small indigenous towns, many of which have already lost more than half their inhabitants to migration. In an environment of economic desperation, money from the mine has a big impact. Bernardo Vasquez, an opponent of the mine and director of the Coalition of People United in the Ocotlán Valley (COPOVU) explained to Canadian journalist Dawn Paley that some residents enjoyed
[LAAMN] watsonville takes on methyl iodide, philippine hotel union interview
WATSONVILLE TEACHERS AND STUDENTS TAKE ON METHYL IODIDE By David Bacon Z Magazine, July 2012 http://www.zcommunications.org/watsonville-teachers-and-students-take-on-methyl-iodide-by-david-bacon Teachers at Watsonville's Ohlone Elementary School were more than relieved when Arysta LifeScience, a giant Japanese chemical company, announced on March 20 that it would no longer sell methyl iodide in the U.S. for use as a pesticide. The school, on the edge of Watsonville, is separated from agricultural fields by no more than a 30-foot wide road. Over the last decade, growers have planted strawberries, artichokes and brussels sprouts in the long rows that snake over the hillside, ending a stones throw from the playground where children kick their ball or hang from the jungle gym every day. When those fields get sprayed with pesticides, or when chemicals are plowed into the soil to kill the nematodes and root fungus that infest strawberry plants, everyone at the school gets a dose. It can come from the spray directly, or from the dust that blows out of the fields into the adjacent neighborhood. Either way, this pesticide drift means that whatever is used to kill pests also gets ingested by children and adults when it wafts through the air into their lungs, or when it coats their clothing or food for lunch. We know that methyl iodide causes birth defects, says Jenn Laskin, grievance office for the Pajaro Valley Federation of Teachers. But we also suspect that it is one of a host of pesticides that are having far-reaching effects on students, and on ourselves as teachers. That realization motivated Laskin and a group of PVFT members to become part of a broad coalition that has fought methyl iodide and methyl bromide use for several years. When Arysta (the world's largest privately held crop protection and life science company) announced it was pulling methyl iodide from the market, the coalition called it a victory. Arysta's announcement stated that the decision was ... based on its economic viability in the U.S. marketplace, and that it would continue to support the use of iodomethane outside of the U.S. where it remains economically viable. What made methyl iodide economically unviable in the U.S. was an almost-certain ruling by Alameda County Superior Court Judge Frank Roesch that the chemical's original approval violated both science and law. Behind that legal suit was not only an accumulation of scientific evidence, but also a political firestorm organized by its opponents, PVFT among them. Methyl iodide is used primarily by strawberry growers to kill root infestations. It was a replacement for methyl bromide, whose use was banned in 1990 by the Montreal Protocol on Ozone Depleting Substances. Methyl bromide attacks the ozone layer in the atmosphere. Despite the ban, however, in 1999 over 70,000 tons of methyl bromide were still being used worldwide as a soil fumigant, mostly in the U.S. Arysta then proposed methyl iodide as a substitute. In opposition, 54 leading scientists wrote to the EPA: We are skeptical of U.S. EPA's conclusion that the high levels of exposure to methyl iodide that are likely to result from broadcast applications are 'acceptable' risks ... none of U.S. EPA's calculations account for the extra vulnerability of the unborn fetus and children to toxic insults. Methyl iodide is listed as a carcinogen by other Federal agencies, including the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the Centers for Disease Control. The California Department of Pesticide Regulation itself had called the chemical highly toxic and found that any anticipated scenario for the agricultural or structural fumigation use of this agent would result in exposures to a large number of the public and thus would have a significant adverse impact on the public health, and that limiting exposure from pesticide drift would be difficult, if not impossible. Nevertheless, EPA approved it in 2007. Then the California DPR approved it as an emergency regulation in December 2010, in the final days of the Schwarzenegger administration. Three months later the department's chief regulator, Mary-Ann Warmerdam, went to work for chemical giant Clorox Corp. A lawsuit was filed on January 5, 2011, challenging the approval, but meanwhile methyl iodide application began in Fresno County in May 2011. Beyond the scientific and legal arguments, however, are growing concerns by teachers about what many see as the rising effects of chemical exposure on students. Jenny Dowd teaches second grade at Ohlone, and has worked at the school for 18 years. I've seen a rise in asthma and behavioral problems over that time, especially in the last few years, she says We have more kids with autism. There's more hyperactivity among students, attention span problems and chronic respiratory infections. I
[LAAMN] pepper spraying students in santa monica
PEPPER SPRAYING STUDENTS IN SANTA MONICA By David Bacon TruthOut, 6/12/12 http://truth-out.org/news/item/9731-pepper-spraying-of-students-in-santa-monica Today California community colleges charge $36/unit, a fee due to increase to $46 this summer. Those fees have been the subject of strong criticism by students and the California Federation of Teachers since they began rising as a result of the state's fiscal crisis. Union leaders and students have shown that as they increase, the number of students able to afford community college decreases. Under the impact of the economic crisis, Santa Monica College has cut back over 1000 classes in recent years. Its current funding from the state was reduced by $11 million this year, and it may lose an additional $5 million next year. On April 3, as the board was debating a proposal from district President Chui Tsang to institute a system charging much higher fees for some of the classes offered by the community college, thirty students and a four-year-old girl were pepper-sprayed outside the meeting room. While it wasn't what she expected when she was elected to the Board of Trustees of Santa Monica College, it wasn't a surprise to Margaret Quiñones-Perez. She called it a wakeup call to us as an institution that we needed to have a bigger conversation ... We had to stop and look and see what was going on. Starting last year, Tsang proposed that the 34,000-student college create a non-profit foundation that would offer core classes, such as English and math, but charge as much as $200 per unit. He predicted that despite state reductions, the college could actually increase offerings if it began charging a much higher fee for additional sections of the most popular classes, once the first set of classes offered at lower fees was filled. Some district officials even predicted that the coming winter session might offer only the higher fee classes. Tsang and other supporters of the idea first tried to convince legislators to carry a bill, AB 515, which would allow the change. Such legislation would be needed, most believe, because current state regulations prohibit a two-tier fee scheme. Paul Feist, a spokesman for California Community Colleges Chancellor Jack Scott, has held that higher fees can only be charged for contract courses geared to the needs of specific employers. In general, he says, state law prohibits higher fees for normal, core classes. The bill failed in committee, however. Then Tsang then came to a Santa Monica Board of Trustees retreat. I said that I didn't think it was proper to introduce this proposal in a meeting that wasn't public, Quiñones-Perez recalls. He slipped it in anyway. I felt this was very disrespectful, and a real problem because he was trying to get board members' agreement in a meeting that was not a public venue. The public anger and frustration when it finally came out was predictable. That happened on April 3, when a hundred students marched from the campus library to a board meeting, chanting No cuts, no fees, education should be free! When they arrived, they found the meeting was taking place in a room that couldn't accommodate a large crowd, and that people were being given numbers to gain admittance. As students massed at the doorway, the chanting changed to Let us in, let us in! Campus security then pepper sprayed the crowd and manhandled some of the students. About thirty students suffered the chemical's effects, and two were taken to the hospital. Afterwards Tsang blamed the students. Although a number of participants at the meeting engaged in unlawful conduct, Santa Monica College police personnel exercised restraint, he asserted later in a statement. Santa Monica College regrets that a group of people chose to disrupt a public meeting in an unlawful manner. It's a strange time we are living in when people who are outraged by social injustice and the lack of democracy in our schools and society are seen as the crazy ones, responded Harrison Wills, student body president in an internet comment. He wondered how incredibly important decisions are made without our consultation and to top it off in an extremely small room for a school of 35,000 students. The real problem, explains Quinones-Perez, who with student trustee Joshua Scuteri were the only votes against the proposal, is that it creates a two-tier educational system in community colleges. These were the most important guarantors of the promise in California's Master Plan that higher education would be available to every student who wanted it. It really creates segregation instead, she says, between the haves and the have-nots. If you can pay, you'll get your classes. That's guaranteed if you have money. But if you don't have money, you may get classes, and you may
[LAAMN] no matter what the result, we will continue to resist
NO MATTER WHAT THE RESULT, WE WILL CONTINUE TO RESIST By David Bacon TruthOut, 6/2/12 http://truth-out.org/news/item/9534-no-matter-what-the-result-we-will-continue-to-resist-says-mexican-electrical-workers-union-leader Humberto Montes de Oca is the international secretary for the Mexican Electrical Workers union. Two years ago, its 44,000 members were all fired, when the Mexican government took over generating stations by force to set the stage for privatizing electricity. Montes de Oca describes the role the union has played on the left in Mexico, its resistance to privatization, and the way fired workers are now forced to migrate to survive. With Mexico's presidenetial election just weeks away, he explains why his union, like the miners and other independent unions, are supporting Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the candidate of the Party of the Democratic Revolution. He was interviewed by David Bacon. Our organization is the oldest democratic union in Mexico. The Mexican Electrical Workers Union [SME] was founded in 1914 when the armies of Emiliano Zapata took Mexico City. Our founders saw that the peasant insurrection would finally create the conditions for their efforts to organize could succeed. They'd already made many attempts to set up the union in underground conditions, and endured repression because of it. In 1916 we organized Mexico's first general strike. Our leaders were imprisoned and condemned to death, but their lives were saved by huge demonstrations. In 1936 we went on strike against the Mexican Power and Light Company, which at that time had U.S., British and Canadian owners. Mexico City went without electricity for ninety days, except for emergency medical services. The strike was successful, and led to the negotiation of one of the most important labor contracts in Latin America. That strike helped set the stage for the nationalization of oil, and created the political conditions that made the expropriation possible. Humberto Montes de Oca Then in 1960 we were one of the organizations that pushed for the nationalization of electrical power. President Adolfo Lopez Mateos modified Article 27 of the Mexican Constitution, and added a paragraph that says that the Mexican government has the exclusive right to provide electricity to the country. Since then, under the Constitution public electrical service can be provided only by the state. In 1992 President Carlos Salinas de Gortari changed the regulations to take some kinds of electrical generation out of the public sphere, and since then a lot has been in private hands. This started a process of privatizing electricity through secondary laws. In 1994 the company Power and Light was decentralized, and it was closed in 2009, putting its 44,000 workers out in the streets. For the previous ten years these workers, members of the SME, had resisted the privatization of electricity. In 1999 then President Ernesto Zedillo launched an effort to privatize it through Constitutional reform, by eliminating the 6th paragraph of Article 27, which made the industry the exclusive property of our nation. Zedillo tried to dismantle it. He proposed allowing the creation of private companies for the generating, transmission, distribution and sale of power. The union reacted quickly to stop it. We formed a front of resistance, and we succeeded because we were able to bring together many social movements that were opposed to privatization. Zedillo's proposal was defeated. Leobardo Benitez Alvarez lived in a tent in front of the office of the Federal Electircity Commission on the Reforma in downtown Mexico City for months, protesting the actions of the Mexican government in firing 44,000 electrical workers and smashing their union. Later President Vicente Fox made another attempt at privatization. This time he didn't try to change the Constitution. He tried to change the Public Law for Providing Electricity, a secondary law. He wanted the public enterprises to supply electricity only to homes. Private enterprises would provide it to large-scale consumers, like commercial and industrial users. This initiative was also defeated. In the same way, the union organized a front of organizations against it. The experience of the past privatizations, including even those in the U.S., is that private owners invest their money to make a profit, not to provide a service. That affects the users of services, because the rates they pay go up while the quality of the services provided goes down. Investors only care about their profits. They don't invest in maintenance or in the means by which the service is provided. High rates and deficient service, in other words. For workers, it means losing what we've achieved over decades of struggle. Things start going backwards
[LAAMN] fighting for the right to a union, and to stay in mexico
FIGHTING FOR THE RIGHT TO A UNION, AND TO STAY IN MEXICO By David Bacon Working In These Times, 5/16/12 http://www.inthesetimes.org/working/entry/13220/fighting_for_the_right_to_a_union_and_to_stay_in_mexico/ Jacinto Martinez is the labor secretary of Section 65 of the Mineros, Mexico's union for miners and one of the oldest unions in the country. His union has been on strike for five years at the huge Cananea mine, one of the longest strikes in the history of North America. Critical support for this strike has come from the U.S. miners' union, the United Steel Workers, and both unions have announced their desire to merge to form a single organization. Martinez describes the history of the strike and the horrifying conditions in Cananea today in an interview with David Bacon. Members of the miners' union, the Mineros, march to Mexico City's main square, the Zocalo, to protest the repression of unions by President Felipe Calderon. Our town is where the Mexican Revolution began in 1906, at a time when miners there were virtually enslaved. The mine was eventually taken over by the government, which ran it for many years. Nevertheless, over the last hundred years there were many strikes in this mine over wages and working conditions Finally, in 1989, the government stopped all operations at the mine, and President Carlos Salinas de Gortari declared that the mine was bankrupt. In August of that year the government sent in Federal troops. The miners were expelled from the mine, and the mine was closed for three months. Then Salinas sold it to private owners, Grupo Mexico, the company run by the Larrea family. Really, it was basically given away. The government had just invested 400 million pesos in the ore concentrator alone. Grupo Mexico bought the whole mine for 650 million. After the Larrea family took over, we've had nothing but battle after battle with them. They are one of the largest mining companies in the world, and one of the richest families in Mexico. The company was forced to make certain commitments in order to take over the mine, but they've never fulfilled any of them. One was to share with the workers five percent of the price they'd paid for the mine. Because of their failure, in 2004 we took action to force the company to pay what had become by that time a debt of 55 million pesos. After that things became even more difficult. Before, the government was at least a little concerned for our welfare. Now all dialogue with the government has been cut off, and they give total support to Grupo Mexico. We went on strike again on June 30, 2007, because of the deteriorating conditions in the mine. Once the strike started, the Federal government, through the labor board, declared it illegal several times. Each time we've gone to court, and the courts have overruled the board and restored the strike's legal status. According to the InterAmerican Commission on Human Rights, we have a right to return to our jobs. Once again, on April 14, 2010, the strike was declared legal by the courts. Nevertheless, at 10PM the same day the company withdrew recognition from our union and broke off its employer/union relationship with us. That was completely illegal. But the government then brought in police and troops, and allowed the company to reopen the mine. At the time we went on strike, there were about 1200 members of our union. Now there are still 850 people on strike, five years later. The company has tried to buy people off by offering them severance pay if they'll give up any claim to their jobs. In my case, after 23 years working in the mine, they've offered me 1,007,000 pesos [about $85,000]. They've said that in addition, they'd give me 830,000 pesos to try to buy me out. But I won't take their offer, nor will any of the strikers. We don't have Social Security medical insurance, so the medical care we get comes from the company as part of our employment. If we take their offer, we will lose all our medical care. The 850 strikers have been fighting for this too. To make matters worse, on Mother's Day in 2008, the company gave us an additional gift by closing the hospital where we received our care. Counting children and retirees, an additional 1200 people lost their medical care because of that. The government stepped in to provide some services, but even though we can see a doctor again, we have no money to buy medicine. This has hurt our retirees especially, because now they have to pay for medicine, where in the past the company had to provide it. Some of us have severe problems because of working in the mine, like silicosis and high blood pressure, so doing without medical care is not an option. To protest government support for the company, about 50 miners have gone to Hermosillo, the state capitol, where they are occupying
[LAAMN] farm worker photo exhibit -- california state capitol
Every Worker is an Organizer Fhotographs by David Bacon This exhibit in the California State Capitol is organized by Assembly Member Luis Alejo and his staff, and is part of the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the United Farm Workers of America. California State Capitol Hallway next to the Governor's Office May 20-26, 2012 Sacramento, California Open to the public Farm labor is a key element historically in the photographic documentation of social reality in the US, and in particular the documentation of social protest. Dorothea Lange, Hansel Meith, Otto Hegel, and the generation of the 1930s and 1940s left a body of work showing the extreme exploitation of farm workers, and documenting the early farm labor organizing efforts, part of the great labor upsurge of those decades. The iconography of social documentary photography was shaped by images like Lange's mother and children in Nipomo, or those of the Pixley cotton strikers packed onto the back of a truck under their banner Disarm the rich farmer or arm the workers for self-defense! or the growers with their rifles waiting in ambush. The first two decades of the growth of the United Farm Workers was undoubtedly one of the most-photographed social protests of the civil rights era. It too had its icons -- the line of marchers on their way from Delano to Sacramento, silhoutted against the sky, or Cesar Chavez weakened by his fast, at the side of Robert Kennedy. In 1994, a year after the death of Chavez, the union made a second march from Delano to Sacramento. In 1996, it began an effort to organize the central California coast strawberry industry, employing 25,000 workers. That struggle pitted workers and the union against mass firings, blacklists, company unions, and the use of the legal structure to subvert workers' efforts. In 1998, workers at the country's then second-largest vegetable grower, D'Arrigo Brothers walked out on strike in the Salinas Valley The photographs in this exhibit document this period in the union's history, especially the organizing drive in Watsonville and the strike at D'Arrigo. Some also document working lives of workers themselves. Strawberry pickers bend over double in the rows, run as they pick wine grapes or tomatoes, or balance at the top of date palms without safety lines. They show as well the extreme youth of farm workers today, where the average age has fallen to 20. Like all workers, farm laborers take pride in the skill it takes to do their jobs, their bravery in the face of dangerous conditions (farm labor has one of the highest occupational injury rates of all US employment), and the social contribution they make in providing food for millions of people. These are not images of passive exploitation, designed to elicit just a sympathetic response. They are a documentary record of the efforts workers have made to organize a union in the face of brutal working conditions and low wages. The images are a view from below, looking at the work process and the union from the point of view of workers. The UFW has had an enormous impact on the US labor movement over the last 50 years. It helped to inspire a resurgence of interest in organizing, and trained hundreds of people who went on to become organizers for unions and community organizations all across the country. These photographs are part of a larger exhibition and documentary project about farm workers and migration tody. This set of images was exhibited at the Oakland Museum of California, the U.S. Labor College, Bread and Roses Gallery and the American Labor Museum, thanks to support from the Northern California Coalition for Immigrant Rights and the Zellerbach Foundation. Watsonville Roberto is a fourteen-year old immigrant from Oaxaca. He came to the U.S. with other friends in 1996, and began working in the strawberry fields of Jaime Rocha near Salinas. Coachella Valley A palmero steps off his ladder onto the fronds of the palm, walking around the crown of the tree as he works. Palmeros are paid by the tree, and have to work quickly in order to make a living. They wear no safety lines, and practically run as they work. Date palms are male and female, and must be pollinated by hand, one of the seven operations done each year at the top of the trees. Napa Valley A farmworker picks grapes in the Napa Valley, practically running as he works. Stockton Tomato pickers bring their full buckets to the truck to be counted, in the fields of the Triple-E Tomato Co., one of the world's largest tomato growers. Many workers complain that they are not credited for the true number of buckets they pick, or that buckets aren't counted for frivolous reasons. Workers struck and voted for the United Farm Workers at this company in 1988, but Triple-E refused to sign a contract. Calexico Juan Jimenez
[LAAMN] faces of hunger -- photo exhibit at state capitol
faces of hunger photographs of hunger in alameda county by david bacon california state capitol hallway in front of the governor's office sacramento, ca starting may 8, 2012 reception 10am, may 8, in the governor's council room For more articles and images, see http://dbacon.igc.org See also Illegal People -- How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants (Beacon Press, 2008) Recipient: C.L.R. James Award, best book of 2007-2008 http://www.beacon.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=2002 See also the photodocumentary on indigenous migration to the US Communities Without Borders (Cornell University/ILR Press, 2006) http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/cup_detail.taf?ti_id=4575 See also The Children of NAFTA, Labor Wars on the U.S./Mexico Border (University of California, 2004) http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/9989.html Two lectures on the political economy of migration by David Bacon http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GgDWf9eefEfeature=youtu.be http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pd4OLdaoxvgfeature=related -- __ David Bacon, Photographs and Stories http://dbacon.igc.org __ [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] --- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --- Unsubscribe: mailto:laamn-unsubscr...@egroups.com --- Subscribe: mailto:laamn-subscr...@egroups.com --- Digest: mailto:laamn-dig...@egroups.com --- Help: mailto:laamn-ow...@egroups.com?subject=laamn --- Post: mailto:la...@egroups.com --- Archive1: http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn --- Archive2: http://www.mail-archive.com/laamn@egroups.com --- Yahoo! Groups Links * To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/ * Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional * To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/join (Yahoo! ID required) * To change settings via email: laamn-dig...@yahoogroups.com laamn-fullfeatu...@yahoogroups.com * To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: laamn-unsubscr...@yahoogroups.com * Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
[LAAMN] demonstrators confront wells fargo bank shareholders
DEMONSTRATORS CONFRONT WELLS FARGO SHAREHOLDERS Photos by David Bacon SAN FRANCISCO, CA (4/24/12) - Thousands of angry homeowners, immigrants, union members, Occupiers and community groups converged on the annual shareholders meeting of Wells Fargo Bank. In a carefully choreographed protest, simultaneous marches left Justin Herman Plaza on the city's waterfront, site of the Occupy San Francisco encampment last fall. Demonstrators walked up parallel streets into the financial district, where they encircled the block in which the meeting was set to take place, in the Julia Morgan ballroom of the Merchant's Exchange Building. Beforehand, some demonstrators had moved into the building's lobby, while others chained themselves together, putting sleeves around their arms to make it hard for police to cut them apart to arrest them. A group of religious, union and community representatives had purchased shares of stock in the bank beforehand, supposedly allowing them to attend the shareholders meeting. Some even held proxies, allowing them to vote the stock belonging to others. As the rally swirled outside, and speeches and songs filled the streets now vacant of their normal traffic, the police closed off the building and refused to let the shareholders inside. Maria Poblete, from the housing rights organization Just Cause, and Cinthiya Muñoz, from Alameda County United to Defend Immigrant Rights, spoke from a flatbed truck in front of the bank, reminding the crowd of the reasons they'd brought their protests to the bank's doors. Shareholders want to meet about how to best reap profits from foreclosures, for-profit prisons and detention centers, student loans, and tax evasion, Poblete shouted. Today the bank can see that there's no more business as usual. We say no! Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf, however, closed the meeting to the shareholders kept at bay by the police outside. Wells Fargo's actions today demonstrate what communities across this country have been experiencing for years: Wells Fargo is indifferent to the havoc they are wreaking in our communities and they do not want to be held accountable, said Wallace Hill, whose home was foreclosed on by Wells Fargo in Oakland. Earlier in April, housing rights activists met with Jon Campbell, Wells Fargo's executive in charge of social responsibility. They proposed a series of measures to meet the crisis faced by families whose homes are underwater, and a moratorium on foreclosures. Campbell refused to consider any of their demands. The bank is the U.S.'s largest servicer of home mortgages. We are the 99%, and we won't take no for an answer! Muñoz shouted from the flatbed truck. Fifteen protesting shareholders were finally permitted across police lines, and went into the meeting. When Stumpf began a presentation congratulating the bank for making a $15.9 billion profit last year, in the midst of foreclosures and a recession, they interrupted him. Police converged on them, took them out of the meeting, and cited and released them. Nine others were arrested outside. Afterwards, the remaining shareholders approved a $19.8 compensation for Stumpf's last year's labor. The bank is pleased with the progress we've made in a tough economy, bank Vice President Oscar Suris told the media. We'll continue focusing on our customers, and that includes our customers who are going through difficult economic times. For more articles and images, see http://dbacon.igc.org See also Illegal People -- How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants (Beacon Press, 2008) Recipient: C.L.R. James Award, best book of 2007-2008 http://www.beacon.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=2002 See also the photodocumentary on indigenous migration to the US Communities Without Borders (Cornell University/ILR Press, 2006) http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/cup_detail.taf?ti_id=4575 See also The Children of NAFTA, Labor Wars on the U.S./Mexico Border (University of California, 2004) http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/9989.html Two lectures on the political economy of migration by David Bacon http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GgDWf9eefEfeature=youtu.be http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pd4OLdaoxvgfeature=related -- __ David Bacon, Photographs and Stories http://dbacon.igc.org __ [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] --- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --- Unsubscribe: mailto:laamn-unsubscr...@egroups.com --- Subscribe: mailto:laamn-subscr...@egroups.com --- Digest
[LAAMN] how mississippi's black/brown strategy beat the south's anti-immigrant wave
How Mississippi's Black/Brown Strategy Beat the South's Anti-Immigrant Wave By David Bacon, for The Nation, web edition http://www.thenation.com/article/167465/how-mississippis-blackbrown-strategy-beat-souths-anti-immigrant-wave Jackson, Mississippi, April 20, 2012 In early April, an anti-immigrant bill like those that swept through legislatures in Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina was stopped cold in Mississippi. That wasn't supposed to happen. Tea Party Republicans were confident they'd roll over any opposition. They'd brought Kris Kobach, the Kansas Secretary of State who co-authored Arizona's SB 1070, into Jackson, to push for the Mississippi bill. He was seen huddled with the state representative from Brookhaven, Becky Currie, who introduced it. The American Legislative Exchange Council, which designs and introduces similar bills into legislatures across the country, had its agents on the scene. Their timing seemed unbeatable. Last November Republicans took control of the state House of Representatives for the first time since Reconstruction. Mississippi was one of the last Southern states in which Democrats controlled the legislature, and the turnover was a final triumph for Reagan and Nixon's Southern Strategy. And the Republicans who took power weren't just any Republicans. Haley Barbour, now ironically considered a moderate Republican, had stepped down as governor. Voters replaced him with an anti-immigrant successor, Phil Bryant, whose venom toward the foreign-born rivals Lou Dobbs. Yet the seemingly inevitable didn't happen. Instead, from the opening of the legislative session just after New Years, the state's Legislative Black Caucus fought a dogged rearguard war in the House. Over the last decade the caucus acquired a hard-won expertise on immigration, defeating over two hundred anti-immigrant measures. After New Year's, though, they lost the crucial committee chairmanships that made it possible for them to kill those earlier bills. But they did not lose their voice. We forced a great debate in the House, until 1:30 in the morning, says state Representative Jim Evans, caucus leader and AFL-CIO staff member in Mississippi. When you have a prolonged debate like that, it shows the widespread concern and disagreement. People began to see the ugliness in this measure. Like all of Kobach's and ALEC's bills, HB 488 stated its intent in its first section: to make attrition through enforcement the public policy of all state agencies and local governments. In other words, to make life so difficult and unpleasant for undocumented people that they'd leave the state. And to that end, it said people without papers wouldn't be able to get as much as a bicycle license or library card, and that schools had to inform on the immigration status of their students. It mandated that police verify the immigration status of anyone they arrest, an open invitation to racial profiling. The night HB 488 came to the floor, many black legislators spoke against it, reports Bill Chandler, director of the Mississippi Immigrants Rights Alliance, including some who'd never spoken out on immigration before. One objected to the use of the term 'illegal alien' in its language, while others said it justified breaking up families and ethnic cleansing. Even many white legislators were inspired to speak against it. Nevertheless, the bill was rammed through the House. Then it reached the Senate, controlled by Republicans for some years, and presided over by a more moderate Republican, Lieutenant Governor Tate Reeves. Reeves could see the widespread opposition to the bill, even among employers, and was less in lock step with the Tea Party's anti-immigrant agenda than other Republicans. Although Democrats had just lost all their committee chairmanships in the house, Reeves appointed a rural Democrat to chair one of the Senate's two judiciary committees. He then sent that bill to that committee, chaired by Hob Bryan. And Bryan killed it. On the surface, it appears that fissures inside the Republican Party facilitated the bill's defeat. But they were not that defeat's cause. As the debate and maneuvering played out in the capitol building, its halls were filled with angry protests, while noisy demonstrations went on for days until the bill's final hour. That grassroots upsurge produced political alliances that cut deeply into the bill's support, including calls for rejection by the state's sheriffs' and county supervisors associations, the Mississippi Economic Council (its chamber of commerce), and employer groups from farms to poultry packers. That upsurge was not spontaneous, nor the last minute product of emergency mobilizations. We wouldn't have had a chance against this without twelve years of organizing work, Evans explains. We worked on the conscience of people night and day, and built coalition after coalition. Over time, people have come around
