The 2010 Election: The Big Losers Are Immigrants
Now that the dust has settled and the pundits are still shuffling around clutching election returns in their hands, it’s time to take a closer look at how November 2 has impacted social justice issues in the U.S. We’ve heard endless talk ping-ponging back and forth about how and why the victors triumphed and the losers lost.
But nobody’s talking about the group that really stands to lose the most because of this election: immigrants. Victories in some states will swing legislatures toward more racist anti-immigration laws…while in other states, a single winning candidate is going to have a negative impact on the lives of people who are already living under the shadow of fear, prosecution, and reprisals.
Prior to the election, it had become clear that the current administration was not going to make genuine immigration reform a priority, as Obama had promised he would during his 2008 campaign. Instead, in a move to placate conservatives, the administration has actually allowed big increases in the number of deportations of undocumented workers over the past two years. While Democrats have been doing their under-the-table deals, many Republican and Tea Party candidates have been openly calling for state-by-state racism via unconstitutional laws like SB 1070. And the rallying cries for a witch hunt certainly won out this November.
One of the most surprising twists was in the campaign of Susana Martinez, the new governor of New Mexico. During her campaign, she announced that she would never sign a SB 1070 bill in her state. But now she’s also saying that she plans to repeal laws in New Mexico that have allowed undocumented workers to get drivers’ licenses—a crucial key to obtaining work—and that she will revoke all drivers’ licenses that have already been issued to this group of workers. In addition, she wants to terminate an in-state tuition lottery that allowed these workers to participate in lower-cost college classes. In a recent interview with CNN, Martinez, a Latina, said, “The borders with Mexico have to be shored up…the borders must be secured.” She also stated she is against any amnesty for undocumented workers, regardless of how long they’d lived in the U.S.
In Georgia, Mississippi, and Florida, newly elected governors have pledged to initiate SB 1070 measures. Georgia already has some of the harshest laws on the books—undocumented workers are virtually unable to get access to health care, college educations for their children, or any benefits, even though they pay into the state’s unemployment insurance through their jobs. Georgia’s constitution makes the governor the state budget director, so the office comes with a great deal of power to eliminate programs and fund state policing efforts. The incoming governor, Karen Handel, was not shy about her stand on undocumented immigrants. She blanketed the state during her campaign with a robocall that contained an endorsement from Arizona Governor Jan Brewer, one of the originators of SB 1070. Handel told voters “A Handel administration will say ‘bring it on’ to President Obama and pass legislation similar to what they have in Arizona.” And she now has the power of the purse to pursue this goal from the governor’s mansion.
In the South Carolina State Senate, Glenn McConnell has been planning to launch SB 1070 copycat legislation in January 2011. Now he has the support he needed—the newly elected governor, Nikki Haley, who announced on election night that she looks forward to signing McConnell’s bill into law. “We will see states across the country stepping up and protecting our citizens…that’s what Arizona has done,” Haley said in a speech in September.
Nebraska’s incumbent governor, Dave Heineman, ran his entire re-election campaign with a virulent anti-immigration plank. He plans to skirt around potential problems with SB 1070 challenges by focusing on broadening police powers at the city level to make it easier to arrest and question immigrants or people suspected of being immigrants. His unsuccessful opponent accused Heineman of appealing to “our lowest common denominator, our fear of difference.”
It’s hardly surprising that in Texas, the now-even-more-bigoted state legislature is already at work on 15 different anti-immigration bills. One of them would make it a state crime to cross the border into Texas without documentation. “Cross the line, do the time” is one slogan attached to this new intimidation tactic. And Texas lawmakers have been given plenty of clout with which to intimidate. Anti-immigrant candidates gained a landslide 50 seats in the state legislature on November 2. This caused one Tea Party blogger to crow, “Not since right after the Civil War have we had so many conservatives in the Texas House.” And really, that tells you all you need to know.
Up north in Wisconsin, State Representative Don Pridemore has just been waiting for an anti-immigrant majority in the State House to introduce an SB 1070-style law in his state. And now he has one. His bill would require everyone suspected of a crime to prove that he or she is not an undocumented immigrant; a 48-hour time window would be given to pull together proof before an arrest. Wisconsin residents would also be encouraged to file reports against and sue their city governments if they feel that undocumented workers were not being dealt with to the full extent of the law.
Pridemore has also stated he plans to put a stop to grass-roots sanctuary programs in Madison and other Wisconsin cities. He said about his legislation: “People are leaving Arizona as a result of their new immigration law, and I don’t want Wisconsin to be a magnet for these people because of the extensive state benefits we have.”
Here in Michigan, it’s very hard to determine exactly what we’re facing next. Rick Snyder kept his cards so close to his vest during the election that many people only knew he has a ten-point plan for reviving Michigan’s economy…but were somehow never able to pin him down on any details regarding those ten points. Snyder’s attitudes about immigration laws are equally obscure.
If you check the nonpartisan site, “On the Issues,” you’ll find that Snyder has no documented stance on 21 of the 25 topics that the watchdog group tracks, including immigration issues. In July, Snyder did say he wanted to “increase incentives for legal immigration, because legal immigrants will boost the economy and create jobs.” No details about what the incentives might be, how they would be “increased,” or even a hint of a stance on undocumented workers.
