Latino Groups Unite Against White House
Anti-Family Immigration Proposals
Uniting American families must remain a top priority of immigration policy
APRIL 30, 2007 - Last Thursday, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) and its coalition partners - National Council of La Raza (NCLR), League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO) Educational Fund, and Labor Council for Latin American Advancement (LCLAA) - sent a letter to President George W. Bush expressing opposition to White House proposals to cut family-based immigration programs.
Recent reports have signaled that the Administration is urging the U.S. Senate to accept a proposal that eliminates some visa categories for United States citizens to reunite legally with their family members and ignores the traditional importance of families in resettling newcomers in the United States.
"Family reunification must continue to be a cornerstone of our immigration policy. The White House proposal erodes the strength of families and their capacity to equip newcomers with the skills and support to contribute fully to the nation," said John Trasviña, President and General Counsel of MALDEF.
"The notion that strong families are essential to strong communities isn't just a Hispanic American value, it's an American value. We need to preserve family as a basis for our immigration system," said Janet Murguía, NCLR President and CEO.
The groups also issued their strong opposition to a proposed Administration green card plan that replaces family reunification with a point system to allocate visas. The proposal would also prohibit future temporary workers from petitioning for their family members. If enacted, it would keep families apart, impede integration into the American mainstream, and be a further incentive to enter the United States illegally.
"As the president acknowledged, healthy families are invaluable to the nation's well being. It is therefore imperative that families are not being separated due to the Administration's recent posture toward family-based immigration," said LULAC National President Rosa Rosales. "We urge the president to have a heart and remember that family values are at the core of our nation's immigration policy."
According to Arturo Vargas, Executive Director of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO) Educational Fund, "We are at a critical juncture in our national discussion of our immigration policy. The choices we make now will determine the future of our nation's prosperity and well-being. We urge the president to demonstrate the leadership necessary to chart a course toward comprehensive immigration reform which recognizes and reinforces the value of family reunification for all Americans."
The Latino community urges President Bush to fulfill his commitment to families in this country by supporting and strengthening family values through our nation's immigration policy.
Founded in 1968, MALDEF, the nation's leading Latino legal organization, promotes and protects the rights of Latinos through litigation, advocacy, community education and outreach, leadership development, and higher education scholarships.
Monday, April 30, 2007
Saturday, April 28, 2007
May 1 Marches
ALL OUT FOR MAY DAY MARCHES
NO TO THE GUTIERREZ-FLAKE BILL
We invite you to join us in the May 1st, MAY DAY, marches and actions to raise our collective voices to STOP IMMIGRATION RAIDS and DEPORTATIONS, STOP the FORCED SEPARATION OF OUR FAMILIES, LEGALIZATION FOR ALL, and NO BRACERO-TYPE CONTRACT PROGRAMS.
Lastly, we adamantly oppose the Gutierrez-Flake Immigration Bill, known as the STRIVE ACT, introduced last month by Congressmen Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) and Jeff Flake (R-AZ). Our next eNewsletter will provide much more information about the STRIVE ACT by various sources which critique the legislation as deficient and dangerous to immigrants and working people.
We encourage you to download the letters we have posted for your convenience, addressed to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and circulate amongst your family, friends, and work-mates and forward these to the Democratic Party leadership.
MAPA
NO TO THE GUTIERREZ-FLAKE BILL
We invite you to join us in the May 1st, MAY DAY, marches and actions to raise our collective voices to STOP IMMIGRATION RAIDS and DEPORTATIONS, STOP the FORCED SEPARATION OF OUR FAMILIES, LEGALIZATION FOR ALL, and NO BRACERO-TYPE CONTRACT PROGRAMS.
Lastly, we adamantly oppose the Gutierrez-Flake Immigration Bill, known as the STRIVE ACT, introduced last month by Congressmen Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) and Jeff Flake (R-AZ). Our next eNewsletter will provide much more information about the STRIVE ACT by various sources which critique the legislation as deficient and dangerous to immigrants and working people.
We encourage you to download the letters we have posted for your convenience, addressed to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and circulate amongst your family, friends, and work-mates and forward these to the Democratic Party leadership.
MAPA
Friday, April 13, 2007
Carlos Munoz, Graduation Speech
Dr. Carlos Munoz, Jr. UC Berkeley Chicano/Latino Graduation Speech
Carlos Munoz, Jr. Keynote Speech
Chicano/Latino Graduation
Greek Theatre, UC Berkeley
May 20, 2006
It's a pleasure and an honor for me to be here with you to celebrate your graduation. You have been blessed with the intelligence, the love of familia, friends, and community. Most of all, you have been blessed with the work ethic of your parents and the legacies of struggle waged by our ancestors.
You came here prepared to work hard in your studies and to survive whatever obstacles were placed in your path. It was not easy, but you have persevered. You have every right to feel extremely proud of yourself. I know your parents are. And so are those who love you.
Some of you are immigrants. Others of you, like me, are children of immigrants. In particular, children of poor working class immigrants. Like me, some of you are the first in your families to graduate from college. No doubt some of you never thought it possible to get a college education. I remember that my immigrant father simply wanted me to finish high school!
Thanks to the Chicano/Chicana Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, and in particular to the student activists of that generation who struggled to open the doors to these previously all white institutions, you are here tonight. In particular, if it were not for the 1969 "Third World Strike" that was organized by Chicano/Chicana and other students of color, I and the rest of the Latino faculty and staff on this stage, would also not be here tonight.
In the process of working and studying hard to get the knowledge you now have, you have also become more critically aware of the harsh realities and tragedies that regretfully exist throughout our nation and the world at large.
You witnessed the terrorism of 9/11. And more tragically, the even more tragic response by the President and the Congress to wage a war of destruction against a sovereign nation that had nothing to do with 9/11. The war in Iraq has taken its toll of thousands of Iraqi innocent lives. Hundreds of lives of U.S. soldiers, including young Latino and Latina soldiers, your age, or younger, have also died and continue to die today in the streets of Iraq. They should have been here or at another university instead of the streets of Iraq where they met their death.
You have also witnessed another kind of war here at home. It is the war waged against hard working Latino undocumented immigrants and their familias who everyday contribute to the U.S. culture and the economy. At the time when Latino blood is being spilled in the battle fields of Iraq, the Republican controlled House of Representatives wants to criminalize them by making it a felony crime for entering the U.S. without papers. That is what the Sensenbrenner Bill (HR 4437) is all about.
Latino undocumented workers have courageously come out of the shadows by the millions to make clear they, like everyone else, deserves equality and human rights. Their struggle has generated a passion for social justice throughout the nation that has not happened since the 1960s when the farm worker movement led by Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta. And the Black and Chicano Civil Rights movements, and the anti-Vietnam War made a similar impact.
I am extremely proud of those of you graduating tonight who have joined me in taking a strong stance against the injustice of the Sensenbrenner Bill HR 4437 here on this campus and who have marched in the streets of Berkeley, Oakland, San Francisco, and elsewhere in solidarity with our undocumented hermanos y hermanas.
The millions of Latinos marching for immigrant
Rights in the streets of cities across this nation has
Also generated fear among those who are committed to preserving the status quo. They are the same ones who have framed Diversity as "un-American" and a source of division in our society. They are the same ones who oppose immigrant rights.
They have made Latinos the main target. For example, Samuel Huntington, a political scientist at Harvard, has argued in his writings that Latinos are the most serious threat to the White dominant culture. He fears that our nation will lose its single national language and its core WASP culture. As he put it, "In this new era, the single most immediate and most serious challenge to America's traditional identity comes from the immense and continuing immigration from Latin America, especially from Mexico."
A new Latino leadership must emerge from your ranks to take on the responsibility of developing a new politics that can build on the positives of our diversity. We need a leadership that has a vision of the future that is based on the multicultural and multiracial reality of what our nation has become. A leadership that is dedicated to the process of building bridges between all the different races and cultures.
You have proven thus far that you have the intellectual and the critical thinking capacity to become this kind of leader for the 21st century.
The task will require new vision of Democracy that must include people of all colors. We are not islands unto ourselves. Latino liberation is not possible without making possible the liberation of people of all colors, including white folks who are not part of the white supremacy structure of power.
In reality, as Latinos we represent everybody. We know we are an indigenous people. But we must also know that we are African, Asian, Middle Eastern, and European. We are Christian, but we are also Muslim and Jewish. We own the original meaning of an authentic Diversity. We are America!
I have been marching for social justice, peace, and Democracy since the 1960s. And I won't stop until the day I die. I know that your generation, and those of you in this graduating class in particular, will continue marching long after I'm gone.
I want to share my Vision for an authentic Multiracial Democracy that I have kept in mind throughout my life of struggle and activism. It is my graduation gift to you to keep in mind as you develop into our nation's leaders.
My vision is that Americans of all colors, religions, sexual preferences, men and women will give birth to an authentic Multiracial Democracy.
A Democracy that will promote a true racial and ethnic diversity and equality in everyday life.
A Democracy that honors its immigrant legacies and values as equal all immigrant workers whether they are documented or undocumented.
A Democracy that will promote social justice, religious tolerance, non-violence, and peace at home and abroad.
A Democracy with a government that will include a representative of every diverse group at the table of political power on behalf of the people, not the military-prison-corporate complex.
A Democracy with a national political multiparty electoral system where candidates for election include the poor and working class, not just those who are rich or middle class. With an electoral system where every vote will in fact be counted. No more Florida's, no more Ohio's, no more Bushes.
A Democracy where human needs are prioritized and not the needs of the rich and the corporations. Where health care and education are defined as Human Rights.
A Democracy that prioritizes youth as the most important Investment for the future of our nation and builds more schools instead of prisons.
THIS VISION WILL TAKE A LONG TIME TO MAKE COME TRUE.
But What I have learned in my lifetime is that struggle is life and life is struggle. But most importantly, that victory is in the struggle!
Congratulations to each and every one of you. Love, Peace, and Justice to you all!
Carlos Munoz, Jr. Keynote Speech
Chicano/Latino Graduation
Greek Theatre, UC Berkeley
May 20, 2006
It's a pleasure and an honor for me to be here with you to celebrate your graduation. You have been blessed with the intelligence, the love of familia, friends, and community. Most of all, you have been blessed with the work ethic of your parents and the legacies of struggle waged by our ancestors.
You came here prepared to work hard in your studies and to survive whatever obstacles were placed in your path. It was not easy, but you have persevered. You have every right to feel extremely proud of yourself. I know your parents are. And so are those who love you.
Some of you are immigrants. Others of you, like me, are children of immigrants. In particular, children of poor working class immigrants. Like me, some of you are the first in your families to graduate from college. No doubt some of you never thought it possible to get a college education. I remember that my immigrant father simply wanted me to finish high school!
Thanks to the Chicano/Chicana Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, and in particular to the student activists of that generation who struggled to open the doors to these previously all white institutions, you are here tonight. In particular, if it were not for the 1969 "Third World Strike" that was organized by Chicano/Chicana and other students of color, I and the rest of the Latino faculty and staff on this stage, would also not be here tonight.
In the process of working and studying hard to get the knowledge you now have, you have also become more critically aware of the harsh realities and tragedies that regretfully exist throughout our nation and the world at large.
You witnessed the terrorism of 9/11. And more tragically, the even more tragic response by the President and the Congress to wage a war of destruction against a sovereign nation that had nothing to do with 9/11. The war in Iraq has taken its toll of thousands of Iraqi innocent lives. Hundreds of lives of U.S. soldiers, including young Latino and Latina soldiers, your age, or younger, have also died and continue to die today in the streets of Iraq. They should have been here or at another university instead of the streets of Iraq where they met their death.
You have also witnessed another kind of war here at home. It is the war waged against hard working Latino undocumented immigrants and their familias who everyday contribute to the U.S. culture and the economy. At the time when Latino blood is being spilled in the battle fields of Iraq, the Republican controlled House of Representatives wants to criminalize them by making it a felony crime for entering the U.S. without papers. That is what the Sensenbrenner Bill (HR 4437) is all about.
Latino undocumented workers have courageously come out of the shadows by the millions to make clear they, like everyone else, deserves equality and human rights. Their struggle has generated a passion for social justice throughout the nation that has not happened since the 1960s when the farm worker movement led by Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta. And the Black and Chicano Civil Rights movements, and the anti-Vietnam War made a similar impact.
I am extremely proud of those of you graduating tonight who have joined me in taking a strong stance against the injustice of the Sensenbrenner Bill HR 4437 here on this campus and who have marched in the streets of Berkeley, Oakland, San Francisco, and elsewhere in solidarity with our undocumented hermanos y hermanas.
The millions of Latinos marching for immigrant
Rights in the streets of cities across this nation has
Also generated fear among those who are committed to preserving the status quo. They are the same ones who have framed Diversity as "un-American" and a source of division in our society. They are the same ones who oppose immigrant rights.
They have made Latinos the main target. For example, Samuel Huntington, a political scientist at Harvard, has argued in his writings that Latinos are the most serious threat to the White dominant culture. He fears that our nation will lose its single national language and its core WASP culture. As he put it, "In this new era, the single most immediate and most serious challenge to America's traditional identity comes from the immense and continuing immigration from Latin America, especially from Mexico."
A new Latino leadership must emerge from your ranks to take on the responsibility of developing a new politics that can build on the positives of our diversity. We need a leadership that has a vision of the future that is based on the multicultural and multiracial reality of what our nation has become. A leadership that is dedicated to the process of building bridges between all the different races and cultures.
You have proven thus far that you have the intellectual and the critical thinking capacity to become this kind of leader for the 21st century.
The task will require new vision of Democracy that must include people of all colors. We are not islands unto ourselves. Latino liberation is not possible without making possible the liberation of people of all colors, including white folks who are not part of the white supremacy structure of power.
In reality, as Latinos we represent everybody. We know we are an indigenous people. But we must also know that we are African, Asian, Middle Eastern, and European. We are Christian, but we are also Muslim and Jewish. We own the original meaning of an authentic Diversity. We are America!
I have been marching for social justice, peace, and Democracy since the 1960s. And I won't stop until the day I die. I know that your generation, and those of you in this graduating class in particular, will continue marching long after I'm gone.
I want to share my Vision for an authentic Multiracial Democracy that I have kept in mind throughout my life of struggle and activism. It is my graduation gift to you to keep in mind as you develop into our nation's leaders.
My vision is that Americans of all colors, religions, sexual preferences, men and women will give birth to an authentic Multiracial Democracy.
A Democracy that will promote a true racial and ethnic diversity and equality in everyday life.
A Democracy that honors its immigrant legacies and values as equal all immigrant workers whether they are documented or undocumented.
A Democracy that will promote social justice, religious tolerance, non-violence, and peace at home and abroad.
A Democracy with a government that will include a representative of every diverse group at the table of political power on behalf of the people, not the military-prison-corporate complex.
A Democracy with a national political multiparty electoral system where candidates for election include the poor and working class, not just those who are rich or middle class. With an electoral system where every vote will in fact be counted. No more Florida's, no more Ohio's, no more Bushes.
A Democracy where human needs are prioritized and not the needs of the rich and the corporations. Where health care and education are defined as Human Rights.
A Democracy that prioritizes youth as the most important Investment for the future of our nation and builds more schools instead of prisons.
THIS VISION WILL TAKE A LONG TIME TO MAKE COME TRUE.
But What I have learned in my lifetime is that struggle is life and life is struggle. But most importantly, that victory is in the struggle!
Congratulations to each and every one of you. Love, Peace, and Justice to you all!
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
Guest workers: braceros; a bad idea
Guest workers: a worn-out labor idea
Such programs are bad for immigrants and hurt U.S. workers as well.
By John J. Sweeney and Pablo Alvarado
JOHN J. SWEENEY is president of the AFL-CIO. PABLO ALVARADO is executive director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network.
April 10, 2007
CORPORATE America has made an expanded guest worker program the cornerstone of its preferred brand of immigration reform, and no wonder: It will assure a steady flow of cheap labor from essentially indentured workers too afraid of being deported to protest substandard wages, chiseled benefits and unsafe working conditions.
Such a system will create a disenfranchised underclass of workers. That is not only morally indefensible, it is economically nonsensical. We've had plenty of bad experiences with such shortsighted answers to a complicated problem.
The notorious bracero program all but enslaved immigrant agricultural and railroad workers in the years after World War II. Today we have H-2A and H-2B visa programs to remind us that "temporary" immigration employment models rest on a faulty foundation.
The H-2 programs bring in agricultural and other seasonal workers to pick crops, do construction and work in the seafood industry, among other jobs. Workers typically borrow large amounts of money to pay travel expenses, fees and sometimes bribes to recruiters. That means that before they even begin to work, they are indebted. They leave their families at home, and they are essentially "bound" to employers who can send them home on a whim and who do not have to prove a need to hire them in the first place.
According to a new study published by the Southern Poverty Law Center, it is not unusual for a Guatemalan worker to pay more than $2,500 in fees to obtain a seasonal guest worker position, about a year's worth of income in Guatemala. And Thai workers have been known to pay as much as $10,000 for the chance to harvest crops in the orchards of the Pacific Northwest. Interest rates on the loans are sometimes as high as 20% a month. Homes and vehicles are required collateral. Handcuffed by their debt, the "guests" are forced to remain and work for employers even when their pay and working conditions are second-rate, hazardous or abusive. Hungry children inevitably checkmate protest.
Technically, these programs include some legal protections, but in reality, those protections exist mostly on paper. Government enforcement is almost nonexistent. Private attorneys refuse to take cases. And guest workers, especially the poorest, the least educated and those with the least English, end up with no choice but to put their heads down and toil, innocently undermining employment standards for all U.S. workers in the process.
This doesn't mean that there is no solution to the immigration crisis or no good way to deal with workers and families who will want to come — and who we will need to come — to the United States to work.
In 1997, the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform validated our belief that a "properly regulated system of permanent admissions serves the national interest" and warned that another temporary-worker program would be a "grievous mistake." This means that everyone who is admitted to work must immediately be on a track toward permanent residency or citizenship.
Yes, employers who can prove that they tried and failed to find U.S. workers should be able to hire foreign workers. But no, they shouldn't be able to bring them in under abusive conditions that have a negative effect on the wages and working conditions of other workers.
Yes, we should have caps set to limit the number of employment-based visas issued each year. But no, they should not be determined, as the H-2 quotas are now, by political compromise or industry lobbying. The number of employment-based visas should be set each year by the Department of Labor based on macro-economic indicators that establish the needs of particular industries.
Employers should not be allowed to recruit abroad, a practice that invites bribes, exorbitant fees and potential abuse. Instead, employers should be required to hire from applications filed by workers in their home countries through a computerized job bank.
Foreign workers should enjoy the same rights and protections as U.S. workers, including freedom to form unions and bargain for a better life. Labor laws must protect all workers, regardless of immigration status. If we leave undocumented workers without any real way to enforce labor laws, as our laws do now, we are feeding employers' hunger for more and more exploitable workers, relegating them to second-class status. That hurts all workers.
Scholars have long recognized that the genius of U.S. immigration policy throughout our history has been the opportunity afforded to immigrants for full membership in society. That is the solid foundation on which a morally and economically sound policy can be built, and it is the foundation we are working together to build.
Such programs are bad for immigrants and hurt U.S. workers as well.
By John J. Sweeney and Pablo Alvarado
JOHN J. SWEENEY is president of the AFL-CIO. PABLO ALVARADO is executive director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network.
April 10, 2007
CORPORATE America has made an expanded guest worker program the cornerstone of its preferred brand of immigration reform, and no wonder: It will assure a steady flow of cheap labor from essentially indentured workers too afraid of being deported to protest substandard wages, chiseled benefits and unsafe working conditions.
Such a system will create a disenfranchised underclass of workers. That is not only morally indefensible, it is economically nonsensical. We've had plenty of bad experiences with such shortsighted answers to a complicated problem.