[LAAMN] minnesota farm workers and labor camps
MINNESOTA FARM WORKERS AND LABOR CAMPS Photos by David Bacon South of Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota farm workers harvest fruits and vegetables for some of the largest processors in the U.S., including Seneca Foods and Lakeside Foods. The food shows up in supermarkets under the Green Giant, Birds Eye and other labels. In Montgomery, many workers live in the labor camp next to the Seneca Foods plant. Eight years ago, Centro Campesino, Minnesota's center for farm workers, helped Seneca workers force the company to provide better housing, and a kitchen where they could cook food. Before that, workers had to use the county park. In Faribault, Lakeside Foods has another big labor camp. There Centro Campesino helped workers win a child care center. Nevertheless, in both camps privacy is at a premium, especially in bathrooms. Other farm workers in the area live in trailer parks. Some in Montgomery say the rent on the trailers in one park doubles when the picking season begins and the workers arrive. In Faribault, immigration agents have held the workers prisoner in another trailer park, while they pounded on doors demanding papers. It's hard to make ends meet for many trailer residents, many of whom come from Veracruz. Francisco Romero digs in his garden during his time off, and then puts in long hours in a local meatpacking plant. Patricia Vasquez has a hard time getting enough hours in the small factory where she works, and worries about whether her daughter Karen will be able to go on to college when she graduates from high school. Centro Campesino organizes the workers in the trailer parks, according to its director Ernesto Velez, a native of Morelos. He says they've protested discrimination in towns like Owatonna, Montgomery and Faribault. The center also administers a college access program designed to help the children of farm workers and immigrants get into college. Two lectures on the political economy of migration by David Bacon http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GgDWf9eefEfeature=youtu.be http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pd4OLdaoxvgfeature=related For more articles and images, see http://dbacon.igc.org See also Illegal People -- How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants (Beacon Press, 2008) Recipient: C.L.R. James Award, best book of 2007-2008 http://www.beacon.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=2002 See also the photodocumentary on indigenous migration to the US Communities Without Borders (Cornell University/ILR Press, 2006) http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/cup_detail.taf?ti_id=4575 See also The Children of NAFTA, Labor Wars on the U.S./Mexico Border (University of California, 2004) http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/9989.html -- __ David Bacon, Photographs and Stories http://dbacon.igc.org __ [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] --- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --- Unsubscribe: mailto:laamn-unsubscr...@egroups.com --- Subscribe: mailto:laamn-subscr...@egroups.com --- Digest: mailto:laamn-dig...@egroups.com --- Help: mailto:laamn-ow...@egroups.com?subject=laamn --- Post: mailto:la...@egroups.com --- Archive1: http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn --- Archive2: http://www.mail-archive.com/laamn@egroups.com --- Yahoo! Groups Links * To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/ * Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional * To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/join (Yahoo! ID required) * To change settings via email: laamn-dig...@yahoogroups.com laamn-fullfeatu...@yahoogroups.com * To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: laamn-unsubscr...@yahoogroups.com * Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
[LAAMN] how not to get sick in the imperial valley
HOW NOT TO GET SICK IN THE IMPERIAL VALLEY By David Bacon New America Media http://newamericamedia.org/2012/03/imperial-valley-residents-must-fight-for-right-to-breathe-clean-air.php SEELEY, CA (2/20/12) -- Until his knee gave out, Ramon Villa Jr. dreamed he'd be a soccer star. Across Seeley's pitted playing field of dirt and grass, he and his friends would chase the ball through the desert sunset every day after school. Seeley's de facto town center is that field. With a fire station in one corner, it is as much of a downtown as Seeley's ever likely to have. Across the street on all four sides sit the sun-bleached homes of Imperial Valley farm workers. Seeley, an unincorporated community not far from the Mexican border, has only 1700 residents. It's not a big place, not even a formal town. For years the kids would play after school, when the broiling daytime temperature dropped, but they'd have to stop when it got dark. Ramon's mom Carolina would point her pickup at the field and turn on the headlights, just to give them another half hour of play. They'd get thirsty-- in the summer the thermometer can top 110 degrees. Sweating and out of breath, to get a drink the young players would put their heads under the spigot for a garden hose, just a few inches off the ground. So Carolina Villa decided she had to do something. With her sister Liz, she organized town residents to call on the Seeley County Water District, which owns the field. After some discussion, they won a few lights on tall aluminum poles. With the help of the planning department, they also got a real water fountain, so the players wouldn't get burrs from the grass in their ears when they drank. Ramon Villa Jr. shows he can still keep the ball in the air, with the field's new lights behind him. It was not easy for the Villas and other parents to get simple amenities for their kids, like light and water, because Seeley is one of the many unincorporated communities in rural California that lack the most basic services, like sewers, sidewalks and streetlights. According to Policy Link, a foundation promoting economic and social equity, Throughout the United States, millions of people live outside of central cities on pockets of unincorporated land. Predominantly African-American and Latino, and frequently low-income, these communities ... have been excluded from city borders. Imperial County has ten unincorporated towns the size of Seeley and its sister community Heber, and 59 other smaller colonias. Three years ago, Policy Link partnered with California Rural Legal Assistance to create the Community Equity Initiative, to find legal and organizing-based strategies for dealing with the critical situations confronting California's unincorporated communities. CRLA attorneys Phoebe Seaton (who directs the Community Equity Initiative) and Ilene Jacobs point to efforts by larger neighboring cities to avoid responsibility for unincorporated areas and their residents. Both Seeley and Heber are less than ten miles from El Centro, the Imperial County seat. Local governments, desperate to protect their resources, perpetuated the political, social and economic isolation of these communities. The local governments, in turn, fail to provide basic services to these communities that were intentionally excluded from planning and infrastructure investment, the two charged in Advocating for Equity In California's Rural Communities. The graffiti house. Light and water on the field made it more attractive to kids with little to do in this small community. But basic amenities for the town's youth just scratch at the surface of the problems faced by Seeley residents. One alternative pulling at young people is the graffiti house, an abandoned home across the street from the elementary school. There the local mota smokers and mainliners get together and party, leaving beer bottles and even syringes lying on the empty floors. From partying, the craziness just escalates. Huge holes have been punched through walls covered in graffiti. Electrical conduits have been pulled out and ripped open, in search of copper wire to sell for scrap. Being a teenager in Seeley has its dangers. But an even worse one isn't visible at all. It's in the air. Joahn Molena with his dog and his grandmother's chickens. As Joahn Molena sits in his back yard, hugging his pit bull in front of his henhouse, dust coats everything outside his home. Molena's proud of his white Honda Civic, with its mag wheels. It's a few years old, but in primo condition. But of course, he has to wash it almost every day because dust in Seeley is everywhere. It blows in from the fields that surround the unincorporated communities. In Heber, that dust comes from the empty expanses at the edge of town, that used to house
[LAAMN] immigrant steel workers march against unjust firings
IMMIGRANT STEEL WORKERS MARCH AGAINST UNJUST FIRINGS By David Bacon Truthout http://www.truthout.org/immigrant-steel-workers-march-against-unjust-firings/1329922142 BERKELEY, CA (2/18/12) -- Two hundred immigrant workers, their wives, husbands, children, and hundreds of supporters marched through downtown Berkeley February 17, protesting their firing from Pacific Steel Castings. The company is one of the city's biggest employers, and the largest steel foundry west of the Mississippi River. Starting at City Hall, they walked for an hour past stores and homes, as bystanders often applauded. Teachers and students at a Montessori school along the route even came out to the sidewalk to urge them on. At a rally before the march started, fired worker Jesus Prado told the assembled crowd, I worked for Pacific Steel for seven years. We've organized this March for Dignity because we want to stop the way they're stepping on us, and treating us like criminals. We came here to work, not to break any laws. Pacific Steel workers march through Berkeley. Many of us are buying homes, or have lived in our homes for years, added another fired worker, Ana Castaño. We have children in the schools. We pay taxes and contribute to our community. What is happening to us is not just, and hurts our families. All we did was work. That shouldn't be treated like it's a crime. Berkeley City Councilmember Jesse Arreguin agreed. We're here today to send a message to the Obama administration that the I-9 raids have to stop, he told the crowd. Two hundred fourteen workers were fired in December and January, as a result of a so-called silent raid, in which the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arm of the Department of Homeland Security inspected the company's records to find workers who don't have legal immigration status. ICE then demanded that the company fire them. Berkeley City Councilmember Jesse Arreguin speaks to the marchers before they set out. For the past year these workers have held meetings in union halls and churches, distributed food to families hungry because they can no longer work, and spoken to elected officials. The march was the culmination of months of debate in which they weighed the consequences of making their firings public, and therefore their immigration status as well. We know Berkeley is a sanctuary city, one worker explained. This is about the safest place we can think of to have this march. What happened to us was unjust, and we feel we have to protest, if not for ourselves, then for others who face the same injustice. In fact, tens of thousands have been fired in recent years because of their immigration status. Thousands of janitors lost jobs in Minneapolis, San Francisco, and San Diego. Two thousand sewing machine operators were fired in Los Angeles. Many more workers across the country have been caught in this wave of terminations. Cinthya Muñoz, of Alameda County United to Defend Immigrant Rights, condemns the firings and tells workers the community supports them. Since the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, employers have been prohibited from hiring undocumented workers, and those workers themselves have been forbidden to hold jobs. To keep track, for a quarter century all workers in the U.S. have had to declare their immigration status on I-9 forms when they get hired. Now the Obama administration has made the inspection of those forms, and the firing of workers whose status it questions, a centerpiece of its immigration enforcement strategy. Throughout the march, chants and shouts condemned the administration. Activists in the crowd pointed out that President Obama is attacking the communities of immigrants and people of color who were his strongest supporters in his 2008 presidential election campaign. At the time, Obama promised he would adopt a more humane approach toward immigration enforcement than his predecessor, who became notorious for factory raids and mass deportations. Candidate Obama said he'd work to reform immigration law so that immigrants could enjoy greater rights. Once in office, however, the administration not only continued President Bush's policy of enforcing immigration law in the workplace, but it vastly expanded I-9 audits and firings. A worker holds a sign saying, We're not criminals! We're workers! ICE began its audit of the I-9 forms of workers at Pacific Steel last February. In March, the workers and their union, Molders Union Local 164B, struck the plant for a week, to turn back company demands in contract negotiations that would have had them pay more for their health coverage. According to legal charges filed later by the union, the ICE audit should have stopped at that point, since the agency's own internal rules call for it to avoid enforcement
[LAAMN] seattle port strike challenges independent contractor lie
SEATTLE PORT STRIKE CHALLENGES INDEPENDENT CONTRACTOR LIE Truck drivers in the Puget Sound shut down ports for two weeks-and begin to shift the balance of power. By David Bacon In These Times, Website edition, 2/21/12 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/12775/seattle_port_strike_challenges_independent_contractor_lie Abdulkader Ali asks a driver to join the strike. SEATTLE-Employers say they're independent contractors. Drivers call that a legal trick to deny them their rights-a nice-sounding label obscuring an ugly reality. For two weeks in February, this argument raged at terminal gates in the ports of Seattle and Tacoma. Hundreds of truckers, who normally ferry huge shipping containers from dockside to waiting trains and warehouses, refused to get behind the wheel and drive. Instead, they caravanned to the terminal gates and appealed to their coworkers to climb out of their cabs and join their strike. Port managers claimed that it was business as usual on the docks. Standing in front of the BNSF rail yard, though, the strikers could see stacks of containers that weren't going anywhere. When they wouldn't drive, the cans, as they're called, stacked up on ships, in rail yards, and at warehouses. The port's lifeblood slowed to a crawl. Cargo has to move for shippers and trucking companies to make money. A still container, a waiting ship and an idle truck all mean lost profits. It was clear the strike was costing employers a lot of money. Finally, after the standoff had gone on for two weeks, on February 14 the two sides basically declared a truce, and drivers went back to work. In their eyes, however, it was only a step, not yet an agreement that resolved their problems. They had made their point, however, by showing the trucking companies they work for-and the huge shipping corporations behind them-that drivers have power over the movement of cargo. And they could and would use it to bring about the changes they demanded. The truckers came away from the strike better organized than they'd ever been before. Every morning they'd gather at the Teamsters Union hall in Tukwila before heading to the docks. Then, in the evening they'd return. The hall would fill with drivers in intense conversations in Amharic, Somali, Urdu and English as they repeated their demands and decided on tactics for the following day. After two weeks, a hardened core of 400 were veterans of the flying squads, deployed in winter rainstorms from gate to gate. They had testified in hearings and spoken to reporters. In the end, many agreed their most important achievement was the organization that emerged strengthened from the strike: the Seattle Port Truckers Association. One driver signals his support for the strike. Ultimately, the drivers want a change in their status, as does the union helping them, the Teamsters. We want to be considered employees, said striker Burhan Abdi, by which he meant that the companies should assume real responsibility for the conditions they impose. While the containers with the cargo and the trailers that carry them belong to the shipping companies, the tractors-that is, the engines and cabs that pull the trailers-belong to the drivers. In theory. In reality, ownership is a not-so-polite fiction. To drive for the trucking companies, the workers have to lease them their trucks. But when I need to use the truck for some other purpose, it's not mine, explained Abdi. It's the company's. It looks like I own it, but that's not real. It's my truck but it's not my truck. Abdi said that if he even used it to move his family's furniture to a new apartment, the company would fire him for it. That's just one reason truckers refused to haul loads for two weeks. Since the deregulation of the trucking industry in the 1970s, the fiction of ownership has been the lever the companies use to dictate conditions and prevent bargaining over them. Trucking companies pay a set amount for each load a driver hauls-usually between $40 and $48. Out of that, drivers have to pay all the costs of running their rigs-the gas, the repairs and maintenance. The trucking companies in turn get paid by the huge corporations that own the ships, railroads, container cranes and terminals. Drivers often have to wait in long lines to pick up a load. Dozens of cabs and empty trailers stand with their big diesels running. The air turns thick and acrid from their blue smoke. In the distance, huge ships are pulled up next to the docks, containers stacked so high on their decks they seem like tall buildings. Enormous cranes stack and unstack the cans, moving them like toys from dock to ship and back. One driver described his life: In order to get a load, you have to get up early, at four o'clock in the morning. You pull yourself up into the cab of your truck while you're still half-awake - you don't even see your family before you leave. Then you go down to the harbor and get
[LAAMN] border photos show on the border wall itself
BORDER PHOTOS SHOW ON THE BORDER WALL ITSELF Border Wall, Mexicali, Baja California Norte February 2 through April 30 Beyond Borders -- photographs by David Bacon On February 2, the Center for Cultural Investigation of the Autonomous University of Baja California mounted an exhibition of 18 large photographs, taken by photographer David Bacon, on the border wall, next to the garita, or gate, between Mexicali, in Mexico, and Calexico, in the United States. The photographs, which measure about 6' by 4', hang on the steel beams that make up the wall in the section of the border that lies between the two cities. They hang on the Mexican side, next to the lanes where traffic lines up, waiting to cross into the U.S. At times, hundreds of cars spend over an hour in the lines, giving drivers ample opportunity to look at and react to the images. The show, called Beyond Borders, consists of images that document the process of migration. Some show the life of Mexican migrants in the U.S., while others were taken in migrants' home communities in Mexico. Three photographs show children working in the fields in northern Baja California, including one taken just a few miles from the Mexicali gate itself. In an interview with local media at the show's opening reception, in a park across the street from the wall, Bacon explained, As a photographer, I've tried to create images that aren't neutral. They are, first, a reality check, showing what life is actually like, trying to do it through the eyes of people themselves. But they are also a form of social criticism - of poverty, of the discrimination and unequal status migrants face, especially in the U.S., but even in Mexico itself. Therefore, they're also a call for social change. So what better place to show them than on the wall itself? The Center is using an object hated on both sides of the border, and reclaiming it as a site for developing popular culture, and even more, a space where people can be urged to make changes so that some day we live in a world where the wall itself will not exist. Luis Ongay, director of the Center for Cultural Investigation of the Autonomous University of Baja California, said that many people will see the show, because of its location where cars and pedestrians are crossing to the United States. We know this is an open space, it's bringing the museum into a public space. He invites people to give their comments on its Facebook page: http://es-es.facebook.com/cicmuseouabc Christian Fernandez, center subdirector, noted that the exhibit uses images that are part of a project of popular art and culture, and then shows them in a way that is accessible to ordinary people. We have a show about migration, and the people looking at the images are those who themselves are crossing the border - migrating. He pointed to two images, one depicting an old labor camp in the Palo Verde Valley, which housed bracero workers in the 1950s, and another portrait of a former bracero, taken in Oaxaca. Some former braceros, who are very old now, come on Sundays to this park to meet and talk with each other. What will they think of the images that show parts of their own experience? Bacon especially thanked Natalia Rojas, who was able to create the very high quality prints. The prints were made on plastic-coated fabric, stretched across metal frames, and coated with an anti-UV protective film. Fernandez said he hoped that the prints would survive the next three months of the show, and that if they did, the center might then bring them to other sections of the border wall in Baja California. For more articles and images, see http://dbacon.igc.org See also Illegal People -- How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants (Beacon Press, 2008) Recipient: C.L.R. James Award, best book of 2007-2008 http://www.beacon.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=2002 See also the photodocumentary on indigenous migration to the US Communities Without Borders (Cornell University/ILR Press, 2006) http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/cup_detail.taf?ti_id=4575 See also The Children of NAFTA, Labor Wars on the U.S./Mexico Border (University of California, 2004) http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/9989.html -- __ David Bacon, Photographs and Stories http://dbacon.igc.org __ [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] --- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --- Unsubscribe: mailto:laamn-unsubscr...@egroups.com --- Subscribe: mailto:laamn-subscr...@egroups.com --- Digest
[LAAMN] marching away from the cold war
MARCHING AWAY FROM THE COLD WAR By David Bacon Chapter 11 in Wisconsin Uprising - Labor Fights Back Monthly Review Press, 2012 http://monthlyreview.org/press/books/pb2808/ One sign carried in almost every May Day march of the last few years in the United States says it all: We are Workers, not Criminals! Often it was held in the calloused hands of men and women who looked as though they'd just come from work in a factory, cleaning an office building, or picking grapes. The sign stated an obvious truth. Millions of people have come to the United States to work, not to break its laws. Some have come with visas, and others without them. But they are all contributors to the society they've found here. In the largest U.S. May Day event this year, marchers were joined by the public workers who protested in the state capitol in Madison, Wisconsin, who have become symbols of the fight for labor rights in the U.S. Their message was the same: we all work, we all contribute to our communities and we all have the right to a job, a union and a decent life. May Day marches and demonstrations over the last five years have provided a vehicle in which immigrants protest their lack of human rights, and unions call for greater solidarity among workers facing the same corporate system. The marches are usually organized by grass roots immigrant rights groups, increasingly cooperating with the formal structure of the labor movement. This year the attacks on public workers provided an additional push to unions to use May Day as a vehicle for protest. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka spoke at the largest of those marches, in Milwaukee, where national attention has focused on the attacks on public workers and their mass resistance. Trumka's presence marked two important political changes in labor. May Day is no longer a holiday red-baited in the U.S. labor movement, but one used to promote a defense of workers' rights, as it is in the rest of the world. And unions are slowly adopting a tradition of May Day demonstrations calling for immigrant rights, a tradition begun by immigrant communities themselves in 2006. For the last five years, May Day protests have responded to a wave of draconian proposals to criminalize immigration status, and work itself, for undocumented people. The defenders of these proposals have used a brutal logic: if people cannot legally work, they will leave. But undocumented people are part of the communities they live in. They seek the same goals of equality and opportunity that working people in the United States historically have fought to achieve. In addition, for most immigrants, there are no jobs to return to in the countries from which they've come. Instead of recognizing this reality, the U.S. government has attempted to make holding a job a criminal act. Thousands of workers have already been fired. Some have been sent to prison for inventing a Social Security number just to get a job. Yet they stole nothing and the money they've paid into Social Security funds now subsidizes every pension or disability payment. Undocumented workers deserve legal status because of that labor-their inherent contribution to society. Past years' marches have supported legalization for the 12 million undocumented people in the United States. In addition, immigrants, unions and community groups have called for repealing the law making work a crime, ending guest worker programs, and guaranteeing human rights in communities along the U.S./Mexico border. Undocumented workers and public workers in Wisconsin have a lot in common. With unemployment at almost 9% nationally, and higher in many states, all working families need the Federal government to set up jobs programs, like those Roosevelt pushed through Congress in the 1930s. If General Electric alone paid its fair share of taxes, and if the troops came home from Iraq and Afghanistan, every person wanting a job could find work building roads, schools, and hospitals. All communities would benefit. Immigrants and public workers need strong unions that can push wages up, and guarantee pensions for seniors and healthcare for the sick and disabled. A street cleaner whose job is outsourced, and an undocumented worker fired from a fast food restaurant both need protection for their right to work and support their families. Instead, some states like Arizona, and now Georgia, have passed measures allowing police to stop any foreign looking person on the street, and question their immigration status. Arizona passed a law requiring employers to fire workers whose names are flagged by Social Security. In Mississippi an undocumented worker accused of holding a job can get jail time of 1-5 years, and fines of up to $10,000. The states and politicians that go after immigrants are the same ones calling for firing public workers and eliminating their union rights. Now a teacher educating children has
[LAAMN] domestic workers and their children march for rights
DOMESTIC WORKERS AND THEIR CHILDREN MARCH FOR RIGHTS Story and photos by David Bacon Working In These Times, 1/27/12 http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/12631/domestic_workers_and_their_children_march_for_rightshttp://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/12631/domestic_workers_and_their_children_march_for_rights SACRAMENTO, CA - Early Tuesday morning busses of domestic workers and their children began arriving at the huge grassy mall in front of California's state capitol building. Dozens of Mexican, Filipina and African American moms, kids in tow, poured out onto the steps leading into the legislature's chamber. When the crowd grew to several hundred, they took up their placards, pushed their strollers out in front, and began marching around the building. Some of the kids had clearly done things like this before. One five-year-old raised her fist in the air as the crowd chanted, calling on members of the state Assembly and Senate to pass the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights. Another girl, who looked about three, knew the chant by heart: We are the children, mighty mighty children, fighting for justice and our future. She didn't miss a beat, and as one of the organizers held the bullhorn up to her mouth she did a little militant dance to accompany it. With balloons and even a couple of clowns, it all seemed very festive. But the happy atmosphere didn't hide a more unpleasant truth. Many of the moms there probably see less of their own children than the youngsters they care for. And in the case of those caring for the aged, sick or disabled, the conditions of that work can seem like something a century ago. Domestic workers often don't get a break to eat, even working many more than the eight-hour workday considered normal for most workers. Others cook for the families they work for, but can't use the same implements to cook for themselves. If they have to sleep in the homes of clients, they often have to get up during the night several times to perform basic services for them, like taking them to the bathroom, or giving them medicine. And the night is considered a rest period, for which they sometimes don't get paid. One Filipina caregiver from the East Bay explained that she sleeps in the same bed as her client. What I'd like would be a bed where I could sleep by myself, she said. Even at five or six, the kids marching with their moms are old enough to understand a little of those bitter truths. When one young girl, who looked about kindergarten age, held up a sign saying trabajo digno, or decent work, she knew enough to explain, she doesn't get enough money, and she works too hard. Last year the state Assembly passed AB 889, authored by Assembly members Tom Ammiano and V. Manuel Perez, that would give domestic workers some state-recognized rights in their efforts to curb abusive conditions. It would provide meal and rest breaks, overtime and reporting pay as enjoyed by other workers, and expand domestic workers' access to workers compensation. In addition, it would guarantee eight hours of sleep for those who work around the clock, and allow them to use kitchen facilities. The bill would affect the 200,000 people who work in California domestic service, who are almost entirely women, and immigrants or people of color. While domestic workers face the same excuses for substandard conditions faced by other women, namely that they're only working to supplement the income of men, most of them are either the sole source of income for their families, or are bringing home pay that their families can't live without. One woman explained that she was still working many more than 40 hours a week, and was in her 70s. The Domestic Workers Bill of Rights is modeled on one that was enacted in New York State in 2010. It is supported by dozens of statewide worker and community advocates, including the California Labor Federation and many other unions, Filipino Advocates for Justice, the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, Mujeres Unidas y Activas, the Women's Collective of the San Francisco Day Labor Program, a number of churches and synagogues, and Hand in Hand, the Domestic Workers Employers Association. Its main opponent is the business association for agencies that provide domestic workers to clients. At the end of the last session of the legislature, the bill was in the appropriations committee of the state Senate. The marchers hoped to pry the bill loose, get it passed through the Senate, and convince Governor Jerry Brown to sign it. One of several legislators who spoke to the crowd, Watsonville Assembly member Bill Monning explained in Spanish, This bill is just, and we're going to make sure it becomes law and that domestic workers finally get the same basic rights as other workers. For more articles and images, see
[LAAMN] can the triquis go home?