Piecemeal challenges to Arizona’s legislation are winding their way through the molasses-like waters of the legal process. Meanwhile, states are still free to put into place any laws they want regarding undocumented immigrants. It’s a window of opportunity to sharpen the hunt for members of a population who only want citizenship, dignity, honest work, and the right to remain in their own homes—the same things that the U.S. has been giving to immigrants since the 18th century. Current restrictive policies and massive backlogs are denying them those rights. Now state governments across the country will be driving them deeper into hiding and lives of fear. Our government has failed them on every level. Their best hope is that American citizens will reject this ongoing persecution and stand with them in solidarity until their human rights are secured.
Wage Theft epidemic spurs nationwide protests
(This article is re-posted from Common Dreams.)
Activists in more than 30 cities, organized by Interfaith Worker Justice and backed by labor groups, are staging a National Day of Action Against Wage Theft on November 18. “As the crisis for working families in the economy has deepened, so too has the crisis of wage theft,” says Interfaith Worker Justice (IWJ) Executive Director Kim Bobo, perhaps the country’s leading reformer addressing the ongoing scandal.
As much as $19 billion is stolen from American workers annually in unpaid overtime and minimum wage violations and, in some cases, through the human trafficking of legal immigrant workers. The latest case to come to light involves alleged horrendous conditions for immigrant workers reportedly hoodwinked in Mexico by a food services contractor for the New York State Fair and kept in near-slavery conditions of $2 an hour.
Indeed, the scandal surfaced when some of these legal guest workers showed up several weeks ago at a Syracuse area clinic, severely dehydrated and malnourished after allegedly being kept in virtual imprisonment in a trailer at the fair and at other locations; they were reportedly being denied thousands of dollars in legal wages owed them while working about 100 hours a week at fairs for months, according to legal filings and Danny Postel, communications coordinator for Interfaith Worker Justice.
“It’s one of the most shocking cases of wage theft,” Postel says.
The contractor, Pantelis Karageorgis, is the target of a labor standards class-action lawsuit filed last month by Farmworker Legal Services and a Labor Department investigation. But criminal charges by the U.S. Attorney’s office have been dropped— “dismissed without prejudice”—and instead a modest settlement involving some back payment for the workers is being hammered out, knowledgeable sources say. In These Times spoke to the vendor’s attorney Thursday seeking comment, but didn’t hear back as of this writing.
While Obama’s Labor Department under Hilda Solis has been winning high marks for adding new inspectors and its tough rhetoric, as well promoting outreach to workers victimized by wage theft, the on-the-ground enforcement remains uneven. One reason: the under-funded, outgunned Wage and Hour Division has a spotty record for cooperating with local advocates and workers’ centers.
Kim Bobo says, in a tempered statement:
Interfaith Worker Justice is pleased with the new DOL leadership’s commitment to wage theft enforcement…Nonetheless, given the crisis of wage theft around the country, the partnerships between the Wage and Hour Division and local workers centers need to be strengthened, and a Wage and Hour Director should be nominated who can develop aggressive and creative approaches to stopping and deterring wage theft.
In fact, one activist notes in blunter terms “The Wage and Hour Divison is way behind OSHA in having a culture of aggressively targeted investigations.”
Today’s OSHA, of course, despite some new inspectors, is widely viewed as still failing to effectively protect workers. With just a thousand inspectors to oversee abuses and wage theft affecting over 20 million low-wage workers — the primary but not the sole victim of a crime affecting white-collar workers, too — the Wage and Hour Division hasn’t been able to turn around yet the willful flouting of labor laws essentially encouraged by the Bush Labor Department’s years of neglect. (The problem is only worsened by the grossly under-manned state labor agencies, which, a new study by Ohio Policy Matters finds, have less than 700 total investigators enforcing minimum wage and related labor laws in the over 40 states surveyed.)
Indeed, as Ted Smukler, IWJ’s policy director sums up, “Secretary Solis is using her bully pulpit and hired 250 additional investigators, but Obama needs to get a Wage and Hour administrator confirmed [there’s only an acting director] and they could be doing a lot more in enforcement.”
Whatever the Department of Labor is attempting to do in this arena, it’s clearly not had much of a deterrent effect. A new IWJ video underscores the scope of the continuing unstopped corporate crime wave (see above).
Cincinnati workers bilked out of overtime pay?
The failure to effectively enforce wage theft has allowed employers to underpay and stiff workers with impunity. For instance, one alleged scheme by owners of a Cincinnati animal hospital reportedly involved paying immigrant workers overtime, but then demanding the pay be returned to the owners in the form of cash kickbacks.
Daniel Sherman, the director of the Cincinnati Interfaith Workers Center, contends, “It’s one of the most egregious examples of wage theft”—but hardly unique in his area. He contends, “The law is not very strong and it is not pursued.”
As the Cincinnati Enquirer reported late last month:
Three undocumented workers say they were extorted into kicking back $24,000 in overtime pay to the owners of an animal hospital under the threat that if they didn’t come up with the money they’d be deported.
Those workers and advocates for immigrants say the practice is not uncommon in Greater Cincinnati and is a growing problem.