The notorious bracero program all but enslaved immigrant agricultural and railroad workers in the years after World War II. Today we have H-2A and H-2B visa programs to remind us that "temporary" immigration employment models rest on a faulty foundation.
The H-2 programs bring in agricultural and other seasonal workers to pick crops, do construction and work in the seafood industry, among other jobs. Workers typically borrow large amounts of money to pay travel expenses, fees and sometimes bribes to recruiters. That means that before they even begin to work, they are indebted. They leave their families at home, and they are essentially "bound" to employers who can send them home on a whim and who do not have to prove a need to hire them in the first place.
According to a new study published by the Southern Poverty Law Center, it is not unusual for a Guatemalan worker to pay more than $2,500 in fees to obtain a seasonal guest worker position, about a year's worth of income in Guatemala. And Thai workers have been known to pay as much as $10,000 for the chance to harvest crops in the orchards of the Pacific Northwest. Interest rates on the loans are sometimes as high as 20% a month. Homes and vehicles are required collateral. Handcuffed by their debt, the "guests" are forced to remain and work for employers even when their pay and working conditions are second-rate, hazardous or abusive. Hungry children inevitably checkmate protest.
Technically, these programs include some legal protections, but in reality, those protections exist mostly on paper. Government enforcement is almost nonexistent. Private attorneys refuse to take cases. And guest workers, especially the poorest, the least educated and those with the least English, end up with no choice but to put their heads down and toil, innocently undermining employment standards for all U.S. workers in the process.
This doesn't mean that there is no solution to the immigration crisis or no good way to deal with workers and families who will want to come — and who we will need to come — to the United States to work.
In 1997, the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform validated our belief that a "properly regulated system of permanent admissions serves the national interest" and warned that another temporary-worker program would be a "grievous mistake." This means that everyone who is admitted to work must immediately be on a track toward permanent residency or citizenship.
Yes, employers who can prove that they tried and failed to find U.S. workers should be able to hire foreign workers. But no, they shouldn't be able to bring them in under abusive conditions that have a negative effect on the wages and working conditions of other workers.
Yes, we should have caps set to limit the number of employment-based visas issued each year. But no, they should not be determined, as the H-2 quotas are now, by political compromise or industry lobbying. The number of employment-based visas should be set each year by the Department of Labor based on macro-economic indicators that establish the needs of particular industries.
Employers should not be allowed to recruit abroad, a practice that invites bribes, exorbitant fees and potential abuse. Instead, employers should be required to hire from applications filed by workers in their home countries through a computerized job bank.
Foreign workers should enjoy the same rights and protections as U.S. workers, including freedom to form unions and bargain for a better life. Labor laws must protect all workers, regardless of immigration status. If we leave undocumented workers without any real way to enforce labor laws, as our laws do now, we are feeding employers' hunger for more and more exploitable workers, relegating them to second-class status. That hurts all workers.
Scholars have long recognized that the genius of U.S. immigration policy throughout our history has been the opportunity afforded to immigrants for full membership in society. That is the solid foundation on which a morally and economically sound policy can be built, and it is the foundation we are working together to build.
Sunday, April 08, 2007
Immigrants March in Los Angeles
Thousands march in LA to protest immigration plan
By Peter Prengaman, Associated Press | April 8, 2007
LOS ANGELES -- Thousands of people marched through downtown yesterday, demanding a way for the country's estimated 12 million illegal immigrants to become citizens and condemning President Bush's latest proposal.
Carrying signs saying "Amnesty Now," about 15,000 people danced to Mexican ranchera music and passed large American flags over their heads.
Organizers said many illegal immigrants were angry about a White House plan that would grant them work visas but require them to return home and pay thousands of dollars to become legal US residents.
"Charging that much, Bush is going to be even more expensive than the coyotes," said protester Armando Garcia, 50, referring to smugglers who transport people across the Mexican border.
Alfredo Gonzalez, 33, an illegal immigrant from Mexico, marched with his wife and daughters, 6 and 8 years old. He said he fears the immigration raids occurring across the country.
"If they kick me out, who is going to take care of my daughters? The government? I don't think so," he said. "We need full legalization and need it now."
Immigrant rights advocates say many of California's illegal immigrants feel betrayed by President Bush, who they had long considered an ally.
"People are really upset," said Juan Jose Gutierrez, president of Los Angeles-based Latino Movement USA, one of several organizers of the rally. "For years, the president spoke in no uncertain terms about supporting immigration reform. . . . Then this kind of plan comes out and people are so frustrated."
The White House's draft plan, which was recently leaked, calls for a new "Z" visa that would allow illegal immigrant workers to apply for three-year work permits. They would be renewable indefinitely, but would cost $3,500 each time.
To get a permit and become legal permanent residents, illegal immigrants would have to return to their home country, apply at a US embassy or consulate to reenter legally, and pay a $10,000 fine.
The proposal has been sharply criticized by Hispanic advocacy groups, Democrats, the Roman Catholic Church, and unions that have many immigrants in their ranks. They argue the cost of work permits and the green card application -- which could total more than $20,000 -- are prohibitive for low-wage earners.
The plan is far more conservative than the one passed by the Senate last year with bipartisan backing and support from President Bush.
That plan would have allowed many of the country's estimated 12 million illegal immigrants to stay in the United States, work, and apply to become legal residents after learning English, pay small fines and back taxes, and clear a background check.
Many conservatives in the Senate opposed that plan, and it failed to gain traction in the then Republican-controlled House, which at the end of 2005 passed the punitive immigration bill that angered immigrant communities and led to massive protests.
In Arizona last week, authorities found at least 80 suspected illegal immigrants in a house west of Phoenix and arrested two suspected smugglers, a police official said.
Authorities shot tear gas into the house Friday, forcing one of the suspected smugglers out. They found the other suspect hiding in the attic, Peoria police spokesman Mike Tellef said.
He said authorities became aware of the drop house after a Michigan resident called US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, saying one of their relatives had called because the smugglers were demanding more money.
The immigrants were in the custody of ICE. Virginia Kice, a spokeswoman for the agency, did not confirm how ICE became aware of the drop house and declined to release further information.
© Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
By Peter Prengaman, Associated Press | April 8, 2007
LOS ANGELES -- Thousands of people marched through downtown yesterday, demanding a way for the country's estimated 12 million illegal immigrants to become citizens and condemning President Bush's latest proposal.
Carrying signs saying "Amnesty Now," about 15,000 people danced to Mexican ranchera music and passed large American flags over their heads.
Organizers said many illegal immigrants were angry about a White House plan that would grant them work visas but require them to return home and pay thousands of dollars to become legal US residents.
"Charging that much, Bush is going to be even more expensive than the coyotes," said protester Armando Garcia, 50, referring to smugglers who transport people across the Mexican border.
Alfredo Gonzalez, 33, an illegal immigrant from Mexico, marched with his wife and daughters, 6 and 8 years old. He said he fears the immigration raids occurring across the country.
"If they kick me out, who is going to take care of my daughters? The government? I don't think so," he said. "We need full legalization and need it now."
Immigrant rights advocates say many of California's illegal immigrants feel betrayed by President Bush, who they had long considered an ally.
"People are really upset," said Juan Jose Gutierrez, president of Los Angeles-based Latino Movement USA, one of several organizers of the rally. "For years, the president spoke in no uncertain terms about supporting immigration reform. . . . Then this kind of plan comes out and people are so frustrated."
The White House's draft plan, which was recently leaked, calls for a new "Z" visa that would allow illegal immigrant workers to apply for three-year work permits. They would be renewable indefinitely, but would cost $3,500 each time.
To get a permit and become legal permanent residents, illegal immigrants would have to return to their home country, apply at a US embassy or consulate to reenter legally, and pay a $10,000 fine.
The proposal has been sharply criticized by Hispanic advocacy groups, Democrats, the Roman Catholic Church, and unions that have many immigrants in their ranks. They argue the cost of work permits and the green card application -- which could total more than $20,000 -- are prohibitive for low-wage earners.
The plan is far more conservative than the one passed by the Senate last year with bipartisan backing and support from President Bush.
That plan would have allowed many of the country's estimated 12 million illegal immigrants to stay in the United States, work, and apply to become legal residents after learning English, pay small fines and back taxes, and clear a background check.
Many conservatives in the Senate opposed that plan, and it failed to gain traction in the then Republican-controlled House, which at the end of 2005 passed the punitive immigration bill that angered immigrant communities and led to massive protests.
In Arizona last week, authorities found at least 80 suspected illegal immigrants in a house west of Phoenix and arrested two suspected smugglers, a police official said.
Authorities shot tear gas into the house Friday, forcing one of the suspected smugglers out. They found the other suspect hiding in the attic, Peoria police spokesman Mike Tellef said.
He said authorities became aware of the drop house after a Michigan resident called US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, saying one of their relatives had called because the smugglers were demanding more money.
The immigrants were in the custody of ICE. Virginia Kice, a spokeswoman for the agency, did not confirm how ICE became aware of the drop house and declined to release further information.
© Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
Monday, April 02, 2007
Labor activists murdered in Columbia
Baltimore Sun April 2, 2007
WASHINGTON -- Carmen Cecilia Santana Romana, a 28-year-
old mother of three and a national trade union officer,
was shot dead in her home in Antioquia, Colombia, on
Feb. 7. Her murder came as little surprise; the most
dangerous country in the world for trade unionists is
Colombia, which will become Washington's newest free
trade partner unless Congress stops the deal.
Some Democrats may be eager to show that they are not
obstructionists on trade by cutting a deal with the
Bush administration to "fix" the U.S.-Colombia Free
Trade Agreement and passing the revised accord. But
that's the wrong approach with Colombia. Congress
should reject the pact outright.
In Colombia, trade unionists who are not murdered are
often threatened, attacked or kidnapped. The
overwhelming majority of cases are unsolved; many are
never investigated, and the perpetrators go unpunished,
ready to strike again. The government says 58 unionists
were murdered in Colombia in 2006, up from 40 the year
before. Labor groups report even higher totals: 77
murdered in 2006, up from 70 in 2005.
Colombia is a violent country, but its trade unionists
are not random casualties. They are especially targeted
when exercising their rights to organize and bargain
collectively, moments of great potential for change.
Change threatens Colombia's two main guerrilla groups
and its Mafia-like paramilitaries, often linked to the
anti-union violence. Change also threatens the
government, which has proved more likely to be
infiltrated by paramilitaries than to pursue them and
more likely to grant them concessions than to impose
punishment.
Despite $4 billion in U.S. support through Plan
Colombia, the Colombian government has yet to take a
tough stand against paramilitaries. Since paramilitary
demobilization began four years ago, Colombia has doled
out the benefits of the process while imposing few of
the burdens. Demobilized paramilitary leaders were
supposed to stop illegal activity, but paramilitaries
are still involved in violence and drug trafficking.
And leaders can continue masterminding crimes from
prison on unrestricted cell phones.
Paramilitary influence may well reach into the
country's highest circles of power. On Feb. 22, the
Colombian intelligence agency's head from 2002 to 2005
was arrested on charges of conspiring with
paramilitaries, including in the killing of union
leaders and academics. The Colombian Supreme Court has
ordered the arrest of nine congressmen from President
Alvaro Uribe's coalition for their links with
paramilitaries. More than a dozen other politicians are
also under investigation. Mr. Uribe is spinning these
developments as evidence of his willingness to clean
house, yet they resulted from independent
investigations by judicial institutions and the media.
The U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement, signed in
November 2006 and awaiting congressional consideration,
would reward Colombia with prized access to American
markets even as its workers' rights are brutally
violated.
The vital labor rights fixes that congressional
Democrats proposed last week for all pending and future
free trade accords would not come close to addressing
Colombia's problems.
Its human rights problems go far beyond its weak labor
laws and their poor enforcement. They cannot be solved
through corrections to the trade agreement. Human
Rights Watch, which normally takes no position on free
trade per se, opposes any free trade accord with
Colombia because of its egregious record on human
rights.
Before Colombia enjoys a free trade agreement with the
United States, it must take a hard line on
paramilitarism by initiating serious investigations and
prosecutions of cases of violence and threats against
trade unionists and by protecting potential witnesses.
The U.S. government should fund the human rights unit
of the Colombian attorney general's office to help meet
these goals, conditioned upon continued "measurable
progress" toward their fulfillment. But it should not
reward the country with a free trade agreement.
If the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement enters into
force, U.S. producers will compete directly against
Colombian producers whose workers often cannot exercise
basic rights without risking their lives. The United
States will also have demonstrated a double standard in
its "war on terror," rewarding with much-coveted trade
benefits a country that stands by while its narco-
terrorist paramilitaries crush fundamental human
rights. ______
Carol Pier is a senior researcher on labor rights and
trade at Human Rights Watch. Her e-mail is
pierc@hrw.org.
WASHINGTON -- Carmen Cecilia Santana Romana, a 28-year-
old mother of three and a national trade union officer,
was shot dead in her home in Antioquia, Colombia, on
Feb. 7. Her murder came as little surprise; the most
dangerous country in the world for trade unionists is
Colombia, which will become Washington's newest free
trade partner unless Congress stops the deal.
Some Democrats may be eager to show that they are not
obstructionists on trade by cutting a deal with the
Bush administration to "fix" the U.S.-Colombia Free
Trade Agreement and passing the revised accord. But
that's the wrong approach with Colombia. Congress
should reject the pact outright.
In Colombia, trade unionists who are not murdered are
often threatened, attacked or kidnapped. The
overwhelming majority of cases are unsolved; many are
never investigated, and the perpetrators go unpunished,
ready to strike again. The government says 58 unionists
were murdered in Colombia in 2006, up from 40 the year
before. Labor groups report even higher totals: 77
murdered in 2006, up from 70 in 2005.
Colombia is a violent country, but its trade unionists
are not random casualties. They are especially targeted
when exercising their rights to organize and bargain
collectively, moments of great potential for change.
Change threatens Colombia's two main guerrilla groups
and its Mafia-like paramilitaries, often linked to the
anti-union violence. Change also threatens the
government, which has proved more likely to be
infiltrated by paramilitaries than to pursue them and
more likely to grant them concessions than to impose
punishment.
Despite $4 billion in U.S. support through Plan
Colombia, the Colombian government has yet to take a
tough stand against paramilitaries. Since paramilitary
demobilization began four years ago, Colombia has doled
out the benefits of the process while imposing few of
the burdens. Demobilized paramilitary leaders were
supposed to stop illegal activity, but paramilitaries
are still involved in violence and drug trafficking.
And leaders can continue masterminding crimes from
prison on unrestricted cell phones.
Paramilitary influence may well reach into the
country's highest circles of power. On Feb. 22, the
Colombian intelligence agency's head from 2002 to 2005
was arrested on charges of conspiring with
paramilitaries, including in the killing of union
leaders and academics. The Colombian Supreme Court has
ordered the arrest of nine congressmen from President
Alvaro Uribe's coalition for their links with
paramilitaries. More than a dozen other politicians are
also under investigation. Mr. Uribe is spinning these
developments as evidence of his willingness to clean
house, yet they resulted from independent
investigations by judicial institutions and the media.
The U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement, signed in
November 2006 and awaiting congressional consideration,
would reward Colombia with prized access to American
markets even as its workers' rights are brutally
violated.
The vital labor rights fixes that congressional
Democrats proposed last week for all pending and future
free trade accords would not come close to addressing
Colombia's problems.
Its human rights problems go far beyond its weak labor
laws and their poor enforcement. They cannot be solved
through corrections to the trade agreement. Human
Rights Watch, which normally takes no position on free
trade per se, opposes any free trade accord with
Colombia because of its egregious record on human
rights.
Before Colombia enjoys a free trade agreement with the
United States, it must take a hard line on
paramilitarism by initiating serious investigations and
prosecutions of cases of violence and threats against
trade unionists and by protecting potential witnesses.
The U.S. government should fund the human rights unit
of the Colombian attorney general's office to help meet
these goals, conditioned upon continued "measurable
progress" toward their fulfillment. But it should not
reward the country with a free trade agreement.
If the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement enters into
force, U.S. producers will compete directly against
Colombian producers whose workers often cannot exercise
basic rights without risking their lives. The United
States will also have demonstrated a double standard in
its "war on terror," rewarding with much-coveted trade
benefits a country that stands by while its narco-
terrorist paramilitaries crush fundamental human
rights. ______
Carol Pier is a senior researcher on labor rights and
trade at Human Rights Watch. Her e-mail is
pierc@hrw.org.
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Cesar Chavez: Presente
César Chávez: "Presente"
By Duane E. Campbell
The spirit of Cesar Chavez lives on in the struggle for union rights and justice in the fields of California. Along with Dolores Huerta, Philip Vera Cruz, and others, César created the United Farm Workers (UFW) the first successful union of farm workers in U.S. history. There had been more than ten prior attempts to build a farm workers union.
The United Cannery and Packinghouse Workers (UCAPAWA) organized in the 1930's, the National Farm Workers Union (NFW) led by Ernesto Galarza tried to organize Farm workers in the 40's and 50's. In 1959, the AFL-CIO tried to organize again with the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC). AWOC had several weaknesses, including a top down leadership selected by AFL-CIO leaders, not by farm workers, and a strategy of working cooperatively with labor contractors. AWOC continued the prior efforts of Ernesto Galarza and the NFW in struggling against "braceros" or guest workers, contract workers imported from Mexico, from breaking strikes. A renewed "guest worker" bill is presently before Congress.
Each of the prior attempts to organize farm worker unions were destroyed by racism and corporate power. Chávez chose to build a union that incorporated the strategies of social movements and allied itself with the churches, students, and organized labor. The successful creation of the UFW changed the nature of labor organizing in the Southwest and contributed significantly to the birth of Latino politics in the U.S.
Today, under the leadership of UFW president Arturo Rodriguez, over 28,000 farm workers enjoy benefits on the job. They are incorporated into California's educational, health and civic communities. The UFW has shown the AFL-CIO that immigrants can and must be organized. In 2002 we won significant victories in the legislature and numerous elections.
César Chavez, Dolores Huerta, Philip Vera Cruz, and others deliberately created a multiracial organization, Mexican, Mexican American, Filipino, African-American, Dominican, Puerto Rican and Arab workers, among others, have been part of the UFW. This cross racial organizing was necessary in order to combat the prior divisions and exploitations of workers based upon race and language. Dividing the workers on racial and language lines always left the corporations the winners.
In the 60's Chávez became the pre-eminent civil rights leader for the Mexican and Chicano workers, helping with local union struggles throughout the nation. He worked tirelessly to make people aware of the struggles of farm workers for better pay and safer working conditions. It is a testament to Cesar Chavez's skills and courage that the UFW even survived. They were opposed by major interests in corporate agriculture including the Bruce Church and Gallo Corporations as well as the leadership of the Republican Party then led by Ronald Reagan. Workers were fired, beaten, threatened and even killed in pursuit of union benefits . Non union farm workers today continue to live on sub-poverty wages while producing the abundant crops in the richest valley, in the richest state in the richest nation in the world.
In response to corporate power, Cesar developed new strategies, such as the boycott, based upon his personal commitment to non-violence in the tradition of Ghandi and Martin Luther King Jr. César Chavez died in his sleep on April 23, 1993 near Yuma, Arizona.
Today Mexican, Mexican American and Puerto Rican union leadership is common in our major cities and in several industries. For myself and others, the UFW was a school for organizing. Hundreds of activists in labor and community organizations owe their skills to UFW training and experience. Along with improved working conditions, salaries, and benefits, training this cadre of organizers remains a major legacy of the UFW.