CAN THE TRIQUIS GO HOME? By David Bacon New America Media, 1/19/12 http://newamericamedia.org/2012/01/can-the-triquis-go-home.php OAXACA, MEXICO -- Just before Christmas, the women and children who'd spent 17 months living on the sidewalk outside the governor's palace in Oaxaca announced they were going home. In the spring of 2010, these refugees abandoned their homes in San Juan Copala, the ceremonial center of the Triqui people. Many houses were burned after they left. Stringing tarps and ropes across the palacio's outdoor colonnade, they set up their planton, an impromptu community of sleeping and cooking areas across the sidewalk from the zocalo, the plaza at Oaxaca's heart. It looked hauntingly similar to the settlements of the Occupy protesters that spread across the United States last fall, but rather than fighting to remain in their tents, the Triqui families in the planton were fighting for the right not to live there, for the right to go home. Finally, this December, they announced an agreement with representatives of Gabino Cue, elected governor last July, who promised to protect the families if they returned to San Juan Copala. Still, many question whether they can really go back safely. Even more importantly, they ask what can bring an end to the violence that has claimed the lives of at least 500 people over the last two decades. This question is not just debated on the sidewalk by the zocalo, or only in Oaxaca. It is asked, albeit in whispers, by migrant farm workers in Baja California and Sinaloa, in northern Mexico, and in Hollister and Greenfield, in California's Salinas Valley. Indigenous Triqui children march through the streets of Oaxaca on December 19, 2011, to protest a wave of killihngs in their home community of San Juan Copala. Mixtecos have been leaving Oaxaca for decades, driven mostly by the endemic poverty of the Mexican countryside, says Gaspar Rivera Salgado, a Mixteco professor at UCLA and past coordinator of the Binational Front of Indigenous Organizations. Yet for many years the Triquis, who were equally poor and live in the same region, stayed put. Their migration only began when the violence in their communities made life unbearable. Once displaced, they began to migrate within the Mixteca region, then within Oaxaca, and then within Mexico. They traveled north, following other Oaxacans to San Quintin in the 1980s, and then in the 1990s, to California. Triqui migrants might have escaped the violence, but not the political presence of the groups they were fleeing. Wherever they went, the Movement for the Unification of the Triqui Struggle (MULT) and the Social Welfare Group of the Triqui Region (UBISORT) sent agents, requiring people to pay monetary quotas and participate in mobilizations. In the 1980s, Triqui activists organized MULT. It was a grassroots organization to fight the caciques (rural political bosses) over control of land, forests and other natural resources, says Rivera Salgado. The caciques were so violent that MULT members had to arm themselves. Eventually, those armed men became a paramilitary group. The caciques were overcome, but what began as a grassroots organization became something different. There was no transition to a civil society form of organization. A Triqui boy carries a sign that says, We want justice for the widows, the orphans and our injured. Eventually MULT itself fractured into factions. One faction became UBISORT, which began fighting MULT for political control of Triqui communities. Oaxaca's repressive state government used the conflict to enhance its own control. UBISORT was organized with the support of then-governor Jose Murat, and became a political support base for Oaxaca's old governing party, the PRI (Party of the Institutionalized Revolution). MULT organized its own political party, the Popular Unity Party. But behind the parties were the guns. A civil war went on between them, Rivera Salgado says. In 2006, Raul Marcial Perez, a leader of UBISORT, was assassinated. Then in October, 2010, Heriberto Pazos, the founder of MULT, was gunned down in the streets of Oaxaca city. In the only municipio that remained in Triqui hand, San Martin Itunyoso, Antonio Jacinto López Martínez, a MULT leader, was elected president in 2004, but then couldn't take office because of threats, and fled to the nearby city of Tlaxiaco. Last October, as he was crossing the street there with two members of his family, a gunman shot him in the head. Many others were killed in years of violence and retribution. The Triquis attempted to create an autonomous town in San Juan Copala, and were expelled by paramilitary gangs. They carried crosses with the names of people who were killed. The High Cost of Migration For Triquies, migration has had a high cost - they've had to fight for survival wherever they went. They faced tremendous
[LAAMN] increasing reliance on guest worker programs
Increasing Reliance on Guest Worker Programs By David Bacon Americas Program website, Posted on: 14/01/2012 http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/6067 Editor's Note: This is the second installment of a three-part series on migrant rights by journalist and immigration activist David Bacon. This article is taken from the report Displaced, Unequal and Criminalized - Fighting for the Rights of Migrants in the United States that examines the origins of the current migratory labor phenomenon, the mechanisms that maintain it, and proposals for a more equitable system. The Americas Program is proud to publish this series in collaboration with the author. Over the last 25 years, guest worker programs have increasingly become a vehicle for channeling the migration that has stemmed from free market reforms. Increasing numbers of guest workers are recruited each year for labor in the U.S. from Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean under the H1-B, H2-A and H2-B programs. Recruiters promise high wages and charge thousands of dollars for visas, fees and transportation. By the time they leave home, the debts of guest workers are crushing. In 2007 the Southern Poverty Law Center issued a report, Close to Slavery, documenting the treatment of guest workers. No one gets overtime, regardless of the law. Companies charge for tools, food and housing. Guest workers are routinely cheated. Recent protests have exposed the exploitation of guest workers recruited from India to work in the Mississippi shipyard of Signal International. They paid $15-20,000 for each visa, lived in barracks in the yard, and had to get up at 3.30 to use the bathroom because there weren't enough for everyone. The company cut the wages, held six workers prisoner for deportation, and fired their leader, Joseph Jacobs. In 2006 Santiago Rafael Cruz, an organizer for the Farm Labor Organizing Committee, was murdered when the union tried to set up an office in Mexico to end the corruption and abuse by guest worker contractors. Graton, California -- Rafael Cisneros, an H2-A worker, looks at a photo of his son, who he left behind in Mexico to work in the U.S. If workers protest this treatment, they're put on a blacklist and won't be hired the following year. Protesting wouldn't do much good anyway. Prior to the current administration, the U.S. Department of Labor almost never decertified a guest worker contractor, no matter how many complaints were filed against it. The paper industry depends on this system. Twenty years ago, it stopped hiring unemployed workers domestically, and began recruiting guest workers. As a result, labor costs in the forests have remained flat, while paper profits have gone up. U.S. guest worker programs in general are just one part of a much larger, global system, which produces labor and then puts it to use. In Latin America, economic reforms promoted by the U.S. government through trade agreements and international financial institutions displace workers, from miners to coffee pickers. They then join a huge flood of labor moving north. When they arrive in the U.S., they become an indispensable part of the workforce, whether they are undocumented or laboring under work visas. Displacement creates a mobile workforce, an army of available workers that has become an indispensable part of the U.S. economy, and that of wealthy countries like it. The same system that produces migration needs and uses that labor. The creation of a vulnerable workforce through the displacement of communities is not new. Africa became a warren for the hunting of black skins during the bloody displacement of communities by the slave traders. Uprooted African farmers were transported to the Americas in chains, where they became an enslaved plantation workforce from Colombia and Brazil to the U.S. South. Their labor created the wealth that made economic growth possible in the U.S. and much of Latin America and the Caribbean. But displacement and enslavement produced more than wealth. As slave-owners sought to differentiate slaves from free people, they created the first racial categories. Society was divided into those with greater and fewer rights, using skin color and origin. When anti-immigrant ideologues call modern migrants illegals, they use a category inherited and developed from slavery. Today displacement and inequality are as deeply ingrained in the free market economy as they were during the slave trade. Mexican President Felipe Calderon said during a 2008 visit to California, You have two economies. One economy is intensive in capital, which is the American economy. One economy is intensive in labor, which is the Mexican economy. We are two complementary economies, and that phenomenon is impossible to stop. When Calderon says intensive in labor, he means that millions of Mexican citizens are being displaced, and that the country's economy can't
[LAAMN] the modern immigrant rights movement
The Modern Immigrant Rights Movement By David Bacon Americas Program website, Posted on: 14/01/2012 http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/6080 Editor's Note: This is the third and final installment of a three-part series on migrant rights by journalist and immigration activist David Bacon. This article is taken from the report Displaced, Unequal and Criminalized - Fighting for the Rights of Migrants in the United States that examines the origins of the current migratory labor phenomenon, the mechanisms that maintain it, and proposals for a more equitable system. The Americas Program is proud to publish this series in collaboration with the author. Development of the Immigrant Rights Movement to 1986 Before the cold war, the defense of the rights of immigrants in the U.S., especially those from Mexico, Central America and Asia was mounted mostly by immigrant working class communities, and the alliances they built with the left wing of the U.S. labor movement. At the time when the left came under attack and was partly destroyed in the cold war, immigrant rights leaders were also targeted for deportation. Meanwhile, U.S. immigration policy became more overtly a labor supply scheme than at any other time in its history. In the 1950s, at the height of the cold war, the combination of enforcement and contract labor reached a peak. In 1954 1,075,168 Mexicans were deported from the U.S. And from 1956 to 1959, between 432,491 and 445,197 Mexicans were brought into the U.S. each year on temporary work visas, in what was known as the bracero program. The program, begun during World War Two, in 1942, was finally abolished in 1964. Los Angeles, California -- Bert Corona, hero of the U.S. immigrant rights movement. The civil rights movement ended the bracero program, and created an alternative to the deportation regime. Chicano activists of the 1960s - Ernesto Galarza, Cesar Chávez, Bert Corona, Dolores Huerta and others - convinced Congress in 1964 to repeal Public Law 78, the law authorizing the bracero program. Farm workers went on strike the year after in Delano, California, and the United Farm Workers was born. They also helped to convince Congress in 1965 to pass immigration legislation that established new pathways for legal immigration - the family preference system. People could reunite their families in the U.S. Migrants received permanent residency visas, allowing them to live normal lives, and enjoy basic human and labor rights. Essentially, a family- and community-oriented system replaced the old labor supply/deportation program. Then, under pressure from employers in the late 1970s, Congress began to debate the bills that eventually resulted in the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act. That debate set in place the basic dividing line in the modern immigrant rights movement. IRCA contained three elements. It reinstituted a bracero-like guest worker program, by setting up the H2-A visa category. It penalized employers who hired undocumented workers (employer sanctions), and required them to check the immigration status of every worker. And it set up an amnesty process for undocumented workers in the country before 1982. The main trade union federation to which most U.S. unions belong, the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), supported sanctions, saying they'd stop undocumented immigration (and therefore, presumably, job competition with citizen or legal resident workers). The Catholic Church and other Washington DC liberal advocates supported amnesty and were willing to agree to guest workers and enforcement as a tradeoff. Employers wanted guest worker programs. The bill was opposed by immigrant communities and leftwing immigrant rights advocates, from the Centro de Acción Social Autónomo (CASA), founded in Los Angeles by labor and immigrant rights leader Bert Corona, to the Bay Area Committee Against Simpson Mazzoli in Northern California, and similar groups around the country. Local labor activists and leaders also opposed the bill, but were not strong enough to change labor's position nationally. The Washington DC-based coalition produced the votes in Congress, and Ronald Reagan, one of the country's most conservative presidents, signed the bill into law. Once the bill had passed, many of the local organizations that had opposed it set up community-based coalitions to deal with the bill's impact. In Los Angeles, with the country's largest concentration of undocumented Mexican and Central American workers, pro-immigrant labor activists set up centers to help people apply for amnesty. That effort, together with earlier, mostly left-led campaigns to organize undocumented workers, built the base for the later upsurge of immigrants that changed the politics and labor movement of the city. Elsewhere, local immigrant advocates set up coalitions to look for ways
[LAAMN] oaxaca's new government calls for migrant rights
OAXACA'S NEW GOVERNMENT CALLS FOR MIGRANT RIGHTS Story and Photographs by David Bacon TruthOut Report, 1/5/12 http://www.truth-out.org/oaxacas-new-government-calls-migrant-rights/1325614305 OAXACA, MEXICO - The Oaxacan Institute for Attention to Migrants, and its director Rufino Dominguez, called for a new era of respect for the rights of migrants, in commorating the International Day of the Migrant in the Palacio del Gobierno, Oaxaca's state capitol building. Representing the newly-elected state government, Dominguez paid tribute to the contributions of the braceros, the first of Oaxaca's migrant workers to travel to the United States. from 1942 to 1964, and to the women who cared for the families they left behind. Around the balconies of the palacio's courtyard hung photographs showing the lives of current migrants from Oaxaca, working as farm laborers in California. Migrant rights activists, artisans and public officials spoke about the important role migration continues to play in Oaxaca's economic, social, political and family life. The state, in southern Mexico, is the source of one of the largest waves of migration from Mexico to the U.S. Dominguez, the former coordinator of the Binational Front of Indigenous Organizations, which organizes indigenous migrants in both Mexico and the U.S., was appointed director of the IOAM by Oaxaca's new governor, Gabino Cue Monteagudo. Cue defeated the PRI, the party that governed Oaxaca for the previous 80 years. In an interview with David Bacon, Dominguez described the different road the new government is taking to ensure social justice for Oaxacan migrants today: We can't tell the U.S. government, or the governments of California and other states, to respect the rights of our people who are living there, if we ourselves are not respecting the rights of migrants here in Oaxaca. Many migrants passing through Oaxaca from Central America and other places suffer systematic violations of their human rights. Have we just paid attention to migrants in the U.S. because they send dollars home? Sometimes the problems of migrants within Mexico are even greater than those we have in the U.S. Oaxacans are also migrants within our own state, like those who work in the coconut palms on the coast. About 30,000 Oaxacans migrate for work without leaving the state, and we've never paid attention to them. Another 300,000 live in Mexico City and states in the north, like Sinaloa, Sonora and Baja California. The Institute hasn't paid attention to them in the past either. And we've never consulted the people who actually live in the U.S. about our activity there, or asked for their opinions. We want a different vision, a more level or equal relationship where we're not dictating policies because we're the government, but asking people for their input and opinions. Our starting point is to understand the need for economic development, because the reason for migration is the lack of work and opportunity in people's communities of origin. If we don't attack the roots of migration, it will continue to grow. There's a fear of investing in our own people, but there's no other way. We have to have economic development, and respect for the human rights of migrants as they come and go. We also have to tell people about the risks of migrating. In Durango and Tamaulipas they've found hidden graves of many migrants, and the surprising thing is that the big majority killed with such cruelty are Mexicans. It's not just a risk to cross the border into the U.S.. You're risking your life migrating here in your own country. People also need to understand that the economic crisis in the U.S. hasn't gotten any better. When you get there, your chance of finding work is worse than ever, and there's a lot of competition for jobs. So we have to work on implementing the right to not migrate, while protecting the ability to migrate safely, making sure that people's dignity and human rights are respected. In March alone, four thousand migrants were sent back after trying to cross into the U.S. That tells us that there's still a huge number of people trying to cross, and that the number isn't getting any smaller. The economic pressure on people to migrate, and the violation of human rights on the border, are still part of our reality. Migrants are raped and beaten, and recruited into criminal gangs. Over 300 Oaxacans have disappeared, and we don't know if they're alive or dead. Their families haven't heard from them. Our state is responsible for them, along with the Federal government. Yet we don't accept responsibility for the economic development that could change it. This silence is a disgrace, at the same time we've become so dependent on the remittances migrant send back to their families.. The labor of migrants in the U.S. has been used throughout history. They tell us to come work
[LAAMN] how u.s. policies fueled mexico's great migration
How US Policies Fueled Mexico's Great Migration The Nation David Bacon | January 4, 2012 http://www.thenation.com/article/165438/how-us-policies-fueled-mexicos-great-migration This article was reported in partnership with The Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute and the Puffin Foundation. Some names of the people profiled in this article have been changed. Roberto Ortega tried to make a living slaughtering pigs in Veracruz, Mexico. In my town, Las Choapas, after I killed a pig, I would cut it up to sell the meat, he recalls. But in the late 1990s, after the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) opened up Mexican markets to massive pork imports from US companies like Smithfield Foods, Ortega and other small-scale butchers in Mexico were devastated by the drop in prices. Whatever I could do to make money, I did, Ortega explains. But I could never make enough for us to survive. In 1999 he came to the United States, where he again slaughtered pigs for a living. This time, though, he did it as a worker in the world's largest pork slaughterhouse, in Tar Heel, North Carolina. His new employer? Smithfield-the same company whose imports helped to drive small butchers like him out of business in Mexico. David Ceja, another immigrant from Veracruz who wound up in Tar Heel, recalls, Sometimes the price of a pig was enough to buy what we needed, but then it wasn't. Farm prices were always going down. We couldn't pay for electricity, so we'd just use candles. Everyone was hurting almost all the time. Ceja remembers that his family had ten cows, as well as pigs and chickens, when he was growing up. Even then, he still had to work, and they sometimes went hungry. But we could give milk to people who came asking for it. There were people even worse off than us, he recalls. In 1999, when Ceja was 18, he left his family's farm in Martinez de la Torre, in northern Veracruz. His parents sold four cows and two hectares of land, and came up with enough money to get him to the border. There he found a coyote who took him across for $1,200. I didn't really want to leave, but I felt I had to, he remembers. I was afraid, but our need was so great. He arrived in Texas, still owing for the passage. I couldn't find work for three months. I was desperate, he says. He feared the consequences if he couldn't pay, and took whatever work he could find until he finally reached North Carolina. There friends helped him get a real job at Smithfield's Tar Heel packinghouse. The boys I played with as a kid are all in the US, he says. I'd see many of them working in the plant. North Carolina became the number-one US destination for Veracruz's displaced farmers. Many got jobs at Smithfield, and some, like Ortega and Ceja, helped lead the sixteen-year fight that finally brought in a union there. But they paid a high price. Asserting their rights also made them the targets of harsh immigration enforcement and a growing wave of hostility toward Mexicans in the American South. The experience of Veracruz migrants reveals a close connection between US investment and trade deals in Mexico and the displacement and migration of its people. For nearly two decades, Smithfield has used NAFTA and the forces it unleashed to become the world's largest packer and processor of hogs and pork. But the conditions in Veracruz that helped Smithfield make high profits plunged thousands of rural residents into poverty. Tens of thousands left Mexico, many eventually helping Smithfield's bottom line once again by working for low wages on its US meatpacking lines. The free trade agreement was the cause of our problems, Ceja says. Smithfield Goes to Mexico-and Migrants Come Here In 1993 Carroll Foods, a giant hog-raising corporation, partnered with a Mexican agribusiness enterprise to set up a huge pig farm known as Granjas Carroll de Mexico (GCM) in Veracruz's Perote Valley. Smithfield, which had a longtime partnership with Carroll Foods, bought the company out in 1999. So many migrants from Veracruz have settled in North Carolina and the South that they name markets for their home state. Because of ferocious anti-immigrant laws, however, many businesses have lost customers as immigrants flee the state. By 2008 the Perote operation was sending close to a million pigs to slaughter every year-85 percent to Mexico City and the rest to surrounding Mexican states. Because of its location in the mountains above the city of Veracruz, Mexico's largest port, the operation could easily receive imported corn for feed, which makes up two-thirds of the cost of raising hogs. NAFTA lifted the barriers on Smithfield's ability to import feed. This gave it an enormous advantage over Mexican producers, as US corn, heavily subsidized by US farm bills, was much cheaper. After NAFTA, says Timothy Wise, of the Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University, US
[LAAMN] african-american tenants fight a stockton slumlord
People of the Central Valley 5 AFRICAN AMERICAN TENANTS FIGHT A STOCKTON SLUMLORD Photos and text by David Bacon STOCKTON, CA (12/12/11) - Doyle Gardens sounds like it might be a pleasant apartment complex, where residents stroll down walkways between flower beds surrounded by greenery. Its name is a lie. In this large apartment complex in downtown Stockton the residents, mostly poor and working-class African American families, instead live with terrible conditions. Patricia Norman points to the trash outside her door. Yolanda Jackson's sink is on its last legs, and the insulation on the door of her refrigerator can't keep the cold locked inside. Tomoro Hooper sits disconsolately beneath the broken towel racks of his bathroom, while his grandmother, Patricia Perkins, stares at the cracks in the linoleum. In Laronda Trishell's apartment the bathroom is also falling apart,. One of the drawers in her kitchen has a bottom that doesn't slide. If she forgets when she pulls it out, all her utensils wind up on the floor. Vicky Robinson used to live in the complex too. She still feels a commitment to the friends she made there, and today helps them get organized to force the landlord to fix the many problems. Some have even complained of bedbug and cockroach infestations. Robinson points to a hole in a window made by a bullet. Instead of replacing the glass, though, a plywood sheet sits in the frame behind to broken pane. Robinson meets with tenants around a table in the courtyard, to talk about these and other defects. Disabled resident Ricky Cobb reads a notice taped to his door by the landlord, so nervous now about the organizing that people from the manager's office keep track of the meetings and visitors. This fall the tension came to a head, when 20 current and former tenants filed a suit against George Garcia and Starr Property Management. The management firm says it no longer handles the Doyle Gardens property for Garcia, who operates a local bail bond company and owns the complex. While conditions at Doyle Gardens seem extreme, they reflect the high level of poverty in the San Joaquin Valley, especially among African American families. According to a report by Sarah Bohn of the Public Policy Institute of California, Central Valley counties around Fresno (Merced, Tulare, Kings, Kern, and San Joaquin) were among the poorest, with poverty rates in excess of 20%. Stockton is the largest city in San Joaquin County, where 22% of the people live below the poverty line. In California as a whole, Bohn says, African Americans have a poverty rate of 22.1%. The 35,000 African Americans living in Stockton make up 12% of its population. With a rental vacancy rate of 9.4%, you'd think people might find another place to live. But many tenants are trapped in Doyle Gardens by the restrictions on the Section 8 subsidies, for which they qualify because of their extremely low incomes. In effect, housing authorities are acting as Garcia's enablers by allowing him to continue to collect the subsidy while making few, if any repairs. Even city code enforcers seem lackadaisical. Richard Dean, program manager for code enforcement, told the Stockton Record after the suit was filed that Garcia is working pretty well with us, that he has a management plan and has made changes. At this point, we're comfortable we're heading in the right direction, Dean told the Record. Garcia called the suit a shakedown. Many residents are clients of California Rural Legal Assistance, which is helping them to sue Garcia. We believe the housing conditions to be substandard, explained Marcela Diaz, the directing attorney in CRLA's Stockton office. For more articles and images, see http://dbacon.igc.org See also Illegal People -- How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants (Beacon Press, 2008) Recipient: C.L.R. James Award, best book of 2007-2008 http://www.beacon.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=2002 See also the photodocumentary on indigenous migration to the US Communities Without Borders (Cornell University/ILR Press, 2006) http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/cup_detail.taf?ti_id=4575 See also The Children of NAFTA, Labor Wars on the U.S./Mexico Border (University of California, 2004) http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/9989.html -- __ David Bacon, Photographs and Stories http://dbacon.igc.org __ [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] --- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --- Unsubscribe: mailto:laamn-unsubscr...@egroups.com --- Subscribe: mailto:laamn-subscr...@egroups.com
[LAAMN] just cause and occupy oakland fight fannie mae and the banks
Just Cause and Occupy Oakland Fight Fannie Mae and Banks Photos by David Bacon OAKLAND, CA - 06DECEMBER11 - Activists from Causa Justa:Just Cause and Occupy Oakland protested foreclosures, and demanded that banks stop foreclosures and allow families to move into foreclosed and vacant homes in Oakland. The action was one of over two dozen carried out by Occupy activists and supporters across the country to protest foreclosures and the refusal of banks to renegotiate loans. After a march, people occupied a home owned by Fannie Mae, and announced they would make it a community center, as part of an effort to force Fannie Mae to allow people to live in the many vacant homes it owns as a result of foreclosures. In front of the occupied home, poets recited, activists made speeches, and neighbors poured through the gates. Causa Justa announced it was holding the occupied house to demand that Fannie Mae turn it into low-income housing, and in support of the Ramirez family, whose home was improperly foreclosed on by Fannie Mae. Bank of America sold the Ramirez home while suppossedly renegotiating the loan, and the family now rents the home they once owned. Fannie Mae took $169 billion in bailout money, while its six top executives received $35 million in income, including bonuses. A statement by Causa Justa asked, If we can ensure that big banks don't go under, why can't we ensure that American families stay in their homes? ... To stop the displacement of long-term residents from Oakland and amplify the fight to keep families in their homes, we are OCCUPYING our homes in solidarity with 27 cities across the nation! We are the 99%! For more articles and images, see http://dbacon.igc.org See also Illegal People -- How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants (Beacon Press, 2008) Recipient: C.L.R. James Award, best book of 2007-2008 http://www.beacon.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=2002 See also the photodocumentary on indigenous migration to the US Communities Without Borders (Cornell University/ILR Press, 2006) http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/cup_detail.taf?ti_id=4575 See also The Children of NAFTA, Labor Wars on the U.S./Mexico Border (University of California, 2004) http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/9989.html -- __ David Bacon, Photographs and Stories http://dbacon.igc.org __ [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] --- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --- Unsubscribe: mailto:laamn-unsubscr...@egroups.com --- Subscribe: mailto:laamn-subscr...@egroups.com --- Digest: mailto:laamn-dig...@egroups.com --- Help: mailto:laamn-ow...@egroups.com?subject=laamn --- Post: mailto:la...@egroups.com --- Archive1: http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn --- Archive2: http://www.mail-archive.com/laamn@egroups.com --- Yahoo! Groups Links * To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/ * Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional * To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/join (Yahoo! ID required) * To change settings via email: laamn-dig...@yahoogroups.com laamn-fullfeatu...@yahoogroups.com * To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: laamn-unsubscr...@yahoogroups.com * Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
[LAAMN] from planton to occupy - unions and immigrants and occupy
FROM PLANTON TO OCCUPY Unions and Immigrants and the Occupy Movement By David Bacon http://www.truth-out.org/unions-and-immigrants-join-occupy-movements/1323183717 OAKLAND, CA (12/5/11) -- When Occupy Seattle called its tent camp Planton Seattle, camp organizers were laying a local claim to a set of tactics used for decades by social movements in Mexico, Central America and the Philippines. And when immigrant janitors marched down to the detention center in San Diego and called their effort Occupy ICE (the initials of the Immigration and Custom Enforcement agency responsible for mass deportations), people from countries with that planton tradition were connecting it to the Occupy movement here. The banners at Occupy Seattle This shared culture and history offer new possibilities to the Occupy movement for survival and growth at a time when the Federal law enforcement establishment, in cooperation with local police departments and municipal governments, has uprooted many tent encampments. Different Occupy groups from Wall Street to San Francisco have begun to explore their relationship with immigrant social movements in the U.S., and to look more closely at the actions of the 1% beyond our borders that produces much of the pressure for migration. Reacting to the recent evictions, the Coalition for the Political Rights of Mexicans Abroad recently sent a support letter to Occupy Wall Street and the other camps under attack. We greet your movement, it declared, because your struggle against the suppression of human rights and against social and economic injustice has been a fundamental part of our struggle, that of the Mexican people who cross borders, and the millions of Mexican migrants who live in the United States. Many of those migrants living in the U.S. know the tradition of the planton and how it's used at home. And they know that the 1%, whose power is being challenged on Wall Street, also designed the policies that are the very reason why immigrants are living in the U.S. to begin with. Mike Garcia, president of United Service Workers West/SEIU, the union that organized Occupy ICE, described immigrant janitors as displaced workers of the new global economic order, an order led by the West and the United States in particular. Criminalizing the act of camping out in a public space is intended, at least in part, to keep a planton tradition from acquiring the same legitimacy in the U.S. that it has in other countries. That right to a planton was not freely conceded by the rulers of Mexico, El Salvador or the Philippines, however -- no more than it has been conceded here. The 99% of those countries had to fight for it. Two of the biggest battles of modern Mexican political history were fought in the Tlatelolco Plaza, where hundreds of students were gunned down in 1968, and three years later in Mexico City streets where more were beaten and shot by the paramilitary Halcones. In both El Salvador and the Philippines, strikers have a tradition of living at the gates of the factory or enterprise where they work. But even today that right must be defended against the police, and (at least until the recent election of the Funes and Aquino governments) even the military. Plantons or encampments don't stand alone. They are tactics used by unions, students, farmers, indigenous organizations and other social movements. Each planton is a visible piece of a movement or organization -- a much larger base. When the plantons are useful to those movements, they defend them. That connection between planton and movement, between the encampment and its social base, is as important as holding the physical space on which the tents are erected. For the last two years that relationship has been very clear in the Zocalo, Mexico City's huge central plaza. During that time, fired members of Mexico's independent leftwing electrical workers union, the SME, have lived in a succession of plantons. They've often been elaborate, with kitchens, meeting rooms and communications centers, in addition to the tents where people slept and ate. At various time, the SME encampment was one of several in the huge square. A year ago the workers were joined by indigenous Triqui and Mixtec women from Oaxaca, who protested the violence used by their state's previous governor against teachers' strikes and rural organizations. The social movement in Oaxaca, which the women represented in Mexico City, grew strong enough to finally knock the old ruling party, the PRI, from the governorship it had held for almost 80 years. In the Zocalo plantons, people from different organizations mix it up. Last September's Day of the Indignant brought together people from very diverse movements. Some see electoral politics as a vehicle for change, but many indigenous
[LAAMN] occupy san francisco march for immigrant rights
