by Paul Abowd
from Labor Notes

October 28, 2009 - As dozens of contracts with hotel giants expired in three cities this summer, UNITE HERE launched another round of battles over health care, pay, and working conditions. Following civil disobedience actions and a nationwide tour of non-union housekeepers, members in Chicago and San Francisco voted overwhelmingly to authorize strikes as the union escalates its nationally coordinated “bargain to organize” campaign, which seeks to grow while raising contract standards.

As dozens of contracts with hotel giants Hyatt, Hilton, Marriott, and Starwood expired in three cities in late summer, UNITE HERE launched another round of battles over health care, pay, and working conditions. The union’s nationally coordinated contract campaign—known as Hotel Workers Rising—centers on building “bargain to organize” deals in its Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles hubs that will allow it to expand while raising contract standards.

The union scored bargaining and organizing victories in 2006 after fighting to line up contract expiration dates for 60,000 workers in six cities.

This year’s showdown finds hotel workers, and their union, at a moment of truth. The hotel giants are making unprecedented attempts to cut health benefits and up workloads in the recession, while the union is opening new organizing fronts that highlight stark contrasts between union and non-union working conditions.

The campaign this year has been hampered, though, by the March split in UNITE HERE, as its former laundry and textile division left and joined the Service Employees (SEIU). The resulting convulsion of raiding and counter-raiding has forced UNITE HERE to siphon staff from Hotel Workers Rising, most recently to battle over cafeteria workers in Philadelphia.

BOSTON’S HYATT 100

This year’s target, Hyatt hotels, hasn’t done much to bolster its public image lately: in late August it replaced 98 housekeepers at three non-union Hyatts in Boston with workers hired through a subcontractor at half the pay.

The company wasn’t banking on non-union workers resisting nor on their getting the support of UNITE HERE Local 26. Nearly all the workers met with the union, which strongly backed their fight. Within weeks of the firings, UNITE HERE had held protests nationwide in front of Hyatt hotels, demanding the “Hyatt 100’s” reinstatement.

The company scrambled, offering workers health care through the end of the year and one-year jobs with a temp agency at their former wages.

Workers rejected the offer, saying they didn’t want to replace other workers just as they’d been replaced. Instead, they joined 1,000 demonstrators who gathered in a Jobs with Justice-sponsored, bagpipe-led “march for jobs” October 1 that culminated outside the downtown Hyatt.

Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick called a statewide boycott of Hyatt, echoed by Boston’s city council and heeded by the city’s cab drivers’ union and dozens of others who switched their reservations in protest.

NATIONAL TOUR

While Local 26 targeted organizations that had events booked with Hyatt, Boston workers hit the road. The nationwide tour of six cities where the union is organizing began at a rally in Long Beach, where housekeeper Corpornia Belis wept recounting her abrupt dismissal after 25 years of service.

“My shoulders, my back, my knees stayed in that hotel,” she said. “And what did they give me? A garbage bag so that I could empty out my locker.”

The tour dovetails with contract fights in Chicago and San Francisco, where the union staged civil disobedience actions as a first escalation over dozens of contracts in the two cities.

Hotel business is off during the recession, but companies are hardly in line for a bailout. The industry has garnered $200 billion in profits in a decade. Hyatt is squealing about a $36 million loss in early 2009, but raked in $1.3 billion over the last four years. Starwood, Marriott, and Intercontinental are all still making money while asking workers to pony up.
NOT AFRAID IN CHICAGO

Boston workers arrived in Chicago, where Local 1 is fighting over 30 hotel contracts. “Me-too” rules dictate that the city’s smaller hotels, also with open contracts, follow the agreements hammered out by the major chains.

Hours after Chicago filled several police buses, San Francisco’s Local 2 followed in kind. At two downtown hotels, 1,700 showed up for an action that has sparked a series of smaller pickets.

After rallying outside the Grand Hyatt, Lorna Villanueva and dozens of her co-workers pushed further, taking over the lobby before getting locked up. Ninety-two were arrested, including Villanueva, a 36-year veteran room inspector—who chalked up her fifth protest arrest. This time, she says, the action was to protect future workers from the companies’ two-tier proposals. “We don’t leave anybody behind,” she said.

Talks over a citywide contract continue, with a 14-hotel multi-employer group covering 9,000 workers. One goal of the campaign is to win organizing rights at three city hotels, where drives are at a tipping point.

Hotels are putting the squeeze on. Ringo Mak, a veteran room service attendant, says the Hilton raised prices for the service so high that customers won’t use it—and then cut the department staff in half. “Everyone in the hotel besides the CEO is hurting,” he said.

Mak’s picking up extra hours serving in the hotel restaurant, and, for now, can maintain his family’s medical coverage even with reduced hours. Hilton wants to freeze its pension contributions and eliminate retiree health care.

Villanueva says frontline managers are playing nice while company negotiators lay down a hard line—a strategy that members recall from their 2004 strike and lockout, when a general manager brought breakfast to the picket lines. “Nobody touched the coffee or the donuts,” says Villanueva. “We buy our own food.”

Members continue their increased contributions to the strike fund, as they have for months. “The hotel lost a lot of money in the last contract fight,” says Mak. “I hope they learn their lesson.”

EXPANSION PLANS

UNITE HERE has achieved 90 percent density in New York and San Francisco through deals ensuring card check at newly built hotels. The union is also devoting resources to several “breakthrough markets” with low union density: Phoenix, Denver, Atlanta, and San Antonio, and those with none: Long Beach and Indianapolis.

The Boston workers made a stop in San Antonio, where a tumultuous organizing drive has stretched out over a year. Worker-leaders who haven’t been fired are getting assigned higher workloads than co-workers. If company intimidation weren’t enough, SEIU showed up to disrupt the drive.