César taught us that all organizations have problems, that all organizations are imperfect. But, if you wait for the perfect organization, nothing gets done. Building popular organizations builds people's power, and democracy. Chavez' legacy to popular struggles, to Chicano/Mexicano self determination and to unions for the immigrant workers is beyond measure. He is present in all of our work. I plan to march on March March 31,2007 in memory of Cesar Chavez' contributions building a more democratic society for working people. You can find our more about this remarkable leader at www.ufw.org
And, www.cesarchavezfoundation.org
Duane Campbell is a Professor of Bilingual/Multicultural Education at Calif. State University-Sacramento and the author of Choosing Democracy; a practical guide to multicultural education. (Merrill/Pren Hall.2004)
Sacramento March. 10 Am. South Side Park.
Democracy, Honest government in Bolivia
Democracy Pays Off in Bolivia
By Mark Weisbrot
March 19, 2007, McClatchy-Tribune Information Services
March 26, 2007, Taiwan News
"In our culture, there is a cosmic law. Don’t steal. Don’t lie. Don’t be lazy . . . in our culture, honesty is very important. I’m convinced still that it was that honesty that allowed me to arrive at the presidency."
That was Bolivian President Evo Morales in an interview during his first trip ever to the United States last September. Morales, an Aymara Indian, is the first indigenous president in South America in more than five centuries.
He appears to be practicing what he preaches. The workday for the President and his cabinet begins at 5 a.m. and often goes past 11 p.m. There is no hint of corruption in the presidency, nor would it be tolerated. And as he passed his first year in office last month, the benefits of honest government were showing.
In the last year the government's revenue from hydrocarbons (mostly natural gas) has increased by more than $340 million dollars, an amount that – relative to Bolivia's economy – is about 70 percent bigger than our federal budget deficit. It has tripled in the last two years, and is expected to triple again over the next four years, due to the government's decision to re-nationalize the industry.
In the United States we don't usually associate nationalization with good government, but for a country that is highly dependent on natural resource exports it can make a huge difference for the public to get its share of the revenues from these resources, rather than having corrupt officials give them away to foreign companies.
This is especially true if the government is committed to using these revenues to benefit the poor. In Bolivia, the poorest country in South America, this includes 64 percent of the population. The Morales government has been investing in the poor: for example, it has approved a program of free reproductive health services for women, is expanding health care to children and people over 60, and building rural clinics. More than 5 million acres of previously state-owned land have been distributed to people in the countryside, and the government has plans to redistribute an area the size of Nebraska.
These are all reforms that Morales promised in his electoral campaign, which he won with the largest margin in Bolivia's history of democratic elections. That is the way democracy is supposed to work: people vote for change, and they get it.
Not everyone sees it that way. Last month, the former US National Intelligence Director, John Negroponte, now the number two official in the State Department, said that democracy "is at risk" in Bolivia. And Bolivia's government is often portrayed here in Cold War terms reminiscent of the 1950s: as part of an "anti-American" alliance of left governments – generally including Venezuela and Cuba – that we should be worried about.
This obscures what is really happening in Bolivia, which has little to do with any foreign countries but is a product of its own political process. The drafting of a new constitution, re-nationalization of the gas industry, land reform, and the rejection of a U.S.-sponsored trade agreement are all demands that came directly – and very insistently – from the Bolivian people. The Bolivians tried Washington's prescription for economic development for decades – and it failed miserably. Aside from the glaring inequality that is obvious to any visitor, the country's per capita income today is less than it was a quarter-century ago. So now they are trying something different, and have put together their own national development plan. But the government has maintained good relations with Washington and still sees the United States as an important trading partner.
The Morales government has made mistakes – for example in dealing with movements for local autonomy in the wealthier eastern regions of the country. But it appears to learn from its mistakes, and has avoided the repression deployed by its predecessors – the prior government killed dozens of people in the streets -- even in the face of violent protests. It faces many daunting challenges, mostly in putting together an efficient and effective government at all levels and implementing a development strategy that can reduce the country's dependence on natural resources. But honest government at the top is a good start, and worthy of respect.
Mark Weisbrot is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, in Washington, D.C.
By Mark Weisbrot
March 19, 2007, McClatchy-Tribune Information Services
March 26, 2007, Taiwan News
"In our culture, there is a cosmic law. Don’t steal. Don’t lie. Don’t be lazy . . . in our culture, honesty is very important. I’m convinced still that it was that honesty that allowed me to arrive at the presidency."
That was Bolivian President Evo Morales in an interview during his first trip ever to the United States last September. Morales, an Aymara Indian, is the first indigenous president in South America in more than five centuries.
He appears to be practicing what he preaches. The workday for the President and his cabinet begins at 5 a.m. and often goes past 11 p.m. There is no hint of corruption in the presidency, nor would it be tolerated. And as he passed his first year in office last month, the benefits of honest government were showing.
In the last year the government's revenue from hydrocarbons (mostly natural gas) has increased by more than $340 million dollars, an amount that – relative to Bolivia's economy – is about 70 percent bigger than our federal budget deficit. It has tripled in the last two years, and is expected to triple again over the next four years, due to the government's decision to re-nationalize the industry.
In the United States we don't usually associate nationalization with good government, but for a country that is highly dependent on natural resource exports it can make a huge difference for the public to get its share of the revenues from these resources, rather than having corrupt officials give them away to foreign companies.
This is especially true if the government is committed to using these revenues to benefit the poor. In Bolivia, the poorest country in South America, this includes 64 percent of the population. The Morales government has been investing in the poor: for example, it has approved a program of free reproductive health services for women, is expanding health care to children and people over 60, and building rural clinics. More than 5 million acres of previously state-owned land have been distributed to people in the countryside, and the government has plans to redistribute an area the size of Nebraska.
These are all reforms that Morales promised in his electoral campaign, which he won with the largest margin in Bolivia's history of democratic elections. That is the way democracy is supposed to work: people vote for change, and they get it.
Not everyone sees it that way. Last month, the former US National Intelligence Director, John Negroponte, now the number two official in the State Department, said that democracy "is at risk" in Bolivia. And Bolivia's government is often portrayed here in Cold War terms reminiscent of the 1950s: as part of an "anti-American" alliance of left governments – generally including Venezuela and Cuba – that we should be worried about.
This obscures what is really happening in Bolivia, which has little to do with any foreign countries but is a product of its own political process. The drafting of a new constitution, re-nationalization of the gas industry, land reform, and the rejection of a U.S.-sponsored trade agreement are all demands that came directly – and very insistently – from the Bolivian people. The Bolivians tried Washington's prescription for economic development for decades – and it failed miserably. Aside from the glaring inequality that is obvious to any visitor, the country's per capita income today is less than it was a quarter-century ago. So now they are trying something different, and have put together their own national development plan. But the government has maintained good relations with Washington and still sees the United States as an important trading partner.
The Morales government has made mistakes – for example in dealing with movements for local autonomy in the wealthier eastern regions of the country. But it appears to learn from its mistakes, and has avoided the repression deployed by its predecessors – the prior government killed dozens of people in the streets -- even in the face of violent protests. It faces many daunting challenges, mostly in putting together an efficient and effective government at all levels and implementing a development strategy that can reduce the country's dependence on natural resources. But honest government at the top is a good start, and worthy of respect.
Mark Weisbrot is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, in Washington, D.C.
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
Chiquita and terrorism
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20070320_chiquitas_slipping_appeal/
Posted on Mar 20, 2007
By Amy Goodman
What do Osama bin Laden and Chiquita bananas have in common? Both have used their millions to finance terrorism.
The Justice Department has just fined Chiquita Brands International $25 million for funding a terrorist organization ... for years. Chiquita must also cooperate fully with ongoing investigations into its payments to the ultra-right-wing Colombian paramilitary group Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia. Chiquita made almost monthly payments to the AUC from 1997 to 2004, totaling at least $1.7 million.
The AUC is a brutal paramilitary umbrella group, with an estimated 15,000 to 20,000 armed troops. It was named a terrorist organization by the United States on Sept. 10, 2001. Among its standard tactics are kidnapping, torture, disappearance, rape, murder, beatings, extortion and drug trafficking.
Chiquita claims it had to make the payments under threat from the AUC in order to protect its employees and property. Chiquita’s outside lawyers implored them to stop the illegal payments, to no avail. The payments were made by check through Chiquita’s Colombian subsidiary, Banadex. When Chiquita executives figured out how illegal the payments were, they started delivering them in cash. Chiquita sold Banadex in June 2004 when the heat got too intense.
While the AUC was collecting U.S. dinero from Chiquita, it was butchering thousands of innocent people in rural Colombia. Chengue (pronounced CHEN-gay) was a small farming village in the state of Sucre. About 80 AUC paramilitary members went into the town in the early hours of Jan. 17, 2001. They rounded up the men and smashed their skulls with stones and a sledgehammer, killing 24 of them. One 19-year-old perpetrator confessed, naming the organizers of the mass murder, including police and navy officials. To date, he is the only one who has been punished. This is just one of hundreds of massacres carried out by AUC.
Chiquita has had a long history of criminal behavior. It was the subject of an extraordinary exposé in its hometown paper, The Cincinnati Enquirer, in 1998. The paper found that Chiquita exposed entire communities to dangerous U.S.-banned pesticides, forced the eviction of an entire Honduran village at gunpoint and its subsequent bulldozing, suppressed unions, unwittingly allowed the use of Chiquita transport ships to move cocaine internationally, and paid a fortune to U.S. politicians to influence trade policy. The lead reporter, Mike Gallagher, illegally accessed more than 2,000 Chiquita voice mails. The voice mails backed up his story, but his methods got him fired. The Enquirer issued a front-page apology and paid Chiquita a reported $14 million. The voice-mail scandal rocked the Enquirer, burying the important exposé.
Chiquita was formerly called the United Fruit Co., which with the help of its former lawyer, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, and his brother Allen Dulles’ Central Intelligence Agency overthrew the democratically elected president of Guatemala, Jacobo Arbenz Guzman, in 1954. And you can go back further. Colombian Nobel Laureate Gabriel García Márquez wrote in his classic “One Hundred Years of Solitude” about the 1928 Santa Marta massacre of striking United Fruit banana workers: “When the banana company arrived ... the old policemen were replaced by hired assassins.”
While the U.S. is seeking extradition of Colombia-based Chiquita executives, the administration of President Alvaro Uribe in Colombia, with its own officials now linked to the right-wing paramilitaries, has countered that Colombia would seek the extradition of U.S.-based Chiquita executives. Colombian prosecutors are also seeking information in Chiquita’s role in smuggling 3,000 AK-47 rifles and millions of rounds of ammunition to paramilitaries in November 2001.
A $25-million fine to a multibillion-dollar corporation like Chiquita is a mere slap on the wrist, the cost of doing business. Presidents like George W. Bush and Uribe, businessmen first, while squabbling over extraditions, would never lose track of their overarching shared goal of a stridently pro-corporate, military-supported so-called free-trade regime. As long as that remains the same, union organizers and hard-working farmers, like the men of Chengue, will continue to be killed on behalf of Chiquita or some other multinational company.
That next organic, fair-trade banana you buy just might save a life.
Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!,” a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on 500 stations in North America.
© 2007 Amy Goodman; distributed by King Features Syndicate
A Progressive Journal of News and Opinion. Editor, Robert Scheer. Publisher, Zuade Kaufman.
Copyright © 2007 Truthdig, L.L.C. All rights reserved.
Posted on Mar 20, 2007
By Amy Goodman
What do Osama bin Laden and Chiquita bananas have in common? Both have used their millions to finance terrorism.
The Justice Department has just fined Chiquita Brands International $25 million for funding a terrorist organization ... for years. Chiquita must also cooperate fully with ongoing investigations into its payments to the ultra-right-wing Colombian paramilitary group Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia. Chiquita made almost monthly payments to the AUC from 1997 to 2004, totaling at least $1.7 million.
The AUC is a brutal paramilitary umbrella group, with an estimated 15,000 to 20,000 armed troops. It was named a terrorist organization by the United States on Sept. 10, 2001. Among its standard tactics are kidnapping, torture, disappearance, rape, murder, beatings, extortion and drug trafficking.
Chiquita claims it had to make the payments under threat from the AUC in order to protect its employees and property. Chiquita’s outside lawyers implored them to stop the illegal payments, to no avail. The payments were made by check through Chiquita’s Colombian subsidiary, Banadex. When Chiquita executives figured out how illegal the payments were, they started delivering them in cash. Chiquita sold Banadex in June 2004 when the heat got too intense.
While the AUC was collecting U.S. dinero from Chiquita, it was butchering thousands of innocent people in rural Colombia. Chengue (pronounced CHEN-gay) was a small farming village in the state of Sucre. About 80 AUC paramilitary members went into the town in the early hours of Jan. 17, 2001. They rounded up the men and smashed their skulls with stones and a sledgehammer, killing 24 of them. One 19-year-old perpetrator confessed, naming the organizers of the mass murder, including police and navy officials. To date, he is the only one who has been punished. This is just one of hundreds of massacres carried out by AUC.
Chiquita has had a long history of criminal behavior. It was the subject of an extraordinary exposé in its hometown paper, The Cincinnati Enquirer, in 1998. The paper found that Chiquita exposed entire communities to dangerous U.S.-banned pesticides, forced the eviction of an entire Honduran village at gunpoint and its subsequent bulldozing, suppressed unions, unwittingly allowed the use of Chiquita transport ships to move cocaine internationally, and paid a fortune to U.S. politicians to influence trade policy. The lead reporter, Mike Gallagher, illegally accessed more than 2,000 Chiquita voice mails. The voice mails backed up his story, but his methods got him fired. The Enquirer issued a front-page apology and paid Chiquita a reported $14 million. The voice-mail scandal rocked the Enquirer, burying the important exposé.
Chiquita was formerly called the United Fruit Co., which with the help of its former lawyer, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, and his brother Allen Dulles’ Central Intelligence Agency overthrew the democratically elected president of Guatemala, Jacobo Arbenz Guzman, in 1954. And you can go back further. Colombian Nobel Laureate Gabriel García Márquez wrote in his classic “One Hundred Years of Solitude” about the 1928 Santa Marta massacre of striking United Fruit banana workers: “When the banana company arrived ... the old policemen were replaced by hired assassins.”
While the U.S. is seeking extradition of Colombia-based Chiquita executives, the administration of President Alvaro Uribe in Colombia, with its own officials now linked to the right-wing paramilitaries, has countered that Colombia would seek the extradition of U.S.-based Chiquita executives. Colombian prosecutors are also seeking information in Chiquita’s role in smuggling 3,000 AK-47 rifles and millions of rounds of ammunition to paramilitaries in November 2001.
A $25-million fine to a multibillion-dollar corporation like Chiquita is a mere slap on the wrist, the cost of doing business. Presidents like George W. Bush and Uribe, businessmen first, while squabbling over extraditions, would never lose track of their overarching shared goal of a stridently pro-corporate, military-supported so-called free-trade regime. As long as that remains the same, union organizers and hard-working farmers, like the men of Chengue, will continue to be killed on behalf of Chiquita or some other multinational company.
That next organic, fair-trade banana you buy just might save a life.
Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!,” a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on 500 stations in North America.
© 2007 Amy Goodman; distributed by King Features Syndicate
A Progressive Journal of News and Opinion. Editor, Robert Scheer. Publisher, Zuade Kaufman.
Copyright © 2007 Truthdig, L.L.C. All rights reserved.
Monday, March 12, 2007
Indentured servants in the U.S.: braceros
Indentured Servants in America
By Bob Herbert
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/03/12/opinion/12herbert.html
New York Times March 12, 2007
A must-read for anyone who favors an expansion of guest
worker programs in the U.S. is a stunning new report
from the Southern Poverty Law Center that details the
widespread abuse of highly vulnerable, poverty-stricken
workers in programs that already exist.
The report is titled 'Close to Slavery: Guestworker
Programs in the United States.' It will be formally
released today at a press conference in Washington.
Workers recruited from Mexico, South America, Asia and
elsewhere to work in American hotels and in such labor-
intensive industries as forestry, seafood processing
and construction are often ruthlessly exploited.
They are routinely cheated out of their wages, which
are low to begin with. They are bound like indentured
servants to the middlemen and employers who arrange
their work tours in the U.S. And they are virtual
hostages of the American companies that employ them.
The law does not allow these 'guests' to change jobs
while they're here. If a particular employer is
unscrupulous, as is very often the case, the worker has
little or no recourse.
One of the guest workers profiled in the report was a
psychology student recruited in the Dominican Republic
to work at a hotel in New Orleans in the aftermath of
Hurricane Katrina. The woman had taken on $4,000 in
debt to cover 'fees' and other expenses that were
required for her to get a desk job that paid $6 an
hour.
But after a month, her hours were steadily reduced
until she was working only 15 or 20 hours a week. That
left her with barely enough money to survive, and with
no way of paying off her crushing debt.
The woman and her fellow guest workers had hardly
enough money for food. 'We would just buy Chinese food
because it was the cheapest,' she said. 'We would buy
one plate a day and share it between two or three
people.' She told the authors of the report: 'I felt
like an animal without claws - defenseless. It is the
same as slavery.'
Steven Greenhouse of The Times recently reported on a
waiter from Indonesia who took on $6,000 in debt to
become a guest worker. He arrived in North Carolina
expecting to do farm work but found that there was no
job for him at all.
The report focused primarily on the 120,000 foreign
workers who are allowed into the U.S. each year to work
on farms or at other low-skilled jobs. In most cases
the guest workers take on a heavy debt load to
participate in the program, anywhere from $500 to more
than $10,000. Worried about the welfare of their
families back home, and with the huge debt hanging over
their heads, the workers are most often docile, even in
the face of the most egregious treatment.
The result, said the report, is that they are
'systematically exploited and abused.'
Some of the worst abuses occur in the forestry
industry. The report said, 'Virtually every forestry
company that the Southern Poverty Law Center has
encountered provides workers with pay stubs showing
that they have worked substantially fewer hours than
they actually worked.'
A favorite (and extremely cruel) tactic of employers is
the seizure of guest workers' identity documents, such
as passports and Social Security cards. That leaves the
workers incredibly vulnerable.
'Numerous employers have refused to return these
documents even when the worker simply wanted to return
to his home country,' the report said. 'The Southern
Poverty Law Center also has encountered numerous
incidents where employers destroyed passports or visas
in order to convert workers into undocumented status.'
Without their papers the workers live in abject fear of
encountering the authorities, who will treat them as
illegals. They are completely at the mercy of the
employers.
President Bush has been relentless in his push to
greatly expand guest worker programs as part of his
effort to revise the nation's immigration laws. To
expand these programs without looking closely at the
gruesome abuses already taking place would be both
tragic and ridiculous.
'This is not a situation where there are just a few
bad-apple employers,' said Mary Bauer, director of the
Immigrant Justice Project at the Southern Poverty Law
Center, which has initiated a number of lawsuits on
behalf of abused workers. 'Our experience is that it's
the very structure of the program that lends itself to
abuse.'
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
________________________
By Bob Herbert
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/03/12/opinion/12herbert.html
New York Times March 12, 2007
A must-read for anyone who favors an expansion of guest
worker programs in the U.S. is a stunning new report
from the Southern Poverty Law Center that details the
widespread abuse of highly vulnerable, poverty-stricken
workers in programs that already exist.
The report is titled 'Close to Slavery: Guestworker
Programs in the United States.' It will be formally
released today at a press conference in Washington.
Workers recruited from Mexico, South America, Asia and
elsewhere to work in American hotels and in such labor-
intensive industries as forestry, seafood processing
and construction are often ruthlessly exploited.
They are routinely cheated out of their wages, which
are low to begin with. They are bound like indentured
servants to the middlemen and employers who arrange
their work tours in the U.S. And they are virtual
hostages of the American companies that employ them.