Occupy San Francisco March for Immigrant Rights Photos by David Bacon SAN FRANCISCO, CA - 26NOVEMBER11 - Participants in Occupy San Francisco live in tents in an encampment in Justin Herman Plaza. The camp protests the exploitation of 99% of the population by the wealthiest 1%, as well as police repression and removal of occupy encampments around the country, including the original New York City demonstration, Occupy Wall Street. Camp residents, together with supporters in immigrant rights organizations and unions, marched up Market Street. Marchers carried signs and banners declaring that immigrants are part of the 99%. Prior to the march, they hold a General Assembly to discuss possible actions if the city moves to evict the encampment from Justin Herman Plaza. During the meeting, people wave their fingers in the air to express agreement with the speaker. Other camp residents look through the books in the Occupy Library, or sit reading by their tents. For more articles and images, see http://dbacon.igc.org See also Illegal People -- How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants (Beacon Press, 2008) Recipient: C.L.R. James Award, best book of 2007-2008 http://www.beacon.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=2002 See also the photodocumentary on indigenous migration to the US Communities Without Borders (Cornell University/ILR Press, 2006) http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/cup_detail.taf?ti_id=4575 See also The Children of NAFTA, Labor Wars on the U.S./Mexico Border (University of California, 2004) http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/9989.html -- __ David Bacon, Photographs and Stories http://dbacon.igc.org __ [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] --- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --- Unsubscribe: mailto:laamn-unsubscr...@egroups.com --- Subscribe: mailto:laamn-subscr...@egroups.com --- Digest: mailto:laamn-dig...@egroups.com --- Help: mailto:laamn-ow...@egroups.com?subject=laamn --- Post: mailto:la...@egroups.com --- Archive1: http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn --- Archive2: http://www.mail-archive.com/laamn@egroups.com --- Yahoo! Groups Links * To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/ * Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional * To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/join (Yahoo! ID required) * To change settings via email: laamn-dig...@yahoogroups.com laamn-fullfeatu...@yahoogroups.com * To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: laamn-unsubscr...@yahoogroups.com * Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
[LAAMN] union supporters still fired with impunity
Union Supporters Still Fired With Impunity by: David Bacon, Truthout 11/21/11 http://www.truth-out.org/print/9203 Los Angeles, California - When a private employer, like the Los Angeles Film School (LAFS), decides to fight the efforts of its workers to form a union, there is very little holding it back, despite the rights written into US labor law almost three quarters of a century ago. The National Labor Relations Act says workers not only have the right to form unions, but that the government encourages them to do so, to level the power imbalance with their employers. The law sets up an election process, in which workers supposedly can freely choose a union. And it says that it's illegal for an employer to fire or punish any worker who uses these rights. Then there's the reality, as practiced by the LAFS. That company, set up in 1999 by the former lawyer for Occidental Petroleum, was bought by Florida-based Full Sail Film School in 2003. The film and recording business in Los Angeles has strong, well-respected unions. The studios that are the hoped-for employers for film school graduates negotiate with unions all the time. But the LAFS and Full Sail are not ordinary film schools. They are diploma mills that feed off federal loans taken out by students. A lawsuit filed last year against LAFS says that students, who pay $18,000 to $23,000 per year tuition for a two-year AS degree, receive much less than promised. The school hands out gift cards to Target and Best Buy, the suit says, to students who list jobs at Apple and Guitar Center stores as creative positions on forms submitted to get the college accreditation. That allows the schools to enroll its students in federal loan programs. Brandii Grace, a digital game designer, moved from Seattle in 2009 when she was offered a contract to teach her skill at LAFS. She took a $2,000 per year cut from her previous job, and was promised $70,000 per year. Her fiancée had to stay behind, but still in their 20s, they decided the prospect of making a life together in the heart of the entertainment world made the sacrifice worth it. No sooner had she started to teach, however, than the school began making radical changes in the conditions for all its teachers. It cut classes, created new online components, and reassigned teachers to classes where they had no experience. At first, they promised extra compensation, she remembers. Then they said we were being changed from salaried employees to hourly, but that we'd get overtime for the additional work. Then, the school announced teachers would only be paid the hours spent in class, cutting most to 8-16 a week. They weren't going to pay anything for the three hours grading, advising and planning curriculum for every hour we spend in class, she says. With their income about to plunge, the faculty rebelled. Grace started trying to help people understand what was happening, at first just by distributing the school's own memos. Finally, the school demanded that teachers sign agreements to the new arrangements. In a meeting of instructors, she not only urged them not to do it, but also said they should look for a union. That was a big step for her. She'd grown up suspicious of unions because of earlier family experiences, but every government agency she contacted told her there was no legal way to stop the new rules if the teachers had no union contract. We found Peter Nguyen and the California Federation of Teachers (CFT), and he was ready to help us move right away, Grace recalls. Over the next month they collected union cards, and filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) with 70 percent of the faculty signed up. Grace was chosen head of the union steering committee. That was when hell broke loose. The film school hired IRI Consultants, a union-busting firm from Michigan. With their advice, school managers set Grace up to be fired, and prepared a classic campaign of psychological warfare against its own faculty. We were immediately told we were all supervisors, and that our salaried status would be restored, she recalls. Her boss called her in, told her they knew she was the union leader, and threatened her. Suddenly they accused her of not turning in work, of insubordination and even of becoming violent. They handed me a memo full of lies that were dramatic and extreme, Grace charges. She was suspended for three days, and when she came back, she was fired. It was her 30th birthday, and her apartment lease had just expired. She didn't give up, though. Other workers would call her at night, telling her how scared they were. The company was holding mandatory meetings to make its union hatred clear, and each teacher was called in for a private chat with her or his supervisor. Managers would run down the hall screaming at someone, 'you signed the card!' Grace says she was told. The union
[LAAMN] this camera fights fascism -- photo exhibit
This Camera Fights Fascism: The Photographs of David Bacon and Francisco Dominguez de Saisset Museum at Santa Clara University Santa Clara, CA July 29 - December 4, 2011 and January 14 - February 5, 2012 Tuesday - Sunday 11 a.m. - 4 p.m. Opening Thursday, September 22nd, 6PM David Bacon and Francisco Dominguez have both followed in the tradition of Depression-era photographers such as Dorothea Lange, focusing their cameras on struggle, dissent, immigrants, and workers. Their photographs speak to the global character of contemporary migration. Like the so-called Okies of the Depression, many of today's migrants have been displaced by environmental degradation and wider economic forces. The title of this exhibition refers to a sign that 1930s folk musician Woody Guthrie often had on his guitar, This Machine Kills Fascists. These two photographers build a powerful body of visual evidence of the continuing struggle of workers, migrants, and poor people to survive. In this exhibition the photographers responded to images by Dorothea Lange and selected photographs from their own work that draw close connections between the 1930s and today. David Bacon is a photojournalist who has documented the movements of farm workers, social protest from Iraq and Mexico to the U.S., and the migration of people. He is the author of several books, and many of the images in this show are from Communities Without Borders, Images and Words from the World of Migration. Francisco Dominguez is a photographer and printmaker. His parents both were farm workers. He documents the struggles of indigenous, immigrant, and poor people in black and white photography. - Art Hazelwood, Guest Curator To view the slide show please go to: http://www.scu.edu/desaisset/exhibitions/Camera-Slide.cfm This exhibition is taking place at the museum simultaneously with Hobos to Street People: Artists' Responses to Homelessness from the New Deal to the Present and Between Struggle and Hope: Envisioning a Democratic Art in the 1930s July 29 - December 4, 2011 also curated by Art Hazelwood For more articles and images, see http://dbacon.igc.org See also Illegal People -- How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants (Beacon Press, 2008) Recipient: C.L.R. James Award, best book of 2007-2008 http://www.beacon.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=2002 See also the photodocumentary on indigenous migration to the US Communities Without Borders (Cornell University/ILR Press, 2006) http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/cup_detail.taf?ti_id=4575 See also The Children of NAFTA, Labor Wars on the U.S./Mexico Border (University of California, 2004) http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/9989.html -- __ David Bacon, Photographs and Stories http://dbacon.igc.org __ [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] --- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --- Unsubscribe: mailto:laamn-unsubscr...@egroups.com --- Subscribe: mailto:laamn-subscr...@egroups.com --- Digest: mailto:laamn-dig...@egroups.com --- Help: mailto:laamn-ow...@egroups.com?subject=laamn --- Post: mailto:la...@egroups.com --- Archive1: http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn --- Archive2: http://www.mail-archive.com/laamn@egroups.com --- Yahoo! Groups Links * To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/ * Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional * To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/join (Yahoo! ID required) * To change settings via email: laamn-dig...@yahoogroups.com laamn-fullfeatu...@yahoogroups.com * To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: laamn-unsubscr...@yahoogroups.com * Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
[LAAMN] mexico's indignados have had it up to here
MEXICO'S INDIGNADOS HAVE HAD IT UP TO HERE By David Bacon TruthOut Photoessay, 9/10/11 http://www.truth-out.org/mexicos-indignados-have-had-it-here/1315597112 MEXICO CITY - Last week Mexican President Felipe Calderon gave the fifth state of the nation speech since his (many say fraudulent) election in 2006. He didn't have an easy time finding a positive spin for the escalating toll exacted by his war on drug gangs -- 50,000 dead, mostly innocent civilians, in the last five years. Making his job even more difficult, just days earlier the war's bloody cost was highlighted when 52 people, mostly working women and retirees on their lunch hour, were burned to death in a fire set by the Zetas in a Monterrey casino. Since then Mexican newspapers have exposed a web of corruption linking businessmen, narcos and politicians from Calderon's own party in the enormous proliferation of gambling houses over the last several years. Tombstones memorialize victims of repression and violence. Mexican casinos don't attract the wealthy, who congregate instead in Mexico City's rich neighborhoods, filled with glittering restaurants and shiny Hummers, patrolled by bodyguards to prevent the frequent kidnappings. Casinos are the refuge of Mexico's working poor, who hope a miracle of luck will pull them from the abyss of falling incomes and disappearing jobs. That truth didn't make it into Calderon's improbably rosy assessment. But it did bring over fifty thousand Mexicans into the capital's main square, the zocalo, where they publicly ridiculed the gulf between his speech and their reality. Humberto Montes de Oca, international secretary of the Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME), denounced Calderon for trying to justify what he's done to the country. The people gathered here, he declared, are the ones who've suffered under him. We know the way things really are. You can see the consequences of this terrible government in our lack of security and public safety, and our economy. The truth is that he's destroying our country. Humberto Montes de Oca The SME has been occupying over half the huge square at the city's heart since May, and they've been at war with Calderon since the government fired the union's 44,000 members in October of 2009. The national company that employed them, the Power and Light Company, provided electrical service for central Mexico, where a majority of the population live. Calderon dissolved it by executive fiat, and brought in soldiers and police to expel the workers from the generating stations. A fired electrical worker Successive governments have sought to privatize the electrical grid, although such a move is barred by the Mexican constitution. The union repeatedly mobilized the opposition of hundreds of thousands of city residents and prevented it, at least until that October. Once the company was dissolved, the government declared the union non-existent (a decision later overturned by the courts, but ignored by Calderon). Over the last two years, this fight over the privatization of electricity, and the smashing of one of Mexico's oldest and most democratic unions, has become a symbol of the administration's war on unions. Protestors fill the zocalo, listening to speakers condemn the government Other unions have also felt the government's wrath, and came to protest in the zocalo. One was the Mexican miners' union. In Cananea, a tiny mountain town south of Arizona with one of the world's largest copper mines, miners have been on strike for four years. The mine's owner, Grupo Mexico, belongs to the Larrea family, political allies of Calderon who contributed heavily to his election. This year he repaid the debt. In the face of court decisions upholding the workers' right to strike, the government brought heavily armed police into Cananea and reopened the struck mine. Striking miners from Cananea Hundreds of ex-employees of the country's national airline, Mexicana, joined miners and electrical workers as they marched into the zocalo. This year the administration forced the company into bankruptcy, and thousands of pilots, stewards and ground crew members suddenly found themselves out on the street. Their union charges that the bankruptcy was a sham. Instead, they say, Calderon's cronies stood to gain from the airline's eventual privatization. Meanwhile, the wealthy families who own Mexico's mushrooming private airline industry won the removal of their biggest competitor, at the cost of thousands of jobs. Unemployed workers from Mexicana Airlines The hundred organizations that cooperated in organizing the zocalo protest called their rally the National Day of Indignant Mexicans. Their purpose was to present an alternative to the official picture painted by Calderon, and to call for a different direction
[LAAMN] something less than prospective citizens
SOMETHING LESS THAN PROSPECTIVE CITIZENS Borrowed hands -- does the H-2A guest worker visa program make it easy to exploit farm workers? By David Bacon California Lawyer, September 2011 http://www.callawyer.com/story.cfm?eid=917686evid=1 In the fall of 2006 Irma Luna, a community outreach worker for California Rural Legal Assistance in Fresno, got a phone call. Hundreds of farm workers, the caller said, were living in the Siskiyou County Fairgrounds, and many were being fired and sent back to Mexico. To investigate, Luna and CRLA attorneys Alegria Delacruz and Mike Meuter drove 500 miles north to the tiny town of Tule Lake. Waiting at the local library they found a hundred angry laborers. Over 600 people, workers said, had been contracted in Mexico by Sierra Cascade, a large nursery, to spend six weeks trimming the roots of strawberry plants. The company owns over a thousand acres of nursery ranches in northern California and southern Oregon, where it grows rootstock for berry plants, selling to growers around the world. The attorneys took declarations and prepared a suit, beginning one of the largest litigations in California over the job rights of contract Mexican guest workers. It became one of the longest as well. The last payments to workers to settle their claims were finally made this spring, five years later. The passage of that much time might not seem extreme to many California lawyers. But to workers who live from one paycheck to the next, waiting five years to get paid is more than a delay. It is an indication that the legal process cannot overcome the vast inequality in power between Mexican contract workers and their employers. California's 650,000 farm laborers comprise a third of the nation's agricultural workforce, but only about 1 percent of those laborers are here on H-2A visas - a much lower rate than on the East Coast. However, numbers don't tell the full story. For more than a decade pressure for expanding guest worker programs in California agriculture has been coming from growers and the politicians close to them. More than half of the state's farm workers are undocumented, and though their labor is cheap, growers can't always rely on having it when they need it. And if the prohibition on hiring undocumented workers were seriously enforced in agriculture - as it has been increasingly in other industries - most enterprises would not be able to function. Every major immigration reform bill proposed over the past decade, therefore, has called for the expansion of guest worker programs. In this atmosphere, then, Sierra Cascade became a watershed case, with farm worker advocates seeking both to enforce the limited legal protections available to the workers and to highlight the fundamental structural imbalances built into the H-2A visa system. One of those workers, Ricardo Valle Daniel, described in a declaration the way he and many others were hired by the company's human relations director, Larry Memmot. While still in his hometown of Nogales, Mexico, Valle said in a declaration, Memmot offered him a H2A visas and a contract guaranteeing 6-8 weeks of work at $9 an hour. The company would supply housing and transportation. The H2A visa program, enacted as part of the federal Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, allows an agricultural employer to recruit workers outside the U.S. First, however, the employer must obtain Department of Labor certification that it can't find local labor to meet its needs, and that hiring foreign workers won't drive down the wages and working conditions of domestic laborers. The workers are given H2A visas, but can only work for the company recruiting them, and only for less than a year. At the end of the contract they must return to their country of origin. Federal regulations govern wages, housing and other conditions. On or about the night of September 20, 2006, Valle recounted in the declaration, Sierra Cascade transported me and other workers by bus from Nogales to Susanville in Lassen County. Nine buses of workers made the trip in about 24 hours. Though the company had promised to provide them with food for the journey, the workers were given only water, Valle stated. In Susanville, more than a thousand miles from the Mexican border, we were given documents to fill out and sign. ... In addition, I was given a new copy of the employment contract, Valle stated. There were significant differences between the information we received in Mexico when we were recruited and the employment contract we were forced to sign at that time. The big difference was that the contract specified they'd have to meet production standards requiring them to process over 1000 plants per hour. I was told by Mr. Memmot, Valle said, that the new provisions were [due to] clerical errors ... and that I had to sign
[LAAMN] fighting the firings
FIGHTING THE FIRINGS By David Bacon In These Times web edition, 8/23/11 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/11857/fighting_the_firings After years of 'silent raids' and federal workplace audits, unions and community allies are going on the offensive. BERKELEY, CA -- When the current wave of mass firings of immigrant workers started three years ago, they were called silent raids in the press. The phrase sought to make firings seem more humane than the workplace raids of the Bush administration. During Bush's eight-year tenure, posses of black-uniformed immigration agents, waving submachine guns, invaded factories across the country and rounded up workers for deportations. Silent raids, by contrast, have relied on cooperation between employers and immigration officials. The Department of Homeland Security identifies workers it says have no legal immigration status. Employers then fire them. The silence, then, is the absence of the armed men in black. Paraphrasing Woody Guthrie, they used to rob workers of their jobs with a gun. Now they do it with a fountain pen. Silence also describes the lack of outcry on behalf of those workers losing their jobs. No delegations of immigrant rights activists have traveled to Washington DC to protest. Unions have said little, even as their own members were fired. And undocumented workers themselves have been afraid. Those working feared losing their jobs. Those already fired worried that immigration agents might come knocking on their doors at night. Over the last few months, however, a wave of protest is starting to break that silence. In Berkeley, California, workers facing firings at Pacific Steel Castings, the largest steel foundry west of the Mississippi, have sought community support in a fight to keep their jobs. City councils in Oakland and Berkeley have passed resolution asking Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to back off efforts to force the company to terminate them. Churches and immigrant rights activists have sent her letters with the same demand. In Los Angeles, 1400 janitors marched among the Bunker Hill skyscrapers, blocking downtown traffic at lunch hour. They protested a wave of similar firings by Able Building Maintenance, California's largest privately-held building services contractor. The two protest campaigns come after two years in which dozens of other employers have fired workers in response to DHS demands. John Morton, head of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, a division of DHS, has made serial announcements of the number of companies being audited to find undocumented employees - citing figures from 1000 to 1654. There is no master list of how many how many workers have been fired. Over the last two years, however, it's at least many thousands. In Minneapolis, Seattle and San Francisco over 1800 janitors, members of SEIU union locals, lost their jobs. In 2009 some 2000 young women laboring at the sewing machines of American Apparel were fired in Los Angeles. At one point Morton claimed ICE had audited over 2900 companies. President Obama says this workplace enforcement targets employers who are using illegal workers in order to drive down wages-and oftentimes mistreat those workers. An ICE Worksite Enforcement Advisory claims unscrupulous employers are likely to pay illegal workers substandard wages or force them to endure intolerable working conditions. Curing intolerable conditions by firing workers who endure them doesn't help the workers or change the conditions, however. Instead, the administration's rhetoric has fed efforts to blame immigrants for stealing jobs and for undermining wages. In a bid to oppose support for Pacific Steel workers, one local city council member wrote, every job given to an undocumented immigrant is a job denied to an American citizen, and citizens won't work for the low wages undocumented immigrants will work for. In reality, the DHS workplace enforcement wave is focusing, not on low-wage employers, but on high-wage, and often unionized ones. Fired janitors around the country are almost all members of SEIU. Workers at Pacific Steel belong to Local 164B of the Glass, Molders, Plastics and Pottery Workers (GMP). In this council member's own city, dozens of workers were terminated at a Sealy mattress factory, where they belonged to a furniture workers' local of the Communication Workers of America. There is a long history of anti-union animus among immigration authorities. Agents have set up roadblocks before union elections in California fields, conducted raids during meatpacking organizing drives in North Carolina and Iowa, audited janitorial employers and airline food plants prior to union contract negotiations, and helped companies terminate close to a thousand apple packers when they tried to join
[LAAMN] faces of hunger -- photo exhibition at oakland city hall
Faces of Hunger Photographs by David Bacon Oakland City Hall Rotunda 1 Frank Ogawa Plaza, Oakland, California August 22 to September 2 Reception Thursday, August 25, 5:30 to 7:30 PM There is no one face of hunger. It is in every neighborhood in our community -- young and old, working or unemployed. These photographs were taken to illustrate the Food Bank's 2010 Hunger Study, a quadrennial census of hunger and food insecurity in California's seventh-largest county. According to recent data, 16% of Alameda County's population is food insecure, but 47% of those people have household incomes nearly double the poverty line. This means that they don't qualify for any nutrition assistance prrograms, making the Food Bank and its member agencies their only safety net. These photographs document the people in Alameda County who don't get enough food. But they also document the efforts in our community, by the Food Bank and its member agencies, to help meet those needs. They tell the story of people helping people to survive. http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?llr=59c54fcabet=1107277837197s=21280e=001mxhzSK5zOkvQvpFVyFKkcfLinPOBRSK37ER2rj15X9h8OYs-74NTJsKojCojp7tG8Chw4IbhFfKlupGZY6RJVnokrrUyZKWcO7uArfsUhhg= Alameda County Community Food Bank | 7900 Edgewater Drive | Oakland | CA | 94621 These photographs are available for exhibition. For more information, contact Keisha Nzewi, knz...@accfb.org For more articles and images, see http://dbacon.igc.org See also Illegal People -- How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants (Beacon Press, 2008) Recipient: C.L.R. James Award, best book of 2007-2008 http://www.beacon.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=2002 See also the photodocumentary on indigenous migration to the US Communities Without Borders (Cornell University/ILR Press, 2006) http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/cup_detail.taf?ti_id=4575 See also The Children of NAFTA, Labor Wars on the U.S./Mexico Border (University of California, 2004) http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/9989.html -- __ David Bacon, Photographs and Stories http://dbacon.igc.org __ [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] --- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --- Unsubscribe: mailto:laamn-unsubscr...@egroups.com --- Subscribe: mailto:laamn-subscr...@egroups.com --- Digest: mailto:laamn-dig...@egroups.com --- Help: mailto:laamn-ow...@egroups.com?subject=laamn --- Post: mailto:la...@egroups.com --- Archive1: http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn --- Archive2: http://www.mail-archive.com/laamn@egroups.com --- Yahoo! Groups Links * To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/ * Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional * To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/join (Yahoo! ID required) * To change settings via email: laamn-dig...@yahoogroups.com laamn-fullfeatu...@yahoogroups.com * To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: laamn-unsubscr...@yahoogroups.com * Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
[LAAMN] $54 a month for water you can't drink
$54 A MONTH FOR WATER YOU CAN'T DRINK By David Bacon New America Media, 8/22/11 http://newamericamedia.org/2011/08/dying-for-a-glass-of-clean-water-in-cas-san-joaquin-valley.php LANARE, CA - When Mary Broad moved to Lanare in 1955, there were only four other families still living in this tiny, unincorporated community in the middle of the San Joaquin Valley, halfway between old Highway 99 and Interstate 5 on the cracked blacktop of Mt. McKinley Avenue. It wasn't always this way. Lanare used to be a company town, taking its name from rancher and speculator LA Nares, one of the last of a string of speculators from the east who became owners of the old Spanish land grants - in his case, the Rancho Laguna de Tache. From 1912 to 1925 the town had a post office and a station on the Laton and Western Railway. Lanare and its neighbors drew their water and life from the Kings River. The next town up the road even changed its name from Liberty Settlement to Riverdale to advertise its proximity. But through the first half of the 1900s, farmers tapped the Kings in the Sierras to the east, to irrigate the San Joaquin Valley's vineyards, orchards and cotton fields. Instead of flowing into the valley past Lanare and Riverdale, in most years the stretch below the mountains became a dry riverbed. Eventually Tulare Lake, the river's terminus, itself was drained for farmland and disappeared. So, almost, did Lanare. Its people left, and only a few families remained. But in California's housing crunch of the last few decades, Lanare began to grow again. For farm laborers, truck drivers and poor rural working families, living in Lanare was cheaper than urban Fresno fifty miles away. But for these new residents, the dry riverbed and a century of using its water for irrigation have spelled bad news. Today Lanare's water comes from a well. And in this low-lying area of the San Joaquin Valley, chemicals have become concentrated in the water table. It was no surprise, therefore, that residents discovered their water had high levels of arsenic, a poison. Since then, their effort to find water they can drink has been a search for the life of their town itself. By 2000 Lanare had 540 residents. A decade later, 589. People mostly moved into trailers. Because most are farm workers in the surrounding fields, a third live under the poverty line, with half the men making less than $22,000 per year, and half the women less than $16,000. Today Lanare is one of the many unincorporated communities in rural California that lack the most basic services, like drinking water, sewers, and even sidewalks and streetlights. According to Policy Link, a foundation promoting economic and social equity, Throughout the United States, millions of people live outside of central cities on pockets of unincorporated land. Predominantly African-American and Latino, and frequently low-income, these communities ... have been excluded from city borders. Three years ago, Policy Link partnered with California Rural Legal Assistance to create the Community Equity Initiative, to find answers to the critical situation of Lanare residents and others like them. The San Joaquin Valley alone is home to more than 220 unincorporated communities, with an estimated population of almost half a million. In 2002 Lanare residents got a $1.3 million grant from the Federal government to build a plant to remove the arsenic. But after it went on line five years later, it only ran for six months. After that, the community's residents no longer had enough money for the chemicals and power to keep it going. Even shut down, however, they still have to come up with $54 every month to cover that loan, paying basically for water they can't drink. Inside every home there's a faucet with water you might risk using to wash dishes or clothes. But when Angel Hernandez or Isabel Solorio hold up a glass to the light, the water is cloudy. So in the corner are the stacks of water bottles for drinking and cooking. In the summer heat, on the border between Fresno and Merced Counties, the temperature rises to over 100 degrees. Water is no luxury. It sustains life. Everyone has to drink enough to replace what their bodies lose, even those like Mary Broad, who sits in the shade of her porch most days. Dozens of similar small communities, or colonias, spread out across the state have similar water problems. Activists in 17 unincorporated areas of next-door Tulare County formed AGUA, La Asociacion de la Gente Unida por el Agua (The Association of People United for Water). In Lanare, Hernandez, Solorio and several other residents, including Juventino Gonzalez and Jesus Medina, organized a group to press the state to take responsibility for providing water, Comunidad Unida en Lanare (Community United in Lanare). As a first step, they asked the state to survey Lanare and surrounding
[LAAMN] san francisco march protests s-comm deportations
San Francisco March Protests S-Comm Deportations Photos by David Bacon SAN FRANCISCO, CA - 12AUGUST11 - Immigrants, unions, churches and social service organizations march through downtown San Francisco to the office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a division of the Department of Homeland Security. They protested an ICE decision to implement the Secure Communities enforcement program, which has resulted in hundreds of thousands of deportations, even though some states have tried to withdraw from their implementation agreements with ICE. California legislators are poised to pass a bill calling on the state to do so also. Many immigrants brought their children to show that the impact of increased enforcement is the separation of families when some members are deported. For more articles and images, see http://dbacon.igc.org See also Illegal People -- How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants (Beacon Press, 2008) Recipient: C.L.R. James Award, best book of 2007-2008 http://www.beacon.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=2002 See also the photodocumentary on indigenous migration to the US Communities Without Borders (Cornell University/ILR Press, 2006) http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/cup_detail.taf?ti_id=4575 See also The Children of NAFTA, Labor Wars on the U.S./Mexico Border (University of California, 2004) http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/9989.html -- __ David Bacon, Photographs and Stories http://dbacon.igc.org __ [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] --- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --- Unsubscribe: mailto:laamn-unsubscr...@egroups.com --- Subscribe: mailto:laamn-subscr...@egroups.com --- Digest: mailto:laamn-dig...@egroups.com --- Help: mailto:laamn-ow...@egroups.com?subject=laamn --- Post: mailto:la...@egroups.com --- Archive1: http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn --- Archive2: http://www.mail-archive.com/laamn@egroups.com --- Yahoo! Groups Links * To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/ * Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional * To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/join (Yahoo! ID required) * To change settings via email: laamn-dig...@yahoogroups.com laamn-fullfeatu...@yahoogroups.com * To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: laamn-unsubscr...@yahoogroups.com * Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
[LAAMN] photoessay - los angeles janitors fight for their jobs
LOS ANGELES JANITORS FIGHT FOR THEIR JOBS By David Bacon TruthOut Photoessay http://www.truth-out.org/los-angeles-janitors-fight-their-jobs/1311960769 LOS ANGELES, CA - 22JULY11 - Over 1400 Los Angeles janitors, members of United Service Workers West SEIU, protest the firing of immigrant workers by Able Building Maintenence. The company fired workers whose immigration status the company questions, even though the workers have been cleaning the buildings where they work for many years. In protest, workers marched through downtown Los Angeles at lunch hour, stopping in front of buildings where Able has the cleaning contract, and finally sat down in an intersection, stopping traffic. Firings because of immigration status do irreparable harm to workers and to their communities. At Able Building Maintenance and most other companies in this wave of firings, workers have steady, well-paying union jobs and support many other people in their families. Many have worked in their jobs for over a decade, and some for even longer. Marchers asked that Able Maintenance respect their time on the job. The janitors are not working for the low wages that are common in the worst workplaces. Union janitors make more than minimum wage, and have medical and other benefits. That's what people are trying to defend - jobs capable of supporting families. That is the goal of most unions, and most working people. Immigrants are no different. Undocumented workers did not take jobs from anyone. The jobs in these buildings belong to the workers who do them. An immigration check leading to their firing does not create a single job. Instead, it forces people into an underground economy where illegal wages and conditions are prevalent. It does not improve wages and conditions in the workplace. At Able there already is a union contract in place that guarantees healthcare and wages that can support families. These immigrant workers didn't cause the unemployment that plagues millions of families. They didn't close a single plant. Big corporations did. They didn't cause the economic recession or foreclose on anyone's home. Big banks did. They didn't throw money at the banks while failing to establish jobs programs for unemployed workers. The misplaced priorities of successive administrations are responsible for that. The money spent on two wars and the defense industry alone could provide employment to everyone. If undocumented workers are removed from their jobs, it spells economic disaster for many people, far beyond the workers themselves. Wages fall and the recession gets worse. Employers and workers pay taxes that support local schools and services. The employers have suppliers whose businesses are also harmed. Workers' paychecks inject hundreds of thousands of dollars into local economies every month, which support other businesses and families. All this is placed in jeopardy by mass firings. Firing and terrorizing people only weakens their ability to unite and fight for something better, as well as any union's ability to adequately represent people. Wages go down when unions and workers are weak. That hurts everyone Under the Bush administration, armed agents took workers in handcuffs from their workplaces. Immigration firings are less visible, but their impact is just as brutal. If our communities stand for equal treatment for all residents, we should treat these workers and their families with the same respect and dignity that all of us deserve. For more articles and images, see http://dbacon.igc.org See also Illegal People -- How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants (Beacon Press, 2008) Recipient: C.L.R. James Award, best book of 2007-2008 http://www.beacon.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=2002 See also the photodocumentary on indigenous migration to the US Communities Without Borders (Cornell University/ILR Press, 2006) http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/cup_detail.taf?ti_id=4575 See also The Children of NAFTA, Labor Wars on the U.S./Mexico Border (University of California, 2004) http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/9989.html -- __ David Bacon, Photographs and Stories http://dbacon.igc.org __ [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] --- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --- Unsubscribe: mailto:laamn-unsubscr...@egroups.com --- Subscribe: mailto:laamn-subscr...@egroups.com --- Digest: mailto:laamn-dig...@egroups.com --- Help