UNITE HERE presented cards from a majority of workers last spring, but SEIU organizers flew in, claiming to be the real bargaining representative—despite having no contact with the worker committee. Hyatt happily obliged SEIU’s request for closed-door meetings, which drew worker protests inside the hotel.

Eventually the NLRB called an election with both unions and “no union” on the ballot. SEIU pulled its staff out before the election, and in July UNITE HERE called off the vote.

Back to square one, Hyatt workers are pressuring the city council to support unionization at the hotel, which was constructed with city incentives on city land. They’re also hoping the nationwide campaign will tip their drive over the top.

While local committees build muscle and multiply, the International is trying to swing organizing deals with the chains. The union reached agreements in 2006 with Starwood and Hilton (where it has the highest density), laying out a broad framework for new organizing rights. This year’s target, Hyatt, is not amenable to such talks.

UNITE HERE researchers say that upwards of 80 percent of hotel workers are still without a union, but 14,000 have joined in 35 metropolitan areas in the last five years—a 14.5 percent gain.

The union is challenged on three fronts: battling global corporations in a recession, keeping a rival union at bay, and creating a culture where hotel workers are at the fore of a democratic union.

Though a loyal membership has repeatedly shown its willingness to confront management, some of the union’s former organizers are raising concerns about the degree of rank-and-file involvement in decisions shaping local campaigns.

In a public letter, a group of ex-organizers at San Francisco hotels challenged UNITE HERE to make good on its professed “bottom-up” strategy, decreasing staff’s role and opening more space for worker control as contracts expire in several major cities next year.

by Jane Slaughter
from Labor Notes

October 29, 2009 - According to US Labor Against the War, the money spent in Iraq and Afghanistan could have paid for a year’s worth of health care for 140 million people—almost every working person in the U.S. The wars have cost each U.S. family $12,750 so far.

U.S. Labor Against the War is preparing for its third national assembly in December as the original motivation for its founding—the Iraq war—is winding down to a more limited but permanent presence. No worries that the nearly seven-year-old USLAW coalition has outlived its usefulness, though: delegates to the Chicago meeting will debate the Afghanistan war.

Thus far few unions have taken positions on the increasingly unpopular U.S. presence there, even those that have historically been leaders within labor on questions of war and peace.

An example is SEIU1199, United Healthcare Workers East, which in 2003 sent 25 busloads of members to Washington to try to forestall the invasion of Iraq. Vice President Steve Kramer says war has not been on 1199’s front burner recently. “We’re not focused on world issues to the extent we’d like to be,” Kramer said, citing concessions demands, a slew of contract reopeners, and the health care reform fight.

Besides preoccupation with day-to-day survival, some union leaders may be hesitant to criticize the U.S. presence in Afghanistan for other reasons. Kathy Black of AFSCME District Council 47 in Philadelphia says, “Nobody knows squat about Afghanistan, which is why USLAW has slide shows and fact sheets.” Black, a USLAW co-convenor, sees a change in attitude since President Obama was elected.

“It’s been really simple as long as Bush was president to get a lot of these unions to oppose the obscene level of spending in Iraq,” Black said. “But anything that will smack of opposing Obama’s policies or saying he’s not withdrawing from Iraq fast enough—they have other fish to fry.”

Kramer noted also the general lack of anti-war protests in the country.

Black sees a “hesitancy to do anything to discredit the administration” during the fight to get health care and labor law reform.

“If we get sold out on those things,” she says, “it’ll be easier to get people to sign on [to an anti-war position].”

DEBATE IT AT HOME

USLAW leaders have sent out sample union resolutions in advance of the December meeting, asking affiliates to raise and debate the question in their own meetings.

One such resolution, from a big New York Teachers (AFT) local, United University Professions, says, “The $65 billion to be spent in Afghanistan this year, and the hundreds of billions of dollars required in coming years for counterinsurgency there, are desperately needed for urgent domestic social purposes.”

A USLAW slide show is chock full of eye-opening statistics that affiliates are encouraged to share with members: The money spent in Iraq and Afghanistan could have paid for a year’s worth of health care for 140 million people—almost every working person in the U.S. The wars have cost each U.S. family $12,750 so far.

John Braxton is co-president of the wall-to-wall Faculty and Staff Federation at the Community College of Philadelphia, AFT Local 2026, an affiliate of USLAW. He says that when some members opposed the local’s taking a stand against the impending Iraq war in late 2002, leaders took a membership poll. They found 60 percent supported the local’s position.

Afghanistan is trickier, Braxton believes. USLAW was formed after many official union bodies had begun to oppose the war, he notes, and was created to pull those unions together and expand their reach within labor.

But now, Braxton says, most locals don’t have any position at all. “We won’t be a very effective organization if it’s just the activists saying we’re against this war,” he said.

TALKING GUNS V. BUTTER

Given the enormous cost of war and the huge cutbacks this year in government spending on education, health care, and other public goods, it’s natural that some unions are educating members and the public on the trade-offs.

SEIU Healthcare Pennsylvania, for example, trains staffers on how to engage members on the “guns or butter” question, stressing that this is a union issue and shouldn’t be shied away from.

In July, when Pennsylvania failed to pass a state budget on time, some SEIU Healthcare members faced payless paydays. The union focused its protests on the impact of budget cuts on state-run veterans nursing homes, where nurses are SEIU members. The union said the cuts would close 400 beds and that the vet homes had already turned down 40 vets who needed a bed.

“Pennsylvania is experiencing the largest call-up of reserves in many years,” said local President Neal Bisno. “Every community is experiencing the impact of expansion of military action abroad.”

A day of action featured press conferences at five nursing homes, along with vets’ organizations. The legislature reversed the cuts.

HEARING FROM A VET

Last year, the local’s annual convention featured a march and rally at a VA clinic and talks by a member, a Pittsburgh nurse, and her son who had come back from Iraq with physical and psychological problems.