The law does not allow these 'guests' to change jobs
while they're here. If a particular employer is
unscrupulous, as is very often the case, the worker has
little or no recourse.
One of the guest workers profiled in the report was a
psychology student recruited in the Dominican Republic
to work at a hotel in New Orleans in the aftermath of
Hurricane Katrina. The woman had taken on $4,000 in
debt to cover 'fees' and other expenses that were
required for her to get a desk job that paid $6 an
hour.
But after a month, her hours were steadily reduced
until she was working only 15 or 20 hours a week. That
left her with barely enough money to survive, and with
no way of paying off her crushing debt.
The woman and her fellow guest workers had hardly
enough money for food. 'We would just buy Chinese food
because it was the cheapest,' she said. 'We would buy
one plate a day and share it between two or three
people.' She told the authors of the report: 'I felt
like an animal without claws - defenseless. It is the
same as slavery.'
Steven Greenhouse of The Times recently reported on a
waiter from Indonesia who took on $6,000 in debt to
become a guest worker. He arrived in North Carolina
expecting to do farm work but found that there was no
job for him at all.
The report focused primarily on the 120,000 foreign
workers who are allowed into the U.S. each year to work
on farms or at other low-skilled jobs. In most cases
the guest workers take on a heavy debt load to
participate in the program, anywhere from $500 to more
than $10,000. Worried about the welfare of their
families back home, and with the huge debt hanging over
their heads, the workers are most often docile, even in
the face of the most egregious treatment.
The result, said the report, is that they are
'systematically exploited and abused.'
Some of the worst abuses occur in the forestry
industry. The report said, 'Virtually every forestry
company that the Southern Poverty Law Center has
encountered provides workers with pay stubs showing
that they have worked substantially fewer hours than
they actually worked.'
A favorite (and extremely cruel) tactic of employers is
the seizure of guest workers' identity documents, such
as passports and Social Security cards. That leaves the
workers incredibly vulnerable.
'Numerous employers have refused to return these
documents even when the worker simply wanted to return
to his home country,' the report said. 'The Southern
Poverty Law Center also has encountered numerous
incidents where employers destroyed passports or visas
in order to convert workers into undocumented status.'
Without their papers the workers live in abject fear of
encountering the authorities, who will treat them as
illegals. They are completely at the mercy of the
employers.
President Bush has been relentless in his push to
greatly expand guest worker programs as part of his
effort to revise the nation's immigration laws. To
expand these programs without looking closely at the
gruesome abuses already taking place would be both
tragic and ridiculous.
'This is not a situation where there are just a few
bad-apple employers,' said Mary Bauer, director of the
Immigrant Justice Project at the Southern Poverty Law
Center, which has initiated a number of lawsuits on
behalf of abused workers. 'Our experience is that it's
the very structure of the program that lends itself to
abuse.'
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
________________________
Thursday, March 08, 2007
Unity position: Immigration reform
UNITY BLUEPRINT FOR IMMIGRATION REFORM
_
MAPA and the Hermandad Mexicana Latinoamericana present the document below - Unity Blueprint for Immigration Reform - as the culmination of months of consensus-building between literally hundreds of organizations, their allies, affiliates, and friends for the purpose of presenting the story and legislative proposals of the immigrant communities in favor of federal immigration reform. The organizations have worked very hard to reach consensus on the most difficult issues, and this is our legislative program. We present this to the U.S. Congress and we will use this to organize our communities, build broader consensus across communities, and continue building the immigrants' rights movement throughout our country. Where disagreements continue to exist between our organizations, we will continue to press for unity, maintain a constructive dialogue, and deepen our consultation with our own immigrant communities.
To: Members of the United States Congress
The Unity Blueprint for Immigration Reform provides specific legislative proposals for rational and humane transformation of the current immigration policy disaster in the United States. These proposals were developed in several meetings in California, Arizona, and Texas, with over 150 organizations participating in discussions leading to the Unity Blueprint proposals. While organizations may vary widely on the strategies they adopt to bring about immigration reform, the Unity Blueprint provides positions of unity on the substance of immigration reform.
As stated in the Preamble to the Unity Blueprint, the United States urgently requires a workable, just, and fair immigration system that addresses the interests of the nation and the millions of immigrants who give their labor, talents, and investments to it without the benefit of protections and rights extended to its citizenry. We believe that the Unity Blueprint proposals are both in the national interest and in the interest of its immigrant communities. The Blueprint is built upon the unity of interests between the nation and its immigrant workers and communities.
The following is a summary of the essential provisions of the Unity Blueprint
1. Protect the well-being and safety of immigrant and U.S. citizen children. Amend the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) to permit the parents of U.S. citizens to petition through their US citizen children under 21 years of age, avoiding the deportation of the parents of US citizen children and allowing such children equal opportunities with other citizen children. Support enactment of the DREAM Act. Support enactment of the Child Citizen Protection Act. Amend the INA to require that apprehended immigrant children are informed about rights they possess to legalize their status under existing laws enacted by Congress and are afforded the assistance of counsel.
2. Achieve faithful enforcement of immigration laws by reinstating the jurisdiction of the federal courts to review agency decisions involving immigrants. Repeal provisions in the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, and the 2005 Real ID Act that strip the courts of their historic role to ensure that the Executive faithfully implements the laws of Congress.
3. Achieve maximum protection of the labor rights and working conditions of U.S. and immigrant workers. Repeal current Employer Sanctions laws that are ineffective in stopping the hiring of undocumented migrants but cause widespread discrimination against citizens and are used to further threaten and exploit undocumented workers. Bring antidiscrimination protections in the INA into line with those in other civil rights laws. Ensure that immigration enforcement complements rather than undermines the enforcement of labor and employment laws. Review international trade agreements that contribute to undocumented migration. Prohibit States from considering immigration status in determining worker benefits. Increase budgets for the Wage and Hour Division of the Department of Labor and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
4. Achieve maximum reduction in the size of the undocumented population. Enact a single-tier and truly comprehensive legalization program offered to all undocumented persons who have not committed serious crimes so as to make them a danger to their communitites. Provide an expedited legalization program for long-time resident Central American and other refugees previously granted some form of temporary status.
5. Achieve a realistic legal framework for future migration. Restructure the immigration quota system to better match the known family and employment-based demand. Ensure that the issuance of permanent and temporary employment- based visas are determined by labor needs based upon reliable economic indicators, rather than an employer-driven system that is easily gamed. Temporary worker programs should not be expanded and must be reformed to provide full labor rights and the ability to seek resident status after three years. Repeal the 3 and 10-year and permanent bars that prevent immigrants from legalizing their status. Restore the ability of immigrants to legalize status in the U.S. despite overstaying visas or entering without inspection.
6. Achieve rational and humane operational control of the borders. Require that migrants apprehended entering the country be informed of rights extended to them by Congress before they are deported (rights available to victims of trafficking and violent crimes, and abused and abandoned unaccompanied juveniles). Prohibit the use of U.S. military forces for border enforcement. Make enforcement of laws to prevent vigilantism a priority and monitor vigilante activity. Decriminalize humanitarian assistance to migrants injured while attempting to enter the country. Make border enforcement solely a federal function. Repeal the Secure Fence Act of 2006 in its entirety. Prohibit Border Patrol high speed chases and use of deadly force except when required to protect life or serious injury. Repeal recently enacted laws that permit “expedited removal” of certain migrants apprehended within 100 miles of the border. Enact legislation permitting border crossing by indigenous people. Set up an Independent Commission to provide accountability, consultation, and monitoring of federal border policies and practices.
7. Achieve rational and humane interior enforcement and related policies relating to the presence of immigrant communities. Enact legislation prohibiting mass non-individualized detentions of citizens and immigrants at work sites and elsewhere. Repeal the recent law that bars States from issuing drivers licenses to undocumented immigrant drivers. Grant suspension of deportation or registry to immigrants of good moral character with five years continuous residence. Repeal recent laws that prevent release on bond for apprehended migrants who are not a flight risk or risk to the community. Enact legislation making removal proceedings open to the public. Enact legislation making technical violations of registration requirements punishable by civil penalties. Require accuracy in the National Crime Information Center database. Enact legislation to amend the definition of an “aggravated felony” in the INA (now includes misdemeanors and non- aggravated crimes). Enact legislation to prohibit the retroactive application of immigration laws. Enact laws to grant immigrants full access to financial institutions.
Long-range immigration policy must also address the underlying root causes that drive migration to the United States, including massive inequality in wealth distribution, economic dislocation in major sending communities, and free trade agreements that have caused workers to loose their jobs in migrant sending communities. No rational policy can ignore these realities.
The Unity Blueprint of legislative proposals is intended to guide legislators, advocates, and the public on the framework of a rational and humane immigration policy that protects and promotes the interests of children, U.S. workers, immigrant workers, sending communities from which immigrants come, and the communities in which they live and work in the United States.
[If you support the framework of the Unity Blueprint and would like to co-sign this letter, or have comments, please email Pablo Alvarado apabloalvarado@aol.com, Dolores Huerta ahuerta@doloreshuerta.org, Rosa Rosales presidentrosales@lulac.org, Angela Sanbrano angela.san1@verizon.net, and Peter Schey pschey@centerforhumanrights.org]
Pablo Alvarado
National Coordinator, National Day Laborers Organizing Network
Maria Elena Durazo
Executive Secretary- Treasurer, Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO
Father Richard Estrada
Our Lady Queen of Angels, Los Angeles
Antonio Gonzalez
President, William C. Velasquez Institute
Dolores Huerta
President, Dolores Huerta Foundation & Co-Founder of the United Farmworkers Union
Victor Narro
Project Director, UCLA Downtown Labor Center
Rosa Rosales
National President, League of United Latin American Citizens
Angelica Salas
Executive Director, Coalition for Humane Immigrants Rights of Los Angeles, and
Angela Sanbrano
Executive Director, Central American Resource Center (Los Angeles) and President of the National Alliance of Latin American and Caribbean Communities
Peter Schey
President & Ex. Director, Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law (CHRCL).
INTRODUCTION
_
MAPA and the Hermandad Mexicana Latinoamericana present the document below - Unity Blueprint for Immigration Reform - as the culmination of months of consensus-building between literally hundreds of organizations, their allies, affiliates, and friends for the purpose of presenting the story and legislative proposals of the immigrant communities in favor of federal immigration reform. The organizations have worked very hard to reach consensus on the most difficult issues, and this is our legislative program. We present this to the U.S. Congress and we will use this to organize our communities, build broader consensus across communities, and continue building the immigrants' rights movement throughout our country. Where disagreements continue to exist between our organizations, we will continue to press for unity, maintain a constructive dialogue, and deepen our consultation with our own immigrant communities.
To: Members of the United States Congress
The Unity Blueprint for Immigration Reform provides specific legislative proposals for rational and humane transformation of the current immigration policy disaster in the United States. These proposals were developed in several meetings in California, Arizona, and Texas, with over 150 organizations participating in discussions leading to the Unity Blueprint proposals. While organizations may vary widely on the strategies they adopt to bring about immigration reform, the Unity Blueprint provides positions of unity on the substance of immigration reform.
As stated in the Preamble to the Unity Blueprint, the United States urgently requires a workable, just, and fair immigration system that addresses the interests of the nation and the millions of immigrants who give their labor, talents, and investments to it without the benefit of protections and rights extended to its citizenry. We believe that the Unity Blueprint proposals are both in the national interest and in the interest of its immigrant communities. The Blueprint is built upon the unity of interests between the nation and its immigrant workers and communities.
The following is a summary of the essential provisions of the Unity Blueprint
1. Protect the well-being and safety of immigrant and U.S. citizen children. Amend the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) to permit the parents of U.S. citizens to petition through their US citizen children under 21 years of age, avoiding the deportation of the parents of US citizen children and allowing such children equal opportunities with other citizen children. Support enactment of the DREAM Act. Support enactment of the Child Citizen Protection Act. Amend the INA to require that apprehended immigrant children are informed about rights they possess to legalize their status under existing laws enacted by Congress and are afforded the assistance of counsel.
2. Achieve faithful enforcement of immigration laws by reinstating the jurisdiction of the federal courts to review agency decisions involving immigrants. Repeal provisions in the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, and the 2005 Real ID Act that strip the courts of their historic role to ensure that the Executive faithfully implements the laws of Congress.
3. Achieve maximum protection of the labor rights and working conditions of U.S. and immigrant workers. Repeal current Employer Sanctions laws that are ineffective in stopping the hiring of undocumented migrants but cause widespread discrimination against citizens and are used to further threaten and exploit undocumented workers. Bring antidiscrimination protections in the INA into line with those in other civil rights laws. Ensure that immigration enforcement complements rather than undermines the enforcement of labor and employment laws. Review international trade agreements that contribute to undocumented migration. Prohibit States from considering immigration status in determining worker benefits. Increase budgets for the Wage and Hour Division of the Department of Labor and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
4. Achieve maximum reduction in the size of the undocumented population. Enact a single-tier and truly comprehensive legalization program offered to all undocumented persons who have not committed serious crimes so as to make them a danger to their communitites. Provide an expedited legalization program for long-time resident Central American and other refugees previously granted some form of temporary status.
5. Achieve a realistic legal framework for future migration. Restructure the immigration quota system to better match the known family and employment-based demand. Ensure that the issuance of permanent and temporary employment- based visas are determined by labor needs based upon reliable economic indicators, rather than an employer-driven system that is easily gamed. Temporary worker programs should not be expanded and must be reformed to provide full labor rights and the ability to seek resident status after three years. Repeal the 3 and 10-year and permanent bars that prevent immigrants from legalizing their status. Restore the ability of immigrants to legalize status in the U.S. despite overstaying visas or entering without inspection.
6. Achieve rational and humane operational control of the borders. Require that migrants apprehended entering the country be informed of rights extended to them by Congress before they are deported (rights available to victims of trafficking and violent crimes, and abused and abandoned unaccompanied juveniles). Prohibit the use of U.S. military forces for border enforcement. Make enforcement of laws to prevent vigilantism a priority and monitor vigilante activity. Decriminalize humanitarian assistance to migrants injured while attempting to enter the country. Make border enforcement solely a federal function. Repeal the Secure Fence Act of 2006 in its entirety. Prohibit Border Patrol high speed chases and use of deadly force except when required to protect life or serious injury. Repeal recently enacted laws that permit “expedited removal” of certain migrants apprehended within 100 miles of the border. Enact legislation permitting border crossing by indigenous people. Set up an Independent Commission to provide accountability, consultation, and monitoring of federal border policies and practices.
7. Achieve rational and humane interior enforcement and related policies relating to the presence of immigrant communities. Enact legislation prohibiting mass non-individualized detentions of citizens and immigrants at work sites and elsewhere. Repeal the recent law that bars States from issuing drivers licenses to undocumented immigrant drivers. Grant suspension of deportation or registry to immigrants of good moral character with five years continuous residence. Repeal recent laws that prevent release on bond for apprehended migrants who are not a flight risk or risk to the community. Enact legislation making removal proceedings open to the public. Enact legislation making technical violations of registration requirements punishable by civil penalties. Require accuracy in the National Crime Information Center database. Enact legislation to amend the definition of an “aggravated felony” in the INA (now includes misdemeanors and non- aggravated crimes). Enact legislation to prohibit the retroactive application of immigration laws. Enact laws to grant immigrants full access to financial institutions.
Long-range immigration policy must also address the underlying root causes that drive migration to the United States, including massive inequality in wealth distribution, economic dislocation in major sending communities, and free trade agreements that have caused workers to loose their jobs in migrant sending communities. No rational policy can ignore these realities.
The Unity Blueprint of legislative proposals is intended to guide legislators, advocates, and the public on the framework of a rational and humane immigration policy that protects and promotes the interests of children, U.S. workers, immigrant workers, sending communities from which immigrants come, and the communities in which they live and work in the United States.
[If you support the framework of the Unity Blueprint and would like to co-sign this letter, or have comments, please email Pablo Alvarado apabloalvarado@aol.com, Dolores Huerta ahuerta@doloreshuerta.org, Rosa Rosales presidentrosales@lulac.org, Angela Sanbrano angela.san1@verizon.net, and Peter Schey pschey@centerforhumanrights.org]
Pablo Alvarado
National Coordinator, National Day Laborers Organizing Network
Maria Elena Durazo
Executive Secretary- Treasurer, Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO
Father Richard Estrada
Our Lady Queen of Angels, Los Angeles
Antonio Gonzalez
President, William C. Velasquez Institute
Dolores Huerta
President, Dolores Huerta Foundation & Co-Founder of the United Farmworkers Union
Victor Narro
Project Director, UCLA Downtown Labor Center
Rosa Rosales
National President, League of United Latin American Citizens
Angelica Salas
Executive Director, Coalition for Humane Immigrants Rights of Los Angeles, and
Angela Sanbrano
Executive Director, Central American Resource Center (Los Angeles) and President of the National Alliance of Latin American and Caribbean Communities
Peter Schey
President & Ex. Director, Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law (CHRCL).
INTRODUCTION
Washington is Losing its Grip on Latin America
Washington Is Losing Its Grip on Latin America
By Mark Weisbrot, McClatchy-Tribune Information Services
Posted on March 6, 2007, Printed on March 8, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/48829/
"State of Denial" is the title of Bob Woodward's famous book on the Bush team's road to disaster in Iraq, but it would have served just as well for a description of their Latin America policy. This week President Bush heads South for a seven-day, five country, trip to Latin America to see if he can counter the populist political tide that has brought left governments to about half the population of the region.
Carrying vague promises of a joint effort on ethanol production -- but no offer to lower tariffs protecting the U.S. market -- President Bush hopes to entice Brazil into taking his side against his nemesis, President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. This is a fantasy.
President Lula da Silva of Brazil made a point of visiting Venezuela for his first foreign trip after being re-elected last October. There he presided over the dedication of a $1.2 billion bridge over the Orinoco river, financed by the Brazilian government, while he lavished praise on Chavez and gave the popular Venezuelan president an added boost in his own re-election campaign.
The Bush Administration's policy of trying to isolate Venezuela from its neighbors has only succeeded in isolating Washington. Last week President Nestor Kirchner of Argentina, speaking in Caracas, flatly rejected the notion that Argentina or Brazil should "contain President Chavez," who he called "a brother and a friend." In another thinly-veiled swipe at Washington, Kirchner said: "It cannot be that it bothers anyone that our nations become integrated." At the same time he announced that Venezuela and Argentina will jointly issue a "Bond of the South" for $1.5 billion.
If Washington is in denial about the political reality of Latin America, it is even more in denial about the economics. For twenty-five years our government has pushed a series of reforms throughout the region: tighter fiscal and monetary policies, more independent central banks, indiscriminate opening to international trade and investment, privatization of public enterprises, and the abandonment of economic development strategies and industrial policies. The Bush team thinks that these reforms, known as "neoliberalism" in Latin America, were just the right formula to stimulate economic growth.
But in fact Latin America's economic growth over the last 25 years has been a disaster -- the worst long-term growth failure in more than a hundred years. From 1980-2000 GDP per person grew by only 9 percent, and another 4 percent for 2000-2005. Compare this to 82 percent for just the two decades from 1960-1980, and it is easy to see why candidates promising new economic policies have been elected (and some re-elected) in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Uruguay, and Venezuela. They also came close to winning in Mexico, Peru, and Costa Rica.
The left governments that have introduced new economic policies have done pretty well: Argentina has grown by a phenomenal 8.6 percent annually for nearly five years, pulling more than 8 million people out of poverty in a country of 36 million. Bolivia has increased government revenue from hydrocarbons by about 6.7 percent of GDP, an amount that would equal $900 billion in the United States, and is using the additional revenue to increase to help its majority poor. Venezuela is also using the government's increased take of oil production to provide health care, education, and subsidized food for the poor. All of these governments have succeeded by implementing policies that Washington opposed.