[LAAMN] hot rods in hoquiam
HOT RODS IN HOQUIAM ABERDEEN and HOQUIAM, WASHINGTON (2JULY11) -- By day in these two small communities on the Washington coast, people work as loggers, longhore and mill workers, fishermen and women, and car mechanics. But after work and on the weekends, people work on their cars. So many love their cars so much that there are two car detailing shops in these next-door towns called Hot Rod Alley. You can see why. For more articles and images, see http://dbacon.igc.org See also Illegal People -- How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants (Beacon Press, 2008) Recipient: C.L.R. James Award, best book of 2007-2008 http://www.beacon.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=2002 See also the photodocumentary on indigenous migration to the US Communities Without Borders (Cornell University/ILR Press, 2006) http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/cup_detail.taf?ti_id=4575 See also The Children of NAFTA, Labor Wars on the U.S./Mexico Border (University of California, 2004) http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/9989.html -- __ David Bacon, Photographs and Stories http://dbacon.igc.org __ [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] --- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --- Unsubscribe: mailto:laamn-unsubscr...@egroups.com --- Subscribe: mailto:laamn-subscr...@egroups.com --- Digest: mailto:laamn-dig...@egroups.com --- Help: mailto:laamn-ow...@egroups.com?subject=laamn --- Post: mailto:la...@egroups.com --- Archive1: http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn --- Archive2: http://www.mail-archive.com/laamn@egroups.com --- Yahoo! Groups Links * To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/ * Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional * To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/join (Yahoo! ID required) * To change settings via email: laamn-dig...@yahoogroups.com laamn-fullfeatu...@yahoogroups.com * To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: laamn-unsubscr...@yahoogroups.com * Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
[LAAMN] south of silicon valley, hunger haunts hollister
SOUTH OF SILICON VALLEY, HUNGER HAUNTS HOLLISTER By David Bacon Hollister, CA 6/4/11 http://newamericamedia.org/2011/06/south-of-silicon-valley-hunger-haunts-california-town.php# Every year when the spring comes, families get in their big pickup trucks in the Rio Grande Valley in Texas, or the Salt River Valley in Arizona, and head for Hollister. Generations of families have made the annual migration to get jobs in the San Benito Foods cannery, or in the local fields on the machines harvesting the tomatoes that get canned there. Juana Rizo This year, say Harley and Emillio Delgado, work has been really slow. Last week we were picking apricots. It's the weather - it's been raining a lot, and not really warm, according to Harley. The two live in the migrant worker camp, set up just south of town in the 1940s to house the field labor needed by local ranchers. Today part of the camp consists of trailers, and another part buildings built after the war. Every Saturday, Israel Banuelos pulls his truck out of a parking lot on the other side of Hollister, behind the warehouse that houses the county food bank. The truck is filled with bags of food, and the camp is his first stop. The Delgado brothers are among the many that line up. Driver Israel Banuelos and helper Erik Rivera hand out bags of food In one of the great contradictions of American poverty, people who spend their working lives producing the food consumed by millions in cities all over the country often don't have enough to eat themselves. Here at the migrant camp, farm workers and cannery workers need the truck's food partly because work is slow. But even when there's more work, there are still lots of families here waiting for bags of food, Banuelos says, sometimes more than there are today. People really need it. I don't know what they'd do if we didn't come every week. I feel I'm doing something important, helping them to survive. San Benito County is just south of Silicon Valley. As you drive south, the big electronics plants and the sprawling developments that house their workers live, gradually disappear. In their place spread fields of lettuce and tomatoes, and orchards of apricots and walnuts. Antonio and Jocelyn Sanchez Something else changes too. As communities get more rural, and farm workers make up more of the population, people get poorer. In 2009 the average yearly income in Santa Clara County - home of Silicon Valley - was $94,715. Silicon Valley has its own not-so-hidden poverty, but the urban standard of living, especially in the country's premier high-tech industrial center, is much higher than San Benito County. Here the average wage in 2009 was a third of Silicon Valley -- $37,623. In April last year, when the recession boosted state unemployment to 12%, Santa Clara's rate was 10.3%. San Benito County's unemployment rate was exactly double - 20.6%. Sandra and Samantha Tello When the San Benito County Community Food Bank opened twenty years ago as the Community Pantry, it served 35 families. Last year it handed out 1750 bags a week to over 5000 people. Half of them are children, many from families who work in the fields. Consuelo Aguilar After the truck leaves the migrant camp, it heads back towards town, to the Rancho Apartments. These subsidized homes were built in the wake of the political changes brought by the farm worker movement of the 1960s and 70s. During those years, at the height of the United Farm Workers, Hollister was a union stronghold. Jose Luna (known in English as Joe Moon), was a short, unassuming farm worker who became one of the union's best organizers. He came to Hollister in the late 1960s, and organized the thousand grape pickers at what was then one of the largest wine companies in the world - Almaden Vinyards. When Luna left, his legacy wasn't just a contract, but a union the workers ran themselves. Julio Cervantes Every September when the grape harvest started in the fields of Paicines, a half-hour south, hundreds of men and women would descend on the tiny union office on Hollister's Second St. There the ranch committee, usually headed by Roberto San Roman, would dispatch workers out to the fields. The office here was run by the workers. The union contract boosted piecerates, and a family working the nine-week season at Almaden could earn enough to get back to Texas or Arizona, and make it through winter's dead time until the following spring. Today the vinyards at Paicines are as extensive as ever, but Almaden Vinyards is hardly a memory. The company disappeared in the 1980s. In the place of the union dispatch hall, labor contractors hire workers for the harvest. Piecerates have dropped. Most farm workers today were small children when union office closed. A few older men getting bags of food at the truck in the migrant camp, like Julio Cervantes or Jose Manzo, are old enough
[LAAMN] immigration and the culture of solidarity
Immigration and the Culture of Solidarity by David Bacon Published by the Americas Program on June 20,/2011 http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/4938 Editor's Note: This is the fifth and final article of a series on border solidarity by journalist and immigration activist David Bacon. All articles in the series were originally published in the Institute for Transnational Social Change's report Building a Culture of Cross-Border Solidarity. To download a PDF of the entire report, visit the Americas Program website. ONE indispensable part of education and solidarity is greater contact between Mexican union organizers and their U.S. counterparts. The base for that contact already exists in the massive movement of people between the two countries. Miners fired in Cananea, or electrical workers fired in Mexico City, become workers in Phoenix, Los Angeles and New York. Twelve million Mexican workers in the U.S. are a natural base of support for Mexican unions. They bring with them the experience of the battles waged by their unions. They can raise money and support. Their families are still living in Mexico, and many are active in political and labor campaigns. As workers and union members in the U.S., they can help win support from U.S. unions for the battles taking place in Mexico. This is not a new idea. It's what the Flores Magon brothers were doing for the uprising in Cananea. It's why the Mexican left sent activists and organizers to the Rio Grande Valley in the 1930s, and to Los Angeles in the 1970s. All these efforts had a profound impact on U.S. unions and workers. The sea change in the politics of Los Angeles in the last two decades, while it has many roots, shows the long-term results of immigrants gaining political power, and the role of politically conscious immigrant organizers in that process. Today some U.S. unions see the potential in organizing in immigrant communities. But most unions in Mexico, in contrast to the past, don't see this movement of people as a resource they can or should organize. What would happen if Mexican unions began sending organizers or active workers north into the U.S.? In reality, active members are already making that move, and have been for a long time. Yet there is no organized way of looking at this. Where, for instance, will the people displaced in today's Mexican labor struggles go? In 1998, almost 900 active blacklisted miners from Cananea had to leave after their strike that year was lost. Many came to Arizona and California. In Mexico City, 26,000 SME members took the indemnizacion and gave up claim to their jobs and unions. Many of them will inevitably be forced to go to the U.S. to look for work. Cananea miners and Mexico City electrical workers have a wealth of experience and a history of participation in a progressive and democratic union. They can help both workers in the U.S. and those they've left back home, building unions in the places they go to work. But to use their experience effectively, unions on both sides of the border need to know who they are and where they're going, and see them as potential organizers. SOLIDARITY and the migration of people are linked. The economic crisis in Mexico is getting much worse, with no upturn in sight. With a 40% poverty rate, the government still has no program for employment beyond encouraging investment with lower wages and fewer union rights. And since the maquila sector is tied to the US market, it experiences even worse mass layoffs than other Mexican sectors, with the waves of unemployed then crossing the border just a few miles away from their homes. Six million Mexicans left for the U.S. in the NAFTA period, a flow of people that now affects almost every family, even in the most remote parts of country. Migration has become an important safety valve for the Mexican economy and also relieves pressure on the Mexican government. It uses the tens of billions of dollars in remittances to make up for social investment cut under pressure from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. Teachers' strikes, like the one in Oaxaca in 2006, mushroom into insurrections because there is no alternative to migration and an economic system increasingly dependent on remittances. Economic reforms and displacement create unemployed workers - for border factories, or for U.S. agriculture and meatpacking plants. Displacement creates a reserve army of workers available to corporations as low wage labor. If demand rises, employers don't have to raise wages. In a time of economic crisis, unemployed people are used to pressure employed workers, making them less demanding, and more fearful of losing their jobs. Displacement and migration aren't a byproduct of the global economy. The economic system in both Mexico and the U.S. is dependent on the labor that displacement produces. Mexican President Felipe Calderon said
[LAAMN] growing ties between mexican and u.s. labor
Growing Ties Between Mexican and U.S. Labor by David Bacon Published by the Americas Program on June 14, 2011 http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/4858 Editor's Note: This is the fourth article of a series on border solidarity by journalist and immigration activist David Bacon. All articles in the series were originally published in the Institute for Transnational Social Change's report Building a Culture of Cross-Border Solidarity. To download a PDF of the entire report, visit the Americas Program website. In Mexico, the NAFTA debate led to the organization of the Action Network Opposing Free Trade (RMALC), which in turn helped to spark the relationship between the U.E. and the Authentic Labor Front (FAT). That relationship, examined in detail in several books, remains a model for solidarity between two unions, based on equality and mutual interest, preserving each union's ability to make its own decisions autonomously. It has been a relationship based on real campaigns on the ground - organizing drives, strikes, and resistance to proposals like the PRI labor law reform. Rank-and-file workers in both unions have played an important part in those efforts. In the solidarity upsurge of the late 1990s onwards, other unions also have found counterparts across the border, and tried to develop ongoing relationships. The Communications Workers first supported efforts by maquiladora workers in a small Cananea factory, and then established a close relationship with the Mexican Telephone Workers. The ILWU sent delegations, first to Veracruz when its longshore union was smashed, and then to Pacific Coast ports as they were being privatized. The union has a relationship with the Federation of Stevedores there, part of the Revolutionary Confederation of Mexican Workers (CROM). The PRI affiliation of this old, official union, however, is very different from the leftwing culture of the ILWU. While they have a common interest facing their mutual employers - huge shipping companies - neither union has been able to put forward a plan for mutual action. Frustrated with the slow pace of union organizing in Mexico, the AFL-CIO Solidarity Center assisted the formation of the Workers Support Center (CAT) in Puebla, which led to pitched battles in the state's maquiladoras, and some important victories. The first came at Mex Mode (Kuk Dong), where the CAT helped set up an independent union. The United Students Against Sweatshops then successfully pressured Nike Corporation into forcing the sweatshop's management to recognize it and bargain. Subsequent campaigns at clothing plants met with heavy repression. But recently, the CAT helped workers organize at a Johnson Controls plant. The UAW in the U.S., which had earlier organized plants of the same company, pressured it into recognizing the union in Puebla. The CAT drives developed a sophisticated strategy using cross-border leverage against Mexican and U.S. employers in a well-defined geographical area, producing for the U.S. market. Those campaigns only received lukewarm support from the Mexican independent labor movement for the first few years. Recently, however, that has changed. The Puebla union at Johnson Controls joined the Mexican miners union after it won recognition. The mineros, who have begun a process of merging with the United Steel Workers, are locked in an all-out conflict with the Mexican government and Grupo Mexico. Yet the union is committed to offering resources to Puebla maquiladora workers, and the workers in turn are unafraid to join a union engaged in fierce battles. The decision by the mineros and USW to draw together rises from their joint struggles in the mines along the U.S./Mexico border, especially the strike in Cananea. Workers in U.S. and Mexican mines have a long history of mutual support, even family relationships. While the Cold War restrained such support activity for some years, the Cananea strike in 1998 restarted relationships. Mexican miners came up to Arizona, and their appeals led to caravans of trucks filled with food going south. Support came from the Tucson labor council, headed by Jerry Acosta, and from USW mine locals in Arizona. When Napoleon Gomez Urrutia became president of the mineros, and increasingly challenged Grupo Mexico and the Mexican government, the USW support efforts increased. Grupo Mexico bought ASARCO, giving the two unions a common employer. Then in June 2007, the mineros struck the Cananea mine, and Gomez Urrutia was forced into exile. The USW offered him a home in Vancouver, Canada, and the union became a critical source of support for the Cananea strikers, contributing food and money. It organized U.S. health and safety experts to go to Cananea to expose the dangers of silicosis in the mine, one of the reasons for the strike. The USW brought the AFL-CIO into its support activity, and together they pressured both the U.S. and Mexican
[LAAMN] the rebirth of solidarity on the border
The Rebirth of Solidarity on the Border by David Bacon Published by the Americas Program on May 31, 2011 http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/4697 Editor's Note: This is the third article of a series on border solidarity by journalist and immigration activist David Bacon. This article and subsequent stories were originally published in the Institute for Transnational Social Change's report Building a Culture of Cross-Border Solidarity. To download a PDF of the entire report, visit the Americas Program website. The growth of cross-border solidarity today is taking place at a time when U.S. penetration of Mexico is growing - economically, politically, and even militarily. While the relationship between the U.S. and Mexico has it's own special characteristics, it is also part of a global system of production, distribution and consumption. It is not just a bilateral relationship. Jobs go from the U.S. and Canada to Mexico in order to cut labor costs. But from Mexico those same jobs go China or Bangladesh or dozens of other countries, where labor costs are even lower. As important, the threat to move those jobs, experienced by workers in the U.S. from the 1970s onwards, are now common in Mexico. Those threats force concessions on wages. In Sony's huge Nuevo Laredo factory, for instance, that threat was used to make workers agree to an indefinite temporary employment status, even though Mexican law prohibited it. Multiple production locations undermine unions' bargaining leverage, since action by workers in a single workplace can't shut down production for the entire corporation. The UAW, for instance, was beaten during a strike at Caterpillar in large part because even though the union could stop production in the U.S., production in Mexico continued. Grupo Mexico can use profits gained in mining operations in Peru to subsidize the costs of a strike in Cananea. The privatization of electricity in Mexico will not just affect Mexicans. Already plants built by Sempra Energy and Enron in Mexico are like maquiladoras, selling electricity into the grid across the border. If privatization grows, that will have an impact on US unions and jobs, giving utility unions in the U.S. a reason to help Mexican workers resist it. This requires more than solidarity between unions facing the same employer. It requires solidarity in resisting the imposition of neoliberal reforms like privatization and labor law reform as well. At the same time, the concentration of wealth has created a new political situation in both countries. In Mexico, the PRI functioned as a mediator between organized workers and business. PRI governments used repression to stop the growth of social movements outside the system it controlled. But the government also used negotiations in the interest of long-term stability. The interests of the wealthy were protected, but some sections of the population also received social benefits, and unions had recognized rights. In 1994, for instance, the government put leaders of Mexico City's bus union SUTAUR in prison. But then it proceeded to negotiate with them while they were in jail. The victory of Vicente Fox and the PAN in 2000 created a new situation, in which the corporate class, grown rich and powerful because of earlier reforms, no longer desired the same kind of social pact or its political intermediaries. The old corporatist system, in which unions had a role, was no longer necessary. Meanwhile employers and the government have been more willing to use force. Unions like the Mexican Electricians Union (SME) and miners face not just repression, but destruction. In the U.S. a similar process took place during the years after the Vietnam War, when corporations made similar decisions. After the Federal government broke the air traffic controller's (PATCO) strike, the use of strikebreakers became widespread. Corporations increasingly saw even business unions as unnecessary for maintaining social peace and continued profits. Union organizing became a kind of labor warfare. A whole industry of union busters appeared, making the process set up by U.S. labor law in the 1930s much less usable by workers seeking to organize. Labor law reform, national healthcare, and other basic pro-worker reforms became politically impossible in the post-Vietnam era, even under Democratic presidents whom unions helped elect. Public workers did succeed in organizing during this period, however, and eventually U.S. union strength became more and more concentrated in that sector. But much as the public sector in Mexico came under attack, the U.S. public sector became the target for the U.S. right, for similar reasons. This too changed the landscape for solidarity, giving the most politically powerful section of the U.S. labor movement, at least potentially, a greater interest in solidarity with Mexican labor. In both countries, the main
[LAAMN] labor law reform - a key battle for mexican unions today
Labor Law Reform - A Key Battle for Mexican Unions Today by David Bacon Published by the Americas Program on: May 26, 2011 http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/4654 Editor's Note: This is the second installment of a series on border solidarity by journalist and immigration activist David Bacon. This article and subsequent installments were originally published in the Institute for Transnational Social Change's report Building a Culture of Cross-Border Solidarity. To download a PDF of the entire report, visit the Americas Program website. Changing Mexico's labor law threatens the lives of millions of workers. It would cement the power of a group of industrialists who have been on the political offensive for decades, and who now control Mexico's presidency and national government. Labor law reform will only benefit the country's oligarchs, claims Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who most Mexicans think won the last presidential election in 2006, as candidate of the left-wing Party of the Democratic Revolution. Napoleon Gomez Urrutia, head of the miner's union who was forced into exile in Canada in 2006, says Mexico's old governing party, the Party of the Institutionalized Revolution (PRI), which lost control of the presidency in 2000, is trying to assure its return by making this gift to big business, putting an end to labor rights. In part, the change is drastic because on paper, at least, the rights of Mexican workers are extensive, deriving from the Revolution that ended in 1920. At a time when workers in the U.S. still had no law that recognized the legality of unions, Article 123 of the Mexican Constitution spelled out labor rights. Workers have the right to jobs and permanent status once they're hired. If they're laid off, they have the right to severance pay. They have rights to housing, health care, and training. In a legal strike, they can string flags across the doors of a factory or workplace, and even the owner can't enter until the dispute is settled. Strikebreaking is prohibited. A new labor law would change most of that. Companies would be able to hire workers in a six-month probationary status, and then fire them at the end without penalty. Even firing workers with 20 or 30 years on the job would suddenly become much easier and cheaper, by limiting the penalty for unjust termination to one year's severance pay. That's an open invitation to employers, according to Arturo Alcalde, Mexico's most respected labor lawyer and past president of the National Association of Democratic Lawyers. The bosses themselves say the PRI reform is the road to a 'paradise of firings.' It will make it much cheaper for companies to terminate workers. The justification, of course, is that by reducing the number of workers at a worksite, while requiring those remaining to work harder, productivity increases and profits go up. For workers, though, a permanent job and stable income become a dream, while the fear of firing grows, hours get longer, and work gets faster, harder and more dangerous. The PRI labor law reform proposal deepens those changes. The 40-hour workweek was written into the Federal Labor Law, which codified the rights in Article 123. That limit would end. Even the current 7-peso/hour minimum wage ($5/day) would be undermined, as employers would gain the unilateral right to set wages. The independent review of safe working conditions would be heavily restricted. Mexican workers aren't passive and organize work stoppages and protests much more frequently than do workers in the U.S. Greater activity by angry workers, therefore, wouldn't be hard to predict. So the labor law reform takes this into account as well. Even in union workplaces with a collective agreement setting wages and conditions, an employer could force workers to sign individual agreements with fewer rights or lower wages. Companies could subcontract work with no limit, giving employers the ability to find low-cost contractors with no union to replace unionized, higher-wage employees. And it would become much more difficult to go on strike. THE proposed labor law reform is the fourth in a series of basic changes in Mexico's economic, legal and political framework over the last decade. A fiscal reform began the process of privatizing the country's pension system, much like the Social Security privatization plans proposed for the U.S. Teachers charge that Mexican education reform is intended to remove their influence over the curriculum, which still espouses values that would seem very progressive in a U.S. classroom. In many cases, they say, it will remove them from their jobs also. Current Mexican President Felipe Calderon of the National Action Party (PAN) proposed an energy reform aimed at privatizing the national oil company, Pemex. Fierce opposition, however, was able to restrict it to some degree. All
[LAAMN] the hidden history of mexico/u.s. labor solidarity
The Hidden History of Mexico/U.S. Labor Solidarity By David Bacon Published by the Americas Program on: May 22, 2011 http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/4606 Editor's Note: This is the first installment of a series on border solidarity by journalist and immigration activist David Bacon. This article and subsequent installments were originally published in the Institute for Transnational Social Change's report Building a Culture of Cross-Border Solidarity. To download a PDF of the entire report, visit the Americas Program website. Introduction In the period since the North American Free Trade Agreement has come into effect, the economies of the United States and Mexico have become more integrated than ever. Through Plan Merida and partnerships on security, the military and the drug war, the political and economic policies pursued by the U.S. and Mexican governments are more coordinated than they've ever been. Working people on both sides of the border are not only affected by this integration. Workers and their unions in many ways are its object. These policies seek to maximize profits and push wages and benefits to the bottom, manage the flow of people displaced as a result, roll back rights and social benefits achieved over decades, and weaken working class movements in both countries. All this makes cooperation and solidarity across the U.S./Mexico border more important than ever. After a quarter century in which the development of solidarity relationships was interrupted during the cold war, unions and workers are once again searching out their counterparts and finding effective and appropriate ways to support each other. This paper is not a survey of all the efforts that have taken place, especially since the NAFTA debate restarted the solidarity process in the early 1990s. Instead, it seeks to set out some questions, and invite responses and contributions from people involved in this cross border movement. Among these questions are the following: What is the history of cross-border solidarity? How can we discard the blinders forged by the cold war, and expand our vision of what is possible? How is the political context changing on both sides of the border? Why is solidarity a necessary response to political and economic challenges? One of our biggest advantages is the movement of people from Mexico to the U.S. and back. What part do migrants and the struggle for their rights play in solidarity between workers of both countries? How can we develop new ways of reaching across the border? The Hidden History of Mexico/U.S. Labor Solidarity The working class movements of the U.S. and Mexico both began in the decades after the seizure of Mexican territory in the War of 1848, its incorporation into the territory of the U.S., and the unequal relationship cemented by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. After the turn of the century, cross-border solidarity became an important political movement, as Mexicans began migrating to the U.S. as railroad workers, miners and farm laborers. The Flores Magon brothers, on the run from the regime of Porfirio Diaz, began organizing what became the uprising in Cananea and the Liberal Party in the communities of railroad workers in Los Angeles, St. Louis and elsewhere north of the border. The two were active participants in the radical socialist and anarchist movements of the day, and were associated with the Industrial Workers of the World. After the Cananea rising, J. Edgar Hoover pursued them in his first campaign of organized anti-labor and anti-left repression. The brothers were caught, tried and sent to Leavenworth Federal Prison, where Ricardo died. Today in Salina Cruz, Oaxaca, on the wall of the longshore union hall, hangs a banner dated 1906, declaring the union part of the Casa Obrera Mundial. The Casa Obrera Mundial was a Mexican group associated with the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), and the banner testifies to the links that existed between workers of the two countries at that time, and their internationalist outlook. Later, members of the IWW fought in the Mexican Revolution itself. The roots of the cross-border solidarity movement are very deep, going back more than a century. They are part of the labor culture of workers and unions, and have been almost since the beginning of our two labor movements. During the 1930s, strong cross border relationships developed between workers on both sides. In Mexico and the U.S., their challenge was the same - to organize the vast bulk of workers in the largest enterprises, especially the basic industries. Through the presidency of Lazaro Cardenas, Mexican labor had a government that depended on a strong, albeit politically controlled, union movement. Communists and socialists organized the Confederation of Mexican Workers (CTM), and began supporting the beginnings of labor movements in other countries through
[LAAMN] city worker bargaining rights under seige in silicon valley
CITY WORKER BARGAINING RIGHTS UNDER SIEGE IN SILICON VALLEY By David Bacon Truthout http://www.truthout.org/city-worker-bargaining-rights-under-siege-silicon-valley/1305819127 SAN JOSE, CA 5/17/11) -- Members of the city workers union in San Jose, the capital of California's Silicon Valley, marched Tuesday to City Hall and packed the council chambers, in a growing confrontation with Mayor Chuck Reed over proposed budget cuts. Yolanda Cruz, president of Local 101 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, spoke to a rally of hundreds of union members in a church behind City Hall. The union will fight, she said, not just the imposition of drastic service reductions, but also the Mayor's threat to go to the ballot with a measure to require an election every time city workers want a raise or benefit increase. We will not be forced to pay for the city's economic crisis with our bargaining rights, she declared. Cruz was supported by the union's national secretary treasurer, Lee Saunders. He compared Reed to Scott Walker, the governor of Wisconsin, who rammed a measure through that state's legislature drastically curtailing public worker union rights. They think they can bring Wisconsin to California, Saunders thundered to an angry crowd. That's just not going to happen. The church exploded in cheers. Later union members marched to City Hall for a second rally with community supporters. Cindy Chavez, former city council member and now executive secretary of the South Bay Labor Council, told union members that the rest of Silicon Valley's labor movement would give them the same support public workers in Wisconsin received from unions throughout the country. Local labor and community groups have backed Local 101 in previous conflicts with the city. In 1981 the union struck for nine days, and won the nation's first contract provision guaranteeing women equal pay for work of comparable worth. At the time, women earned 18% less than men in sex-segregated jobs. The strike challenged sex discrimination that was pervasive throughout city employment. But even more, it was an indictment of the low wages and inequality suffered by hundreds of thousands of women who make up the vast majority on the production lines in Silicon Valley's huge electronics plants. That fight earned the union respect from working women in the valley that has lasted 30 years. Mayor Chuck Reed intends to put that loyalty to the test. San Jose has a projected budget deficit of $115 million for next year. He has announced drastic service cuts, including the elimination of over 400 city jobs. Citing a fiscal emergency, his threatened initiative on the November ballot would raise the city's retirement age and cut the pensions of retirees. Although a Democrat, Reed and Silicon Valley unions have had a rocky relationship for years. He was a member of the city planning commission and its business-oriented Downtown Association before being elected to city council. Then, in 2006, he ran for mayor against Cindy Chavez, who was strongly supported by city workers and other unions. He won the election, and has since boasted of moving at the speed of business. The city workers union has offered to take a 10% cut and make other sacrifices, according to Cruz, but she accuses Reed of promoting hysteria and blaming city worker pensions for causing the current budget crisis. Reed has again chosen to blame workers in order to deflect attention away years of mismanaged spending by city leadership - decisions that occurred both while he served on the city council for years and continue today under his watch as mayor, she said. Many union members held signs during the protest that said Stop the Lies! Cruz condemned Reed's declaration of a state of emergency, the pretext for going to the ballot with his initiative, calling it scare tactics and a campaign of misinformation about city worker retirement. In a pension analysis for Local 101's members, Cruz explained that the pension crisis cited by Reed is not caused by excessive retirement benefits. The major driver of current pension shortfalls is the stock market crash in 2007-09, she said. This flies in the face of those who would suggest that it is caused by ever-increasing or overpromised benefits to employees. The city's pension fund, she explained, had an unfunded liability of $1.13 billion in 2009, but because of the recovery of the stock market, a year later it had dropped to $998 million. Since then, the SP 500 index has increased 30 percent. We estimate that recovering markets will eliminate nearly half of the unfunded liability during this fiscal year, she predicted. The city is also trying to prefund the costs of health benefits for retirees, and Reed has said that this will cost $400 million by 2015. Few governments prefund retiree health care, and even fewer companies
[LAAMN] will public workers and immigrants march together on may day?