“His story touched a nerve with our members—the idea that we’re spending the kinds of resources we are on dubious military operations in Iraq,” Bisno said, “yet we can’t provide basic access to affordable health care for adults and children in the U.S., even those we’re sending abroad.”

Mike Zweig of United University Professions, which represents faculty and professional staff at the State University of New York, says his delegate assembly passed an anti-Afghan war resolution this month by a big majority.

The SUNY system just made a mid-year budget cut of $90 million, Zweig said, and “people are just disgusted with this war, they want the money. Nobody said a word about ‘let’s cool it till after we get health care reform.’”

Two recent national polls show only 40 percent and 52 percent of Americans supporting the Afghan war. Kathy Black believes union members’ opposition to the eight-year-old conflict is bound to grow.

“We can’t escape the reality of the money situation,” Black says. “As long as we are pouring money into overseas military operations we can’t possibly have full economic recovery. We have an opening to talk about war spending and the black hole of Afghanistan.”

by Ellen Bravo
from Barbara Ehrenreich's Blog

Recently I gave a talk in Calgary, Canada for representatives of credit unions from around the world. The woman who introduced me, a director of marketing, was Canadian. “I just got back from maternity leave,” she told me, raving about her first child.

I know that Canadian law allows for nearly a year of leave at 55 percent pay. “How long did you take?” I asked.

“Oh, the whole year,” she replied. I mentioned that the Family and Medical Leave Act in the U.S. provides for considerably less time, 12 weeks, and that the time is unpaid. (I didn’t mention that it covers only half the workforce.) The vast majority of new mothers in the U.S. are back at work before 12 weeks. More than half of them get no pay at all.

Could she imagine having returned that soon, I asked. She worked her jaw for a few minutes without speaking. “I just couldn’t have done it,” she said finally. I felt as if I’d asked her to imagine feeding her child weeds.

Our interaction reminded me of that scene in Michael Moore’s film “Sicko” when he asks the Americans living in France how many sick days they received. “If you’re sick, you stay home,” one of them told him. “Yeah, but how many days do you get?” The answer: as long as you’re sick.

Hard to imagine for those living in the U.S., where no state or federal law requires any paid sick days at all – and where half the workforce has none. Seven out of ten workers in the U.S. have no paid sick time to care for a sick family member.

The next time you hear some lobbyist argue that our lack of standards is about economic competitiveness, remember this fact: Of the 20 most competitive nations in the world, the U.S. is the ONLY ONE which does not guarantee any paid sick days. Eighteen of those 20 countries guarantee at least 31 days of paid sick time.

Three decades years ago, when I was pregnant with my first child, a friend in France wrote me to say how sorry she felt that I had to have my baby in the United States. She went on to list the standards available to everyone in France – not just paid maternity leave, but high-quality child care available on a sliding scale basis for babies, and pre-school free to every child at age two and a half. Nearly all French parents sent their kids to those pre-schools, even in homes where a parent was available during the day, because the experience was so positive.

At the time I was taken aback by my friend’s letter, a little embarrassed and a little envious. Today, I’m just angry – and determined to see this change before my children have children.

For those who labor and go through labor, or simply need time to care for loved ones of any age, it’s about time we created some new rules in this country – like a minimum number of paid sick days, and insurance programs that provide at least partial wage replacement during family and medical leave. It’s about time we made sure that family values don’t end at the workplace door.

I’d sure like to say to friends in other countries that the U.S. no longer stands alone.

***
Ellen Bravo is former director of 9to5, National Association of Working Women and author of the recently released Taking on the Big Boys, or Why Feminism is Good for Families, Business and the Nation (Feminist Press at CUNY).

from United Steelworkers News
For More Information: Rob Witherell, 412-562-4333, rwitherell@usw.org

PITTSBURGH - The United Steelworkers (USW) and MONDRAGON Internacional, S.A. today announced a framework agreement for collaboration in establishing MONDRAGON cooperatives in the manufacturing sector within the United States and Canada. The USW and MONDRAGON will work to establish manufacturing cooperatives that adapt collective bargaining principles to the MONDRAGON worker ownership model of “one worker, one vote.”

“We see today’s agreement as a historic first step towards making union co-ops a viable business model that can create good jobs, empower workers, and support communities in the United States and Canada,” said USW International President Leo W. Gerard. “Too often we have seen Wall Street hollow out companies by draining their cash and assets and hollowing out communities by shedding jobs and shuttering plants. We need a new business model that invests in workers and invests in communities.”

Josu Ugarte, President of MONDGRAGON Internacional added: “What we are announcing today represents a historic first – combining the world’s largest industrial worker cooperative with one of the world’s most progressive and forward-thinking manufacturing unions to work together so that our combined know-how and complimentary visions can transform manufacturing practices in North America.”

Highlighting the differences between Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs) and union co-ops, Gerard said, “We have lots of experience with ESOPs, but have found that it doesn’t take long for the Wall Street types to push workers aside and take back control. We see Mondragon’s cooperative model with ‘one worker, one vote’ ownership as a means to re-empower workers and make business accountable to Main Street instead of Wall Street.”

Both the USW and MONDRAGON emphasized the shared values that will drive this collaboration. Mr. Ugarte commented, “We feel inspired to take this step based on our common set of values with the Steelworkers who have proved time and again that the future belongs to those who connect vision and values to people and put all three first. We are excited about working with Mondragon because of our shared values, that work should empower workers and sustain families and communities,” Gerard added.

In the coming months, the USW and MONDRAGON will seek opportunities to implement this union co-op hybrid approach by sharing the common values put forward by the USW and MONDGRAGON and by operating in similar manufacturing segments in which both the USW and MONDRAGON already participate.

Click here for the full text of the Agreement.