President Bush will get a good reception from the right-wing governments he is visiting: his close allies in Mexico, Colombia, and Guatemala. Colombia is in the midst of a huge national scandal over the responsibility of government officials for mass murder and assassinations of political opponents. More trade unionists are killed in Colombia each year than in the rest of the world combined. Guatemala is another right-wing ally with a terrible human rights record: two weeks ago three Central American parlimentarians were murdered by a Guatemalan police death squad. All three governments have been linked to narco-trafficking, but President Bush will likely praise them for their co-operation in the war on drugs.
It's all about denial. The political and economic changes sweeping Latin America are a serious break with the failed policies of the past. Washington's influence has collapsed, and is not likely to recover.
Mark Weisbrot is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, in Washington, D.C.
By Mark Weisbrot, McClatchy-Tribune Information Services
Posted on March 6, 2007, Printed on March 8, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/48829/
"State of Denial" is the title of Bob Woodward's famous book on the Bush team's road to disaster in Iraq, but it would have served just as well for a description of their Latin America policy. This week President Bush heads South for a seven-day, five country, trip to Latin America to see if he can counter the populist political tide that has brought left governments to about half the population of the region.
Carrying vague promises of a joint effort on ethanol production -- but no offer to lower tariffs protecting the U.S. market -- President Bush hopes to entice Brazil into taking his side against his nemesis, President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. This is a fantasy.
President Lula da Silva of Brazil made a point of visiting Venezuela for his first foreign trip after being re-elected last October. There he presided over the dedication of a $1.2 billion bridge over the Orinoco river, financed by the Brazilian government, while he lavished praise on Chavez and gave the popular Venezuelan president an added boost in his own re-election campaign.
The Bush Administration's policy of trying to isolate Venezuela from its neighbors has only succeeded in isolating Washington. Last week President Nestor Kirchner of Argentina, speaking in Caracas, flatly rejected the notion that Argentina or Brazil should "contain President Chavez," who he called "a brother and a friend." In another thinly-veiled swipe at Washington, Kirchner said: "It cannot be that it bothers anyone that our nations become integrated." At the same time he announced that Venezuela and Argentina will jointly issue a "Bond of the South" for $1.5 billion.
If Washington is in denial about the political reality of Latin America, it is even more in denial about the economics. For twenty-five years our government has pushed a series of reforms throughout the region: tighter fiscal and monetary policies, more independent central banks, indiscriminate opening to international trade and investment, privatization of public enterprises, and the abandonment of economic development strategies and industrial policies. The Bush team thinks that these reforms, known as "neoliberalism" in Latin America, were just the right formula to stimulate economic growth.
But in fact Latin America's economic growth over the last 25 years has been a disaster -- the worst long-term growth failure in more than a hundred years. From 1980-2000 GDP per person grew by only 9 percent, and another 4 percent for 2000-2005. Compare this to 82 percent for just the two decades from 1960-1980, and it is easy to see why candidates promising new economic policies have been elected (and some re-elected) in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Uruguay, and Venezuela. They also came close to winning in Mexico, Peru, and Costa Rica.
The left governments that have introduced new economic policies have done pretty well: Argentina has grown by a phenomenal 8.6 percent annually for nearly five years, pulling more than 8 million people out of poverty in a country of 36 million. Bolivia has increased government revenue from hydrocarbons by about 6.7 percent of GDP, an amount that would equal $900 billion in the United States, and is using the additional revenue to increase to help its majority poor. Venezuela is also using the government's increased take of oil production to provide health care, education, and subsidized food for the poor. All of these governments have succeeded by implementing policies that Washington opposed.
President Bush will get a good reception from the right-wing governments he is visiting: his close allies in Mexico, Colombia, and Guatemala. Colombia is in the midst of a huge national scandal over the responsibility of government officials for mass murder and assassinations of political opponents. More trade unionists are killed in Colombia each year than in the rest of the world combined. Guatemala is another right-wing ally with a terrible human rights record: two weeks ago three Central American parlimentarians were murdered by a Guatemalan police death squad. All three governments have been linked to narco-trafficking, but President Bush will likely praise them for their co-operation in the war on drugs.
It's all about denial. The political and economic changes sweeping Latin America are a serious break with the failed policies of the past. Washington's influence has collapsed, and is not likely to recover.
Mark Weisbrot is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, in Washington, D.C.
Friday, March 02, 2007
MAPA and immigration
Mexican American Political Association
March 02, 2007
NCLR’s Embrace of Bracero-type Program a Trojan Horse
_
“Is this indentured alien – an almost perfect model of the economic man, an ‘input factor’ stripped of the political and social attributes that liberal democracy likes to ascribe to all human beings ideally – is this bracero the prototype of the production man of the future?” – asked Ernesto Galarza, the legendary author, labor organizer, community leader, and founder of the National Council of La Raza in his seminal work, “Merchants of Labor” in 1964, wherein he described the managed migration of Mexican farm workers in California from 1942 to 1963.
Fast forward to the current national debate around federal immigration reform and we encounter Galarza’s creation, NCLR, morphed into a naked apologist for that sector of corporate America, which is clamoring for modern-day braceros – and not solely reserved for agriculture. But, then again, it probably couldn’t have been otherwise. NCLR has been marketed by American big business as the “largest Hispanic civil rights organization in the U.S.” – a figment of a not too sophisticated marketing strategy, but almost entirely funded and subsidized by the Wal- Marts of the U.S. corporate landscape.
There is nothing in the distant or recent history of similar contract-worker programs in the U.S. that would inspire confidence in any of the current proposals for what NCLR’s CEO, Janet Murguia, has called a “new worker program.” She recently declared in an op-ed piece published in the Washington Post on February 11, 2007, that her “organization and many Latino leaders find ourselves in the interesting position of being principal advocates for a significant new worker visa program as part of comprehensive immigration reform.” Yet, she fails to identify what other “Latino leaders” advocate such a position, or organization that has a track record of advocating for and representing immigrant workers, or immigrant leaders and organizations. She couldn’t because there are none. In the same piece, Murguia lays out the historical experience of bracero programs as “dreadful,” “infamous,” and “synonymous with worker abuse,” yet goes on to advocate for a modern version of the program – an incredible summersault of logic.
We should remember that this is the same organization in the early 1990s – in the name of the Latino community - that was a vociferous supporter of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which has resulted in the loss of millions of American jobs, and the displacement of no less than three million Mexican small farmers from their lands, notwithstanding the opposition by labor and community-based organizations on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border during those debates. This is relevant because it goes to the question of whose interests are served by NCLR’s position on a new bracero program, and whose interests are prejudiced. Simply put, who wins and who loses?
NCLR has no history, trajectory, or reputation for serving individual immigrants in the problems that they encounter in America. It has no first-hand experience in case management in filing wage claims or addressing the systematic violations of the terms and conditions of existing contract-labor programs – H-2A and H-2B, for example. It has no stomach for litigating endemic injustices committed by employers who rob the contract laborers of the value that they create, and that stab to undermine existing prevailing wage standards, and thus, make more tenuous the social standing of native-born workers. Neither has NCLR advocated for the just resolution of the claims made by previous bracero workers who were denied the social security benefits, the funds of which were deducted from their wages, and due them by the U.S. and Mexican governments.
The Essential Worker Immigration Coalition, comprised of agribusiness, and major American corporations, but also includes NCLR, the National Immigration Forum, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and UNITE-HERE, with cozy relations with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, has been at the forefront in advocating for the 21st Century bracero program.
Contrariwise, all other labor unions affiliated with the AFL-CIO and Change to Win, immigrants’ rights coalitions, national and regional Latino organizations, and immigrant-member organizations have steadfastly opposed bracero-type programs.
What we are witnessing today is a debate shaping up similar to that which occurred prior to the passage of NAFTA in 1994. Let’s call it NAFTA II, or NAFTA coming home to roost. A massive “guest-worker” program constitutes nothing more then the importation of bound labor, cheaper than domestic labor, the inverse effect of the massive exportation of manufacturing jobs to cheap labor aboard. Speaking before the American Trucking Association recently, Newt Gingrich, former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, stated that a successful guest- worker program could “give all of you all the truck drivers you can hire.” Trucking companies are currently experiencing driver shortages. This is the real intent of big business with regard to any new contract-labor program, however the advocates of such may seek to soften the name with “guest,” “temporary,” or “new worker.”
U.S. Senator Ernest Gruening, who served in the U.S. Congress during the previous bracero period, observed at the time that, “Although American private enterprise was the beneficiary of an ample and docile labor supply, a large part of the costs were borne by the U.S. Government, i.e., the American taxpayers.” He characterized the program as one in which “corruption and exploitation were its steady concomitants. Gradually the imported labor replaced the domestic.”
Murguia claims that the critics of her position offer “no practical solutions for the flow of migrants that will surely continue or for the abuses these workers will face if they survive the trip across the border.” More than a decade after the approval of NAFTA, a fair trade to the new migrants who come to America to provide valued labor and service is a permanent visa – either employment-based or family relative-based. This would be the best measure to assure that prevailing wage standards are protected, that domestic labor not be undermined, and that labor and civil rights, and civil liberties, are more easily guaranteed. There can be nothing more practical to the migrant worker than permanent legal residency, which provides the minimum modicum of negotiating power with the employer, freedom of movement cross borders, a true statutory path to citizenship, and the ability to immigrate other loved ones.
Only such permanence in visa status will assure that new migrant workers not become a stratified permanent second-class workforce available primarily to benefit employers. Permanent legal resident status in exchange for the valued labor of the migrant worker is what I would call a fair trade, instead of the notoriously unfair “free trade” concept associated with NAFTA.
Nativo V. Lopez, National President of the Mexican American Political Association (MAPA), and the National Director of Hermandad Mexicana Latinoamericana. 2-26-07
_
WASHINGTON POST (Murguía Op-Ed): A Change of Heart on Guest Workers
By Janet Murguía Sunday, February 11, 2007; B07
After President Bush highlighted the need for a temporary-worker program as part of a larger immigration reform in his State of the Union address, Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) compared the president's proposal to slavery. Rangel is right to be concerned. Our nation's history with such programs has been dreadful.
Many Latinos still have searing memories of the infamous bracero program, which more than 50 years ago became synonymous with worker abuse. The current guest-worker programs for agriculture and other "non-skilled" labor are not much better. Experience tells us that there is good reason to be concerned that a new worker visa program could repeat these mistakes, creating a permanent, sizable subclass of workers who endure harsh treatment while simultaneously undercutting their American co- workers.
Despite these concerns, after decades of strongly opposing temporary-worker programs for the very reasons that Rangel articulates, my organization and many Latino leaders find ourselves in the interesting position of being principal advocates for a significant new worker visa program as part of comprehensive immigration reform.
Some think we got here as the result of some devil's bargain with our allies among business leaders: They get a new worker program, and we get a path to citizenship for undocumented workers. Not so. We have concluded that a new legal pathway for the future flow of immigrant workers to the United States is the safest, most reasonable path for immigrant workers, for their co-workers in this country, and for a nation hungry for order and control at the border.
We share that hunger. Latinos know that even if we pass immigration reforms that include a path to citizenship for millions of immigrants who work, pay taxes and otherwise contribute to the United States, we will have failed to fix our nation's broken immigration system unless we do what previous reforms did not: Acknowledge that there will continue to be a flow across the border and that we will do everything we can to control and regulate it.
If this year's immigration debate accomplishes what the debate in 1986 did -- marry a legalization program with additional enforcement without addressing the future flow of migrants -- we will have addressed the symptoms of our broken system without repairing it. The cost of this mistake will be enormous: a continued death toll at the border; a sizable flow of undocumented workers who come to this country under harsher conditions; increased harassment of and discrimination against Hispanic Americans often mistaken for immigrants; and exacerbated public frustration that the immigration issue is still not under control.
But we do not have to repeat past mistakes. The immigration reform bill the Senate passed last year contains a much different model of a worker visa program than the unjust model we have lived with for decades. Workers would not be at the mercy of abusive employers in that they could change jobs and alert the authorities to mistreatment. Rather than becoming a permanent second-class workforce, they would have the opportunity to earn a path to permanent status -- and ultimately citizenship -- as one of the only classes of migrants able to petition for themselves rather than relying on an employer or relative to petition for them. There are important labor protections for immigrant workers as well as for their American co-workers, including a requirement that immigrant workers be paid the prevailing wage in an industry to avoid undercutting the wages of American workers employed there. The 110th Congress has an opportunity to build from this strong start and do even better.
We are deeply aware of the risks of going down this path in the immigration reform debate, including accusations that we are selling out one group of immigrant workers to help another. But our critics offer no practical solutions for the flow of migrants that will surely continue or for the abuses these workers will face if they survive the trip across the border. We owe it to migrants, as well as to the nation that their hard work will sustain, to shape a new path for migration that is legal, safe and endowed with protections for immigrant and American workers alike.
The writer is president and chief executive of the National Council of La Raza.
Join us in this prolonged campaign for driver's licenses and visas for our families. The first step in making change is to join an organization that pursues the change we desire. We welcome you to our ranks.
Other organizations leading this movement include: Hermandad Mexicana Latinoamericana, Mexican American Political Association (MAPA), MAPA Youth Leadership, Liberty and Justice for Immigrants Movement, National Alliance for Immigrant's Rights, and immigrant's rights coalitions throughout the U.S..
CONTACT:
Nativo V. Lopez, National President of MAPA (323) 269-1575
March 02, 2007
NCLR’s Embrace of Bracero-type Program a Trojan Horse
_
“Is this indentured alien – an almost perfect model of the economic man, an ‘input factor’ stripped of the political and social attributes that liberal democracy likes to ascribe to all human beings ideally – is this bracero the prototype of the production man of the future?” – asked Ernesto Galarza, the legendary author, labor organizer, community leader, and founder of the National Council of La Raza in his seminal work, “Merchants of Labor” in 1964, wherein he described the managed migration of Mexican farm workers in California from 1942 to 1963.
Fast forward to the current national debate around federal immigration reform and we encounter Galarza’s creation, NCLR, morphed into a naked apologist for that sector of corporate America, which is clamoring for modern-day braceros – and not solely reserved for agriculture. But, then again, it probably couldn’t have been otherwise. NCLR has been marketed by American big business as the “largest Hispanic civil rights organization in the U.S.” – a figment of a not too sophisticated marketing strategy, but almost entirely funded and subsidized by the Wal- Marts of the U.S. corporate landscape.
There is nothing in the distant or recent history of similar contract-worker programs in the U.S. that would inspire confidence in any of the current proposals for what NCLR’s CEO, Janet Murguia, has called a “new worker program.” She recently declared in an op-ed piece published in the Washington Post on February 11, 2007, that her “organization and many Latino leaders find ourselves in the interesting position of being principal advocates for a significant new worker visa program as part of comprehensive immigration reform.” Yet, she fails to identify what other “Latino leaders” advocate such a position, or organization that has a track record of advocating for and representing immigrant workers, or immigrant leaders and organizations. She couldn’t because there are none. In the same piece, Murguia lays out the historical experience of bracero programs as “dreadful,” “infamous,” and “synonymous with worker abuse,” yet goes on to advocate for a modern version of the program – an incredible summersault of logic.
We should remember that this is the same organization in the early 1990s – in the name of the Latino community - that was a vociferous supporter of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which has resulted in the loss of millions of American jobs, and the displacement of no less than three million Mexican small farmers from their lands, notwithstanding the opposition by labor and community-based organizations on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border during those debates. This is relevant because it goes to the question of whose interests are served by NCLR’s position on a new bracero program, and whose interests are prejudiced. Simply put, who wins and who loses?
NCLR has no history, trajectory, or reputation for serving individual immigrants in the problems that they encounter in America. It has no first-hand experience in case management in filing wage claims or addressing the systematic violations of the terms and conditions of existing contract-labor programs – H-2A and H-2B, for example. It has no stomach for litigating endemic injustices committed by employers who rob the contract laborers of the value that they create, and that stab to undermine existing prevailing wage standards, and thus, make more tenuous the social standing of native-born workers. Neither has NCLR advocated for the just resolution of the claims made by previous bracero workers who were denied the social security benefits, the funds of which were deducted from their wages, and due them by the U.S. and Mexican governments.
The Essential Worker Immigration Coalition, comprised of agribusiness, and major American corporations, but also includes NCLR, the National Immigration Forum, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and UNITE-HERE, with cozy relations with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, has been at the forefront in advocating for the 21st Century bracero program.
Contrariwise, all other labor unions affiliated with the AFL-CIO and Change to Win, immigrants’ rights coalitions, national and regional Latino organizations, and immigrant-member organizations have steadfastly opposed bracero-type programs.
What we are witnessing today is a debate shaping up similar to that which occurred prior to the passage of NAFTA in 1994. Let’s call it NAFTA II, or NAFTA coming home to roost. A massive “guest-worker” program constitutes nothing more then the importation of bound labor, cheaper than domestic labor, the inverse effect of the massive exportation of manufacturing jobs to cheap labor aboard. Speaking before the American Trucking Association recently, Newt Gingrich, former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, stated that a successful guest- worker program could “give all of you all the truck drivers you can hire.” Trucking companies are currently experiencing driver shortages. This is the real intent of big business with regard to any new contract-labor program, however the advocates of such may seek to soften the name with “guest,” “temporary,” or “new worker.”
U.S. Senator Ernest Gruening, who served in the U.S. Congress during the previous bracero period, observed at the time that, “Although American private enterprise was the beneficiary of an ample and docile labor supply, a large part of the costs were borne by the U.S. Government, i.e., the American taxpayers.” He characterized the program as one in which “corruption and exploitation were its steady concomitants. Gradually the imported labor replaced the domestic.”
Murguia claims that the critics of her position offer “no practical solutions for the flow of migrants that will surely continue or for the abuses these workers will face if they survive the trip across the border.” More than a decade after the approval of NAFTA, a fair trade to the new migrants who come to America to provide valued labor and service is a permanent visa – either employment-based or family relative-based. This would be the best measure to assure that prevailing wage standards are protected, that domestic labor not be undermined, and that labor and civil rights, and civil liberties, are more easily guaranteed. There can be nothing more practical to the migrant worker than permanent legal residency, which provides the minimum modicum of negotiating power with the employer, freedom of movement cross borders, a true statutory path to citizenship, and the ability to immigrate other loved ones.
Only such permanence in visa status will assure that new migrant workers not become a stratified permanent second-class workforce available primarily to benefit employers. Permanent legal resident status in exchange for the valued labor of the migrant worker is what I would call a fair trade, instead of the notoriously unfair “free trade” concept associated with NAFTA.
Nativo V. Lopez, National President of the Mexican American Political Association (MAPA), and the National Director of Hermandad Mexicana Latinoamericana. 2-26-07
_
WASHINGTON POST (Murguía Op-Ed): A Change of Heart on Guest Workers
By Janet Murguía Sunday, February 11, 2007; B07
After President Bush highlighted the need for a temporary-worker program as part of a larger immigration reform in his State of the Union address, Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) compared the president's proposal to slavery. Rangel is right to be concerned. Our nation's history with such programs has been dreadful.
Many Latinos still have searing memories of the infamous bracero program, which more than 50 years ago became synonymous with worker abuse. The current guest-worker programs for agriculture and other "non-skilled" labor are not much better. Experience tells us that there is good reason to be concerned that a new worker visa program could repeat these mistakes, creating a permanent, sizable subclass of workers who endure harsh treatment while simultaneously undercutting their American co- workers.
Despite these concerns, after decades of strongly opposing temporary-worker programs for the very reasons that Rangel articulates, my organization and many Latino leaders find ourselves in the interesting position of being principal advocates for a significant new worker visa program as part of comprehensive immigration reform.