WILL PUBLIC WORKERS AND IMMIGRANTS MARCH TOGETHER ON MAY DAY? By David Bacon Working In These Times, 4/28/11 http://www.inthesetimes.com/working/entry/7246/will_public_workers_and_immigrants_march_together_on_may_day/ One sign carried in almost every May Day march of the last few years says it all: We are Workers, not Criminals! Often it was held in the calloused hands of men and women who looked as though they'd just come from work in a factory, cleaning an office building, or picking grapes. The sign stated an obvious truth. Millions of people have come to the United States to work, not to break its laws. Some have come with visas, and others without them. But they are all contributors to the society they've found here. This year, those marchers will be joined by the public workers we saw in the state capitol in Madison, whose message was the same: we all work, we all contribute to our communities and we all have the right to a job, a union and a decent life. Past May Day protests have responded to a wave of draconian proposals to criminalize immigration status, and work itself, for undocumented people. The defenders of these proposals have used a brutal logic: if people cannot legally work, they will leave. But undocumented people are part of the communities they live in. They cannot simply go, nor should they. They seek the same goals of equality and opportunity that working people in the United States have historically fought to achieve. In addition, for most immigrants, there are no jobs to return to in the countries from which they've come. The North American Free Trade Agreement alone deepened poverty in Mexico so greatly that, since it took effect, 6 million people came to the United States to work because they had no alternative. Instead of recognizing this reality, the U.S. government has attempted to make holding a job a criminal act. Thousands of workers have already been fired, with many more to come. We have seen workers sent to prison for inventing a Social Security number just to get a job. Yet they stole nothing and the money they've paid into Social Security funds now subsidizes every Social Security pension or disability payment. Undocumented workers deserve legal status because of that labor-their inherent contribution to society. Past years' marches have supported legalization for the 12 million undocumented people in the United States. In addition, immigrants, unions and community groups have called for repealing the law making work a crime, ending guest worker programs, and guaranteeing human rights in communities along the U.S./Mexico border. The truth is that undocumented workers and public workers in Wisconsin have a lot in common. In this year's May Day marches, they could all hold the same signs. With unemployment at almost 9%, all working families need the Federal government to set up jobs programs, like those Roosevelt pushed through Congress in the 1930s. If General Electric alone paid its fair share of taxes, and if the troops came home from Iraq and Afghanistan, we could put to work every person wanting a job. Our roads, schools, hospitals and communities would all benefit. At the same time, immigrants and public workers need strong unions that can push wages up, and guarantee pensions for seniors and healthcare for the sick and disabled. A street cleaner whose job is outsourced, and an undocumented worker fired from a fast food restaurant both need protection for their right to work and support their families. Instead, some states like Arizona, and now Georgia, have passed measures allowing police to stop any foreign looking person on the street, and question their immigration status. Arizona passed a law requiring employers to fire workers whose names are flagged by Social Security. In Mississippi an undocumented worker accused of holding a job can get jail time of 1-5 years, and fines of up to $10,000. The states and politicians that go after immigrants are the same ones calling for firing public workers and eliminating their union rights. Now a teacher educating our children has no more secure future in her job than an immigrant cleaning an office building at night. The difference between their problems is just one of degree. But going after workers has produced a huge popular response. We saw it in Madison in the capitol building. We saw it in the May Day marches when millions of immigrants walked peacefully through the streets. Working people are not asleep. Helped by networks like May Day United, they remember that this holiday itself was born in the fight for the 8-hour day in Chicago more than a century ago. In those tumultuous events, immigrants and the native born saw they needed the same thing, and reached out to each other. This May Day, will we see them walking together in the streets again? For information about where May Day marches are scheduled to take place this Sunday, visit
[LAAMN] photo exhibit at addison st. sidewalk gallery in berkeley
BEYOND BORDERS Photographs by David Bacon Addison Street Windows Gallery 2018 Addison Street (between Shattuck Av./ Milvia St.) Berkeley, CA April 22 thru May 31, 2011 street encuentro / meet the artist -- Thursday, May 12, 6-8 PM, at the Windows Addison Street Windows Gallery presents documentary photographs by David Bacon about indigenous migration to the United States from Mexico. Photographer and journalist David Bacon documents an important aspect of the reality of the migrant experience -- the creation of transnational communities. This candid and forthright documentation functions as a reality check, showing the human face of people and communities often stereotyped by hysteria and political controversy over immigration. Indigenous communities are often simply invisible, especially to city dwellers, although today anyone eating a lemon or strawberry is likely consuming the product of the labor of indigenous farm workers. These photographs take us inside these communities and illuminate the ties that bind people together, the influence of their working conditions on migrants and their families, their health and their collective and personal struggles for better lives. Images in the project also show the social movements in Mexico that challenge the poverty and community displacement that make migration a question of basic human survival. Beyond Borders is part of a larger project, Living Under the Trees, in which Bacon, over the last decade, has documented communities of indigenous migrants from Mexico, now living in rural California towns and working in the fields. The project contains thousands of images, many of which have been exhibited nationally. Beyond Borders contains 29 large digital color prints from this collection. This exhibit is in the Addison Street Windows Gallery, located on Addison Street between Milvia Street and Shattuck Avenue in Berkeley's downtown Arts District. It can be viewed 24 hours a day from the sidewalk. The exhibit is free and wheelchair accessible. For more information, contact: David Bacon/ photographer dba...@igc.org Mary Ann Merker/ Civic Arts Coordinator mmer...@ci.berkeley.ca.us Greg Morozumi/ curator gmoroz...@yahoo.com Sponsored by the Civic Arts Program of the City of Berkeley in cooperation with the Civic Arts Commission. Living Under the Trees is a cooperative project with California Rural Legal Assistance and the Frente Indigena de Organizaciones Binacionales. For more articles and images, see http://dbacon.igc.org See also Illegal People -- How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants (Beacon Press, 2008) Recipient: C.L.R. James Award, best book of 2007-2008 http://www.beacon.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=2002 See also the photodocumentary on indigenous migration to the US Communities Without Borders (Cornell University/ILR Press, 2006) http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/cup_detail.taf?ti_id=4575 See also The Children of NAFTA, Labor Wars on the U.S./Mexico Border (University of California, 2004) http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/9989.html. -- __ David Bacon, Photographs and Stories http://dbacon.igc.org __ [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] --- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --- Unsubscribe: mailto:laamn-unsubscr...@egroups.com --- Subscribe: mailto:laamn-subscr...@egroups.com --- Digest: mailto:laamn-dig...@egroups.com --- Help: mailto:laamn-ow...@egroups.com?subject=laamn --- Post: mailto:la...@egroups.com --- Archive1: http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn --- Archive2: http://www.mail-archive.com/laamn@egroups.com --- Yahoo! Groups Links * To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/ * Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional * To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/join (Yahoo! ID required) * To change settings via email: laamn-dig...@yahoogroups.com laamn-fullfeatu...@yahoogroups.com * To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: laamn-unsubscr...@yahoogroups.com * Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
[LAAMN] justice, equality and a decent life
JUSTICE, EQUALITY AND A DECENT LIFE After 150 Years, Bay Area Working Families Fight for the Same Goals By David Bacon Truthout, 4/21/11 http://truthout.org/one-hundred-and-fifty-years-after-general-strike-bay-area-workers-still-fighting-justice In the hundred and fifty year history of workers in the San Francisco Bay Area, the watershed event was one that happened 75 years ago - the San Francisco general strike. That year sailors, longshoremen and other maritime workers shut down all the ports on the west coast, trying to form a union and end favoritism, low wages, and grueling 10- and 12-hour days. Shipowners deployed tanks and guns on the waterfront, and tried to break the strike. At the peak of this bitter labor war, police fired into crowds of strikers, killing two union activists. Then workers shut down the entire city in a general strike, and for four days nothing moved in San Francisco. The strike gave workers a sense of power described in a verse in the union song Solidarity Forever: Without our brain and muscle, not a single wheel can turn. The strike marked the end of a period in which, for seventy years, the efforts of workers to form unions were met with violence and firings. By the end of the 1930s, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union was one of the strongest in the nation, workers had a hiring hall instead of a humiliating shapeup in which they had to beg for jobs, and workers on both sides of the bay were busy building other unions, as well as political organizations that eventually elected mayors and sent pro-worker candidates to Congress. The strike marked the beginning of our modern labor movement. One product of the rising power of unions was the development of the workers compensation system to ensure that injured and sick workers would receive enough compensation from employers to survive. While California had passed its first workers' compensation law, the Compensation Act, in 1911, participation by employers was at first voluntary, and only became compulsory two years later. Establishment of the system was both a reaction to the high level of workplace injuries at the turn of the century, and a product of the Progressive movement that sought to limit the power of large corporations. The state established its own compensation fund in 1914, to offer a system with costs lowered by removing insurance corporations and their profits. At the height of the Depression, 18 private insurance corporations went bankrupt, while the state fund continued to pay injured workers. The 1930s and 40s was a high point in the power of industrial and manual laborers. By that time, trucks had replaced the horse-drawn wagons that employed the area's first Teamsters. Assembly workers labored in huge factories churning out automobiles and electrical equipment, construction workers built the bridges that span the bay, and thousands of sailors and other marine workers sailed out on ships that packed the wharves. The unions of the 30s ended the worst conditions that prevailed in the previous 70 years - 10 hour days and six day weeks, job conditions that could sicken and kill, wages that could barely feed a family, and constant fear of getting unfairly fired. The changes won by the unions of the 30s and 40s created an economic base for many working families to buy homes and send their children to college. The state responded by creating a system of universities and community colleges and, by the end of World War 2 promised that any working-class kid who graduated high school would find a place in one of them. The nation's first employer-paid medical plan began in the Richmond shipyards. Belonging to a union gave workers from diverse backgrounds a common shared culture, with its own labor songs and activities built around the hall, from sports and fishing, to dancing, eating and other social activities. Still, in the 30s and 40s, the Bay Area's workforce was rigidly divided by race and sex. A color line prevented African Americans from getting skilled jobs in construction, industry and public services like fire and police. Women could work in some jobs, but were kept out of the best-paying ones. The general strike made one of the first cracks in that wall, when striking longshoremen promised that if African Americans supported the effort, they'd force shipping companies to abandon the color line on the docks. The promise was kept, and today people of color are a majority of the bay's dockworkers. Meanwhile, wartime work in the shipyards drew many African Americans from homes in the south to new communities in California. Black families living in West Oakland and San Francisco's Fillmore and Western Addition neighborhoods shared a vibrant cultural life, with its clubs incubating jazz and bebop, while the promise of employment gave a new generation
[LAAMN] border communities are ground zero for hunger
BORDER COMMUNITIES ARE GROUND ZERO FOR HUNGER Photos and story by David Bacon New American Media, 4/18/11 http://newamericamedia.org/2011/04/border-communities-are-ground-zero-for-hunger.php TIERRA DEL SOL, CA - The tiny towns in the borderland of East San Diego County - Campo, Boulevard and Tierra del Sol - mark the road north for hundreds of migrants as they cross the border and travel on. Hardly any migrants stay -- just those who die in the crossing. Instead, for the people who live here, some with roots going back for generations, these tiny communities are home to growing hunger and poverty. The border fence is the main feature of the landscape, as it passes through the desert between the U.S. and Mexico, two miles south of Campo. A big Border Patrol station sprawls across several acres just outside this tiny town. Hundreds of people try to walk though the mountains here every month, and many die as they attempt to cross the border. The potters field graveyard in Holtville, a few hours away, is filled with hundreds of graves of those found dead in these hot dry hills. Up the road from Campo is Boulevard, another tiny town on the border highway. Near it sits Camp Vigilance, home to the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, a rightwing anti-immigrant militia. The camp became notorious after Shawna Forde, recently sent to death row in Arizona for murdering a nine-year-old Mexican girl and her father, stayed there on her way to the shooting. Until fed-up locals recently stopped it, the Blackwater security company planned to open a clandestine training facility nearby as well. It presumably would have focusing on paramilitary action against the poor farmers and workers making the trek north from Mexico. When company mercenaries were charged with murdering civilians in Baghdad's Nisour Square, however, the training camp proposal was quickly shelved. Its little wonder that national media describe this section of the border as immigration ground zero, where border enforcement both by the official authorities, and border violence by right wing militias, is the big story. But for the people who actually live here, the real story is not having enough to eat. East San Diego County shares with other border communities, from the Rio Grande Valley in Texas to the Imperial Valley just hours east on the highway, the distinction of being the poorest communities in the United States. Every week, Ken Koppin leaves his shack here on Tierra del Sol Road, where an American flag in the window shades the interior from the sun's intense heat. He drives up to Highway 94, and there puts out a signboard telling his neighbors that the food pantry will be handing out bags that afternoon. Around two o'clock a large white truck with murals painted on its sides pulls into the open area beside Koppin's shack. Willie Mills, an African American driver, pilots it from one border settlement to another, from the suburbs of San Diego itself, through these mountain hamlets, to the border of Imperial County. Koppin says that it was hard at first to find a place for the truck to make its stop in Tierra del Sol, but his landlord finally agreed to let it park here. Mills and Koppin call for volunteers among the people leaning on their cars or sitting smoking and talking in the shade of a solitary tree. Soon folding tables are set up, and the area's residents begin parceling out food from bins into bags. Then they all line up, and each person gets whatever the truck is holding that day. Oranges. Canned milk. Potatoes. Bread or hot dog buns. Off to one side sits Jesus Rodriguez. He says he doesn't know exactly when he was born, but he's lived his entire life here on the border, over 80 years at least. My family has always been here, he says. We were probably here when this was Mexico. This land became part of the U.S. in 1848, after the U.S. army defeated the Mexicans, and General Santana signed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo giving up what's now California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and parts of Colorado and Utah. It was only Mexico for 27 years - until Mexican independence in 1821 Spain claimed it as its colony. But long before the Spanish conquistadores and their friars arrived in the 1700s, native people occupied the land for 10,000 years. The Kumeyaay and Cocopah Indians were its original inhabitants, as late as 1880 Indians resisted outside settlement. Fifteen were massacred that year by ranchers in nearby Jacumba. Today a number of small reservations are scattered through east San Diego County. The Manzanita Band of Diegueno Mission Indians has its tribal office in nearby Boulevard, and sometimes tribe members also get food from the truck. A Spanish-speaking neighbor has brought Don Jesus, as she calls him in respect for his age, down to the food
[LAAMN] students and faculty occupy a building at cal state university east bay
Students and Faculty Occupy a Building in Protest at California State University East Bay Photos by David Bacon HAYWARD, CA 4/13/11 -- Students and faculty at California State University, East Bay, marched to the administration building on the campus and then occupied the building in protest. Organized by Students for a Quality Education and the California Faculty Association, the civil disobedience protested budget cuts and fee increases for students, and cutbacks on staff and benefits, while administrators' salaries are increased. The building occupation demanded the resignation of CSU Chancellor Chuck Reed, and a list of other demands discussed and adopted during the occupation. Similar building occupations took place on other campuses. Some students wore face paint with scars symbolizing the painful slashing impact of budget cuts. Before the march and building occupation, students and faculty organized a People's University. Workshops talked about the attack on education and the rights of public workers, especially teachers, throughout the U.S., as well as campus issues that included lack of childcare, parking and student services. Other SQE demands included democratizing the state university's board of trustees, budget transparency, fair treatment for unions and workers, and a recommitment to the California Master Plan for Higher Education. According to the California Faculty Association, the California State University has lost some $1 billion, let go more than 3000 faculty, slashed course offerings and tripled student fees. Tens of thousands of eligible students have been turned away or given up because of rising costs and inability to get necessary classes. For more articles and images, see http://dbacon.igc.org See also Illegal People -- How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants (Beacon Press, 2008) Recipient: C.L.R. James Award, best book of 2007-2008 http://www.beacon.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=2002 See also the photodocumentary on indigenous migration to the US Communities Without Borders (Cornell University/ILR Press, 2006) http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/cup_detail.taf?ti_id=4575 See also The Children of NAFTA, Labor Wars on the U.S./Mexico Border (University of California, 2004) http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/9989.html -- __ David Bacon, Photographs and Stories http://dbacon.igc.org __ [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] --- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --- Unsubscribe: mailto:laamn-unsubscr...@egroups.com --- Subscribe: mailto:laamn-subscr...@egroups.com --- Digest: mailto:laamn-dig...@egroups.com --- Help: mailto:laamn-ow...@egroups.com?subject=laamn --- Post: mailto:la...@egroups.com --- Archive1: http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn --- Archive2: http://www.mail-archive.com/laamn@egroups.com --- Yahoo! Groups Links * To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/ * Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional * To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/join (Yahoo! ID required) * To change settings via email: laamn-dig...@yahoogroups.com laamn-fullfeatu...@yahoogroups.com * To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: laamn-unsubscr...@yahoogroups.com * Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
[LAAMN] bay area workers march to support wisconsin labor
BAY AREA WORKERS MARCH TO SUPPORT WISCONSIN LABOR CROCKETT and SAN FRANCISCO, CA 4/4/11 -- Over a thousand events took place across the U.S. on April 4 to support the workers and unions in Wisconsin and the Midwest, where Republican-dominated state governments are trying to eliminate collective bargaining for public workers, and cut their healthcare and pensions. In California alone, almost every central labor council organized a rally or march. Two of them took place in Crockett and San Francisco. The events were all called We Are One to draw attention to the solidarity of workers and unions nationally in facing this attack. In Crockett, unions and their supporters marched from each side of the Zampa Memorial Bridge. Union members from the central labor and building trades councils of Contra Costa County marched from one side, and from the Napa/Solano and North Bay councils from the other. As big rig trucks thundered past across the bridge, they blew their horns, while people in cars waved and cheered. One sign summed up the spirit of the march and the connections made by U.S. workers to those around the world: Fight Like an Egyptian! In San Francisco, unions, centers for domestic workers, and civil rights and other community organizations marched through downtown San Francisco. As the march stopped in front of several banks, teachers from United Educators of San Francisco, longshoremen from the International Longshore and Warehouse Union and hotel housekeepers from UNITE HERE Local 2 were three among the many unions who condemned budget priorities favoring bailouts for banks and cutbacks in public services. Civil rights attorney Eva Paterson joined Stephanie Bloomingdale, secretary-treasurer of the Wisconsin State AFL-CIO in recalling that April 4 marked the anniversary of the assassination of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who was killed while supporting a strike of public employees - garbage workers in Memphis, Tennessee. For more articles and images, see http://dbacon.igc.org See also Illegal People -- How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants (Beacon Press, 2008) Recipient: C.L.R. James Award, best book of 2007-2008 http://www.beacon.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=2002 See also the photodocumentary on indigenous migration to the US Communities Without Borders (Cornell University/ILR Press, 2006) http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/cup_detail.taf?ti_id=4575 See also The Children of NAFTA, Labor Wars on the U.S./Mexico Border (University of California, 2004) http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/9989.html -- __ David Bacon, Photographs and Stories http://dbacon.igc.org __ [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] --- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --- Unsubscribe: mailto:laamn-unsubscr...@egroups.com --- Subscribe: mailto:laamn-subscr...@egroups.com --- Digest: mailto:laamn-dig...@egroups.com --- Help: mailto:laamn-ow...@egroups.com?subject=laamn --- Post: mailto:la...@egroups.com --- Archive1: http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn --- Archive2: http://www.mail-archive.com/laamn@egroups.com --- Yahoo! Groups Links * To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/ * Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional * To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/join (Yahoo! ID required) * To change settings via email: laamn-dig...@yahoogroups.com laamn-fullfeatu...@yahoogroups.com * To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: laamn-unsubscr...@yahoogroups.com * Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
[LAAMN] cesar chavez and the farm workers movement
CESAR CHAVEZ AND THE FARM WORKERS MOVEMENT By David Bacon Working In These Times, 4/1/11 http://www.inthesetimes.com/working/entry/7142/cesar_chavez_and_the_state_of_the_farm_workers_movement/ The U.S. media tends to view social movements as the creation of strong leaders, especially on those rare occasions when it looks at unions. Nowhere is this more evident than in its view of Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers. After Chavez died in 1993, a plethora of coverage speculated that the UFW wouldn't survive his death. Stories since have continued in the same personal vein. Was Chavez a hero or a villain? Did he make terrible mistakes that cost the life of the union he led, or was he single-handedly responsible for its greatest victories? The questions don't enlighten us because the United Farm Workers was and is the product of a social movement, and Cesar would have been the first to say so. He was not the single author of the boycotts or the strategic ideas the union used in fighting for its survival. No one person could have been, because they evolved as the responses of thousands of people to the age-old problems faced by farm worker unions for a century, of strikebreaking, geographic isolation, poverty and grower violence. The conditions that ignited the burning desire to organize in the 1960a are still out there in the nation's fields today. In fact, they've gotten worse. At the height of the union's power in the late 1970s the base farm labor wage was twice the minimum wage. Today that would be $16 an hour - more if the minimum wage had actually risen with inflation. Today the minimum wage is the wage for most farm workers, and many earn less, law or no. Growers tore down most labor camps in California in the era of the great strikes. Today thousands of migrant field laborers sleep under trees, in cars, or in the fields themselves as they travel with the harvest. Most workers have toilets and drinking water, and where they know their rights, they don't have to use the short-handled hoe. But labor contractors, who were once replaced by union hiring halls, have retaken control of the fields. And as contractors compete to sell the labor of farm workers to the growers, they cut wages even further. Medical insurance, once guaranteed by UFW contracts, has again become a dream for most workers. In the meantime, the lack of safe working conditions was dramatized by the death in 2008 of 17-year-old Maria Isavel Vasquez Jimenez, who was denied shade and water and collapsed in 100-degree heat. The low value put on her life and that of workers like her was also dramatized - by the sentence of community service given by the state court to the labor contractor responsible. West Coast Farms, the grower, wasn't penalized at all, because it claimed the contractor was responsible for conditions in its grape field. The response that led to the creation of the UFW is still the answer farm workers themselves give to those conditions - to organize, strike and boycott. The year before Cesar died, five thousand workers struck in the grape fields in Coachella, winning the first wage increase they'd had in a decade. Every year spontaneous work stoppages like it, although perhaps not on that scale, take place in U.S. fields. And in the years since the first grape strike in 1965, farm worker unions have grown to over a dozen, in Washington, Oregon, Arizona, Texas, Ohio, Connecticut, Florida, New Mexico and Pennsylvania, in addition to California. To one degree or another, all draw inspiration from the movement that started in Coachella and Delano. Chavez was that movement's leader, but not the only one. Others also had a part - women like Dolores Huerta and Jessica Govea, Filipino labor leaders Larry Itliong and Philip Vera Cruz, African American Mack Lyons and many white organizers from the civil rights and student movements of the day. Of all the achievements of that movement, its most powerful and longest enduring was the boycott. It leveled the playing field in the fight with the growers over the right to form a union, and led to the most powerful and important alliance between unions and communities in modern labor history. Farm worker strikes have traditionally been broken by strikebreakers and, all too often, drowned in blood. No country has done more than the U.S. to enshrine the right of employers to break strikes. From their first picket lines in Delano, UFW members watched in anger as growers brought in crews of strikebreakers to take their jobs. Often the Border Patrol opened the border, as they did during the lemon strike in Yuma in 1974, when trucks hauling strikebreakers roared up through the Sonora desert every night. Local police and sheriffs provided armed protection. Chavez saw that as akin to the bracero program, which he
[LAAMN] fired for the crime of working
FIRED FOR THE CRIME OF WORKING By David Bacon In These Times, April 2011 http://www.inthesetimes.org/article/7073/fired_for_the_crime_of_working The words Mexico and Mexican can hardly be found on the website of the country's largest chain of Mexican fast food restaurants, Chipotle. Yet almost everyone working in almost every location is Mexican, or at least Latino. Mexican workers are often an invisible but indispensable workforce. They clean office buildings at night, pick fruit and vegetables miles from most urban Americans, and cut up cows and pigs in giant anonymous factories hidden away in Midwest small towns. But Chipotle's effort to make its workers invisible is deliberate, not an accident of time or geography. Three months ago the chain that made its fortune selling Mexican food made by Mexican workers fired hundreds of them throughout Minnesota. Their crime was that they worked, but had no immigration papers. That put them in the crosshairs of the Obama administration's key immigration enforcement program. One was Alejandro Juarez, who spent five years at the Calhoun Lake Chipotle in Minneapolis. Juarez came here nine years ago, leaving two daughters and a wife at home in Mexico. Once he arrived, he could never risk going back, not even once, to see them grow up. Crossing back over the border to return to work would have cost more than $2500, a prohibitive expense for a fast food worker. Over the years Juarez learned how to fix stoves, grills, refrigerators and hot tables, for which he was paid $9.42/hour. He worked hard, sent money home, put his girls through school, and knew their voices only from the telephone. In the restaurant, he says, you couldn't think about that because the company had a rule that you had to smile all the time. People would come to work leaving sick kids at home, not able to get enough hours to pay the rent, and then had to smile for fear of losing their job, he recalls. It was humiliating. Last December he and coworkers all over the state were called in by managers. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, part of the Department of Homeland Security, had audited the company records, they said, and told Chipotle to fire them. So managers told them not to come back the following day. Firings hundreds, even thousands of workers is the administration's primary strategy for enforcing immigration law in the workplace. Since 1986, federal law has required employers to verify the immigration status of workers. Job applicants fill out an I-9 form and provide identification showing they are citizens or are immigrants authorized to work in the U.S. In effect, this provision of the law, called employer sanctions, makes it a federal crime for an undocumented immigrant to hold a job. For over 20 years the federal government has used various methods to enforce the law. Under President George W. Bush, black-clad immigration agents holding submachine guns charged into meatpacking plants and rounded up workers for deportation. Bush proposed a regulation that would have required all employers to fire all workers whose Social Security numbers didn't match the SSA database, presumably because they were undocumented. That regulation was challenged by unions and enjoined in Federal court. President Barack Obama and DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano have said they favor a softer strategy. Instead of Bush's all employers at once approach, ICE now audits the records of employers one by one. Social Security numbers, once intended to benefit workers by tracking contributions for retirement and disability benefits, have become the tool for identifying and firing the undocumented. President Obama says sanctions enforcement targets employers who are using illegal workers in order to drive down wages-and oftentimes mistreat those workers. An ICE Worksite Enforcement Advisory claims unscrupulous employers are likely to pay illegal workers substandard wages or force them to endure intolerable working conditions. Curing intolerable conditions by firing workers who endure them doesn't help the workers or change the conditions, however. Over the last two years, thousands of workers have been fired. In Minneapolis, Seattle and San Francisco over 1800 janitors, members of SEIU union locals, have lost their jobs. In 2009 over 2000 young women at the sewing machines of American Apparel were fired in Los Angeles. No one, except perhaps ICE, knows exactly how many how many more workers have been terminated, but ICE director John Morton last year said ICE had audited over 2900 companies. One might think that the current and previous administrations, bent on using this brutal tactic to force undocumented immigrants to leave the country, would also address the reasons why people cross the border to begin with. The North American Free
[LAAMN] eight years of iraq's occupation
EIGHT YEARS OF IRAQ'S OCCUPATION, EIGHT YEARS OF MISERY By David Bacon 3/28/11 When demonstrations broke out in other countries of the Middle East and North Africa, people in Baghdad, Basra and Kirkuk had been taking to the streets for years. There has basically been no change in the unemployment situation since the occupation started, charges Qasim Hadi, president of the Union of Unemployed of Iraq. There are more than 10 million unemployed people in Iraq -- about 60-70% of the workforce. There's no electricity most of the time, and no drinking water - no services at all, Eight years after the start of the U.S. military intervention, there's hardly even any repair of the war damage - there's still rubble in the streets. People are going hungry. According to the UUI, government unemployment statistics are artificially low because they don't count many people.. Women aren't counted, Hadi says, citing just one example, because the government says their husbands or fathers are responsible for supporting them. Hadi was one of Baghdad's first protestors, leading marches of unemployed workers to the gates of the Green Zone, where U.S. occupation chief Paul Bremer had his offices. On July 25, following the May 2003 invasion, Hadi was arrested by U.S. troops for protesting. For the next six years, he led one protest after another, making the Union of the Unemployed a thorn in the side first of the U.S. occupation administration, and then of the Iraqi regimes that followed. Some government representatives tried to stop the union's growth with bribes. They said they'd give us a position in the Labor Ministry, and make us responsible for unemployed people, Hadi says. Those attempts were unsuccessful because, he explains, we belong to the union because we want civil rights, not for ourselves, but for all people. When bribes didn't work, threats followed. A representative of the Dawa Party (the party of Iraqi President Nouri al-Maliki) told us to leave the union, Hadi recalls. If we didn't, he said we'd be enemies of the people of Iraq. We know what this language means. They will kidnap you. They'll make holes in your body with a drill. They will kill you slowly, with lots of pain. Hadi isn't exaggerating. During the years of U.S. occupation, many union organizers have been murdered, some, like Hadi Saleh, brutally tortured first. People who get threatened like this change the place where they sleep many times, he says. Sometimes they go live in another city. I don't care what they do to me. I have a dream I'm fighting for. But when they threatened to kidnap my wife and children I couldn't stay. A year ago Hadi left Iraq. He describes enormous economic pressure on families. Prices are very high, and millions of people have no income at all, he elaborates. Even for those who have a job, wages are so low you see people on the street selling all their furniture. If they get a sugar ration, they sell it instead. People stop drinking tea because they have to spend all their money just on the food they need to stay alive. It surprises me how people can survive. The Iraqi government only counts 2 million unemployed, and pays unemployment benefits to a quarter of them. Benefits are low, about $110 a month, and if there's more than one unemployed person in the family, they reduce the benefit. But the worst problem, the UUI says, is that you have to register with the governing political party at the same time you register for benefits. If you oppose the governing party, you can't register, Hadi says. Benefits are given out as political bribes. Unemployment, hunger and corruption were the fuel that fed the rising wave of protest that culminated in Iraq's Day of Rage at the end of this February. At the beginning of the month rallies in the Al-Kuray'at and Al-Mutanabbi Street neighborhoods featured banners saying The Baghdad Municipality is wasting billions and the capital is sleeping in trash. Other banners had warnings for the government: O inhabitants of the Green Zone -- think about the others, and Remember the fate of Arab dictatorship regimes and how their people revolted. As the month wore on, the government passed an $82 billion budget, financed almost entirely from oil revenue. Endemic corruption, however, practically guarantees that little of that will reach the country's hungry and unemployed populace. The growing anti-government tone of the demonstrations was displayed in one large banner at a Tahrir Square rally that read, The oil of the people is for the people, not for the thieves. Finally, unions, leftwing political parties and other organizations of Iraqi civil society announced a national mobilization for February 25, the Day of Rage. The Maliki government attempted to keep turnout low by arresting leaders
[LAAMN] eight years of iraq's occupation - eight years of misery
EIGHT YEARS OF IRAQ'S OCCUPATION - EIGHT YEARS OF MISERY By David Bacon TruthOut News Analysis, 3/24/11 http://www.truth-out.org/for-iraqs-unemployed-nothing-has-changed-eight-years68633 The war in Iraq is supposedly over. The U.S. administration says the occupation, which began on March 20 eight years ago, is ending as well, with the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops. But as the U.S., Great Britain and France begin another military intervention in North Africa, their respective administrations are silent about the price Iraqis are paying for the last one. Not so the Iraqi, however. Demonstrations have taken place in Baghdad, Basra and Kirkuk, among other cities, calling on the U.S. in particular to stop its escalating military intervention in Libya. Iraqi unions have been especially vocal, linking the U.S. invasion of Iraq with continued misery for its working people. According to one union representative, Abdullah Muhsin of the General Federation of Iraqi workers, Eight years have ended since the fall of Saddam's regime, yet the empty promises of the liberators - the invaders and the occupiers who promised Iraqis heaven and earth - were simply lies, lies and lies. The GFIW, which supported the recent uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East, says the U.S. should allow the people of Libya, Bahrain and other countries to determine their own destiny by themselves. Falah Alwan, president of the Federation of Workers Councils and Unions in Iraq, says violence directed against workers and unions is intended to keep a lid on protests against miserable living conditions. We are still under occupation, he charges. The new Iraqi army, created by the U.S. occupation, is doing the same job, protecting the corrupt government while we are suffering from the difficulties of daily life. There's no electricity most of the time, and no drinking water - no services at all, says Qasim Hadi, president of the Union of Unemployed of Iraq. Eight years after the start of the U.S. military intervention, there's hardly even any repair of the war damage - there's still rubble in the streets. People are going hungry. Despite often-extreme levels of violence in the years of occupation, Iraqis have never stopped protesting these conditions. When demonstrations broke out in other countries of the Middle East and North Africa, people in Baghdad, Basra and Kirkuk had been taking to the streets for years. In large part, protests continued in Iraq because living conditions never changed, despite promises of what the fall of Saddam Hussein would bring. There has basically been no change in the unemployment situation since the occupation started, Hadi charges. There are more than 10 million unemployed people in Iraq -- about 60-70% of the workforce According to the UUI, government unemployment statistics are artificially low because they don't count many people.. Women aren't counted, Hadi says, citing just one example, because the government says their husbands or fathers are responsible for supporting them. Hadi was one of Baghdad's first protestors, leading marches of unemployed workers to the gates of the Green Zone, where U.S. occupation chief Paul Bremer had his offices, almost as soon as Bremer moved in. On July 25, following the May 2003 invasion, Hadi was arrested by U.S. troops for protesting. For the next six years, he led one protest after another, making the Union of the Unemployed a thorn in the side first of the U.S. occupation administration, and then of the Iraqi regimes that followed. Some government representatives tried to stop the union's growth with bribes. They said they'd give us a position in the Labor Ministry, and make us responsible for unemployed people, Hadi says. Those attempts were unsuccessful because, he explains, we belong to the union because we want civil rights, not for ourselves, but for all people. When bribes didn't work, threats followed. A representative of the Dawa Party (the party of Iraqi President Nouri al-Maliki) told us to leave the union, Hadi recalls. If we didn't, he said we'd be enemies of the people of Iraq. We know what this language means. They will kidnap you. They'll make holes in your body with a drill. They will kill you slowly, with lots of pain. Hadi isn't exaggerating. During the years of U.S. occupation, many union organizers have been murdered, some, like Hadi Saleh, brutally tortured first. People who get threatened like this change the place where they sleep many times, he says. Sometimes they go live in another city. I don't care what they do to me. I have a dream I'm fighting for. But when they threatened to kidnap my wife and children I couldn't stay. A year ago Hadi left Iraq. He describes enormous economic pressure on families. Prices are very high, and millions of people have no income
[LAAMN] foundry workers strike to save their healthcare