About MONDRAGON:

The MONDRAGON Corporation mission is to produce and sell goods and provide services and distribution using democratic methods in its organizational structure and distributing the assets generated for the benefit of its members and the community, as a measure of solidarity. MONDRAGON began its activities in 1956 in the Basque town of Mondragon by a rural village priest with a transformative vision who believed in the values of worker collaboration and working hard to reach for and realize the common good.

Today, with approximately 100,000 cooperative members in over 260 cooperative enterprises present in more than forty countries; MONDRAGON Corporation is committed to the creation of greater social wealth through customer satisfaction, job creation, technological and business development, continuous improvement, the promotion of education, and respect for the environment. In 2008, MONDRAGON Corporation reached annual sales of more than sixteen billion euros with its own cooperative university, cooperative bank, and cooperative social security mutual and is ranked as the top Basque business group, the seventh largest in Spain, and the world’s largest industrial workers cooperative.

from International Union of Food Workers

In a drive to destroy the independent union established last year by workers at the giant Haft Tapeh plantation/refining sugar complex in southern Iran, a court on October 12 sentenced 6 union leaders to immediate prison terms on charges stemming from October 2007. Three leaders convicted for their union activity last year for "endangering national security" in connection with worker action in 2008 had their sentences overturned on appeal in September. Two union officers, president Ali Nejati and communications officer Reza Rakhshan, both of whom face lengthy prison sentences, were still awaiting the outcome of their appeal when the court in the city of Dezful sentenced the six leaders on the similar 2007 charges.

Ghorban Alipour, Feridoun Nikoufard, Jalil Ahmadi, Nejat Dehli and Ali Nejati were all sentenced to 6 months' immediate imprisonment and 6 months suspended sentences over 5 years; during which time they are barred from union activity. Mohammmad Heydari Mehr received a 4 month term, 8 months suspended. Ali Nejati must serve his suspended sentence as prison time, meaning he faces an immediate one-year prison term. Should he lose his appeal on the 2008 conviction, his sentence could stretch to over 2 years.

Haft Tapeh workers in recent years have repeatedly had to resort to strikes and other actions to claim huge wage arrears and protest deteriorating working conditions. The union was officially founded in June 2008 following a 42-day strike to demand long-standing arrears. The Haft Tapeh union is an IUF affiliate.

Haft Tapeh president Nejati has been refused work at Haft Tapeh and blacklisted from all work in the region since being released in April from a month in solitary confinement in an intelligence detention center. The other Haft Tapeh leaders sentence on October 12 have now also been turned away from their work and instructed to report to prison.

The regime is clearly determined to crush the union by putting its entire leadership behind bars.

The fate of imprisoned transport and teachers' union activists shows that the Haft Tapeh prisoners risk prolonged physical and psychological abuse. The IUF urges all defenders of democratic and trade union rights to mobilize in their defense.

Act Now! - CLICK HERE to send a message to the Iranian state and judicial authorities, calling on them to immediately and unconditionally annul the sentences against the Haft Tapeh unionists! Please note that some messages may bounce back - do not be discouraged! Server overload is a common condition in Iran - some messages will get through, making the point that the persecuted trade unionists enjoy international support. The Haft Tapeh union leaders are also supported by Amnesty International.

You can also send a message to the Iranian embassy or diplomatic representation in your country - or pay them a visit! A complete list of embassies/consulates is available here, and you can generally find e-mail addresses by searching the internet for the individual representation in your country.

from Progressive Historians

Philadelphia was first in another major milestone in labor history - the general strike. Word traveled from city to city. By November 1, 1835, Philadelphia was ready.

Three hundred armed Irish longshoremen marched through the streets calling workers to join them on strike. Leather workers, printers, carpenters, bricklayers, masons, city employees, bakers, clerks and painters joined in, carrying their tools.

In all, 20,000 workers walked off their jobs and idled the city in a general strike for a 10-hour day. In what might be called the first "concern troll" in history, the Germantown Telegraph fretted for the well-being of the workers.

the brevity of only a sixty-hour week would be harmful to workers, that all the extra time would be "applied to useless and unworthy purposes."

After a week the city government caved. City workers would now only work 10 hours, from 6 A.M. to 6 P.M., with one hour for lunch and one hour for dinner. Three weeks later the other employers in the city gave in to the general strike. The 10 hour day was adopted throughout the city along with some wage increases.

The success of the general strike electrified the labor movement, and a wave of strikes swept the east coast. By the following year the 10-hour day was the standard for skilled workers. In 1840 President Martin Van Buren instituted the ten hour day for federal employees.

Here is a video from the Great General Strike of 1919 in Seattle:

by Jim Maynard
from Queer Notes

Less than two weeks away from the vote on Maine’s marriage equality law, things are looking up for marriage equality supporters.

The latest poll, released Tuesday, shows voters evenly split—48 percent to 48 percent, with four percent undecided and a margin of error of +/- 2.9 percent. The firm of Public Policy Polling surveyed 1,130 “likely voters” between October 16 and 19. Prior to that, a poll conducted between September 30 and October 7, showed 51.8 percent of “likely” voters in November would vote “No” on Measure 1, 42.9 percent would vote “Yes,” and less than 6 percent were undecided.

Measure 1 seeks to repeal the state’s newly approved law allowing same-sex couples to obtain marriage licenses the same as straight couples.

It's young.
It's diverse.
It's democratically elected.
It's the new National Committee of the Socialist Party USA!

from Weekly News Update on the Americas

A one-day general strike protesting plans to lay off 16,970 of Puerto Rico’s 180,000 public employees in November shut down all state-owned enterprises and the island’s schools and colleges on Oct. 15; most private businesses reportedly remained open remained open, and ports and airports were said to be functioning normally. There were protests throughout Puerto Rico, with tens of thousands of people converging on San Juan's Plaza Las Américas, the biggest shopping mall in the Caribbean. Hundreds of trucks drove slowly around the Milla de Oro area honking their horns, while some employees of the companies along the way gathered at doors and windows to show their support for the protest. “I’ve never seen anything like this before,” office worker Yadira de León told the Associated Press news service. “I support it because the situation is difficult [for the laid-off workers], but I have to work.” De León’s 11-year-old daughter was with her because the schools were closed.