The former employees of the Hamilton Avenue Animal Hospital and Clinic in Pleasant Run and the Sycamore Animal Hospital in Symmes Township say veterinarians Michael Cable and his daughter, Stephanie Cable, first accepted their payments in personal checks but later required them to pay in cash.
Two of the workers placed a hidden camera in the Sycamore Animal Hospital on Montgomery Road and filmed themselves three different times giving cash to Stephanie Cable. One worker rented the apartment above the animal hospital and installed the camera from there.
Jose Aguilar and another worker, Salvador Martinez, 20, gave the Enquirer the video, pay stubs and a series of canceled checks that had been deposited into the animal hospital’s account at Huntington Bank…
The video provided by the workers shows three men paying Stephanie Cable cash.
“Hey, Steph – how much I need pay back for overtime this check?” asks Aguilar in the video.
“Uh, I think it’s in my car – I really need to start bringing my bag in,” Stephanie Cable says on the video.
In one scene, she takes the money from a man and quickly puts it in her back pocket….
But the attorney for the Cables, Steve Goodin, told In These Times, “The Cables have categorically denied that they were extorting or threatening to deport their employees.” Because of pending investigations, he says, he can only say about the alleged labor law violations: “We’re urging everyone not to rush to judgment,” noting that there was a bomb threat aimed at the owners after the Enquirer story appeared.
Yet it’s also clear the Cables are planning to mount an aggressive defense: they’ve already filed a criminal complaint with the county sheriff against the workers who arranged the filming for allegedly violating wiretapping and trespass laws, although Goodin concedes a criminal prosecution seems unlikely. They’re also planning a civil suit on similar grounds. Still, he says of the owners, “They were friendly with these guys.”
He also argues that an earlier 2007 settlement the Cables made with the Department of Labor for allegedly underpaying overtime to 19 former employees—in which they admitted no guilt but paid about $9,200—is completely unrelated to these latest violations.
Workers’ advocates: Employers act with near impunity
Whatever the merits of the new charges against these owners, advocates at these privately-funded workers’ centers often affiliated with IWJ, including Daniel Sherman in Cincinnati and Rebecca Fuentes in Syracuse, regularly field complaints from the victims of employers who routinely ignore labor laws with little fear of timely or effective punishment.
As one national activist told In These Times privately, the Department of Labor usually has to go to court to enforce its own regulations, and so “the smart [employers]” just wait for the interminable legal process to play itself out or get dropped altogether—assuming any enforcement efforts are even started.
As a result, Sherman and other advocates report, new abuses keep cropping up. In yet another case of labor trafficking, for example, he learned just last month about 12 immigrant laborers working about 120 hours a week for $1,000 a month each, housed at the warehouse where they worked—and who were essentially forced to sleep inside just four hours a night.
Sherman’s organization only discovered the abuse after one worker jumped out of a warehouse window and escaped to a church for help. “The church called us,” he says, and he in turn contacted the Department of Labor to pursue labor law violations– and the FBI, to investigate human trafficking. But he’s not confident that there will be any prosecutions for trafficking because the threatened and intimidated workers were theoretically free to leave.
But in another recent case, Sherman says, the employer just pulled a gun on two immigrant workers who complained about not getting paid. No criminal or legal actions have yet been pursued because the families of the workers are too scared, he observes.
‘Perfect conditions’ for ‘slave-like situations’ at New York State Fair
The allegations made against the New York food vendor illustrate some of the ways employers can purportedly intimidate and abuse workers. In a startling affidavit filed by a federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”) agent that accompanied the arrest of Pantelis Karageorgis in September (again, the charges have been dropped at the request of the prosecutor), Special Agent Thomas Kirwin outlines some of the alleged tricks of the labor trafficking trade used against employees hungry for work. The agent’s affidavit and the original class-action lawsuit filed by Nathaniel Charny as the lead counsel of Farmworkers Legal Services on behalf of four named workers and others paint quite an ugly picture.
And the local workers’ rights advocate, Rebecca Fuentes, who helped discover and expose the alleged Syracuse worker abuse, points out, “The guest worker visa program is very flawed, and it ties workers to one employer. That creates perfect conditions for almost slave-like situations,” like those facing the apparently starving New York State Fair workers. (She also claims that, at least in her region, the federal Department of Labor is more responsive than the state labor department, which dawdles for months in the face of serious wage theft complaints – a pattern afflicting many weak state labor departments.)
The food-stand employees were recruited this past summer in Mexico with allegedly “fraudulent” promises of a relatively well-paying job, complete with written contracts, as legal guest workers under the H-2B visa program. They were hired as workers in the Karageorgis firm’s Greek food concession stands that accompanied some carnivals and fairs in the United States.
Starting in Buffalo in August, then moving to Syracuse, agent Kirwin reported, the workers arrived with no food or money, were allowed to get their meals solely by eating at the concessions stands only once or twice a day, and were housed in trailers on the fair sites, working 16 or more hours each day. “On the last day of the [Syracuse] fair, the employees worked 24 hours consecutively,” he noted about the state government-sponsored fair. “At the conclusion of the fair in Syracuse, the defendant paid each of the employees $260.”
Yet by some estimates, for the months of nonstop work at a promised $10.71 per hour and extra overtime pay, the workers actually should have each received closer to $30,000. But for approximately 280 hours of work in just a three-week period, each worker got a mere $360, Kirwin stated.