Some think we got here as the result of some devil's bargain with our allies among business leaders: They get a new worker program, and we get a path to citizenship for undocumented workers. Not so. We have concluded that a new legal pathway for the future flow of immigrant workers to the United States is the safest, most reasonable path for immigrant workers, for their co-workers in this country, and for a nation hungry for order and control at the border.
We share that hunger. Latinos know that even if we pass immigration reforms that include a path to citizenship for millions of immigrants who work, pay taxes and otherwise contribute to the United States, we will have failed to fix our nation's broken immigration system unless we do what previous reforms did not: Acknowledge that there will continue to be a flow across the border and that we will do everything we can to control and regulate it.
If this year's immigration debate accomplishes what the debate in 1986 did -- marry a legalization program with additional enforcement without addressing the future flow of migrants -- we will have addressed the symptoms of our broken system without repairing it. The cost of this mistake will be enormous: a continued death toll at the border; a sizable flow of undocumented workers who come to this country under harsher conditions; increased harassment of and discrimination against Hispanic Americans often mistaken for immigrants; and exacerbated public frustration that the immigration issue is still not under control.
But we do not have to repeat past mistakes. The immigration reform bill the Senate passed last year contains a much different model of a worker visa program than the unjust model we have lived with for decades. Workers would not be at the mercy of abusive employers in that they could change jobs and alert the authorities to mistreatment. Rather than becoming a permanent second-class workforce, they would have the opportunity to earn a path to permanent status -- and ultimately citizenship -- as one of the only classes of migrants able to petition for themselves rather than relying on an employer or relative to petition for them. There are important labor protections for immigrant workers as well as for their American co-workers, including a requirement that immigrant workers be paid the prevailing wage in an industry to avoid undercutting the wages of American workers employed there. The 110th Congress has an opportunity to build from this strong start and do even better.
We are deeply aware of the risks of going down this path in the immigration reform debate, including accusations that we are selling out one group of immigrant workers to help another. But our critics offer no practical solutions for the flow of migrants that will surely continue or for the abuses these workers will face if they survive the trip across the border. We owe it to migrants, as well as to the nation that their hard work will sustain, to shape a new path for migration that is legal, safe and endowed with protections for immigrant and American workers alike.
The writer is president and chief executive of the National Council of La Raza.
Join us in this prolonged campaign for driver's licenses and visas for our families. The first step in making change is to join an organization that pursues the change we desire. We welcome you to our ranks.
Other organizations leading this movement include: Hermandad Mexicana Latinoamericana, Mexican American Political Association (MAPA), MAPA Youth Leadership, Liberty and Justice for Immigrants Movement, National Alliance for Immigrant's Rights, and immigrant's rights coalitions throughout the U.S..
CONTACT:
Nativo V. Lopez, National President of MAPA (323) 269-1575
Thursday, March 01, 2007
Minute men conspire against each other
« Bring In The Mobs: Press Corps OKs Bloggers | Main | »
Coup Inside the Minuteman Project
The "citizens patrol" Minuteman Project is eating itself alive. Board member Marvin L. Stewart, described as an "accounts receivable technician" at Veterans Affairs and leader of My Lord's Salvation Ministries Inc., has orchestrated a coup to oust the group's chairman, James Gilchrist, over allegations of "gross mismanagement."
Of course, the dispute is over money. Stewart says the Minuteman Project can't account for $400,000 that a direct-mail company helped raise last year for the organization. Gilchrist (pictured left) is disgusted with his former supporters and says it could destroy the whole organization:
"It certainly could come to that," Gilchrist told The Washington Times. "We have led the fight for stricter immigration enforcement, but I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that the people I am fighting against, including the open-border lobbies, are better than the people I'm fighting for."
Gilchrist firmly rejects the idea that $400,000 is missing, and he has asked a Superior Court judge for a restraining order to halt his firing. A hearing is set for March 21 in Orange County. It's not the first divorce for Gilchrist; he already has split with the Minuteman Project's co-founder, Chris Simcox, who started the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps.
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Domestic Marshall Plan: Ron Daniels
A Domestic Marshall Plan to Transform America’s ‘Dark Ghettos’
Wednesday, 21 February 2007
by Dr. Ron Daniels
Black Agenda Report
http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=83
Black America must revive the concept of a Domestic
Marshall Plan to reverse the deterioration of the
nation's ‘dark ghettos' - most immediately, to restore
New Orleans' exiled population. Dr. Daniel's suggests
the campaign be called the Martin Luther King-Malcolm X
Community Revitalization Initiative, a mobilization to
begin on April 4. The guiding principle behind the
campaign must be the idea that oppressed people should
exercise the power to control their communities and the
conviction that every person in this country is
entitled to enjoy certain basic human rights, as
articulated in the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights. A Domestic Marshall Plan to Transform America's
‘Dark Ghettos'
by Dr. Ron Daniels, President, Institute of the Black
World 21st Century
"We will call this proposal the Martin Luther King-
Malcolm X Community Revitalization Initiative."
This article is based on a presentation made by Dr.
Daniels at the Black Family Summit Policy Institute
convened February 1, 2007, by the Institute of the
Black World 21st Century at Howard University. It is a
discussion piece which is intended to assess interest
in and commitment to launching a bold initiative to
compel the American public and the government to
confront issues of racism, poverty and inequality in
this country as dramatically exposed by Katrina.
urbal_renewal_taxi_1970 In January at the Institute of
the Black World 21st Century (IBW) "State of the Black
World Forum" in Washington D.C., during discussion on
creating a "New Force in Black America" to revitalize
the Black Freedom Struggle, New York City Councilman
Charles Barron remarked that neither the Democratic
Party nor the Congressional Black Caucus has clearly
signaled what explicitly "Black issues" they are
prepared to advance since Democrats took control of
Congress. In this regard it is important to remember
that the Six Point Democratic Program for recapturing
control of Congress did not include Katrina/New
Orleans. Moreover, Katrina/New Orleans was completely
absent from President Bush's State of the Union
Address.
While there was no noticeable outcry from Black leaders
protesting this disgraceful omission, Capital Hill
insiders indicate that the Congressional Black Caucus
is focusing on aid/assistance for New Orleans and the
Gulf as a major priority. With Blacks once again
demonstrating unflinching loyalty to the Democratic
Party in the critical mid-term elections, however,
there is still the overarching and compelling question
as to what "race specific" initiatives will be advanced
by the Democratic leadership in Congress to address
crucial Black issues and concerns. Black America needs
an answer to that question, and I believe that one of
the responses ought to be to revive the concept of a
Domestic Marshall Plan targeted at rebuilding New
Orleans and America's "dark ghettos."
"The Six Point Democratic Program for recapturing
control of Congress did not include Katrina/New
Orleans."
I presented this idea at a recent Policy Institute
convened by the Black Family Summit of IBW at Howard
University. In so doing, I reminded the assembled
organization heads, scholars and activists that it is
important to realize that Katrina is a metaphor for the
disaster wrought on Black America's urban and rural
communities by years of benign and blatant neglect.
This was/is manifested by the almost total abandonment
of pro-active and corrective policies for problems of
inner-city and rural communities by Democratic and
Republic administrations. The toll on Black America,
especially on Black working class and poor people, has
been devastating. Many urban inner-city areas are like
zones of desolation and despair, racked by chronic
unemployment, underemployment, poverty, inadequate
health facilities, environmental degradation, poor
performing schools, the infestation of drugs, crime,
gangs, the illicit economy, fear, police occupation and
terror - all feeding a prison-jail industrial complex
where Black and Brown people are the primary fodder. As
depicted on the television series "The Wire," life in
America's dark ghettos can be deadly and destructive of
the aspirations of a people; the tragic consequence of
broken individuals, families and
communities.cityscapeWclouds
Most importantly, contrary to the exhortations of
"America's Dad," Bill Cosby, this is a fate which is
not of our own choosing. Nor are these the same
"ghettos" that past generations grew up in around the
country. As William Julius Wilson observes, in the face
of globalization, massive de-industrialization and the
calculated shrinking of ameliorative public programs
and services under the guise of creating a more
efficient government, the most disadvantaged of our
people are living in communities where "work has
virtually disappeared." Moreover, there is an almost
total collapse of supportive community based
institutions like settlement houses, health care
centers, hospitals and viable schools. And, African
Americans in past generations did not grow up in
communities where guns and drugs were so readily
available and violence and deadly force was endemic to
daily life.
"Ethnic cleansing is afoot in New Orleans."
Currently there is no acceptable response to our plight
by policymakers in Washington. Total neglect or the
conservative mantra of "blame the victim," is the order
of the day. To the degree that there has been a
response, it has been by developers moving in, aided
and abetted by local governments, to displace Black
working class and poor people from their neighborhoods,
scattering them hither and thither as Whites have
decided to recapture the "Chocolate Cities" of this
nation. Gentrification has become the "Negro removal
program" of the 21st century. It is precisely this kind
of "ethnic cleansing" program that is afoot in New
Orleans as local developers attempt to remake this
African city to create a Disney World, theme park
environment.
While we must continue to urge our people who are
imprisoned by these conditions to do all they can to
assume responsibility for rising above and overcoming
the pathology which now afflicts them/us, we must be
clear that the racist and exploitive policies of
government are primarily responsible for our plight.
Ultimately we must compel the government to rescue and
transform this nation's dark ghettos. And this will
require a massive allocation of resources, not only to
improve the physical environment but to heal and
restore broken lives and communities. The
transformation of America's dark ghettos demands
nothing less than a program equivalent to a Domestic
Marshall Plan.
Long advocated by the National Urban League under the
leadership of John E. Jacob but de-prioritized by his
successor Hugh A. Price, the concept of a Domestic
Marshall Plan was derived from the massive and
unprecedented expenditure of U.S. resources to rebuild
Europe and Japan after World War II. Mr. Jacobs
consistently questioned why the United States could not
rebuild urban areas here in America in the same way it
had rebuilt entire foreign nations. The same question
is relevant today. How is it that America can instantly
find billions of dollars to wage an ill conceived, ill
advised and illegal war in Iraq, including billions to
rebuild this strife-riven nation, and not muster
sufficient resources to expeditiously rebuild New
Orleans, the Gulf and transform the dark ghettos of
this prosperous land? Black America must muster the
resolve to compel America to respond in the affirmative
to this question.
"How is it that America can instantly find billions of
dollars to wage an ill conceived, ill advised and
illegal war in Iraq, and not muster sufficient
resources to expeditiously rebuild New Orleans."
Every organization that gathered for the Black Family
Summit Policy Institute, e.g., National Association of
Black Social Workers, National Medical Association,
National Association of Black Psychologists, Mental
Health Healers Alliance, National Association of Black
Veterans, International Association of Black
Professional Firefighters is engaged in treating some
aspect of the malady which afflicts our most destitute
and desperate communities. Each organization has
specific initiatives and programs designed to address
some dimension of the crisis. The value of these
efforts notwithstanding, strategically, I believe it is
imperative that a broad ranging collective of
organizations and agencies come together to adopt a
comprehensive/holistic, consensus strategy/approach to
address the desperate and deteriorating conditions in
America's dark ghettos - an approach that must
prescribe solutions to the physical, cultural,
educational, spiritual and social justice aspects of
the crises.
At a minimum the approach must include affordable
housing, public service employment, job training,
environmentally sustainable community economic
development, quality education based on culturally
inclusive curricula, Black adoptions, drug and alcohol
abuse counseling and treatment, AIDS counseling and
treatment, community based health centers with
facilities for mental health, community organizers,
gang prevention programs, re-entry programs for
formerly incarcerated persons and civic engagement and
empowerment programs. The same approach should apply to
rural communities with an additional focus on Black
land retention and programs to assist and enhance the
viability of Black farmers and agriculturalists.
At the end of his life Martin Luther King and the
Southern Christian Leadership Conference were planning
a Poor People's Campaign as a way of articulating the
concept of an Economic Bill of Rights to guarantee a
basic quality of life for Black people and all
Americans. Similarly, Malcolm X was urging us to
control the politics and social life of our
communities, and to see our struggle not just as a
fight for civil rights but human rights as well. The
idea that oppressed people should exercise the power to
control their communities and the conviction that every
person in this country is entitled to enjoy certain
basic human rights, as articulated in the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights, should constitute guiding
principles for our approach to resolving the crises in
our communities.
"It is time to draw a line in the sand to rescue and
transform our communities."
While the Domestic Marshall Plan concept captures the
spirit of what I am advocating and has a familiar ring
for policymakers and the public, given the scope and
character of the approach envisioned, it might be more
appropriate to call this proposal the Martin Luther
King-Malcolm X Community Revitalization Initiative. In
addition, it is important to have a title which
resonates in the Black community as the base
constituency for this initiative. It is also important
to indicate that this initiative should not be viewed
as a substitute for affirmative action or, ultimately,
reparations, as policy prescriptions to repair past and
present damage to Africans in America as a consequence
of the long and tragic travail of enslavement and
racial apartheid in this country.
It is time to draw a line in the sand to rescue and
transform our communities. It is time to mobilize the
political muscle to demand that the Congress of the
United States and the President implement a
comprehensive/holistic program to rebuild depressed and
oppressed communities in this nation. Accordingly, as
a vital exercise in operational unity, I am suggesting
a Black and people of color led Emergency Mobilization,
April 4th to May 19th as the first phase of a campaign
to create public awareness of the plight of America's
dark ghettos and to demand the enactment of the Martin
Luther King-Malcolm X Community Revitalization
Initiative. We must mobilize Black people to take the
lead in issuing a clarion call to end the war in Iraq,
rebuild New Orleans and the Gulf and invest in
transforming America's dark ghettos, reservations and
neighborhoods.
I am proposing April 4th because it is the date Martin
Luther King delivered his "Beyond Vietnam: A Time To
Break Silence" speech at Riverside Church in 1967, and
the date he was assassinated one year later in Memphis
as he was preparing to launch the Poor People's
Campaign. May 19th is the birthday of El Hajj Malik El
Shabazz, our "Black Shining Prince," Malcolm X who
increasingly viewed the struggle of Africans in America
as a human rights struggle. Hence, we capture the
vision, spirit and courage of two of Black America's
seminal leaders in advancing a powerful concept for the
rebuilding and restoration of America's dark ghettos. I
would also like to dedicate this Initiative to the
memory of Damu Smith, our young ancestor, veteran
social and political activist, founder of the National
Black Environmental Justice Network and Black Voices
for Peace; a stalwart in the struggle for liberation of
people of African descent and oppressed humanity.
The intensive emergency mobilization would be preceded
by working sessionsDL &W Railroad Willow with scholars
and policymakers to flesh out the basic elements of the
MLK-Malcolm X Initiative. IBW would also craft a
proclamation outlining the rationale for the Initiative
and a call to action. The model Initiative and
proclamation would be released April 4th followed by a
National Forum on the subject in Washington, D.C.,
April 6th where leading scholars, policy makers and
activists would address the importance of the
Initiative. A similar forum would be convened by the
New York area IBW Ujima Support Committee April 7th to
kick-off an extensive nationwide education campaign
utilizing Black talk radio, Black newspapers, the
internet and the majority media to promote the
Initiative and mobilize constituencies/participants for
a March/Rally in Washington, D.C. May 19th.
"America has the opportunity to erase the ugly images
of Katrina from the consciousness of the world by
transforming America's dark ghettos."
May 19th would mark the culmination of the first phase
of an ongoing campaign/mobilization to build public
support for the enactment of the Initiative including
injecting the idea into the presidential campaign. The
forthcoming State of the Black World Conference II,
tentatively scheduled for November 28th - December 2nd
this fall in New Orleans, would be another major focal
point for galvanizing support for the Initiative.
Ultimately, Africans in America and our allies must
generate sufficient momentum to force the Democratic
Party, which has taken Blacks for granted for too long,
and a nation which has been in denial about the
debilitating effects of racism, poverty and inequality
on Blacks and people of color, to take an affirmative
stand in favor of this vital Initiative.
America has the opportunity to erase the ugly images of
Katrina from the consciousness of the world by
transforming America's dark ghettos. There is no better
way to achieve this mission than by doing for the
dispossessed in this country what this nation so
magnanimously did for Europe and Japan after World War
II. Americans must demand that the U.S. government end
the war in Iraq, seal the "demonic suction tube" that
is draining vast resources away from urgent domestic
needs and massively invest in rescuing and transforming
America's dark ghettos. Africans in America and the
oppressed must settle for nothing less.
Organizations, agencies and individuals interested in
contributing ideas about this proposed Initiative or
organizing to support the campaign should visit the
website www.ibw21.org Email IBW at info@ibw21.org
____________________
Wednesday, 21 February 2007
by Dr. Ron Daniels
Black Agenda Report
http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=83
Black America must revive the concept of a Domestic
Marshall Plan to reverse the deterioration of the
nation's ‘dark ghettos' - most immediately, to restore
New Orleans' exiled population. Dr. Daniel's suggests
the campaign be called the Martin Luther King-Malcolm X
Community Revitalization Initiative, a mobilization to
begin on April 4. The guiding principle behind the
campaign must be the idea that oppressed people should
exercise the power to control their communities and the
conviction that every person in this country is
entitled to enjoy certain basic human rights, as
articulated in the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights. A Domestic Marshall Plan to Transform America's
‘Dark Ghettos'
by Dr. Ron Daniels, President, Institute of the Black
World 21st Century
"We will call this proposal the Martin Luther King-
Malcolm X Community Revitalization Initiative."
This article is based on a presentation made by Dr.
Daniels at the Black Family Summit Policy Institute
convened February 1, 2007, by the Institute of the
Black World 21st Century at Howard University. It is a
discussion piece which is intended to assess interest
in and commitment to launching a bold initiative to
compel the American public and the government to
confront issues of racism, poverty and inequality in
this country as dramatically exposed by Katrina.
urbal_renewal_taxi_1970 In January at the Institute of
the Black World 21st Century (IBW) "State of the Black
World Forum" in Washington D.C., during discussion on
creating a "New Force in Black America" to revitalize
the Black Freedom Struggle, New York City Councilman
Charles Barron remarked that neither the Democratic
Party nor the Congressional Black Caucus has clearly
signaled what explicitly "Black issues" they are
prepared to advance since Democrats took control of
Congress. In this regard it is important to remember
that the Six Point Democratic Program for recapturing
control of Congress did not include Katrina/New
Orleans. Moreover, Katrina/New Orleans was completely
absent from President Bush's State of the Union
Address.
While there was no noticeable outcry from Black leaders
protesting this disgraceful omission, Capital Hill
insiders indicate that the Congressional Black Caucus
is focusing on aid/assistance for New Orleans and the
Gulf as a major priority. With Blacks once again
demonstrating unflinching loyalty to the Democratic
Party in the critical mid-term elections, however,
there is still the overarching and compelling question
as to what "race specific" initiatives will be advanced
by the Democratic leadership in Congress to address
crucial Black issues and concerns. Black America needs
an answer to that question, and I believe that one of
the responses ought to be to revive the concept of a
Domestic Marshall Plan targeted at rebuilding New
Orleans and America's "dark ghettos."
"The Six Point Democratic Program for recapturing
control of Congress did not include Katrina/New
Orleans."
I presented this idea at a recent Policy Institute
convened by the Black Family Summit of IBW at Howard
University. In so doing, I reminded the assembled
organization heads, scholars and activists that it is
important to realize that Katrina is a metaphor for the
disaster wrought on Black America's urban and rural
communities by years of benign and blatant neglect.