Organizers said more than 100,000 people had participated in the San Juan demonstration, while the police declined to give an estimate. The general strike was backed by all the island’s main labor organizations, including the General Workers Union (UGT) and the All Puerto Rico for Puerto Rico Coalition. Economists said the Oct. 15 strike would cost the economy at least $32 million.

If Gov. Luis Fortuño goes ahead with the November layoffs, the total job losses for the year will be above 21,000. The government laid off 7,816 employees in May but had to hire more than 3,000 temporary teachers and assistants when the school year started in August. Fortuño says the job cuts, expected to save $386 million, are necessary because the government faces a $3.2 billion deficit this year due to the world economic crisis, but economists say the cuts will prolong the recession. Union leaders accuse Fortuño of planning to privatize government services [see Update #1006]. (El Diario-La Prensa (New York) 10/15/09 from AP; Univision 10/15/09; Latin American Herald Tribune 10/16/09 from EFE)

In New York, with the largest community of people of Puerto Rican descent outside the island, labor unions and other groups held a press conference on the steps of City Hall on Oct. 15 to support the demands of the strikers. In the late afternoon, as many as 200 activists gathered in a heavy rain outside the Puerto Rico Federal Affairs Administration office in midtown for a lively solidarity rally organized by the National Congress for Puerto Rican Rights and other grassroots organizations. After the rally, protesters carried out a “huevazo,” hurling eggs at a poster with Gov. Fortuño’s picture. (Terra (Spain) 10/15/09 from EFE; eyewitness report)

Protests continued after Oct. 15. Members of the National Hostosian Independence Movement (MINH) demonstrated against the governor when he appeared at a ceremony at the Julita Ross amphitheater in Toa Baja on Oct. 17. The labor unions said on Oct. 16 that they planned to continue the struggle until they had overturned Law 7, which permits the layoffs. Methodist bishop Juan Vera, a spokesperson for protest organizers, warned that there may be another general strike. “The people are tired of so much abuse,” he told the Cuban news service Prensa Latina. (ED-LP 10/18/09 from AP; PL 10/16/09)

from World War 4 Report

Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Arizona's Maricopa County is vowing to defy a federal order to halt immigration round-ups. On Oct. 16, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) told Arpaio to stop using the authority of the federal 287g program—which deputizes local law enforcement to help federal agents target undocumented immigrants—in his Phoenix street sweeps that have primarily led to arrests of people who haven't committed any serious crimes. Arpaio publicly refused as he headed a 12th major anti-immigration operation through the metro Phoenix county that day.

"You know what? They can take away anything they want. I’m still the elected sheriff," Sheriff Arpaio told Fox News' Glenn Beck this week. "I'm still going to enforce the state laws and I’m going to enforce the federal laws."

Arpaio, a veteran DEA agent, was first elected in 1993 and has since won five four-year terms as a Republican, all by double-digit margins. The county inmate population has doubled in that time to 10,000. With the county jail full, Arpaio began housing inmates in tent cities, telling critics that most jails these days are "like hotels." Claiming that pink is a calming color, he has marched inmates through the streets in pink underwear. He also instituted the nation's first female and juvenile chain gangs. Maricopa was the only county to lose its 287g authority. (CSM, Oct. 17)

by Colm McNaughton
from Upside Down World

22 October 2009 - The war in Guatemala has never ceased. While the Peace Accords signed in 1996 demobilized some combatants and weapons - the killing, raping and torturing continues unabated. In 2009 the homicide rate for Guatemala, with a population of 13 million, is about 8,000 per year. Of these 8,000 murders approximately 10 percent are women and girls.

According to figures from Guatemala City based women’s group Grupo Guatemalteco de Mujeres (GGM) between January 2002 and January 2009 there were 197,538 acts of domestic violence, 13,895 rapes and 4,428 women were murdered. What is perhaps even more disturbing is that for this tsunami of violence there is a 97 percent impunity rate. One of the main reasons for near total impunity in the Guatemalan context is that the people responsible for the genocidal civil war against indigenous people in which 200,000 people were murdered and 50,000 disappeared have never, nor are they ever likely to be held accountable.

In August and September of 2009 I visited Guatemala, at least in part, to examine how the civil war has been superseded by an as yet undeclared social war, part of which is an ongoing femicide.

This journey really starts for me in early September 2009 in the Ixil triangle, which is an area in the western highlands framed by the three townships of Nebaj, Chajul and Cotzal. It is a fiercely indigenous region which has resisted the colonialism and brutal immiseration forced upon the region since the times of the Spanish invasion. Consequently, it bore the brunt of the genocidal ‘scorched earth’ policies enacted by the consecutive military dictatorships of Romeo Lucas Garcia and Rios Mont in the early 1980s. At this time there were more than 200 massacres and 16,000 deaths, which led to a population decrease of the region by a quarter.

I visited Finca Covabunga, which is just up the road from Chul, a bumpy, dusty, windy three hour trip through the mountains on the back of a pick up, north of Nebaj. On December 9, 1982, 75 men, women and children were massacred by the Guatemalan army. The exhumation of seven or so bodies from two graves - the rest had been eaten by dogs, birds and time - was organized by the Centre for Forensic Analysis and Scientific Application (CAFTA) and it was part of their ongoing campaign against impunity for genocide in Guatemala. In speaking with the folks from CAFTA they were not hopeful of a prosecution – there is no functioning legal system in Guatemala – but they keep on building the case anyway. Over the two days I was in the community, like everyone else I tried to find a little spot underneath the black plastic to watch the digging: a pair of gumboots here, a crumbling skull there, some paperwork in a pocket, all carefully collected, noted and packed. One of the most surreal experiences of my life is helping to clean up the site and carrying plastic bags full of clothing, body parts and personal affects of recently exhumed massacre victims to the four-wheel drive for further tests and safer storage. As the exhumation continued an old woman wept, someone let off fireworks, others cooked beans and tortillas, young boys played football and stony faced older men talked softly in conjobal, a Mayan language.