When the employees complained about not getting their full wages, Karageorgis allegedly made a variety of threats, including potentially firing them, cutting their pay even further, or having them deported—and barring them from ever working in the U.S. again. Kirwin added, “The defendant, who traveled with the Employees the entire time, routinely berated and sought to demean them, calling them, for example, `pussies’ if they complained about illness or injury.”
One of the sadder ironies of the entire case is that some of these victims, also cited in the civil suit, such as Adonai Vasquez, started working for the vendor, Peter’s Fine Greek Food, Inc., as far back as July, 2008. But they kept returning on different work trips for as little as $1 or $2 an hour—despite the previously broken promises of $10 to $12 per hour in wages. This is the reality of the “race to the bottom” in the Wild West-style globalized economy: Immigrants are literally starving to work in the United States.
The still-pending civil suit filed in October alleges, “For a period at least as far back as six years from the date of commencement of this action, there have been hundreds of Mexican national treated in the same violative fashion in regards to the payment of wages.”
At the same time, the lawsuit claims, “Upon information and belief, Defendants [Karageorgis and his firm], grossed more than $500,000 in the past fiscal year.”
Even though one of Karegeorgis’s lawyers, Dawn Cardi, was unable to comment as of this writing, the ICE agent’s affidavit recounts Karageorgis’s version of events. The Greek food entrepreneur explained his operation: his agents recruit workers in Mexico and he submits their legal paperwork to U.S. labor and immigration authorities. But he claimed to be surprised to learn that they were promised $10.71 an hour. He conceded to Kirwin he hadn’t yet paid his workers in full, but intended to do so—while somehow asserting that none of them ever worked in Buffalo for him and thus they weren’t owed money for that work. He also denied making any threats against his workers, except that he’d notify his attorney if they quit.
But the observant immigration agent also noticed that Karegeorgis wasn’t short of cash at the time of his arrest. “He had in his pants’ pockets three bulky wads of cash and also had a briefcase that he said contained money, the security of which he was concerned about,” Kirwin noted dryly. Despite the defendant’s claims, Kirwin added, the agent requested that the food merchant “be dealt with according to law.”
So far, though, he seems unlikely to face any criminal prosecution.
Activists to demand reform around country
It’s small wonder, then, with employers apparently stealing wages with so much impunity, that a groundswell by activists is building to take action, even in a still-weakened regulatory climate. At a preview for next week’s events, for instance, hundreds of workers and allies marched in Minneapolis last Saturday demanding fair wages, an end to wage theft and safe working conditions for retail cleaning workers at major stores, including Supervalu and Target.
The worsening economy makes it even easier to rip off workers desperate for work, the protesters declared (hat tip to Workday Minnesota). “Corporations are responsible for pitting cleaning companies against each other which results in plummeting wages and increased workloads,” said Veronica Mendez, an organizer with Center for Workers United in Struggle, a IWJ-affiliated labor-faith coalition. “The only way to stop this is for these retail chains to meet with workers to establish fair standards. These poor working conditions affect everyone in our communities…”
Interfaith Worker Justice and its allies have ambitious plans for its nationwide local protests next Thursday:
Events on the National Day of Action Against Wage Theft will include protests at businesses guilty of wage theft to demand back wages for workers and events at which political leaders, workers, faith leaders, community groups, and labor unions will present new initiatives to end wage theft.
In Houston, a worker center will release a local report on wage theft and will send a “Justice Bus” around the city to call attention to local businesses that steal their workers’ wages. Other innovative local events include a text messaging campaign, a “Worst Employers” Awards ceremony, “Know Your Rights” workshops for workers, a jazz funeral for lost wages and a Thanksgiving-themed auction and a dramatization against wage theft in Memphis.
Yet the Republican take-over of the House and rising anti-union sentiment have already changed one of their primary legislative goals. The coalition’s call for action includes this sweeping reform priority:
On September 29, Congressman Phil Hare (D-IL) introduced the Wage Theft Prevention and Community Partnership Act (H.R. 6268), which would authorize the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) to establish a competitive grant program to prevent wage theft. The bill would expand the efforts of enforcement agencies and community organizations to educate workers about their rights and the remedies available to them, while educating employers about their responsibilities under the law.
“That’s dead,” one knowledgeable activist admitted. “He lost the election.”
What We Are Reading
Below is a list of books that we have read in recent weeks. The comments are not a review of the books, instead sort of an endorsement of ideas and investigations that can provide solid analysis and even inspiration in the struggle for change. All these books are available at The Bloom Collective, so check them out and stimulate your mind.
Dancing with Dynamite: Social Movements and States in Latin America, by Benjamin Dangl – This book is a great sequel to Dangl’s first book on Latin American social movements, The Price of Fire. Like the first book Dangl provides sharp analysis of social movements in Latin America, not from the halls of academia, but as someone who has spent significant time talking with and observing movements from below. What makes this book so important is Dangl’s assessment of how popular movements in Latin America interact with the State. The author believes that their strength and ability to makes changes is because these movements have remained independent of political parties and know when it makes sense to endorse state actions and when to fight the state. A useful book for those seeking to understand the impact social movements have on making change in Latin America.