FOUNDRY WORKERS STRIKE TO SAVE THEIR HEALTHCARE Photos and text by David Bacon BERKELEY, CA 3/22/10 -- A strike of over 450 workers in one of the largest foundries on the west coast brought production to a halt Sunday night, at Pacific Steel Castings. The work stoppage, which began at midnight, has continued with round the clock picketing at the factory gates in west Berkeley. Local 164B of the Glass, Molders, Pottery, Plastics and Allied Workers International Union (GMP) has been negotiating a new labor agreement at Pacific Steel for several months. The old agreement expired on Sunday night. The strike was caused by demands from the company's owners for concessions and takeaway proposals in contract negotiations. Those include: - requiring workers to pay at least 20% of the cost of their medical insurance, amounting to about $300 per month per employee. - a wage freeze for the first two years of the agreement, and tiny raises after that. - eliminating the ability of workers to use their seniority to bid for overtime, allowing criteria including speedup, discrimination and favoritism. All eight other foundries in the Bay Area have agreed to a fair contract, said Ignacio De La Fuente, GMP international vice-president. Workers at Pacific Steel haven't had a raise in the last two years, in order to help the company pay for increases in health plan costs. Pacific Steel is now alone among the rest in trying to make its workers give back $300 a month. The $300/month would mean an approximately 10% cut in wages for most workers at the foundry. Joel Soto, a member of the union's negotiating committee, has worked eight years at Pacific Steel, and has a wife, 2-year-old child and another on the way. Soto said, We've been trying to save money for a house. If we have to give up $300 a month, we'll have to continue renting. My wife and I both support our parents, and that $300 cut is what we're able to give them now that they're old. And with my wife pregnant, we can't do without that medical care. Benito Navarro has ten years at the foundry, and a wife and son. That $300 is what I pay for my car to get to work. I'm the only one in my family working, so if we don't have that money, I'll have to give up the car. But I'd rather eat than drive. On both Monday and Tuesday dozens of Berkeley police, with helmets and face shields, shoved and hit strikers as they attempted to help the company bring trucks full of castings out of its struck facility. On Tuesday, one striker, Norma Garcia, who is seven months pregnant, was struck in the abdomen and taken to a hospital. It is inexcusable that Berkeley is spending precious municipal resources on providing protection for this business, and opening the city to liability through these unprovoked actions by police against strikers, said De La Fuente. That violence isn't necessary, added Soto. We're just struggling for our rights. I wouldn't be so surprised to see this in other cities, but Berkeley? Another worker showed the swelling on his arm he said was caused by a blow from a police baton. Workers feel additionally betrayed by the company because they and their union testified before the Berkeley City Council three years ago. They urged the city to draft environmental regulations that would allow the foundry to continue operating while installing needed pollution control equipment. Pacific Steel Casting Co. is a privately held corporation, the third-largest steel foundry in the United States. Its large corporate customers include vehicle manufacturers, like Petebilt Corp., and big oil companies, including BARCO. The company has been very productive in recent years, despite the recession. It chose not to comment. For more articles and images, see http://dbacon.igc.org See also Illegal People -- How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants (Beacon Press, 2008) Recipient: C.L.R. James Award, best book of 2007-2008 http://www.beacon.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=2002 See also the photodocumentary on indigenous migration to the US Communities Without Borders (Cornell University/ILR Press, 2006) http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/cup_detail.taf?ti_id=4575 See also The Children of NAFTA, Labor Wars on the U.S./Mexico Border (University of California, 2004) http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/9989.html -- __ David Bacon, Photographs and Stories http://dbacon.igc.org __ [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] --- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --- Unsubscribe: mailto:laamn-unsubscr
[LAAMN] utah's immigration bills - a blast from the past
UTAH'S IMMIGRATION BILLS - A BLAST FROM THE PAST By David Bacon In These Times, web edition http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/7098/utahs_immigration_bills_a_blast_from_the_past OAKLAND, CA (3/17/11) -- Last week the Utah legislature passed three new laws that have been hailed in the media as a new, more reasonable, approach to immigration policy. Reasonable, that is, compared to Arizona's SB1070, which would allow police to stop anyone, demand immigration papers, and hold her or him for deportation. The Utah bills were signed by Republican Governor Gary Herbert on Tuesday, March 15. Arizona's SB 1070 is currently being challenged in court. Utah's bills were called the anti-Arizona by Frank Sharry, head of America's Voice, a Washington DC immigration lobbying firm. According to Lee Hockstader, on the Washington Post's editorial staff, the laws are the nation's most liberal - and most reality-based - policy on illegal immigration. The Utah laws, however, are not new. And they're certainly not liberal, at least towards immigrants and workers. Labor supply programs for employers, with deportations and diminished rights for immigrants, have marked U.S. immigration policy for more than a hundred years. One bill would establish a state system to allow employers to bring people from the Mexican state of Nuevo Leon as guest workers. Under this program, workers would have to remain employed to stay in the country. They would not have the same set of labor and social rights as people living in the communities around them. Another bill would give undocumented workers now living in Utah a similar guest worker status, lasting two years. The National Immigration Law Center (NILC) says the third bill, the Arizona look-alike, requires police to interrogate individuals and verify their immigration status in a wide array of situations, promoting harmful and costly incentives for law enforcement to racially profile. Utah, like most states in the west and Midwest, has been down this road before. From 1930 to 1935, 345,839 Mexicans were deported from the U.S. Last year alone, the Federal government deported almost 400,000. Even given the growth in population, this is greater than that Depression-era wave. In those years the climate of scathing anti-Mexican sentiment created intense polarization, producing a sweeping suspicion of foreigners ... which linked housing congestion, strained relief services and social ills to the large presence of Mexicans, recounts Zaragosa Vargas, professor at the University of North Carolina. Most immigrants in Utah were farm workers, many laboring in sugar beet fields for the Mormon-backed Utah-Idaho Sugar Company. Their wages were so low that families went hungry even when they were working. When beet workers in nearby Colorado tried to organize a union and went on strike, Vargas says their communities were targeted with deportations. Then World War Two created a labor shortage. To supply workers to growers at low wages, the government started the bracero contract labor program, bringing immigrants first into the beet fields of Stockton, California, and then into the rest of the country in 1942. Braceros were treated as disposable, dirty and cheap. Herminio Quezada Durán, who came to Utah from Chihuahua, says ranchers often had agreements between each other to exchange or trade braceros as necessary for work. Jose Ezequiel Acevedo Perez, who came from Jerez, Zacatecas, remembers the humiliation of physical exams that treated Mexicans as louse-ridden. We were stripped naked in front of everyone, he remembers, and sprayed with DDT, now an outlawed pesticide. Men in some camps were victims of criminals and pimps. Juan Contreras, from Tuxtla Gutierrez, Chiapas, tactfully recalls that in Utah, women often went to the camps, and they were rumored to be especially fond of Mexican men. During the war, Utah-Idaho Sugar first used labor from the Japanese internment camps in Minidoka, Idaho; Topaz, Utah; and Heart Mountain, Wyoming. When that wasn't enough, they brought in braceros. In the 1950s, at the height of the cold war that followed, the combination of enforcement and contract labor reached a peak. In 1954 1,075,168 Mexicans were deported from the U.S. And from 1956 to 1959, between 432,491 and 445,197 braceros were brought in each year. The civil rights movement ended the bracero program, and created an alternative to the deportation regime. Chicano activists of the 1960s - Ernesto Galarza, Cesar Chavez, Bert Corona, Dolores Huerta and others - convinced Congress in 1964 to repeal Public Law 78, the law authorizing the bracero program. Farm workers went on strike the year after in Delano, California, and the United Farm Workers was born. They also helped to convince Congress in 1965
[LAAMN] mexicans and jews fight for the rights of mercado workers
MEXICANS AND JEWS FIGHT FOR THE RIGHTS OF MERCADO WORKERS Photographs by David Bacon OAKLAND, CA 3/13/11 -- Rabbi Sheldon Lewis joined Members of the Progressive Jewish Alliance, the Jeremiah Fellowship, Mexican supermarket (or mercado) workers and union organizers protest the firing of 300 workers by the Mexican market chain, Mi Pueblo. They sang and protested inside an Oakland store, and then picketed outside it. An estimated 10,000 mercado workers work in the Bay Area and most are recent immigrants from Latin America and Asia. Workers lack proper meal and rest breaks, earn poverty wages, and often endure abuse. Benefits such as paid vacations and holidays, medical coverage, and pension plans are practically nonexistent. Overtime and double-time pay violations are common. Mercado workers are organizing the Mercado Workers Association to take action to improve work conditions. Together with Local 5 of the United Food and Commercial Workers, they demand that Mi Pueblo's owners and other markets agree to the Mercado Code of Conduct, which includes: - Markets will pay no less than the minimum wage and abide by all state and federal laws regarding overtime, breaks and lunch periods, and health and safety. - Markets will pay in a timely manner with a written record of hours worked, earnings and deductions. - Workers with a year on the job shall receive at least two days of paid sick leave and five days of paid vacation per year. - Markets will not discriminate against any employee, and will not retaliate against workers by making them re-verify their work authorization status. - Markets won't fire or retaliate against workers for filing complaints under this Code or with a government agency over violations of their rights. - Markets will abide by fair business, advertising and food safety standards. - A market representative will attend at least one class on employment rights and standards. - Markets will recognize workers' right to join a union of their own choosing, will not retaliate against them, will remain neutral about union representation, and will voluntarily recognize any union workers choose. - Markets will post this Code in English and the primary languages of workers and will agree to monitoring of their compliance. For more articles and images, see http://dbacon.igc.org See also Illegal People -- How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants (Beacon Press, 2008) Recipient: C.L.R. James Award, best book of 2007-2008 http://www.beacon.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=2002 See also the photodocumentary on indigenous migration to the US Communities Without Borders (Cornell University/ILR Press, 2006) http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/cup_detail.taf?ti_id=4575 See also The Children of NAFTA, Labor Wars on the U.S./Mexico Border (University of California, 2004) http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/9989.html -- __ David Bacon, Photographs and Stories http://dbacon.igc.org __ [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] --- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --- Unsubscribe: mailto:laamn-unsubscr...@egroups.com --- Subscribe: mailto:laamn-subscr...@egroups.com --- Digest: mailto:laamn-dig...@egroups.com --- Help: mailto:laamn-ow...@egroups.com?subject=laamn --- Post: mailto:la...@egroups.com --- Archive1: http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn --- Archive2: http://www.mail-archive.com/laamn@egroups.com --- Yahoo! Groups Links * To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/ * Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional * To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/join (Yahoo! ID required) * To change settings via email: laamn-dig...@yahoogroups.com laamn-fullfeatu...@yahoogroups.com * To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: laamn-unsubscr...@yahoogroups.com * Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
[LAAMN] up against the open shop -- photos of silicon valley labor history
Up Against the Open Shop -- Photographs of the Versatronex Strike By David Bacon On January 29, 1993 workers at the Versatronex plant in Sunnyvale, California, filed out of its doors for the last time. Seventeen years have passed since, but there are still electronics workers in Silicon Valley who remember the company's name. It was the first valley plant struck by production employees, and the first where a strike won recognition of their union. The struggle of these workers, almost all immigrants from Mexico, Central America and the Philippines, demolished some of the most cherished myths about the Silicon Valley workforce. It showed workers there are like workers everywhere. Under the right circumstances, even in the citadel of high tech's open shop, people are willing to organize for a better life. We said at the beginning that if the company was going to close, let them close, said Sandra Gomez, a leader of the Versatronex strike. But as long as the plant was open, we were going to fight for our rights. For a history of organizing in Silicon Valley, including the Versatronex strike, see the article, Up Against the Open Shop -- The Hidden History of Silicon Valley's High Tech Workers, By David Bacon http://www.truth-out.org/up-against-open-shop-hidden-story-silicon-valleys-high-tech-workers68167 The children of Versatronex strikers march in support of their parents. The Spanish sign says: Stop the Injustices in Versatronex. A Versatronex striker. UE organizer Maria Pantoja talks with Versatronex strikers at a meeting in the street on the first day of the strike, to elect the strike committee. Nicacia Amaya's sign accuses one of Versatronex's customers, Digital Microwave Corp., of stealing her children's future by continuing to do business with the struck plant. Janitors' organizer Lino Pedres calls on strikebreakers to leave work and respect the strike. Versatronex striker Sandra Gomez speaks at a rally. Strikers in front of the plant. Versatronex strikers at their tent encampment on the sidewalk in front of one of Versatronex's biggest customers, Digital Microwave Corporation. Striker Maribel Garcia reads a statement from women who went on a hunger strike in a tent encampment on the sidewalk in front of one of Versatronex' biggest customers, Digital Microwave Corporation. Versatronex strikers marched through downtown San Jose with Korean workers cheated of their pay when their factory closed, and janitors fighting for a union contract, in a show of unity among immigrant workers. For more articles and images, see http://dbacon.igc.org See also Illegal People -- How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants (Beacon Press, 2008) Recipient: C.L.R. James Award, best book of 2007-2008 http://www.beacon.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=2002 See also the photodocumentary on indigenous migration to the US Communities Without Borders (Cornell University/ILR Press, 2006) http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/cup_detail.taf?ti_id=4575 See also The Children of NAFTA, Labor Wars on the U.S./Mexico Border (University of California, 2004) http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/9989.html -- __ David Bacon, Photographs and Stories http://dbacon.igc.org __ [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] --- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --- Unsubscribe: mailto:laamn-unsubscr...@egroups.com --- Subscribe: mailto:laamn-subscr...@egroups.com --- Digest: mailto:laamn-dig...@egroups.com --- Help: mailto:laamn-ow...@egroups.com?subject=laamn --- Post: mailto:la...@egroups.com --- Archive1: http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn --- Archive2: http://www.mail-archive.com/laamn@egroups.com --- Yahoo! Groups Links * To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/ * Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional * To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/join (Yahoo! ID required) * To change settings via email: laamn-dig...@yahoogroups.com laamn-fullfeatu...@yahoogroups.com * To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: laamn-unsubscr...@yahoogroups.com * Your use
[LAAMN] up agasint the open shop - the hidden history of silicon valley's high-tech workers
UP AGAINST THE OPEN SHOP - The Hidden Story of Silicon Valley's High-Tech Workers By David Bacon New Labor Forum -- winter 2011 truthout, 3/4/11 http://www.truth-out.org/up-against-open-shop-hidden-story-silicon-valleys-high-tech-workers68167 Introduction On January 29, 1993 workers at the Versatronex plant in Sunny¬vale, California, filed out of its doors for the last time. Seventeen years have passed since, but there are still electronics workers in Sili¬con Valley who remember the company's name. It was the first valley plant struck by production employees, and the first where a strike won recognition of their union. The struggle of these workers, almost all immigrants from Mexico, Central America and the Philippines, demolished some of the most cherished myths about the Silicon Valley workforce. It showed workers there are like workers everywhere. Under the right circumstances, even in the citadel of high tech's open shop, people are willing to organize for a better life. We said at the beginning that if the company was going to close, let them close, said Sandra Gomez, a leader of the Ver¬satronex strike. But as long as the plant was open, we were going to fight for our rights. Unions have called the electronics industry unorganizable. Corpora¬tions like IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Intel and National Semiconductor told their workers for years that the company regarded them as a family, and that they needed no union. Healthy bottom lines, they said, would guarantee rising living standards and secure jobs. Economists painted a picture of the electronics industry as a massive industrial engine fueling economic growth, benefiting workers and communities alike. The promises were worthless. Today many those giants of the industry own no factories at all, having sold them to contract manufacturers who build computers and make chips in locations from China to Hungary. In the factories that remain in the valley, labor contractors like Manpower have become the formal employers, relieving the big brands of any responsibility for the workers who make the products bearing their labels. While living standards rise for a privileged elite at the top of the workforce, they've dropped for thousands of workers on the production line. Tens of thousands of workers have been dropped off the lines entirely, as production was moved out of the valley to other states and countries. Companies long ago eliminated their no-layoff pledge. Permanent jobs became temporary, and then disappeared entirely. The image of the clean industry was undermined by toxic contamination of the valley's water supply, and a high occurrence of chemically induced industrial illness. Despite these obstacles, however, for three decades Silicon Valley was as much a cauldron of new strategies for labor organizing as it was for corporate management of the workforce. Workers developed important tactics to oppose inhuman conditions. Some unions, like the janitors, wielded those tactics with remarkable success. For production workers in the plants themselves, however, the road was harder, and often seemed to accept the industry's mythology that they either couldn't or wouldn't organize. The Development of the High Tech Workforce One of the oldest myths about Silicon Valley is that its high tech innovations were the brainchildren of a few, brilliant white men, who started giant corporations in their garages. In fact, the basic inventions that form the foundation of the electronics industry, especially the solid-state transistor, were developed at Bell Laboratories, American Telephone and Telegraph, Fairchild Camera and Instrument, and General Electric. These innovations were products of the Cold War - of the race in arms and space that began after World War Two. Long before the appearance of the per¬sonal computer, high tech industry grew fat on defense contracts and rising military budgets. Its Cold War roots affected every aspect of the industry, from its attitude towards unions to the structure of its plants and workforce. As the electronics indus¬try began to grow in the 1950's, a fratricidal struggle within the U.S. labor move¬ment led to the expulsion of many unions and union members for their leftwing politics. One byproduct of that struggle was the near-destruction of the union founded to organize workers in the electrical industry - the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE). General Elec¬tric Corp. in particular helped ensure the fragmentation of the electrical industry workforce among 13 different unions, with a great proportion outside any union at all. As a result, while the new high-tech industry was growing, the ability of electrical and electronics workers to organize unions in the expanding plants fell to its lowest point since the early
[LAAMN] divide and deport
Divide and Deport: On Immigration, Thom Hartmann and Lou Dobbs Have Much in Common By David Bacon Working In these Times, Feb 28, 2011 http://www.inthesetimes.com/working/entry/7007/divide_and_deport_on_immigrants_thom_hartmann_and_lou_dobbs_have_much_/ Radio host and author Thom Hartmann has a new book, Rebooting the American Dream. Hartmann has a progressive reputation, and his book supports unions, calls for eliminating tax cuts for the rich and advocates other sensible ideas. But like many liberals, when it comes to immigration his tune changes. In one chapter, Hartmann says he wants to Put Lou Dobbs Out to Pasture. But Hartmann, like Dobbs, criticizes corporate power and then turns his fire on workers and immigrants. Instead of taking Lou Dobbs on, Hartmann repeats many of the stereotypes and falsehoods that gave Dobbs a reputation as one of the most anti-immigrant commentators in U.S. media. Hartmann, like Dobbs, claims to speak for the interests of working people. And his ideas do reflect the thinking of a certain section of the U.S. working class. That makes it important to understand the impact of his recommendations. There has always been a conflict in U.S. labor about immigration. Conservatives historically sought to restrict unions and jobs to the native born, to whites and to men, and saw immigrants as job competitors-the enemy. This was part of an overall perspective that saw unions as businesses or insurance programs, in which workers paid dues and got benefits in return. Labor's radicals, however, from the IWW through the CIO to those in many unions today, see the labor movement as inclusive, with a responsibility to organize all workers, immigrant and native-born alike. They see unions as part of a broader movement for social change in general. In 1986, the AFL-CIO supported the Immigration Reform and Control Act, because it contained employer sanctions. This provision said employers could only hire people with legal immigration status. In effect, the law made it a federal crime for an undocumented person to hold a job. Since passage of the law, immigration raids have led to firings and deportations of thousands of people in workplaces across the country. In many cases employers have used the law as a way to intimidate immigrant workers, and rid themselves of those trying to organize unions and protest bad wages and conditions. Transnational corporations invest in developing countries like Mexico, moving production to wherever wages are lowest. Treaties like the North American Free Trade Agreement promote low wages, privatization, the dumping of agricultural products, and other conditions that increase corporate profits. But those measures also impoverish and displace people, forcing them to migrate to survive. When those displaced people arrive in the United States, corporate employers use their hunger and vulnerability to enforce a system of low wages and fear. In this system, corporations are aided by U.S. immigration laws. While they're always presented in the media as a means of controlling borders, and keeping people from crossing them, for the last hundred years they've been the means of regulating the supply, and consequently the price, of immigrant labor. When the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 criminalized work for undocumented immigrants, it was a subsidy or gift to employers. When working becomes illegal, it's much harder for workers to organize unions, go on strike, and fight for better conditions. Immigration agents now check documents workers must fill out to get a job, and require employers to fire those whose documents are in question. In Washington state, they did this in the middle of a union drive among apple workers, and fired 700 people. That organizing effort was broken. Smithfield Foods cooperated in raids and firings at its huge Tarheel, North Carolina meatpacking plant. Workers only overcame the terror they caused when citizens and immigrants, African Americans and Mexicans, agreed to defend the jobs of all workers, and the right of everyone to join the union. When they won their union drive as a result in 2007, it was the largest private-sector union victory in years. Immigrants are fighters. In 1992 the drywallers stopped construction for a year from Santa Barbara to the Mexican border. They've gone on strike at factories, office buildings, laundries, hotels and fields. Some unions today are growing, and they're mostly the ones that know immigrant workers will fight to make things better. The battles fought by immigrants over the last twenty years changed the politics of cities like Los Angeles, and are helping to make unions strong today. Because of experiences like these, in 1999 the previous AFL-CIO support for employer sanctions was overturned by grassroots immigrant rights coalitions and labor councils around the country
[LAAMN] beyond borders -- photo exhibit
Beyond Borders: Immigration Images and Stories Photographs by David Bacon and Kathya Landeros Viewpoint Photographic Art Center 2015 J. Street, Suite 101 Sacramento, CA 95811-3124 Phone: 916-441-2341 Exhibit Dates: Wed, 03/09/2011 - Sat, 04/02/2011 Artist Reception Date: Fri, 03/11/2011 - 5:30pm - 9:00pm 2nd Saturday Reception: Sat, 03/12/2011 - 5:30pm - 9:00pm An exhibition of documentary photographs by David Bacon and Kathya Landeros about immigration to the United States from Mexico and Central America. An experienced photographer, journalist, and former labor organizer, Bacon's stunning work of photographs and oral history documents the new reality of migrant experience: the creation of transnational communities. He takes us inside these communities and illuminates the ties that bind them together, the influence of their working conditions on their families and health, and their struggle for better lives. Landeros, herself from a family of immigrants from Central Mexico, proposes that If one can accept that the history of migratory policy toward Mexico has been complicated as we negotiate between our demands for labor and our need for cultural sovereignty, then we can acknowledge that the migrant communities that have developed in Mexico are a manifestation of these complexities. Coachella, CA, 2010, David Bacon Graton, CA, 2004, David Bacon For more articles and images, see http://dbacon.igc.org See also Illegal People -- How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants (Beacon Press, 2008) Recipient: C.L.R. James Award, best book of 2007-2008 http://www.beacon.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=2002 See also the photodocumentary on indigenous migration to the US Communities Without Borders (Cornell University/ILR Press, 2006) http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/cup_detail.taf?ti_id=4575 See also The Children of NAFTA, Labor Wars on the U.S./Mexico Border (University of California, 2004) http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/9989.html -- __ David Bacon, Photographs and Stories http://dbacon.igc.org __ [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] --- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --- Unsubscribe: mailto:laamn-unsubscr...@egroups.com --- Subscribe: mailto:laamn-subscr...@egroups.com --- Digest: mailto:laamn-dig...@egroups.com --- Help: mailto:laamn-ow...@egroups.com?subject=laamn --- Post: mailto:la...@egroups.com --- Archive1: http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn --- Archive2: http://www.mail-archive.com/laamn@egroups.com --- Yahoo! Groups Links * To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/ * Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional * To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/join (Yahoo! ID required) * To change settings via email: laamn-dig...@yahoogroups.com laamn-fullfeatu...@yahoogroups.com * To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: laamn-unsubscr...@yahoogroups.com * Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
[LAAMN] undocumented immigrants stand up to chipotle
UNDOCUMENTED IMMIGRANTS STAND UP TO CHIPOTLE By David Bacon The Nation, web edition, February 15, 2011 http://www.thenation.com/article/158513/undocumented-immigrants-stand-chipotle Last month six hundred workers at the Chipotle fast food chain were fired in Minnesota. Their crime? Working. In the last two years, thousands of others have been fired for the same offense - 2000 young women at Los Angeles sewing machines, 500 apple pickers in eastern Washington, hundreds of janitors in Minnesota and California, and many, many more. They're all victims of the administration's softer immigration enforcement strategy. Its logic is brutal: Make it impossible for 12 million undocumented people in the U.S. to earn a living - to buy food, pay rent, or send money home to their children. Then they'll deport themselves. When their families hear they can't get jobs in the U.S., they won't join those already here. This inhuman logic convinced Congress to pass the Immigration Reform and Control Act in 1986. For 25 years employers have had to verify workers' immigration status, and cannot legally employ people without papers. The real impact, though, is on workers. It's become a crime to hold a job. The justification has always been the same. Undocumented immigrants will go home if they can't work. But no one has. Over those 25 years NAFTA and CAFTA, and pro-corporate market reforms in Mexico and other developing countries, profoundly deepened the poverty driving people from their homes. More people came than ever before. Among them were those six hundred mostly-Mexican workers, who got minimum-wage jobs serving Mexican food at Chipotle. Many of them worked years for the company. Then the Department of Homeland Security audited Chipotle's personnel records, found incorrect Social Security numbers, and in December sent the company a list of workers it had to fire. Alejandro Juarez, who worked at the Calhoun Lake restaurant in Minneapolis, says his manager told him not to bother coming back the next day. He'd spent five years cleaning and fixing the stoves, grills and refrigerators, for $9.42/hour. The company used us, he says, and when it didn't serve them anymore, they threw us away like trash. John Morton, head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) says it plans many more mass firings. The ICE website says it targets employers who are using illegal workers to drive down wages ... [those] likely to pay illegal workers substandard wages or force them to endure intolerable working conditions. At Chipotle, however, as in every other sanctions target, ICE never improved conditions. Wages remain the same. In fact, although Morton boasts ICE collected $7 million in employer fines during 2,740 audits, those who cooperated in firing workers were given immunity. The only people penalized were workers. Fortunately, in Minneapolis, workers first found the Center for Workers United in Struggle, a local workers' center. With its help, they made an alliance with the city's janitors' union, Service Employees Local 26. The local union had already been hit by audits that led to the firing of hundreds of its members, including stewards, officers and core activists. Janitors had marched in the streets, while the union tried to help them survive. Together, Chipotle workers and building cleaners picketed the restaurants, where several supporters were arrested in protest. As these firings spread, many other unions will face the same situation. Some, like the janitors' locals in Minneapolis and San Francisco, have looked for ways to fight. Their first concern has been survival, and they've sought time extensions, back wages and vacation already owed, and severance. In Minneapolis the workers also demand that Chipotle support immigration reform. That puts the human rights of immigrants squarely in the center of the table. Congress' comprehensive immigration reform proposals of the last five years would not have stopped these firings - in fact, most bills would have increased them. But though Congress is moving rightwards, many immigrant rights groups and unions are moving left. They demand reforms that would reinforce the human and labor rights of people like the janitors and Chipotle workers. One proposal, the Dignity Campaign, calls for legal status for the undocumented, for repealing employer sanctions, and for ending trade policies that lead to forced migration. That reflects the position unions adopted at the AFL-CIO convention in 1999. They argued then that immigrant workers had to be able to organize in order to improve Chipotle-level wages and conditions. Making work a crime made organizing harder, while pitting workers against each other during times of high unemployment. San Francisco's hotel union later won
[LAAMN] people of watsonville 4 - migrant education at ohlone school
People of Watsonville 4 - Migrant Education at Ohlone School By David Bacon Watsonville, CA 11/19/10 Migrant Education is a product of the civil rights and farm worker movements of the 1960s. California's Migrant Education Program was established in 1967, two years into the five-year historic grape strike by the United Farm Workers. That strike, and the farm workers movement that it helped to ignite, gave migrant workers and their allies the political power necessary to get the state's educational system to respond to their needs. Today migrant education programs are one of the most important ways that farm worker families can win social equality and a future for their children beyond the fields. The Pajaro Valley district includes thousands of students who travel with their families every year because their parents are migrant farm workers. The demographics of farm labor have changed radically over the last three decades. Today a large percentage of families come from Oaxaca and the states of southern Mexico. Many come from communities where people speak indigenous languages that were old when Columbus arrived in the Americas. The most common language among Watsonville students is Mixteco, although a few students speak Triqui or Zapoteco. Families qualify as migrants because the parents work in farm labor, and have moved at least once in the last few years. In addition to education programs, children also get help with medical and dental care. The program has a very active parents group, with large meetings every month during the work season. Watsonville is close to the campus of the University of California in Santa Cruz, and university students help farm worker kids begin to think about the possibility of going to college. Photographs: Children of migrant farm workers, many of them from indigenous Mixtec families from Oaxaca, are part of the Migrant Education program at Ohlone Elementary School. Ofelia Lopez is a Mixteco-speaking student in Jenny Doud's class. Doud helps students learn the words to a song. In another classroom, students hold hands, jump and dance. Natalia Gracida-Cruz is a tutor who speaks Mixteco with students for whom it is their primary language. Gabriela Diaz and Ruth Espinoza practice the sounds of the letters of the alphabet. Then Gracida-Cruz helps the two girls and Hector Cruz with recognizing letters and sounds. In another classroom she helps Victor Mendoza. Outside, older students get ready to practice a Mixteco song, including Romualdo Ortiz, Elizabeth Espinoza, Ezequiel Espinoza and Luis Lopez. Then Gracida-Cruz and migrant education instructor Casimira Salazar lead the four students, plus Claudia Salvador, in a song honoring Mexico's first indigenous president, Benito Juarez. For more articles and images, see http://dbacon.igc.org See also Illegal People -- How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants (Beacon Press, 2008) Recipient: C.L.R. James Award, best book of 2007-2008 http://www.beacon.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=2002 See also the photodocumentary on indigenous migration to the US Communities Without Borders (Cornell University/ILR Press, 2006) http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/cup_detail.taf?ti_id=4575 See also The Children of NAFTA, Labor Wars on the U.S./Mexico Border (University of California, 2004) http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/9989.html -- __ David Bacon, Photographs and Stories http://dbacon.igc.org __ [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] --- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --- Unsubscribe: mailto:laamn-unsubscr...@egroups.com --- Subscribe: mailto:laamn-subscr...@egroups.com --- Digest: mailto:laamn-dig...@egroups.com --- Help: mailto:laamn-ow...@egroups.com?subject=laamn --- Post: mailto:la...@egroups.com --- Archive1: http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn --- Archive2: http://www.mail-archive.com/laamn@egroups.com --- Yahoo! Groups Links * To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/ * Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional * To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/join (Yahoo! ID
[LAAMN] how the purhepechas came to the coachella valley
HOW THE P'URHÉPECHAS CAME TO THE COACHELLA VALLEY By David Bacon New America Media, 1/11/11 http://newamericamedia.org/2011/01/coachella-labor-camp.php THERMAL, CA -- Pierce Street sounds like an avenue in any city old enough to name a street after a nineteenth century president. In the Coachella Valley, though, Pierce Street is a narrow blacktop running through sagebrush and desiccated palms, across alkali-crusted sand. Heading toward the Salton Sea a dozen miles south of Coachella, the nearest incorporated town, Pierce Street passes the Duros trailer camp. The desert here belongs to the Torres Martinez Desert Cahuilla Indians, a Native American tribe whose name for themselves is Mau-Wal-Mah Su-Kutt Menyil, or Deer Moon Among the Palms. In 1876, when the U.S. government recognized the tribe, Toro was the name of the local town here, and the Martinez Indian Agency administered the reservation. Hence the combined name of Torres Martinez. The Duros trailer camp sits on reservation land, along with a sister trailer park, Chicanitas, on nearby Avenue Seventy. Together they create a unique situation. This small reservation is home to a few hundred Native Americans, that is, indigenous people whose land lies within the present borders of the United States. The reservation is now home also to a far larger number of indigenous Mexican migrants, P'urhépecha people from the Mexican state of Michoacan. Over 2000 P'urhépechas live in the two camps, and the number of migrants here rises to over 5000 during peak harvest in the surrounding fields. P'urhépechas now make up a significant part of the workforce in the Coachella Valley, one of the oldest agricultural areas in California. It was in the valley's grape fields in 1965 that Filipino farm workers walked out on strike, leading eventually to the formation of the United Farm Workers. Today hardly any Filipinos are left in Coachella fields. The work they did half a century ago - picking grapes and lemons, and cutting lettuce - today is performed by indigenous Mexican migrants. The trailers at Duros aren't in great shape. People came here looking for living space after Riverside County began requiring the demolition of tumbledown trailers in other, smaller settlements outside the reservation. Harvey Duro, for whom Duros is named, had a lease for land from the tribe, and the camp quickly grew as people were forced out elsewhere. Chicanitas expanded for the same reason. Eventually Duros too was threatened with demolition, since its trailers were often in worse condition than those the County had condemned. In 2008 U.S. District Judge Stephen G. Larson ordered improvements to the trailers and the camp's infrastructure. California Rural Legal Assistance went to bat for the residents, advocating better conditions, but also opposing any demolition. In April 2009, Judge Larson agreed with them. Tearing down the trailers and relocating residents yet again would create one of the largest forced migrations in the history of this state, he said, comparable in size to the internment of Japanese-Americans at Manzanar. A caretaker was appointed for the Duros camp, and today conditions are much better, according to Meregildo Ortiz, president of the P'urhépecha community of Coachella Valley. In Duros and Chicanitas most residents don't speak English or Spanish, but a language that was centuries old when Columbus arrived in the Americas. Every December, P'urhépechas begin practicing the Danza de los Ancianos, the Dance of the Old People. It too is a central part of their cultural identity. Late at night at Chicanitas, long lines of young people shuffle around the trailers to the music of guitars and horns, in a stylized imitation of the halting gait of the very old. They're getting ready for the procession they'll eventually make to the church in Mecca, a few miles away. But the practice also introduces children to the culture in which they've been born. And as the lines snake and shuffle, wood smoke rises into the dark sky from a fire warming a galvanized tub of cinnamon-flavored coffee, which everyone shares when the practice ends. People don't make much money picking lemons or grapes. Jobs only last a harvesting season, and many have to leave the valley for at least part of the year as they follow the crops elsewhere. But dancing together in the desert is part of the glue that holds the P'urhépecha community together in these two trailer camps -- something to come back for. Pedro Gonzalez was one of the first P'urhépechas to leave his home state to travel to the U.S., looking for work. Over the three decades that followed, he was joined by thousands of others. He was the community's first president, before Ortiz. Today he's 60 years old, and lives in a trailer at Duros with his wife
[LAAMN] people of watsonville 3 - stopping the death of our children
People of Watsonville 3 - Stopping the Death of our Children By David Bacon Watsonville, CA 11/7/10 The 17th annual memorial and march for young people in Watsonville, who have died as a result of violence in the Latino community. Domiciano Ramirez, who lost his son, sits next to his wife Teresa, and his granddaughter Brenda. Brenda Ramirez lost her uncle, Greg, when he was 26. Margarita Renteria lost her son Servando when he was 16. Carolina Cervantes' son Ray was shot and killed when he was 21. The memorial was organized by members of the Watsonville Brown Berets. Aztec dancers led a march after of the ceremony, while political and labor activist Robert Chacanaca looked on. Brenda Ramirez, Margarita Renteria and Carolina Cervantes all held photographs of the young men in their families who have been killed, as they walked in the rain around the central plaza downtown. Later Watsonville Mayor Luis Alejo comforted the mother of one of the murdered young people. Alejo, who was just elected to the California State Assembly, was one of the original organizers of the community marches against violence, and was the Watsonville attorney for many years for California Rural Legal Assistance. Stopping the death of our children is the best way we have to remember those who've already died, said Carolina Cervantes. For more articles and images, see http://dbacon.igc.org See also Illegal People -- How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants (Beacon Press, 2008) Recipient: C.L.R. James Award, best book of 2007-2008 http://www.beacon.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=2002 See also the photodocumentary on indigenous migration to the US Communities Without Borders (Cornell University/ILR Press, 2006) http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/cup_detail.taf?ti_id=4575 See also The Children of NAFTA, Labor Wars on the U.S./Mexico Border (University of California, 2004) http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/9989.html -- __ David Bacon, Photographs and Stories http://dbacon.igc.org __ [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] --- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --- Unsubscribe: mailto:laamn-unsubscr...@egroups.com --- Subscribe: mailto:laamn-subscr...@egroups.com --- Digest: mailto:laamn-dig...@egroups.com --- Help: mailto:laamn-ow...@egroups.com?subject=laamn --- Post: mailto:la...@egroups.com --- Archive1: http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn --- Archive2: http://www.mail-archive.com/laamn@egroups.com --- Yahoo! Groups Links * To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/ * Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional * To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/join (Yahoo! ID required) * To change settings via email: laamn-dig...@yahoogroups.com laamn-fullfeatu...@yahoogroups.com * To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: laamn-unsubscr...@yahoogroups.com * Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
[LAAMN] managed labor or human rights?