I talked and recorded survivors of the massacre. Margarheta lost her husband, animals, land and all her possessions on that day. She spent the next ten years living in the mountains running from the army. Digging up the bodies was painful for her as it brought back a flood of painful memories. I met another man, Juan, hunched over, with a tiny twisted frame, obviously in pain from years of unrelenting farm labor. He lost his whole family on that day, he kept repeating the same word ‘everything’, ‘everything’. He found it hard to walk, to talk.

A day or so after returning from Chul, I was visiting an activist friend, Nicolas, in his dirt-floored shack surrounded by his wife and eight beautiful kids. He had been unable to attend the exhumation because of other business. I played him the recordings and showed him the photos. He listened with a sharp intensity to every word. He looked at the pictures likewise, it was like he had lost something precious and he was looking for clues. He told me his grandfather and grandmother had been executed by the army. Later on, he explained he had only learned to read and write recently, after he and his people had come down from the mountains. I asked him if he was a guerilla. He replied with some sadness: ‘no, I was too young’. He was elated that people from other countries are interested in learning about and telling the story of his people’s suffering and resistance. He gave me a present, of a book, a powerful pictorial account of the struggle for memory in Guatemala. The title translates as ‘the truth is under the earth’. Indeed.

The next day Nicolas and I and a couple of other activists visited a community on the outskirts of Nebaj. It is named June 30th which commemorates the date in 2006 in which the community reclaimed land from the army - who had stolen it after eradicating the owners - and started growing food, teaching their kids and various other projects of self-determination. All these families that made up this community had been dispossessed by the ‘scorched earth’ policies of the army in the region and been living in the mountains for more than a decade. Now this community is in a low-intensity conflict with the soldiers at the army base, which is situated on the other side of the hill. What this war largely consists of is the continual harassment, rape and sometimes torture and killing of women, which usually occurs when the women go out to collect firewood in the forests.

While at the community I met a young woman of sixteen who had a six month old baby, the father is a soldier and the conception method was rape. Nothing has ever happened in regards to this rape. In June of 2009 a woman who had five young children, was raped, murdered and cut up by soldiers. Nothing will likely ever happen to the person/s who committed this heinous act - impunity for such crimes is total in Guatemala. This woman’s five children are now orphaned and being helped out for now by a much older aunt and they have no means of support. I visited these kids and the littlest one who is two, had her finger in her mouth the whole time, and she looked out the world with big accusing eyes.

After a meeting with the community and many different perspectives on what is happening - in four different languages - we asked the community if they would like us to accompany them on a wood-sourcing mission. They enthusiastically agreed, so after lunch we set off into the forest, literally to confront power and to defend memory against institutionalized forgetting. On the way we were shown the spot were the mother of five was murdered, and stories were shared by the women who heard the screams and found the body. It was about half an hour into chopping and collecting wood when first contact was made with the army. They called for back-up immediately and the community gathered. First, we eyed five soldiers in shorts and runners with machetes, ropes and bags, obviously on some sort of collection mission. They were soon joined by five more soldiers, wearing camouflage fatigues and heavily armed. They kept their distance, filmed the proceedings and generally added a malevolent presence and threat to the encounter.

The community members began to really speak their minds to the soldiers. After a while, the tension eased and soldiers and community members went on their way. As she was leaving, one older woman said to the soldiers, "I am not afraid of you. Back in the eighties and nineties we used to kill you sort of people, and we’ll do it again if we have to." The soldiers were visibly shaken by her words.

from Wikipedia

Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, draughtsman, and sculptor. Commonly known simply as Picasso, he is one of the most recognized figures in 20th-century art. He is best known for co-founding the Cubist movement and for the wide variety of styles embodied in his work. Among his most famous works are the proto-Cubist Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907) and Guernica (1937), his portrayal of the German bombing of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War.

Picasso demonstrated uncanny artistic talent in his early years, painting in a realistic manner through his childhood and adolescence; during the first decade of the twentieth century his style changed as he experimented with different theories, techniques, and ideas. Picasso’s creative genius manifested itself in numerous mediums, including painting, sculpture, drawing, and architecture. His revolutionary artistic accomplishments brought him universal renown and immense fortunes throughout his life, making him the best-known figure in twentieth century art. His fame has continued after his death, firmly establishing his status as one of the greatest artists in Western history.

Delegates from across the country turned out in Newark, NJ this weekend for the National Convention of the Socialist Party USA. The Convention is the highest decision making body in the organization. Delegates debated the issues and voted on the election of officers and proposed changes in the Socialist Party's platform and constitution. New co-chairs, Andrea Pason and Billy Wharton, and a new National Committee were elected and some dedicated rank-and-file members of the organization were recognized during our awards ceremonies. The new National Committee is young, bristling with an energy and a determination to make the Socialist Party USA into America's Voice for Democratic Socialism. This year's convention was a positive step in that direction, but there is much work to be done to defeat a capitalist system which has thrown 25 million people out of work, left 58 million without health care and allowed the richest 5% of the population to control 85% of the productive wealth.