The 500 Years of Resistance Comic Book, by Gord Hill – Native writer and comic book author Gord Hill has given us a gem with The 500 Years of Resistance Comic Book. Hill depicts through words and drawings how numerous Native communities have resisted conquest over the past 5 centuries, with examples from the Incas, Mapuche, Pueblo, Apache, AIM and the Zapatistas. Hill pulls no punches in showing that this resistance has often resulted in Native people using force to defend their communities and the land they inhabited. The book also includes an introductory essay by Native American activist and scholar War Churchill.
Gaza in Crisis: Reflections on Israel’s War Against the Palestinians, by Noam Chomsky & Ilan Pappe – This is a collection of essays and interviews with two of the most outspoken authors on Israeli policy towards the Palestinians. Chomsky & Pappe have spent the last 40 years critiquing and challenging Israeli state policy often at personal risk. The book deals with Israel’s campaign of ethnic cleansing in 1947-48 all the way up to the 2008-09 assault on Gaza. For anyone looking to understand what drives Israeli policy against the Palestinians this book is an excellent choice that will answer important questions.
Debt, The IMF, and the World Bank: Sixty Questions, Sixty Answers, by Eric Toussaint & Damien Millet – The global economy is often times difficult to wrap one’s head around, especially when it involved the role of the IMF and the World Bank. Toussaint and Millet have done us a great service in laying out a critique of these institutions in a sixty questions and answers framework. In addition, the author present relevant information on the issue of debt that has been imposed on poorer, often called “developing countries.” This is an excellent populist text that would be useful for both educators and organizers alike.
Movie Review: The Tillman Story
Like a good American I did what we all do on holidays, I went to the movies. However, instead of going to be entertained I went to be challenge by a powerfully produced documentary that exposes yet another lie by the US government.
Last night I saw the recently release documentary film, The Tillman Story. The Tillman Story is about Pat Tillman, an professional football player who left the game to join the military after 9/11. Tillman was the consummate all American hero, who not only was killed by his fellow soldiers, but was used by the government to sell the War on Terror.
The documentary tracks both the life of Pat Tillman and the military cover up that began immediately after his death. Tillman was first deployed in Iraq in 2003 and was involved in the bogus rescue of Private Jessica Lynch. Tillman’s brother, who joined the military with his brother said that after being in Iraq for just a few weeks, Pat told him while they watch US planes bomb residential areas of Baghdad, “this war is fucking illegal.”
Disillusioned with what he saw in Iraq, Tillman was then deployed to Afghanistan to conduct search missions on the Taliban. Tillman and his squad were sent to a village and along the way were separated from half of that squad. Tillman and other soldiers heard gunfire and set out on foot over a mountain ridge to see what was happening. When Tillman came over the ridge his fellow squad members opened fire and viciously killed him.
The documentary takes you down the difficult road that his family would have to travel to get the truth about what happened. Initially, Tillman’s family and wife were told he died fighting the enemy, but once questions were asked the story began to unravel.
This is an incredible story of government and military cover up that after two years was first investigated because Tillman’s father sent a letter to government officials accusing them of lying. The government then wanted to put the blame at the feet of a lower level officer, until an AP reporter was given a military memo that demonstrated that high-ranking officials knew that Tillman was killed by his fellow troops.
The documentary ends with a powerful narrative and scenes from a Congressional hearing where several US Generals, including Stanley McCrystal and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld boldly lied to members of Congress about what they knew and when they knew it.
This is a must see film for anyone who thinks the war in Afghanistan is for a noble cause and it is an important film for those already opposed since it provides another powerful resource to build greater opposition.
Local events in solidarity with the stand against the SOA
The School of the Americas (SOA), in 2001 renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHISC) in 2001, is a combat training school for Latin American soldiers, located at Fort Benning, Georgia.
Initially established in Panama in 1946, it was kicked out of that country in 1984 under the terms of the Panama Canal Treaty. Frequently dubbed the “School of Assassins,” the SOA has left a trail of blood and suffering in every country where its graduates have returned.
According to SOA Watch,“The past 59 years, the SOA has trained over 60,000 Latin American soldiers in counterinsurgency techniques, sniper training, commando and psychological warfare, military intelligence and interrogation tactics. These graduates have consistently used their skills to wage a war against their own people. Among those targeted by SOA graduates are educators, union organizers, religious workers, student leaders, and others who work for the rights of the poor. Hundreds of thousands of Latin Americans have been tortured, raped, assassinated, ‘disappeared,’ massacred, and forced into being refugees by those trained at the School of Assassins.”
From Nov. 15 to 21, people seeking to close the school will gather at the gates of Fort Benning for the “Convergence of Hope,” as they have since 1990. Locally, The Bloom Collective is sponsoring two film/discussion events in solidarity with the Fort Benning protests:
11 a.m. Monday Nov. 15 Film, Hidden in Plain Sight, and Campus March at GVSU Allendale campus, 2204 Kirkhoff. This event is free.- 6:30 p.m. Thursday Nov. 18 Film & Discussion, Guns and Greed at The Bloom, 671 Davis NW. Suggested donation $3 to $5 includes a light supper with vegan options.