MANAGED LABOR OR HUMAN RIGHTS? By David Bacon Working USA, Fall 2010 http://www.truth-out.org/the-pitfalls-using-immigration-a-labor-supply-system-employers66547 Displacement and Labor Migration A political alliance is developing between countries with a labor export policy and the corporations who use that labor in the global north. Many countries sending migrants to the developed world depend on remittances to finance social services and keep the lid on social discontent over poverty and joblessness, while continuing to make huge debt payments. Corporations using that displaced labor share a growing interest with those countries' governments in regulating the system that supplies it. Increasingly, the mechanisms for regulating that flow of people are contract labor programs - called guest worker or temporary worker programs in the U.S., or managed migration in the UK and much of the EU. With or without these programs, migration to the U.S. and other industrial countries is a fact of life. But does that mean that U.S. immigration policy should be used to increase corporate profits by supplying labor to industry at a price it wants to pay? Despite often using rhetoric that demonizes immigrants, the U.S. Congress is not debating the means for ending migration. Nothing can, short of a radical reordering of the world's economy. Nor are waves of immigration raids and deportations intended to halt it. In an economy in which immigrant labor plays a critical part, the price of stopping migration would be economic crisis. The intent of immigration policy is managing the flow of people, determining their status here in the U.S., in the interest of those who put that labor to work. Migrants are human beings first, however, and their desire for community is as strong as the need to labor. Or as the old shop floor saying goes, We work to live; we don't live to work. The use of neoliberal reforms and economic treaties to displace communities, to produce a global army of available and vulnerable workers, has a brutal impact on people. NAFTA and the existing and proposed free trade agreements between the U.S. and Central America, Peru, Colombia, Panama, South Korea and Jordan not only don't stop the economic transformations which uproot families and throw them into the migrant stream--they push that whole process forward. On a world scale, the migratory flow caused by displacement is still generally self-initiated. In other words, while people may be driven by forces beyond their control, they move at their own will and discretion, trying to find survival and economic opportunity, and to reunite their families and create new communities in the countries they now call home. The idea of managing the flow of migration is growing. During the negotiations at the Hong Kong summit of the WTO in 2005, a proposal was introduced for the first time, to begin regulating the movement of people along with the movement of capital and goods. As the WTO further regulated the modes in which services are provided in the world economy, it began to propose regulating the movement of people themselves as the providers of services in what was called Mode 4. The Mode 4 program was originally proposed for skilled workers and executives, and included salespeople, corporate managers and specialists, foreign employees of corporate subsidiaries, and independent contractors like doctors and architects. Labor-exporting countries, however, have advocated expanding the range of jobs to include construction workers, domestic workers, and other less-skilled employment. As in all guest worker programs, the visas of these workers would require them to remain employed, and they would be deported if they lost their jobs. Contractors would be allowed to recruit workers in one country and sell their labor in another. The visas of these workers would all be temporary, and they would not be able to become permanent residents. Countries contracting for these guest workers could regulate the number admitted and establish conditions under which they could be employed. The WTO opposes the regulation of any standards of employment, and says they should be regulated by the International Labor Organization instead. Over many decades, however, the ILO has been unable to establish any mandatory standards or wages, nor any enforcement mechanism to punish any countries or corporations who violate its voluntary standards. The economic reforms that displace communities, like privatization and the end of subsidies, are all mandated by the WTO and international trade agreements. Displacement, therefore, will continue under this scheme, while protection for workers and migrants will be voluntary and ineffective. Essentially, this will produce migrant labor on a huge scale, and give corporations and compliant governments the freedom to exploit it without regulation
[LAAMN] oakland's first chinese-american mayor walks through the city
OAKLAND'S FIRST CHINESE-AMERICAN MAYOR, WALKS THROUGH THE CITY OAKLAND, CA - 3JANUARY11 - Oakland Mayor Jean Quan walked through the city on her inauguration day. She is the first Chinese American woman elected mayor. She started at the Oakland Asian Cultural Center in Chinatown. She then stopped at the Asian Resource Gallery, which featured an exhibit of posters curated by Greg Morizumi, from the Third World Strike at the University of California and political movements in the Asian American community since the 1960s. Mayor Quan designed one of the posters in the exhibit, protesting the beating death of Vincent Chin. During her walk, she visited Lincoln Elementary School, in the heart of Chinatown. Quan was previously a member of the Oakland School Board, and students excited by her visit made small speeches and sang for her. Kindergarten-age children looked on through the school windows. Her walk took her down 17th Street, where storeowners have been hit hard by the economic recession. One storeowner hugged her, as the mayor urged Oakland residents to support local businesses by shopping in the city. The last stop on Mayor Quan's walk was the Leamington Hotel, where her father worked as a cook. There she was honored by the leaders of the Alameda County Central Labor Council, the International Longhsore and Warehouse Union, and other local unions, along with the longshore union's drill team. Mayor Quan's husband, Floyd Huen, her son and daughter, and state Assembly member Sandre Swanson, one of her strongest supporters, all walked with her together with dozens of well-wishers. For more articles and images, see http://dbacon.igc.org See also Illegal People -- How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants (Beacon Press, 2008) Recipient: C.L.R. James Award, best book of 2007-2008 http://www.beacon.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=2002 See also the photodocumentary on indigenous migration to the US Communities Without Borders (Cornell University/ILR Press, 2006) http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/cup_detail.taf?ti_id=4575 See also The Children of NAFTA, Labor Wars on the U.S./Mexico Border (University of California, 2004) http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/9989.html -- __ David Bacon, Photographs and Stories http://dbacon.igc.org __ [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] --- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --- Unsubscribe: mailto:laamn-unsubscr...@egroups.com --- Subscribe: mailto:laamn-subscr...@egroups.com --- Digest: mailto:laamn-dig...@egroups.com --- Help: mailto:laamn-ow...@egroups.com?subject=laamn --- Post: mailto:la...@egroups.com --- Archive1: http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn --- Archive2: http://www.mail-archive.com/laamn@egroups.com --- Yahoo! Groups Links * To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/ * Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional * To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/join (Yahoo! ID required) * To change settings via email: laamn-dig...@yahoogroups.com laamn-fullfeatu...@yahoogroups.com * To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: laamn-unsubscr...@yahoogroups.com * Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
[LAAMN] federal raids against immigrant workers on the rise
FEDERAL RAIDS AGAINST IMMIGRANT WORKERS ON THE RISE By David Bacon Race, Poverty the Environment | Fall 2010 http://urbanhabitat.org/node/5826 While the criminalization of undocumented people in Arizona continues to draw headlines, the actual punishment of workers because of their immigration status has become an increasingly bitter fact of life across the country. The number of workplace raids carried out by the Obama administration is staggering. Tens, maybe even hundreds of thousands of workers have been fired for not having papers. According to public records obtained by Syracuse University, the latest available data from the Justice Department show that criminal immigration enforcement by the two largest investigative agencies within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has increased to levels comparable to the highest seen during the Bush Administration. Homeland Secretary Janet Napolitano announced that almost 400,000 people were deported last year, the highest number in the country's history. But deportations are only part of the story. Much less visible is the other arm of current immigration enforcement policy -- the firing of workers. The justification is brutal -- if immigrant workers can't work, and therefore can't eat, pay rent, or provide for their families, they'll have no alternative but to leave the country. In a recent action DHS pressured one of San Francisco's major building service companies, ABM, into firing hundreds of its own workers. Some 475 janitors have been told that unless they can show legal immigration status, they will lose their jobs in the near future. ABM has been a union company for decades, and many of the workers have been there for years. They've been working in this industry for 15, 20, some as many as 27 years in the buildings downtown, says Olga Miranda, president of Service Employees Local 87. They've built homes. They've provided for their families. They've sent their kids to college. They're not new workers. They didn't just get here a year ago. Those workers are now faced with an agonizing dilemma. Should they turn themselves in to Homeland Security, who might charge them with providing a bad Social Security number to their employer, and even hold them for deportation? For workers with families, homes, and deep roots in a community, it's not possible to just walk away and disappear. I have a lot of members who are single mothers whose children were born here, Miranda says. I have a member whose child has leukemia. What are they supposed to do? Leave their children here and go back to Mexico and wait? And wait for what? Miranda's question reflects not just the dilemma facing individual workers, but of 12 million undocu- mented people living in the United States. Since 2005, successive Congressmen, Senators, and administrations have dangled the prospect of gaining legal status in front of those who lack it. In exchange, their various schemes for immigration reform have proposed huge new guest worker programs, and a big increase in exactly the kind of enforcement directed at 475 San Francisco janitors. Rhetoric vs. Policy President Obama condemned Arizona's law that tries to make being undocumented a state crime, saying it would undermine basic notions of fairness that we cherish as Americans. But then he called for legislation with guest worker programs and increased enforcement. While the country is no closer to legalization of the undocumented than it was 10 years ago, the enforce- ment provisions of the comprehensive immigration reform proposals have already been implemented on the ground. The Bush administration conducted a high- profile series of raids in which it sent heavily armed agents into meatpacking plants and factories, holding workers for deportation, and sending hundreds to federal prison for using bad Social Security numbers. It set up a new Federal court in Tucson, Arizona, called Operation Streamline, where dozens of people are sen- tenced to prison every day for walking across the border. After Obama was elected President, immigration authorities said they would follow a softer policy, using an electronic system to find undocumented people in work- places. People working with bad Social Security numbers would be fired. As a result, last September, 2000 seamstresses in the Los Angeles garment factory of American Apparel were fired, followed by a month later by 1200 janitors working for ABM in Minneapolis. In November, over 100 janitors working for Seattle Building Maintenance lost their jobs. Ironically, the Bush administration proposed a regulation that would have required employers to fire any worker who provided an employer with a Social Security number that did not match the SSA database. That regulation was then stopped in court
[LAAMN] people of watsonville -- migrant head start
The People of Watsonville 2 - Migrant Head Start By David Bacon Watsonville, CA 9/29/10 Children of migrant farm workers, many of them from indigenous Mixtec families from Oaxaca, begin learning basic reading, writing and social skills in a day care nursery school program run by Migrant Head Start, part of the Pajaro Valley Unified School District. Children who go through Head Start programs learn much more quickly, and have an easier time making social adjustments, once they begin regular school. The Migrant Head Start program has been going on for two decades. It tries to provide both childcare and a learning environment for the children of people who work in the fields, including families who travel with the crops. Other families work several months in the U.S., and return to Mexico during the off-season. Many of the teachers who run the centers were field workers themselves earlier in their lives, and know the difficulties migrant families face introducing children to schools and education. Some teachers speak the same language the children speak, not just Spanish, but Mixteco. They help children to begin learning English as well. Learning in a home environment has important advantages, according to Teresa Gallegos, whose center is in a Watsonville working-class neighborhood. Parents who live in this neighborhood can drop their kids off before they have to be at work, she says. Field labor jobs start at 6 or 7 AM, while it's still dark, long before schools open. Plus we share the same culture and know what's happening in their lives. Karen Osmondsen, a member of the Pajaro Valley school board, goes to every one of the monthly meetings organized for Migrant Head Start parents. I really love this program, and I'm very close to the families here, she says. This is what we really need to make sure the children from farm worker families can make it into and through our education system. Like the name says, it's a head start. Teresa Gallegos and the children in her center. Maria Juarez and her sister Clarita taking a nap. Clarita Juarez learning to look at books. Yesenia Gallegos and children look at books. Marcos Gonzalez and Nathaniel Rivera are friends and are learning to read in the center run by Ofelia Ortiz Maldonado. Yareli Reyes shows the paper where she is learning to write letters, in Maria Ines Rocha's center. Brisa Avalos' parents work in the fields, and she's using the plastic vegetables to explain what they do. Children sing and gesture with their hands as they follow Veronica Fernandez in her center. Children playing ball outside Veronica Fernandez' center. Olivia Diaz draws on an easel with her marker. For more articles and images, see http://dbacon.igc.org See also Illegal People -- How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants (Beacon Press, 2008) Recipient: C.L.R. James Award, best book of 2007-2008 http://www.beacon.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=2002 See also the photodocumentary on indigenous migration to the US Communities Without Borders (Cornell University/ILR Press, 2006) http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/cup_detail.taf?ti_id=4575 See also The Children of NAFTA, Labor Wars on the U.S./Mexico Border (University of California, 2004) http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/9989.html -- __ David Bacon, Photographs and Stories http://dbacon.igc.org __ [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] --- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --- Unsubscribe: mailto:laamn-unsubscr...@egroups.com --- Subscribe: mailto:laamn-subscr...@egroups.com --- Digest: mailto:laamn-dig...@egroups.com --- Help: mailto:laamn-ow...@egroups.com?subject=laamn --- Post: mailto:la...@egroups.com --- Archive1: http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn --- Archive2: http://www.mail-archive.com/laamn@egroups.com --- Yahoo! Groups Links * To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/ * Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional * To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/join (Yahoo! ID required) * To change settings via email: laamn-dig...@yahoogroups.com laamn
[LAAMN] picking the colonizers' vegetable
The People of Watsonville 1 -- Picking the Colonizers' Vegetable By David Bacon Watsonville, CA 11/19/10 The California coast, from Davenport south through Santa Cruz, Watsonville and Castroville, is brussels sprouts country. Most of this vegetable in north America comes from these fields, although a growing harvest now takes place in Baja California, in northern Mexico. In both California and Baja California, the vast majority of the people who harvest brussels sprouts, like those who pick other crops, are Mexican. In Baja they're migrants from the states of southern Mexico. In California, they're immigrant workers who've crossed the border to labor in these fields. On a cold November day, this crew of Mexican migrant workers picks brussels sprouts on a ranch outside of Watsonville. Many people love this vegetable, and serve it for dinner on the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday. Native people in the U.S. point out that Thanksgiving celebrates the beginning of the European colonization of north America, which drove them from the lands where they lived historically. The brussels sprouts came with the colonizers. While the Romans probably grew and ate them, the first plants came to this continent with the French to the colonies of Quebec and the Atlantic seaboard. Today the people picking in this field may be immigrants to the U.S., but in a longer historical view, they are the descendents of indigenous people whose presence in north America predated Columbus and the arrival of the brussels sprouts by thousands of years. Now they cross the border between Mexico and the U.S. as migrant workers, many speaking indigenous languages as old, or even older, than those of the colonizers - Mixteco, Triqui or Nahuatl. In the soft conversations among the workers of this picking crew, and other crews harvesting the sprouts, you can hear those languages mixed with that of the Spaniards. Brussels sprouts may be a colonizers' vegetable, but it has many healthy properties. It contains sulforaphane and indole-3-carbinol, both of which are believed to play a role in blocking the growth of cancer. In yet another irony, in non-organic fields, picking crews often get exposed to the agricultural chemicals that are one important cause of the explosion of cancer in the U.S. Farm workers get much higher doses than the supermarket patrons who buy the produce they pick. But it's a job. Putting the food on the table is really one of the most important jobs people do, and one that gets the least acknowledgement and respect. So the next time you decide on brussels sprouts for dinner, first, don't boil them. It removes those healthy anti-cancer chemicals. And don't overcook them either - that's what produces the sulfur taste many people don't like. But then, when they're out there on the table, remember who got them there. For more articles and images, see http://dbacon.igc.org See also Illegal People -- How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants (Beacon Press, 2008) Recipient: C.L.R. James Award, best book of 2007-2008 http://www.beacon.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=2002 See also the photodocumentary on indigenous migration to the US Communities Without Borders (Cornell University/ILR Press, 2006) http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/cup_detail.taf?ti_id=4575 See also The Children of NAFTA, Labor Wars on the U.S./Mexico Border (University of California, 2004) http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/9989.html -- __ David Bacon, Photographs and Stories http://dbacon.igc.org __ [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] --- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --- Unsubscribe: mailto:laamn-unsubscr...@egroups.com --- Subscribe: mailto:laamn-subscr...@egroups.com --- Digest: mailto:laamn-dig...@egroups.com --- Help: mailto:laamn-ow...@egroups.com?subject=laamn --- Post: mailto:la...@egroups.com --- Archive1: http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn --- Archive2: http://www.mail-archive.com/la...@egroups.com --- Yahoo! Groups Links * To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/ * Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional * To change
[LAAMN] public workers - a visual reality check
Public Workers -- A Visual Reality Check By David Bacon In California cities like San Jose and San Francisco, voters this election will decide on ballot measures to weaken the retirement system for public workers. These are the same kind of measures that have brought workers into the streets of France for weeks in protest. Beyond the ballot initiativves, the election season of 2010 has been filled with rhetoric blaming public workers for the economic woes of cities and states. It's hard to understand, in an era of foreclosures by banks that pay their executives bonuses of millions of dollars, while getting bailouts from the Federal government, why public workers should be held responsible for the current economic crisis. Who contributes more to the welfare of our communities - a teacher or a hedge fund manager? But perhaps the most important thing to remember is what these workers do. These photographs are meant to inspire some obvious questions. Can people do this work, if they're then cast adrift once they're too old? What would happen to all of us if they didn't do these jobs? Sam Johnson, a worker for the City of Burlingame, prepares to tap a water main to provide water service to a home. Nick Hackleman takes a water sample from a Burlingame hydrant, to test water purity. Pamela Swim and Misael Apostol sweep up leaves at the maintenance yard for the Elk Grove schools. Yesenia Galegos helps children of migrant farm workers learn social skills in a nursery school program run by Migrant Head Start. A school bus driver in Colusa helps children get safely off the bus, and makes sure they don't get lost. Carmelita Reyes teaches math at the Life Academy, a small public high school in one of the poorest areas of east Oakland. Gabriela works on the line in the Food and Nutrition Services Production Center, which prepares school lunches for the Elk Grove schools. A printer in the school district print shop in Anaheim, CA. Judy Leyva runs the control panel for the sewage treatment plant for the City of Lodi. Markus Brown is an intern at the San Mateo County Hospital. For more articles and images, see http://dbacon.igc.org See also Illegal People -- How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants (Beacon Press, 2008) Recipient: C.L.R. James Award, best book of 2007-2008 http://www.beacon.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=2002 See also the photodocumentary on indigenous migration to the US Communities Without Borders (Cornell University/ILR Press, 2006) http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/cup_detail.taf?ti_id=4575 See also The Children of NAFTA, Labor Wars on the U.S./Mexico Border (University of California, 2004) http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/9989.html -- __ David Bacon, Photographs and Stories http://dbacon.igc.org __ [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] --- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --- Unsubscribe: mailto:laamn-unsubscr...@egroups.com --- Subscribe: mailto:laamn-subscr...@egroups.com --- Digest: mailto:laamn-dig...@egroups.com --- Help: mailto:laamn-ow...@egroups.com?subject=laamn --- Post: mailto:la...@egroups.com --- Archive1: http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn --- Archive2: http://www.mail-archive.com/la...@egroups.com --- Yahoo! Groups Links * To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/ * Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional * To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/join (Yahoo! ID required) * To change settings via email: laamn-dig...@yahoogroups.com laamn-fullfeatu...@yahoogroups.com * To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: laamn-unsubscr...@yahoogroups.com * Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
[LAAMN] people of the central valley 4 - toolville and its bad water
The People of the Central Valley - 2 A Photographic Look at the Diverse Communities of California's Central Valley Toolville and its Bad Water Toolville is a tiny colonia, or unincorporated and informal settlement of about a hundred families, in California's rural San Joaquin Valley just a couple of miles outside the small town of Exeter. Over recent years, Toolville residents have discovered dangerous concentrations of nitrates in their water supply, which is pumped from the aquifer below the homes. As in many San Joaquin Valley communities, overuse of the water table, especially by giant industrial farms, has led to a growing concentration of fertilizer and other ag chemicals in the water that remains. Toolville's residents are all working-class people, many of them farm workers. They can use the water from their taps for washing dishes and clothes, but have to buy bottled water for drinking and cooking. Eunice Martinez, a leader of the community's effort to gain safe drinking water, looks warily at a jar of water drawn from the tap. Her mother, Margaret, holds their pet Chihuahua at a table where they keep a case of small bottles of drinking water. Across the street from the Martinez house, Natalie and Paco Rojas play in their yard. The health and development of children especially can be harmed by Toolville's contaminated water. In her home by the state highway, Cindy Newton-Enloe, who helped start Toolville's effort to gain safe drinking water, stores her water in big thermos containers, and then boils it for tea on her old-fashioned stove. Valeria Alvarado is a Mixtec immigrant from Oaxaca, and lives in a trailer with her husband, son and three daughters. Her husband is a limonero, or lemon picker, but work is very slow because of the recession. The family has almost no furniture, and struggles to survive from day to day. Valeria washes her dishes in water from the tap, which is pumped from the ground, but buys her drinking water in 5-gallon bottles. She stores them in her empty living room, and outside the trailer under the porch. The hills behind Toolville are the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas (Snowy Mountains), and most of the year they're covered in dry brown grass. At the base of the foothills runs the Friant-Kern Canal, part of the great California Water Project. Its system of dams extends throughout the San Joaquin Valley, channeling the Sierra Nevada runoff into canals, reducing the valley's former rivers into often-dry watercourses and lowering the water table. The canals provide water exclusively to growers for irrigation. Although the Friant-Kern Canal behind Toolville could supply the community's water with hardly a noticeable reduction in its flow, Toolville and water-starved colonias like it can't get access to a single drop. As many as half a million people live in California's 220 unincorporated communities, or colonias. Toolville's water rights movement got the help of California Rural Legal Assistance' project for Disadvantaged Unincorporated Communities, supported by PolicyLink. For more articles and images, see http://dbacon.igc.org See also Illegal People -- How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants (Beacon Press, 2008) Recipient: C.L.R. James Award, best book of 2007-2008 http://www.beacon.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=2002 See also the photodocumentary on indigenous migration to the US Communities Without Borders (Cornell University/ILR Press, 2006) http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/cup_detail.taf?ti_id=4575 See also The Children of NAFTA, Labor Wars on the U.S./Mexico Border (University of California, 2004) http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/9989.html -- __ David Bacon, Photographs and Stories http://dbacon.igc.org __ [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] --- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --- Unsubscribe: mailto:laamn-unsubscr...@egroups.com --- Subscribe: mailto:laamn-subscr...@egroups.com --- Digest: mailto:laamn-dig...@egroups.com --- Help: mailto:laamn-ow...@egroups.com?subject=laamn --- Post: mailto:la...@egroups.com --- Archive1: http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn --- Archive2: http://www.mail-archive.com/la...@egroups.com