To see the names of the new co-chairs and national committee click here

Our 2010 award winners are as follows:

Jenny Higgins Award (volunteer)
male: Jesse Heiwa, NYC Local
female: Jane Newton, Brattleboro VT

Ann Rosenhaft Local Organizing Award
male: Brandon Collins, Central VA Local
female: Sally Joyner, Memphis Local

Irv Koth Youth Award
male: Zelig Stern, NYC Local
female: Kristin Schall, NYC Local

Between 150,000 and 200,000 people turned out for the National Equality March in Washington D.C. last weekend. The umbrella coalition organizing the march issued these demands:

Equal protection in all matters governed by civil law in all 50 states. We will accept no less and will work until it is achieved. Equality Across America exists to support grassroots organizing in all 435 Congressional Districts to achieve full equality.

We are guaranteed equal protection under the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution. Free and equal people do not bargain for or prioritize our rights. Full equality necessarily includes all members of the LGBT community and encompasses, but is not limited to:

* The right to work our jobs and go to school free of harassment and discrimination.
* The right to safety in our daily lives, and protection from hate crimes.
* The right to equitable healthcare, and the right to donate blood.
* The right to equitable immigration policies.
* The right to marry.
* The right to serve in the military openly.

Many bills currently exist to address some of these issues, but we do not support a piecemeal strategy. We seek one federal solution to full equality.

For more information about the Queer Commission of the Socialist Party USA, please contact Jim Sanders at jimsanders954(at)yahoo.com

by Billy Wharton

The beginning of the baseball playoffs offers the perfect opportunity to examine what has been a momentous season in the Bronx. Derek Jeter has become the clubs’all-time hits leader, C.C. Sabathia fell painfully short of a 20-win season and the Bronx Bombers returned to the postseason after a one-year hiatus. All this in a new stadium that has seemed like more of a challenge to fans and community residents than visiting teams to the Yankees. So, as the regular season ends, it is fitting that we mark year one in the “House that Neo-Liberalism built.”

Neo-liberal values of law-and-order and social discipline are the name of the game in the new stadium. This system of top-down control works well in total institutions such as jails, psychiatric wards and concentration camps, but is less effective, and certainly less just, inside of a democratic society. In the baseball stadium, the crowd rules. Spontaneous affinity and the cultivation of a collective will are organic features of a baseball crowd. Thousands of people bound together by voluntary association attempting to will their team toward victory. Raucous cheering, open hostility to the opponent and even the occasional brawl between fans all serve to seal the social pact of fandom.

Organized against these democratic impulses are the forces of the market backed by the muscle of security. For many Yankee Stadium officials, the game is little more than an opportunity to encourage hyper-consumption. Over-policing ensures that the independent impulses of fans are tamed. From the minute one steps into the new Yankee Stadium, they are searched, prodded and cajoled into buying things, experiencing things and being awed by the lifestyle available to rich elites. It is difficult to resist the postmodern prescription that the New Yankee Stadium is some hyperreal spectacle. One can see the dirty fingerprints of the same neo-liberal planning which has mucked up much of our planet all over the new stadium.

Eviscerating the Indigenous
No neoliberal project would be complete without dispossessing the indigenous. Not surprisingly then, the construction of the new Yankee Stadium is a tale of community dispossession, the siphoning of state resources and sharp price increases. For decades now, Yankees officials have held the impoverished South Bronx community where the stadium is located hostage by cooking up far-fetched escape schemes for New Jersey or Midtown Manhattan. Each demand was designed to extract further concessions from the City government. Mayor Michael Bloomberg feigned resistance to the Yankees most recent proposal, while secretly attempting to forge an agreement for a free corporate suit from the Yankees. No corporate seats for Bloomberg, but the Yankees did walk away with up to $700 million in tax payer funds, including $27 million to tear down the old stadium. The community paid an even higher price.

Green space was the first community casualty. The site of the new stadium was the large, high-use Macombs Dam Park, a public park frequented by youth sports teams. Youth baseball in the park created a fitting backdrop to the old Yankee Stadium – the hopes and dreams of the youth ball field emanated out into its professional counterpart. Macombs Dam Park was a vital open space in a neighborhood dominated by massive court houses, a sports stadium and high-rise apartments. The community protested, but their elected officials did not, preferring the political expediency of agreeing with City Hall and Yankee officials. Vague, and as yet unfulfilled, promises to replace the park were issued.

Community organizers with the 4DSBxCoalition have recently launched a campaign demanding that the Yankees deliver on the promise of green community space and other parts of the Community Benefits Agreement. Yet the only remnant of this promise that remains is a map just outside of the stadium which indicates how space will be used after the demolition of the old stadium. The location of the replacement community green space? The roofs of a dozen parking garages for Yankees fans.

Fans of the Yankees have also been swindled. Seats in the stadium are fewer and more expensive. Field-level seat prices were raised as high as $2,500 per game. Displaced fans clinging to seats passed through generations were dispersed to the nether regions of the new stadium. Other fans were priced-out entirely.

Once the season began, the new pricing scheme revealed the stark class contradictions of the stadium. Corporations and rich individuals gobbled up premium tickets, yet often neglected to actually attend the game. Fans, jammed into every other crevice of the stadium, were justifiably enraged at the site of hundreds of empty field-level seats, each section guarded by security. They had unknowingly identified the very essence of neoliberalism. Scarce space could be purchased, reserved and protected regardless of whether the rich actually intend to use it. All utility – in both stadium seating and community green space - had been annihilated.

Cornucopia of Distractions
Strangeness multiplies immediately upon entering the new stadium. As a child on summer vacation, I often wondered why the Amish put their sense of moral purity ahead of the appeals of modern society. Walking into the main hallway of the new Yankee Stadium allowed me to confront everything that is wrong with consumer society. A horse drawn buggy would be preferable to the blaring images of the 1977 World Series. A slice of shoo-fly pie to the massively expensive Yankees Steak House or Sushi Restaurant.