Guns and Greed features “Powerful statements from Students against Sweatshops, labor leaders, veterans and church people participating in protests at the gates of Fort Benning, Georgia and at a Washington DC protest of World Bank and IMF policies.”
Hidden in Plain Sight explores the link between U.S. foreign policy and 20th century Latin Americas bloodstained history. It features interviews of both SOA supporters and critics, and shows footage of soldiers and victims.
You can also view Hidden in Plain Sight on line. Both are available at The Bloom Collective.
Students aren’t Tweeting in London, they are protesting
(This article is re-posted from ZNet.)
Students have finally had enough. Fees were introduced in 1998 and we hardly heard a squeak; they were bumped up to over £3,000 in 2006 and no one revolted. But today students smashed their way into the Tory party campaign HQ in a show of anger against a political elite they believe have abandoned them.
Around 200 protesters, who had taken part in the 50,000 strong demonstration against cuts in education, broke through police lines and smashed windows to enter the building, occupying it for several hours before being forced out by the police.
This kind of radical action shows that some students are disillusioned with the National Union of Students protest and lobby model. With the Lib Dems doing a U-turn on their pledge to vote against an increase in fees, and Labour discredited as a champion of students, students have been left feeling that there is no one left to lobby.
There has been a significant segment of the student movement that has been pushing for more drastic action for a while. What has changed is that that segment has swelled to include a much wider section of the student community.
Several commentators and indeed the NUS have said that the Millbank occupation was not a student-led action and that anarchist agitators are behind it. Images of black-hooded youths have added to this belief. Speaking to the people inside the building, however, revealed a different story. Those dressed in black were students too, and several fresh-faced, excited students said this was their first demonstration. Meanwhile, Philippe Clem from Hull University said: “I’ve never been on a protest before … we just came to join the march, but we just got swept up in this. It’s amazing.”
The crowd of students outside the building, lighting fires and shouting their support for those inside, swelled to over a thousand. This tells a different story to the one told by those wishing to discredit the protest as just a small bunch of troublemakers kicking off. The fact that the building was only a few hundred metres from the end rally supports the claims of those inside that this was unplanned.
Some of the people inside were obviously more seasoned activists, Robert Briggs, 28, of Kings College London, said: “This is nothing, this is a spark, but it is important for people to see that they can do something, that they are not totally powerless.”
The issue at the heart of the protest was the proposed increase in fees up to £9,000 a year. Alison Bent, 19, of Sussex University said, “I really don’t know how I’m going to cope. I’ve always wanted to come to uni, so I had to do it, but it is really scary.” Anger towards the Lib Dems was also evident with effigies of Nick Clegg hoisted high and placards demanding “I want my vote back”.
Recent events in Greece and France where students played a large part in the unrest over public sector cuts appeared to have inspired today’s actions. Chants of “Greece, France, now here too!” echoed through the HQ as people stormed up the stairs.
There is a very real possibility that this could motivate people looking to fight the cuts to other public services to look beyond just protesting and lobbying. Across the country there have been meetings and protests already, with speakers at rallies calling for poll tax style revolts.
No doubt Polly Toynbee will be looking on disapprovingly – she has argued that students are low on the pecking order of pain inflicted by the coalition government. And she is right that students are largely from middle class backgrounds and so won’t be as hard hit by austerity as many others. But her argument assumes that there is only a certain amount of space in society for protest. If the students are successful, her argument goes, then others will face more severe cuts. Quite the opposite: if the students make some headway, others will be spurred on to push their agendas more forcefully.
The Realities for US Veteran’s on Veteran’s Day
It is Veteran’s Day and that usually means parades and ceremonies to honor men and women who have served in the US military. It means the President will give a speech about the commitment to freedom that the US military demonstrates and Veteran’s Day usually means news stories about soldiers on leave.
This was the case with a story in the Grand Rapids Press, which features the return of a US soldier from Afghanistan. The brief article tells us about a US soldier from Hudsonville, who was greeted at the airport by family and friends. The story quotes the soldier’s mom who says she expected her son to come back different.
Coming back different is an understatement, particularly for soldiers who have been involved in combat. The statistics are staggering, whether we are talking about soldiers who have been physically wounded, are struggling with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), substance abuse and broken relationships.
While the news media and society in general might celebrate the sacrifices that US soldiers make, the concern for soldiers returning from war changes dramatically after the parade ends.
There has been some news coverage of US troop deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan, but that is usually limited to numerical milestones. What we don’t hear much about are US troops who have committed suicide as a result of their involvement in war. In fact, for every death, at least five members of the armed forces were hospitalized for attempting to take their life. According to the Navy Times, 2 percent of Army; 2.3 percent of Marines and 3 percent of Navy respondents to the military’s own survey of 28,536 members from all branches reported they had attempted suicide at some point.
US soldier suicides have now claimed more lives than soldiers killed in combat in Afghanistan. You can see from this graph how US soldier suicides have risen steadily since the US War in Iraq began and the recent escalation of US troops in Afghanistan.
In addition to high suicide rates, US soldiers have to try to cope with living in a civilian life, which means finding work and attempting to maintain relationships. Ann Jones reports that many US soldiers fall victim to substance abuse after combat. Substance abuse can add stress to relationships, which sometimes results in physical abuse by veterans against spouses, girlfriends and children. Sometimes this abuse results in rape and murder of intimate partners.