This was/is manifested by the almost total abandonment
of pro-active and corrective policies for problems of
inner-city and rural communities by Democratic and
Republic administrations. The toll on Black America,
especially on Black working class and poor people, has
been devastating. Many urban inner-city areas are like
zones of desolation and despair, racked by chronic
unemployment, underemployment, poverty, inadequate
health facilities, environmental degradation, poor
performing schools, the infestation of drugs, crime,
gangs, the illicit economy, fear, police occupation and
terror - all feeding a prison-jail industrial complex
where Black and Brown people are the primary fodder. As
depicted on the television series "The Wire," life in
America's dark ghettos can be deadly and destructive of
the aspirations of a people; the tragic consequence of
broken individuals, families and
communities.cityscapeWclouds
Most importantly, contrary to the exhortations of
"America's Dad," Bill Cosby, this is a fate which is
not of our own choosing. Nor are these the same
"ghettos" that past generations grew up in around the
country. As William Julius Wilson observes, in the face
of globalization, massive de-industrialization and the
calculated shrinking of ameliorative public programs
and services under the guise of creating a more
efficient government, the most disadvantaged of our
people are living in communities where "work has
virtually disappeared." Moreover, there is an almost
total collapse of supportive community based
institutions like settlement houses, health care
centers, hospitals and viable schools. And, African
Americans in past generations did not grow up in
communities where guns and drugs were so readily
available and violence and deadly force was endemic to
daily life.
"Ethnic cleansing is afoot in New Orleans."
Currently there is no acceptable response to our plight
by policymakers in Washington. Total neglect or the
conservative mantra of "blame the victim," is the order
of the day. To the degree that there has been a
response, it has been by developers moving in, aided
and abetted by local governments, to displace Black
working class and poor people from their neighborhoods,
scattering them hither and thither as Whites have
decided to recapture the "Chocolate Cities" of this
nation. Gentrification has become the "Negro removal
program" of the 21st century. It is precisely this kind
of "ethnic cleansing" program that is afoot in New
Orleans as local developers attempt to remake this
African city to create a Disney World, theme park
environment.
While we must continue to urge our people who are
imprisoned by these conditions to do all they can to
assume responsibility for rising above and overcoming
the pathology which now afflicts them/us, we must be
clear that the racist and exploitive policies of
government are primarily responsible for our plight.
Ultimately we must compel the government to rescue and
transform this nation's dark ghettos. And this will
require a massive allocation of resources, not only to
improve the physical environment but to heal and
restore broken lives and communities. The
transformation of America's dark ghettos demands
nothing less than a program equivalent to a Domestic
Marshall Plan.
Long advocated by the National Urban League under the
leadership of John E. Jacob but de-prioritized by his
successor Hugh A. Price, the concept of a Domestic
Marshall Plan was derived from the massive and
unprecedented expenditure of U.S. resources to rebuild
Europe and Japan after World War II. Mr. Jacobs
consistently questioned why the United States could not
rebuild urban areas here in America in the same way it
had rebuilt entire foreign nations. The same question
is relevant today. How is it that America can instantly
find billions of dollars to wage an ill conceived, ill
advised and illegal war in Iraq, including billions to
rebuild this strife-riven nation, and not muster
sufficient resources to expeditiously rebuild New
Orleans, the Gulf and transform the dark ghettos of
this prosperous land? Black America must muster the
resolve to compel America to respond in the affirmative
to this question.
"How is it that America can instantly find billions of
dollars to wage an ill conceived, ill advised and
illegal war in Iraq, and not muster sufficient
resources to expeditiously rebuild New Orleans."
Every organization that gathered for the Black Family
Summit Policy Institute, e.g., National Association of
Black Social Workers, National Medical Association,
National Association of Black Psychologists, Mental
Health Healers Alliance, National Association of Black
Veterans, International Association of Black
Professional Firefighters is engaged in treating some
aspect of the malady which afflicts our most destitute
and desperate communities. Each organization has
specific initiatives and programs designed to address
some dimension of the crisis. The value of these
efforts notwithstanding, strategically, I believe it is
imperative that a broad ranging collective of
organizations and agencies come together to adopt a
comprehensive/holistic, consensus strategy/approach to
address the desperate and deteriorating conditions in
America's dark ghettos - an approach that must
prescribe solutions to the physical, cultural,
educational, spiritual and social justice aspects of
the crises.
At a minimum the approach must include affordable
housing, public service employment, job training,
environmentally sustainable community economic
development, quality education based on culturally
inclusive curricula, Black adoptions, drug and alcohol
abuse counseling and treatment, AIDS counseling and
treatment, community based health centers with
facilities for mental health, community organizers,
gang prevention programs, re-entry programs for
formerly incarcerated persons and civic engagement and
empowerment programs. The same approach should apply to
rural communities with an additional focus on Black
land retention and programs to assist and enhance the
viability of Black farmers and agriculturalists.
At the end of his life Martin Luther King and the
Southern Christian Leadership Conference were planning
a Poor People's Campaign as a way of articulating the
concept of an Economic Bill of Rights to guarantee a
basic quality of life for Black people and all
Americans. Similarly, Malcolm X was urging us to
control the politics and social life of our
communities, and to see our struggle not just as a
fight for civil rights but human rights as well. The
idea that oppressed people should exercise the power to
control their communities and the conviction that every
person in this country is entitled to enjoy certain
basic human rights, as articulated in the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights, should constitute guiding
principles for our approach to resolving the crises in
our communities.
"It is time to draw a line in the sand to rescue and
transform our communities."
While the Domestic Marshall Plan concept captures the
spirit of what I am advocating and has a familiar ring
for policymakers and the public, given the scope and
character of the approach envisioned, it might be more
appropriate to call this proposal the Martin Luther
King-Malcolm X Community Revitalization Initiative. In
addition, it is important to have a title which
resonates in the Black community as the base
constituency for this initiative. It is also important
to indicate that this initiative should not be viewed
as a substitute for affirmative action or, ultimately,
reparations, as policy prescriptions to repair past and
present damage to Africans in America as a consequence
of the long and tragic travail of enslavement and
racial apartheid in this country.
It is time to draw a line in the sand to rescue and
transform our communities. It is time to mobilize the
political muscle to demand that the Congress of the
United States and the President implement a
comprehensive/holistic program to rebuild depressed and
oppressed communities in this nation. Accordingly, as
a vital exercise in operational unity, I am suggesting
a Black and people of color led Emergency Mobilization,
April 4th to May 19th as the first phase of a campaign
to create public awareness of the plight of America's
dark ghettos and to demand the enactment of the Martin
Luther King-Malcolm X Community Revitalization
Initiative. We must mobilize Black people to take the
lead in issuing a clarion call to end the war in Iraq,
rebuild New Orleans and the Gulf and invest in
transforming America's dark ghettos, reservations and
neighborhoods.
I am proposing April 4th because it is the date Martin
Luther King delivered his "Beyond Vietnam: A Time To
Break Silence" speech at Riverside Church in 1967, and
the date he was assassinated one year later in Memphis
as he was preparing to launch the Poor People's
Campaign. May 19th is the birthday of El Hajj Malik El
Shabazz, our "Black Shining Prince," Malcolm X who
increasingly viewed the struggle of Africans in America
as a human rights struggle. Hence, we capture the
vision, spirit and courage of two of Black America's
seminal leaders in advancing a powerful concept for the
rebuilding and restoration of America's dark ghettos. I
would also like to dedicate this Initiative to the
memory of Damu Smith, our young ancestor, veteran
social and political activist, founder of the National
Black Environmental Justice Network and Black Voices
for Peace; a stalwart in the struggle for liberation of
people of African descent and oppressed humanity.
The intensive emergency mobilization would be preceded
by working sessionsDL &W Railroad Willow with scholars
and policymakers to flesh out the basic elements of the
MLK-Malcolm X Initiative. IBW would also craft a
proclamation outlining the rationale for the Initiative
and a call to action. The model Initiative and
proclamation would be released April 4th followed by a
National Forum on the subject in Washington, D.C.,
April 6th where leading scholars, policy makers and
activists would address the importance of the
Initiative. A similar forum would be convened by the
New York area IBW Ujima Support Committee April 7th to
kick-off an extensive nationwide education campaign
utilizing Black talk radio, Black newspapers, the
internet and the majority media to promote the
Initiative and mobilize constituencies/participants for
a March/Rally in Washington, D.C. May 19th.
"America has the opportunity to erase the ugly images
of Katrina from the consciousness of the world by
transforming America's dark ghettos."
May 19th would mark the culmination of the first phase
of an ongoing campaign/mobilization to build public
support for the enactment of the Initiative including
injecting the idea into the presidential campaign. The
forthcoming State of the Black World Conference II,
tentatively scheduled for November 28th - December 2nd
this fall in New Orleans, would be another major focal
point for galvanizing support for the Initiative.
Ultimately, Africans in America and our allies must
generate sufficient momentum to force the Democratic
Party, which has taken Blacks for granted for too long,
and a nation which has been in denial about the
debilitating effects of racism, poverty and inequality
on Blacks and people of color, to take an affirmative
stand in favor of this vital Initiative.
America has the opportunity to erase the ugly images of
Katrina from the consciousness of the world by
transforming America's dark ghettos. There is no better
way to achieve this mission than by doing for the
dispossessed in this country what this nation so
magnanimously did for Europe and Japan after World War
II. Americans must demand that the U.S. government end
the war in Iraq, seal the "demonic suction tube" that
is draining vast resources away from urgent domestic
needs and massively invest in rescuing and transforming
America's dark ghettos. Africans in America and the
oppressed must settle for nothing less.
Organizations, agencies and individuals interested in
contributing ideas about this proposed Initiative or
organizing to support the campaign should visit the
website www.ibw21.org Email IBW at info@ibw21.org
____________________
Thursday, February 08, 2007
International unions
Solidarity Without Borders
Confronted with multinationals and business-friendly trade agreements, unions have begun to act globally
By David Moberg February 7, 2007
With John Lennon's "Imagine" playing in the background, more than 1,000 leaders of service and technology unions from around the world gathered in Chicago in the fall of 2005. As delegates at the Union Network International (UNI) convention, they represented about 15 million workers in 140 countries. The challenge they faced was laid out in bold by the banner before them: "Global companies require global organizing, global unions."
It's an idea that's as old as it is new. Back in 1848, Marx and Engels exhorted the workers of the world to unite, and in the late 19th century, during an earlier wave of globalization, confederations of unions in similar industries--like metalworking--began to form across borders. But in the United States and elsewhere, the idea remains new and alien to many labor leaders, even as those same international union groupings--now called Global Union Federations (GUFs)--confront a seemingly borderless economy dominated by transnational corporations.
Despite the long history of global federations, no real global union exists. "For a union to exist at any place and any time, there are many preconditions," says Ron Oswald, general secretary of the International Union of Foodworkers (IUF), one of the most imaginative global union federations. "First workers [must] know there's a union, and employers [must] know there's a union. I'm not sure any worker or employer knows there's a global union. It's a brand, not a reality. International companies are clearly a reality. International unions have yet to become so."
There are signs that global unions may become more than mere brands. Alexandra Figus is one of the small indicators of progress. Twenty-seven years ago, Figus, 51, emigrated from Poland to Chicago, where she became a janitor and leader in her Service Employees International Union (SEIU) local. Last September, she flew to Warsaw to help organize security guards as part of a multinational security industry unionizing campaign.
"I was so inspired that so many people they want solidarity to take care of their problems," Figus says. "They know a single worker cannot do nothing. They were very interested what was my experience. They listened to me. These are kids of those who created Solidarity. We told them what you can get if stick together."
The long detour
Workers have been acting together across borders for a long time. The eight-hour day movement of the late 19th century was international, and the Haymarket incident in Chicago was commemorated as May Day, the international workers' holiday. But two world wars, a global Depression and the Cold War disrupted globalization of both capital and the labor movement. Unions in richer countries often scored their political gains by creating national welfare states and using national governments to reinforce trade union power.
International solidarity was often a one-way affair, from rich countries to poorer ones, including expressions of solidarity to jailed unionists. U.S. unions often subordinated their work to their country's anti-communist foreign policy. International labor elites focused on groups such as the 88-year old International Labor Organization (ILO)--a Geneva-based United Nations institution composed of government, business and labor representatives who establish rights and standards for workers globally, but can do little to enforce their directives.
The contemporary global economy presents labor with a double challenge in regards to global solidarity. On the one hand, corporations push workers into competition over who gets jobs and investment, especially in highly mobile manufacturing or digitized services. At the same time, unions, even in rich countries, realize that they can--and often must--work together to confront those corporations and to lift the standards of working conditions everywhere.
Last November, the 57-year old International Confederation of Free Trade Unions--the world's largest organization of national union federations--merged with a smaller world federation of unions aligned with Christian Democratic political parties, as well as several independent federations, such as the communist-oriented GGT of France. Stan Gacek, AFL-CIO assistant director of international affairs, calls it a "major quantum leap, in terms of organization of the labor movement on a global basis."
Guy Ryder, general secretary of the newly expanded federation, now called the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), says that the politics of the merger were as important as its size, roughly 168 million workers. "This would have been almost unimaginable even four years ago," Ryder says. "Unions saw the Cold War as an element of division in the labor movement, even 15 years after the end of the Cold War."
The merger also created a closer alliance between the ITUC and the GUFs. As a result, the GUFs will focus more on organizing and bargaining by industry and corporation, leaving broader political work to the ITUC.
"The key on global work is to figure out ways to do global grassroots action, not meetings," says Larry Cohen, president of the Communications Workers of America. "For a hundred years, too much has been about sending leaders to meet and dine together, which is great for building relationships, but we're looking for global events, ways for people to act together."
The revolutions in communications and transportation that enabled corporate globalization--such as cheaper airfares and the Internet--make it easier for workers around the world to connect. Korean workers can send videos of their participation at a Haymarket rally in Chicago over their cell phones back to a rally of co-workers in Korea. "We couldn't even begin to think about doing the work we do without the Internet," says Christy Hoffman, an SEIU official who serves as the European-based organizing director for UNI's property services division.
Eric Lee, founder of the LabourStart Web site, which mobilizes labor supporters around global causes, says that the Internet greatly increases the speed and numbers of activists responding to a crisis--like a successful campaign to reverse the firing of an Irish union shop steward for wearing her union pin. It has also increased the involvement of grassroots activists. "International solidarity work has penetrated to the shop floor level," he says, "and hundreds of times as many people are involved in global solidarity work."
A cold splash of reality
Unions are seeking other ways to meet global capital on a more level playing field. In January, several unions--Amicus and the Transport and General Workers Union (T&G), two of Britain's largest unions; IG Metall (the giant German metalworkers union); and the Steelworker and Machinist unions in the United States--announced plans for a new "super union." The proposal is still just a "theoretical concept," says Steelworkers' International Affairs Director Gerald Fernandez, but other unions are also talking about forming joint cross-border unions. And the Farm Labor Organizing Committee already organizes in both Mexico and the United States to represent largely migrant workers in North Carolina and Ohio.
Yet a cold splash of reality is needed. Easier communication and the consolidating forces of global capital may help unite unions, but language, institutional structures, levels of economic development, national identity, strategic differences, and national labor laws and traditions all act as dividers. At a time when the former "international unions" covering neighboring countries like Canada and the United States continue to separate into national unions, creating global unions will not be easy. For the foreseeable future, the challenge will simply be to increase global cooperation and coordination.
Part of the problem is the weakness of what passes for global governance and labor law. Today, the most powerful global governance of the world economy comes from institutions like the World Trade Organization and the International Monetary Fund, which tilt against labor. Although it often appears that corporations write the rules of the new global economy, they still rely on governments to do their bidding. By using their economic and political power to change governments and laws, global unions can change those rules.
Labor unions around the world have agreed that international trade and economic agreements must include protection of labor rights. When no such protections exist, U.S. unions have increasingly used legal avenues to challenge corporations and both the U.S. and foreign governments. The AFL-CIO has taken cases to the ILO contesting the Bush administration's National Labor Relations Board decisions that restrict the right to organize. And Mexican and U.S. unions have filed NAFTA complaints about U.S. violations of the rights of Washington apple pickers and North Carolina state employees. The AFL-CIO also has used trade law to challenge labor rights violations in China and Jordan, but new free trade agreements have removed the threat of suspending trade preferences for violations of worker rights. And some unions have employed a powerful but controversial legal tool, the Alien Tort Claims Act. Used mainly by the International Labor Rights Fund--successfully against Chevron's slave labor practices in Burma--this law permits workers victimized overseas by U.S. corporations to sue in U.S. federal courts.
Though such cases often accomplish little, they build the case that labor rights are human rights, deserving of protection in future trade deals. "Using NAFTA labor or ILO complaints [or] raising our national labor law problems to an international dimension can be helpful if it's part of a broader campaign strategy," says Lance Compa, an international labor law expert at Cornell University.
One strategy for changing the political climate for labor involves negotiation of International Framework Agreements between Global Union Federations and transnational employers guaranteeing basic labor rights. The IUF bargained the first of these agreements in 1988 with Danone, the French food giant, and now various federations have negotiated more than 50 such agreements.
Many strategists saw them as at least improvements on the codes of conduct that transnationals adopted as public relations gambits to fend off criticism from unions and anti-sweatshop groups. At best, they might be first steps towards global collective bargaining. But the deals mainly ratified rights workers had in Europe and were unenforceable in the United States or the global South. "Now we're talking about much tougher agreements," Oswald says, that would guarantee unions access to workers and recognition by the most expeditious means possible.
Still, with few exceptions, global collective bargaining barely exists. The International Transport Workers' Federation (ITF) campaigned for many years to force "flag of convenience" ships--which fly flags of countries like Panama to avoid regulation--to pay wages for cargo ship crews that the ITF defined as fair. Eventually a global industry group agreed to bargain directly with the ITF.
Targeting transnationals
The most important global work in recent years has been cross-border campaigning in support of strikes or organizing drives at particular transnational corporations. Most are so-called "comprehensive campaigns" that find chinks in the corporate armor where unions and their allies, usually non-governmental organizations like churches or worker rights advocates, can apply pressure. Such global support has been critical in high-profile U.S. labor victories, like the Steelworkers' battles with Ravenswood Aluminum and Bridgestone/Firestone, the 1997 Teamster strike against UPS and UNITE HERE's campaign at the Brylane clothing warehouse (owned by a French multinational). Currently, the west coast longshoremen are working with Korean unions to help organize Blue Diamond almond workers in California, because Korea is a major market for the company, and the Mineworkers are jointly campaigning with Australian miners to organize Peabody Coal.
In most cases, U.S. unions ask their counterparts to pressure corporations with whom they have some clout. Western European union leaders, however, often do not understand how anti-union businesses are in the United States and are more accustomed to civil consultations with employers rather than confrontations. They have at times complained that the Americans wanted them to risk their close relationships with employers, without getting help in return from Americans.
"The criticism that Europeans and Brazilians have of Americans is, 'You're only into international solidarity when you're about to go on strike or negotiate or there's a plant closing. What about the rest of the time?', " says Ben Davis, Mexico representative of the AFL-CIO's Solidarity Center, which trains and supports unions in many countries.
But relationships are growing more balanced, and campaigns are becoming less reactions to crises and more a part of global strategies. "We've moved from global solidarity to global strategy," says Ginny Coughlin, UNITE HERE's global strategies director. "Instead of making lots of statements, we're making mistakes, running into obstacles, which means we're making progress. We've embarked for the first time in union history on a real cross-border organizing effort in hotels and hospitality."
As UNITE HERE bargained last year with U.S. hotel chains, it also supported a new community-religious-labor organization, London Citizens, which is working with the almost entirely non-union London hotel workforce. Besides helping British workers unionize, UNITE HERE wants to stop U.S. hotel chains from embracing this new London operating model--outsourcing room-cleaning to immigrants minimally paid by the room, rather than offering them fixed wage.