These are the ugly realities of the consequences of putting very young men in circumstances that no one should have to endure. Unfortunately, these are realities that we do not want to talk about or come to terms with since to do so is often seen as unpatriotic. This kneejerk response is ridiculous on many levels but particularly when we realize that the strongest voices on the realities of war veterans are veterans themselves.
Just a few days ago Jeff Hanks, a US soldier who has served in Afghanistan, refused deployment because of his struggle with PTSD. Hanks sought help from military doctors when returning from Afghanistan, but his treatment was cut short when he received orders for re-deployment. Iraq Veterans Against the War have organized a campaign to support Jeff Hanks and they are seeking solidarity from the public.
So on Veteran’s Day 2010, let’s not blindly honor veterans as heroes, rather let us see them as victims of a policy they had little to do with. Let us listen to US veterans of war who are resisting the ongoing US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Here is a short video by Brave New Foundation, where US veterans speak out on the US war in Afghanistan.
GR Press Announces End of Recession….Again
Last Monday, November 8, the Grand Rapids Press ran an article which explained that Michigan was finally “climbing out of the recession.”
But let’s not get excited. The Press has run a number of articles saying the same thing over the past few years. Back in 2008, we had “Fifth Third Exec Predicts End to Credit Crisis,” in which we were told that we hadn’t even had a recession yet: “Stapley sees an end that could come soon enough [thanks to the Wall Street bailout] to avert a true recession—or at least make any national recession short-lived.” Then in 2009, we had “Is Recession Really Over?” with a Fifth Third bank official explaining how things were going to improve and the stock market was about to rally. More stories were scattered throughout 2010: “Economic Panel Says Recession Ended in June 2009”; “There’s No Shortage of Money, There’s a Shortage of Confidence”; “Stocks Post Meager Gains Despite Strong Jobs News”; and one of my personal favorites, “Do Extended Unemployment Benefits Discourage Job Searches?” Right…it’s those lazy workers’ fault that they don’t have new jobs yet! How could I not have seen that?
So you can’t blame reporter Jackie Headapohl for being just a bit tentative this time around. Her Monday article was headlined with a question (“Is Michigan Finally Climbing Out of the Recession?”) and is not based on any investigative work of her own. Instead, it recaps a recent article in Crain’s Detroit which predicts “mild economic growth” for the state in 2011. But, Crain’s adds, “…it will be quite a while before [Michigan’s] unemployment rate gets to the national level—at least a year.”
Or never.
First let’s recap a few facts that GRIID has featured in recent articles on this site:
•Grand Rapids’ poverty rate now stands at 25 percent.
•Its current “official” unemployment rate is 10.5 percent.
•In September 2010, foreclosures jumped 30 percent over August’s numbers.
Add to those statistics a new study that shows that across the country, 77 percent of Americans are now living paycheck to paycheck.
Every time the Grand Rapids Press has run an article announcing the end of the recession, or reminding people that the recession ended in June of 2009, readers write in protest, saying, “Not as far as I’m concerned!” So what’s going on? Why do the capitalists keep insisting that everything’s back to normal?
As Bill Moyers would say, “Welcome to the plutocracy.”
Moyers gave a speech in October as part of this year’s Howard Zinn Lecture Series. He chose a topic that he feels is vital to our understanding of our current situation: we have been robbed. We now live in a society where the wealth distribution is equivalent to, or worse than, it is in banana republics such as Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Guyana. A concerted effort began in 1980 to demolish the middle class and shift wealth into the hands of the richest Americans. The government, the media, and the financial industry have conspired together to hide that fact from us. So Moyers decided to lay out the entire scam in his lecture:
•The richest 1 percent of Americans take home 24 percent of the country’s income. That’s almost 10 percent more than the wealth gap during the Gilded Age, where the richest 1 percent had corned 15 percent of the nation’s wealth.
•CEOs now make an average of 531 times as much as the average worker.
•American CEOs have cut, in the past decade, one in three manufacturing jobs in the U.S.
•Under the Bush tax cuts, which will now probably be re-instated, the richest 0.1 percent of Americans will receive about $370,000 in tax cuts…and it will not “trickle down” because studies show this class invests tax-return money, not spends it.
•From 1950 to 1980, an even distribution of wealth across the classes created an average income which rose from $17,719 to $30,941, or about $661 a year.
•But from 1980, when Reagan took office and the official plundering of national wealth began, to 2008, the average worker’s income has gone from $30,914 to $31,244. That means over the past 20 years, our average income has only risen $303. That’s $15.15 a year.
It’s called what Moyers calls “wage repression.” It’s created two different Americas. And that’s clearly class warfare.
Moyers states: That’s how financial capitalism works today: Conserving cash rather than bolstering hiring and production; investing in their own shares to prop up their share prices and make their stock more attractive to Wall Street. To hell with everyone else…If this were a functioning democracy, our financial institutions would be helping everyday Americans and businesses get the mortgages and loans – the capital – they need to keep going; they’re not, even as the financiers are reaping robust awards…The super-rich earn their fortunes with overseas labor, selling to overseas consumers and managing financial transactions that have little to do with the rest of America, while relying entirely or almost entirely on immigrant servants at one of several homes around the country.
Moyer’s entire speech can be read here. It’s well worth the time.
And it explains a lot. The capitalists are telling us the recession is over because for them, it is. In fact, between the bailout dollars on Wall Street, the constant squeezing of wages and the invented “jobs deficit,” good times have never been better for them. But the other 90 percent of us are trapped in the gray world of a recession—a recession that those in power have a vested interest in continuing, if possible, forever.
Mainstream newspapers like the Grand Rapids Press help corporations maintain the smoke-and-mirrors illusion that things are just not as bad as we think they are. That’s the purpose of those jolting, occasional articles about the end of the recession. It’s a weapon of mass confusion, and an effective one, considering how much has been stolen from us and how little we still understand about the criminals who robbed us.
Tonight (Wednesday, November 10th), as part of American Indian Heritage Month, there will be a screening of the documentary film Reel InJuns: On the Trail of Hollywood Indians.
Hollywood has made over 4000 films about Native people; over 100 years of movies defining how Indians are seen by the world.
Reel Injun takes an entertaining and insightful look at the Hollywood Indian, exploring the portrayal of North American Natives through the history of cinema.
Travelling through the heartland of America, Cree filmmaker Neil Diamond looks at how the myth of “the Injun” has influenced the world’s understanding – and misunderstanding – of Natives.
With candid interviews with directors, writers, actors and activists, including Clint Eastwood, Jim Jarmusch, Robbie Robertson, Sacheen Littlefeather, John Trudell and Russell Means, clips from hundreds of classic and recent films, including Stagecoach, Little Big Man, The Outlaw Josey Wales, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and Atanarjuat the Fast Runner, Reel Injun traces the evolution of cinema’s depiction of Native people from the silent film era to today.
The film will be show on the GVSU downtown campus and followed by a discussion. The film is free and open to the public.
Reel Injuns
6pm
Loosemore Auditorium – 122E DeVos
401 W. Fulton St.
Grand Rapids, MI
WOOD Radio drops local show, adds racist Glenn Beck to their far right programming
Friday it was reported that WOOD AM Radio discontinued one of the few locally produced programs in order to make room for the syndicated show of Glenn Beck.
The show Mouth 2 Mouth aired 9am til noon on Monday through Friday every week in the West Michigan media market. The largest radio conglomerate in the country Clear Channel owns WOOD Radio, which has seven stations in this area.
It was reported yesterday in the Grand Rapids Press that the Glenn Beck show began airing on WOOD Radio on Monday and that has fans of the Mouth 2 Mouth show upset. The Press reported that people have started a Facebook group, called Mad at WOOD. The Facebook page says, “Are you angry at Wood Radio 1300 for “letting go” Scott Winters and Michelle McCormick, our beloved hosts of Mouth to Mouth? Show it by joining!” There isn’t any concrete call to action, although some of the comments on this page are suggesting that people flood station manager Tim Feagan with E-mails demanding that the local show be reinstated.
People on the Facebook page are arguing that Mouth 2 Mouth was one of the few information/news-based shows that was locally produced, where the public could call in to add their comments to the topics of the day. It is true that there is limited local program in the West Michigan market this is overwhelmingly the case for WOOD Radio.
Station manager Tim Feagan said that the decision had nothing to do with the content of Mouth 2 Mouth, rather it was purely a “business decision.” The decision was no doubt good for business since advertisers will want to tap into Beck’s popularity. However, adding Glen Beck to their line up has other implications for WOOD Radion.
A quick look at WOOD Radio’s weekday program should tell us something about the kind of programming content they have decided upon. Not only are all the shows (except 5am – 9am) nationally syndicated shows, many of them are notorious for making false claims and engaging is racist hate speech, as has been well documented by Rory O’Connor in the book Shock Jocks: Hate Speech and Talk Radio.
09:00am – 12:00pm – The Glenn Beck Program – LIVE
12:00pm – 03:00pm – The Rush Limbaugh Show – LIVE
03:00pm – 06:00pm – The Sean Hannity Show – LIVE
06:00pm – 09:00pm – The Dave Ramsey Show
09:00pm – 12:00pm – The Michael Savage Show
12:00am – 05:00am – Coast To Coast AM with George Noory – LIVE
Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting has been documenting fallacious comments by Limbaugh for years, including racists comments. Michael Savage has an even worse track record of on air racist comments, which has led to efforts to get him off the air in various markets through a campaign called No Savage. Savage has advocated for an outright ban on Muslim immigration to the US and the construction of Mosques.
Glenn Beck has also engaged in demonizing Muslims and immigrants on his talk show, but the comment that resulted in a campaign against him was when he called President Obama a racist in 2009.
This comment resulted in the group Color of Change organizing a campaign to pressure Fox News to pull Beck from their programming. The campaign has not been able to get Beck off the air, but it has resulted in numerous national advertisers pulling their ads from the network.
In addition to these kinds of campaigns, some organizations have petitioned the Federal Communications Commission to investigate the link between on air hate speech and hate crimes in the US. So far the FCC has not made any decisions on this matter, but it does show that people are organized to challenge the kind of racist and xenophobic language that is part of radio programming across the country and on WOOD Radio.