SEIU has recently ramped up its global organizing dramatically. It is working with two GUFs (UNI and IUF) on organizing the transnational corporate leaders in four industries--security guards, school bus drivers, janitors, and (with UNITE HERE) "multi-service companies" that provide food, laundry and other services. Thanks to coordinated global union pressure, the three multiservice giants--Aramark, Compass and Sodexho--have quietly agreed to terms tht will make organizing their workers much easier.
"The huge consolidation [in global service corporations] has made it more possible to organize with fewer players," says Stephen Lerner, SEIU's property services director. If global labor can guarantee workers' rights to organize at each of these companies, there's an opportunity to organize quickly on a huge scale. Also, though the companies are global, the services they provide can't be shifted to low-wage countries, as with industrial or digital service work. "They can't move the buildings," Lerner says. "workers [can] support each other because they're not competing for the same jobs." Ultimately he believes there should be true global unions that match the scope of global companies.
When SEIU encountered resistance from security firms owned by Swedish-based Securitas, they turned for help to the Swedish Transport Workers Union, which was able to mediate talks. "We put our relationship with the company on the line," says Transport Workers International Secretary Lars Lindgren. "We had a good relationship with the company, but SEIU is a sister union, and that comes first."
Securitas agreed to be neutral and recognize the union when a majority of workers in a city signed union cards, and SEIU agreed not to enforce a contract until most employers in the market were organized. Unions are now globally fighting a British-based giant, Group 4 Securicor], that rejects such a deal.
SEIU and the Teamsters, working with the British Transport and General Workers (T&G), had to use shareholder actions and other tactics relatively new for Europeans to win a neutrality pledge from First Group, a British bus company that become a leader in operating yellow school buses in the United States.
Graham Stevenson, T&G national transport organizing director, says that this alliance may help his union stop the company from importing American anti-union management practices. "The useful thing for us is that our members' consciousness has risen a lot," Stevenson says. "We're awash in American capital, but we don't want American labor relations."
The development of these global campaigns creates complex webs. SEIU has at least 15 staff working overseas, mainly in Europe, training organizers and developing relationships with individual unions and the GUFs, which are all poorly financed and understaffed. SEIU also provided IUF with seed money for an organizing fund, which will be replenished by a share of dues from new organizing that the IUF assists.
The Steelworkers have begun developing "strategic alliances" with unions in Australia, Brazil, Germany, Mexico and other countries. The Mexican union helped the Steelworkers in bargaining with companies like Alcoa and Asarco, which is owned by Grupo Mexico. And the Steelworkers have staunchly defended the union's leader, Napoleon Gomez, when the government removed him from his union office for leading a strike over mine safety.
"Mexico is one of our largest trading partners," says the Steelworkers' Fernandez. "If we can't take care of labor rights in our hemisphere, how can we do it in other hemispheres? We have a philosophical basis for assisting them. That's what unions are about. We also have self-interest. Strong unions in Mexico, Canada and the United States make it difficult for multinational corporations to exploit any of us."
Global campaigns can take on a life of their own. When the small Graphic Communications International Union (GCIU) asked the AFL-CIO in 2001 to help develop an organizing plan, they decided to target Quebecor, a Canadian-based transnational printing giant. With UNI's help, they formed a global conference of Quebecor unions and pursued an international framework agreement.
As the company resisted, unions around the world joined in shareholder actions, protests with religious leaders, in-plant petition drives, and global days of solidarity--even a sympathy strike. Governments and client corporations were pressured to threaten cutoffs of lucrative contracts. Organizers trained by Solidarity Center helped win victories in Peru, Chile and Brazil, as well as two elections in the United States. The Teamsters, which incorporated the American part of GCIU, hopes talks will now revive the stalled campaign.
Simply campaigning more, however, won't be enough. Unions need to change both the global political climate and the rules of the global economy. In some parts of the world, particularly Latin America, unions recently have turned more to populist and socialist politics, says Cornell professor Kate Bronfenbrenner, who organized a landmark conference on global comprehensive campaigns.
The global labor movement needs agreement on its broad political agenda. As AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka argues, workers everywhere are boxed in by policies that promote capital mobility, labor flexibility, price stability and privatization of government. When taken together, those policies, at a global and national level, undermine workers' economic power and social welfare protections, make organizing more difficult and limit what unions can do even if they do organize or undertake global campaigns.
"Is the labor movement actually becoming more international, either with regard to employers in organizing and bargaining or in relation to governments in setting policy at both the national and international levels?" asks one high-level union official with extensive global experience. "That's a tough call to say there's been real progress." Yet today more labor leaders and workers around the world at least recognize the need for global unionism, and are looking for ways to give the old idea of worldwide worker solidarity a viable form for a new era.
David Moberg, a senior editor of In These Times, has been on the staff of the magazine since it began publishing. Before joining In These Times, he completed his work for a Ph.D. in anthropology at the University of Chicago and worked for Newsweek. Recently he has received fellowships from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the Nation Institute for research on the new global economy.
In These Times
Confronted with multinationals and business-friendly trade agreements, unions have begun to act globally
By David Moberg February 7, 2007
With John Lennon's "Imagine" playing in the background, more than 1,000 leaders of service and technology unions from around the world gathered in Chicago in the fall of 2005. As delegates at the Union Network International (UNI) convention, they represented about 15 million workers in 140 countries. The challenge they faced was laid out in bold by the banner before them: "Global companies require global organizing, global unions."
It's an idea that's as old as it is new. Back in 1848, Marx and Engels exhorted the workers of the world to unite, and in the late 19th century, during an earlier wave of globalization, confederations of unions in similar industries--like metalworking--began to form across borders. But in the United States and elsewhere, the idea remains new and alien to many labor leaders, even as those same international union groupings--now called Global Union Federations (GUFs)--confront a seemingly borderless economy dominated by transnational corporations.
Despite the long history of global federations, no real global union exists. "For a union to exist at any place and any time, there are many preconditions," says Ron Oswald, general secretary of the International Union of Foodworkers (IUF), one of the most imaginative global union federations. "First workers [must] know there's a union, and employers [must] know there's a union. I'm not sure any worker or employer knows there's a global union. It's a brand, not a reality. International companies are clearly a reality. International unions have yet to become so."
There are signs that global unions may become more than mere brands. Alexandra Figus is one of the small indicators of progress. Twenty-seven years ago, Figus, 51, emigrated from Poland to Chicago, where she became a janitor and leader in her Service Employees International Union (SEIU) local. Last September, she flew to Warsaw to help organize security guards as part of a multinational security industry unionizing campaign.
"I was so inspired that so many people they want solidarity to take care of their problems," Figus says. "They know a single worker cannot do nothing. They were very interested what was my experience. They listened to me. These are kids of those who created Solidarity. We told them what you can get if stick together."
The long detour
Workers have been acting together across borders for a long time. The eight-hour day movement of the late 19th century was international, and the Haymarket incident in Chicago was commemorated as May Day, the international workers' holiday. But two world wars, a global Depression and the Cold War disrupted globalization of both capital and the labor movement. Unions in richer countries often scored their political gains by creating national welfare states and using national governments to reinforce trade union power.
International solidarity was often a one-way affair, from rich countries to poorer ones, including expressions of solidarity to jailed unionists. U.S. unions often subordinated their work to their country's anti-communist foreign policy. International labor elites focused on groups such as the 88-year old International Labor Organization (ILO)--a Geneva-based United Nations institution composed of government, business and labor representatives who establish rights and standards for workers globally, but can do little to enforce their directives.
The contemporary global economy presents labor with a double challenge in regards to global solidarity. On the one hand, corporations push workers into competition over who gets jobs and investment, especially in highly mobile manufacturing or digitized services. At the same time, unions, even in rich countries, realize that they can--and often must--work together to confront those corporations and to lift the standards of working conditions everywhere.
Last November, the 57-year old International Confederation of Free Trade Unions--the world's largest organization of national union federations--merged with a smaller world federation of unions aligned with Christian Democratic political parties, as well as several independent federations, such as the communist-oriented GGT of France. Stan Gacek, AFL-CIO assistant director of international affairs, calls it a "major quantum leap, in terms of organization of the labor movement on a global basis."
Guy Ryder, general secretary of the newly expanded federation, now called the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), says that the politics of the merger were as important as its size, roughly 168 million workers. "This would have been almost unimaginable even four years ago," Ryder says. "Unions saw the Cold War as an element of division in the labor movement, even 15 years after the end of the Cold War."
The merger also created a closer alliance between the ITUC and the GUFs. As a result, the GUFs will focus more on organizing and bargaining by industry and corporation, leaving broader political work to the ITUC.
"The key on global work is to figure out ways to do global grassroots action, not meetings," says Larry Cohen, president of the Communications Workers of America. "For a hundred years, too much has been about sending leaders to meet and dine together, which is great for building relationships, but we're looking for global events, ways for people to act together."
The revolutions in communications and transportation that enabled corporate globalization--such as cheaper airfares and the Internet--make it easier for workers around the world to connect. Korean workers can send videos of their participation at a Haymarket rally in Chicago over their cell phones back to a rally of co-workers in Korea. "We couldn't even begin to think about doing the work we do without the Internet," says Christy Hoffman, an SEIU official who serves as the European-based organizing director for UNI's property services division.
Eric Lee, founder of the LabourStart Web site, which mobilizes labor supporters around global causes, says that the Internet greatly increases the speed and numbers of activists responding to a crisis--like a successful campaign to reverse the firing of an Irish union shop steward for wearing her union pin. It has also increased the involvement of grassroots activists. "International solidarity work has penetrated to the shop floor level," he says, "and hundreds of times as many people are involved in global solidarity work."
A cold splash of reality
Unions are seeking other ways to meet global capital on a more level playing field. In January, several unions--Amicus and the Transport and General Workers Union (T&G), two of Britain's largest unions; IG Metall (the giant German metalworkers union); and the Steelworker and Machinist unions in the United States--announced plans for a new "super union." The proposal is still just a "theoretical concept," says Steelworkers' International Affairs Director Gerald Fernandez, but other unions are also talking about forming joint cross-border unions. And the Farm Labor Organizing Committee already organizes in both Mexico and the United States to represent largely migrant workers in North Carolina and Ohio.
Yet a cold splash of reality is needed. Easier communication and the consolidating forces of global capital may help unite unions, but language, institutional structures, levels of economic development, national identity, strategic differences, and national labor laws and traditions all act as dividers. At a time when the former "international unions" covering neighboring countries like Canada and the United States continue to separate into national unions, creating global unions will not be easy. For the foreseeable future, the challenge will simply be to increase global cooperation and coordination.
Part of the problem is the weakness of what passes for global governance and labor law. Today, the most powerful global governance of the world economy comes from institutions like the World Trade Organization and the International Monetary Fund, which tilt against labor. Although it often appears that corporations write the rules of the new global economy, they still rely on governments to do their bidding. By using their economic and political power to change governments and laws, global unions can change those rules.
Labor unions around the world have agreed that international trade and economic agreements must include protection of labor rights. When no such protections exist, U.S. unions have increasingly used legal avenues to challenge corporations and both the U.S. and foreign governments. The AFL-CIO has taken cases to the ILO contesting the Bush administration's National Labor Relations Board decisions that restrict the right to organize. And Mexican and U.S. unions have filed NAFTA complaints about U.S. violations of the rights of Washington apple pickers and North Carolina state employees. The AFL-CIO also has used trade law to challenge labor rights violations in China and Jordan, but new free trade agreements have removed the threat of suspending trade preferences for violations of worker rights. And some unions have employed a powerful but controversial legal tool, the Alien Tort Claims Act. Used mainly by the International Labor Rights Fund--successfully against Chevron's slave labor practices in Burma--this law permits workers victimized overseas by U.S. corporations to sue in U.S. federal courts.
Though such cases often accomplish little, they build the case that labor rights are human rights, deserving of protection in future trade deals. "Using NAFTA labor or ILO complaints [or] raising our national labor law problems to an international dimension can be helpful if it's part of a broader campaign strategy," says Lance Compa, an international labor law expert at Cornell University.
One strategy for changing the political climate for labor involves negotiation of International Framework Agreements between Global Union Federations and transnational employers guaranteeing basic labor rights. The IUF bargained the first of these agreements in 1988 with Danone, the French food giant, and now various federations have negotiated more than 50 such agreements.
Many strategists saw them as at least improvements on the codes of conduct that transnationals adopted as public relations gambits to fend off criticism from unions and anti-sweatshop groups. At best, they might be first steps towards global collective bargaining. But the deals mainly ratified rights workers had in Europe and were unenforceable in the United States or the global South. "Now we're talking about much tougher agreements," Oswald says, that would guarantee unions access to workers and recognition by the most expeditious means possible.
Still, with few exceptions, global collective bargaining barely exists. The International Transport Workers' Federation (ITF) campaigned for many years to force "flag of convenience" ships--which fly flags of countries like Panama to avoid regulation--to pay wages for cargo ship crews that the ITF defined as fair. Eventually a global industry group agreed to bargain directly with the ITF.
Targeting transnationals
The most important global work in recent years has been cross-border campaigning in support of strikes or organizing drives at particular transnational corporations. Most are so-called "comprehensive campaigns" that find chinks in the corporate armor where unions and their allies, usually non-governmental organizations like churches or worker rights advocates, can apply pressure. Such global support has been critical in high-profile U.S. labor victories, like the Steelworkers' battles with Ravenswood Aluminum and Bridgestone/Firestone, the 1997 Teamster strike against UPS and UNITE HERE's campaign at the Brylane clothing warehouse (owned by a French multinational). Currently, the west coast longshoremen are working with Korean unions to help organize Blue Diamond almond workers in California, because Korea is a major market for the company, and the Mineworkers are jointly campaigning with Australian miners to organize Peabody Coal.
In most cases, U.S. unions ask their counterparts to pressure corporations with whom they have some clout. Western European union leaders, however, often do not understand how anti-union businesses are in the United States and are more accustomed to civil consultations with employers rather than confrontations. They have at times complained that the Americans wanted them to risk their close relationships with employers, without getting help in return from Americans.
"The criticism that Europeans and Brazilians have of Americans is, 'You're only into international solidarity when you're about to go on strike or negotiate or there's a plant closing. What about the rest of the time?', " says Ben Davis, Mexico representative of the AFL-CIO's Solidarity Center, which trains and supports unions in many countries.
But relationships are growing more balanced, and campaigns are becoming less reactions to crises and more a part of global strategies. "We've moved from global solidarity to global strategy," says Ginny Coughlin, UNITE HERE's global strategies director. "Instead of making lots of statements, we're making mistakes, running into obstacles, which means we're making progress. We've embarked for the first time in union history on a real cross-border organizing effort in hotels and hospitality."
As UNITE HERE bargained last year with U.S. hotel chains, it also supported a new community-religious-labor organization, London Citizens, which is working with the almost entirely non-union London hotel workforce. Besides helping British workers unionize, UNITE HERE wants to stop U.S. hotel chains from embracing this new London operating model--outsourcing room-cleaning to immigrants minimally paid by the room, rather than offering them fixed wage.
SEIU has recently ramped up its global organizing dramatically. It is working with two GUFs (UNI and IUF) on organizing the transnational corporate leaders in four industries--security guards, school bus drivers, janitors, and (with UNITE HERE) "multi-service companies" that provide food, laundry and other services. Thanks to coordinated global union pressure, the three multiservice giants--Aramark, Compass and Sodexho--have quietly agreed to terms tht will make organizing their workers much easier.
"The huge consolidation [in global service corporations] has made it more possible to organize with fewer players," says Stephen Lerner, SEIU's property services director. If global labor can guarantee workers' rights to organize at each of these companies, there's an opportunity to organize quickly on a huge scale. Also, though the companies are global, the services they provide can't be shifted to low-wage countries, as with industrial or digital service work. "They can't move the buildings," Lerner says. "workers [can] support each other because they're not competing for the same jobs." Ultimately he believes there should be true global unions that match the scope of global companies.
When SEIU encountered resistance from security firms owned by Swedish-based Securitas, they turned for help to the Swedish Transport Workers Union, which was able to mediate talks. "We put our relationship with the company on the line," says Transport Workers International Secretary Lars Lindgren. "We had a good relationship with the company, but SEIU is a sister union, and that comes first."
Securitas agreed to be neutral and recognize the union when a majority of workers in a city signed union cards, and SEIU agreed not to enforce a contract until most employers in the market were organized. Unions are now globally fighting a British-based giant, Group 4 Securicor], that rejects such a deal.
SEIU and the Teamsters, working with the British Transport and General Workers (T&G), had to use shareholder actions and other tactics relatively new for Europeans to win a neutrality pledge from First Group, a British bus company that become a leader in operating yellow school buses in the United States.
Graham Stevenson, T&G national transport organizing director, says that this alliance may help his union stop the company from importing American anti-union management practices. "The useful thing for us is that our members' consciousness has risen a lot," Stevenson says. "We're awash in American capital, but we don't want American labor relations."
The development of these global campaigns creates complex webs. SEIU has at least 15 staff working overseas, mainly in Europe, training organizers and developing relationships with individual unions and the GUFs, which are all poorly financed and understaffed. SEIU also provided IUF with seed money for an organizing fund, which will be replenished by a share of dues from new organizing that the IUF assists.
The Steelworkers have begun developing "strategic alliances" with unions in Australia, Brazil, Germany, Mexico and other countries. The Mexican union helped the Steelworkers in bargaining with companies like Alcoa and Asarco, which is owned by Grupo Mexico. And the Steelworkers have staunchly defended the union's leader, Napoleon Gomez, when the government removed him from his union office for leading a strike over mine safety.
"Mexico is one of our largest trading partners," says the Steelworkers' Fernandez. "If we can't take care of labor rights in our hemisphere, how can we do it in other hemispheres? We have a philosophical basis for assisting them. That's what unions are about. We also have self-interest. Strong unions in Mexico, Canada and the United States make it difficult for multinational corporations to exploit any of us."
Global campaigns can take on a life of their own. When the small Graphic Communications International Union (GCIU) asked the AFL-CIO in 2001 to help develop an organizing plan, they decided to target Quebecor, a Canadian-based transnational printing giant. With UNI's help, they formed a global conference of Quebecor unions and pursued an international framework agreement.
As the company resisted, unions around the world joined in shareholder actions, protests with religious leaders, in-plant petition drives, and global days of solidarity--even a sympathy strike. Governments and client corporations were pressured to threaten cutoffs of lucrative contracts. Organizers trained by Solidarity Center helped win victories in Peru, Chile and Brazil, as well as two elections in the United States. The Teamsters, which incorporated the American part of GCIU, hopes talks will now revive the stalled campaign.
Simply campaigning more, however, won't be enough. Unions need to change both the global political climate and the rules of the global economy. In some parts of the world, particularly Latin America, unions recently have turned more to populist and socialist politics, says Cornell professor Kate Bronfenbrenner, who organized a landmark conference on global comprehensive campaigns.
The global labor movement needs agreement on its broad political agenda. As AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka argues, workers everywhere are boxed in by policies that promote capital mobility, labor flexibility, price stability and privatization of government. When taken together, those policies, at a global and national level, undermine workers' economic power and social welfare protections, make organizing more difficult and limit what unions can do even if they do organize or undertake global campaigns.
"Is the labor movement actually becoming more international, either with regard to employers in organizing and bargaining or in relation to governments in setting policy at both the national and international levels?" asks one high-level union official with extensive global experience. "That's a tough call to say there's been real progress." Yet today more labor leaders and workers around the world at least recognize the need for global unionism, and are looking for ways to give the old idea of worldwide worker solidarity a viable form for a new era.
David Moberg, a senior editor of In These Times, has been on the staff of the magazine since it began publishing. Before joining In These Times, he completed his work for a Ph.D. in anthropology at the University of Chicago and worked for Newsweek. Recently he has received fellowships from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the Nation Institute for research on the new global economy.
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