Everywhere a fan turns in the new Yankee Stadium there is some kind of slickly designed distraction, each with only the slimmest connection to the actual baseball game. A stuffed monkey with a Yankees jersey, innumerable cups, mugs, jars, waste baskets with Yankee logos, even a Yankee swim tube. A seemingly endless supply of overpriced souvenir items melds with a bizarre assemblage of food – sushi, pulled pork, kettle korn - to form a blurry consumerist psychedelia wholly divorced from the human activity about get underway on the field.

Contradictions abound. For instance, whatever noble currency is built up by the new Yankees museum is abruptly negated by the fire-sale of history underway in the main hall. The private company Steiner Sports operates a stand in the hall which offers pieces of the old Yankee Stadium for sale. Piece-by-piece, seat-by-seat, and blade-by-blade of grass offered up for a cash payment. The right-field wall, $2,500. Two chairs from the upper deck, $1,500. A clump of grass, $150. Derek Jeter’s locker was sold by Steiner for a reported $100,000. Perhaps only an Amish-informed sense of transcending worldly desires can save a baseball fan from this brutal orgy of commercialism.

The Philadelphia Problem
The stadium also confronts fans with a Philadelphia problem. What makes the new (2004) Citizen’s Bank Park in Philadelphia so striking is not the variety of concessions nor its obscenely homer-obsessed dimensions, but its openness. A fan feels invited into the open spaces of Citizen’s Bank. The space allows the crowd to casually congregate and watch the game from a variety of perspectives. Fans flow through the stadium relatively freely and naturally.

Key to creating this environment is the design of the main seating decks. The upper deck is foisted on a platform underneath which there is a large hallway. The hall is lined with the usual assemblage of souvenir shops, food stands and bathrooms. The innovation is that the stadium designers installed standing room spaces just above the lower deck. There is a small shelf where fans can place food or drinks or even just lean on, while watching the game standing up. There are no tickets here. People freely associate; moving fluidly from their standing spot back to their seats. Conversations develop quite easily in the standing-room seats.

The new Yankee Stadium appropriated this design from Citizen’s Bank. However, a combination of greed and paranoia about freedom of movement motivated the Yankees to privatize the standing room seats. Metal barriers are installed in front of the lower deck and seat numbers assigned to each standing location.

Of course, the Citizen’s Bank designers understood a bit more about the natural flow of the crowd. On a recent trip, I observed dozens of Yankee fans moving toward the standing-room locations. Each one was turned away by one of the hundreds of private security guards employed to police space. The weary security guard explained, perhaps for the millionth time, that the location required a ticket for admission. As a result, any number of fans stood lurching, some on tippy-toes, over the metal barrier attempting to catch a view of the game. Frustrated, they eventually moved back to their assigned seat. So much for Philadelphia freedom.

Freedom or an Interesting Illusion
The stadium is flooded with security guards. Each aisle in each section is guarded by someone – most often a fairly bored mid-20s African-American male who has clearly been instructed to stand with his back to the field and not watch the game. The mental torment of security guards is only one, unintentional, outcome of the policing strategy at the New Yankee Stadium.

What the guards are, in fact, protecting fans from is other fans. The obvious motive for restricting fan movement is to insure the class privilege of the denizens of the field-level seats. However, this was the policy even at the old stadium. The new security policy extends the logic built to protect rich fans to all parts of the ballpark. No one, regardless of the price of their ticket, can move. You must produce a ticket when attempting to enter any section of the stadium. It is total lock down.

Such heavy policing serves to curb all sorts of movement including the formerly venerated “7th inning rush.” Around the 7th inning of a blowout game, hordes of people would descend from the upper decks into lower section seats for a rare close-up look at their baseball heroes. Nothing formalized, just a part of the moral economy of a sports stadium. A temporary reversal of privilege in the baseball world order. Any fan attempting this today would be immediately pounced upon by an army of security guards.

The security policy goes deeper than just quelling this kind of stadium mini-insurrection. It seeks the micro-enforcement of rule of law in the stadium by force – actual force or the public display of the potential to use force. This process is intended to curtail the creativity, self-organization and disorderly chaos that made Yankee Stadium such a wonderful, and dangerous and exciting place to see a baseball game. Fans can no longer freely circulate – possession of a ticket is the sole item which legitimizes movement. In the end, micro-policing in the stadium reflects broader policing trends in society. Similarly, people’s freedom is often exchanged for a few trinkets or an interesting illusion.

Another Path for Baseball? Society?
Baseball is a beautiful game. For much of American history it served as a marvelous escape from the humdrum of work and family. Unlike most other sports there is no time clock in baseball. Hope, therefore, truly springs eternal on the ball field – a team can always come from behind and win, no matter what the score. Fans can play a necessary emotional role in such moments. Perhaps, when the time comes to inspect our society in search of democratic foundations, the essence of what is good about baseball can be reborn.

The new Yankee Stadium is designed to negate this essential goodness. Born with the original sin of community dispossession, the stadium is an over-policed, commercial happy zone which just happens to host 81 baseball games a year. So, for now, at the baseball stadium, as well as in society, we struggle against neoliberal attempts to control where we move, what we consume and how we experience happiness. Essential to such resistance is retaining the spirit of unruliness inherent in the baseball crowd. Doing so may allow us to transform the new Yankee Stadium from a site for neoliberal discipline into a target for a democratically informed non-compliance movement. In the process, we may just save a sport which has brought happiness to millions.

***
Billy Wharton is the co-chair of the Socialist Party USA and editor of The Socialist and the Socialist WebZine. His articles have recently appeared in the Washington Post, the Indypendent, Dissident Voice and the Monthly Review Zine.

by Mal Herbert

Tasting the Sky, A Palestinian Childhood
by Ibtisam Barakat
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 2007, $16.00

Tasting the Sky, is the memoir of a gifted young Palestinian refugee who discovers at an early age that writing is her way of coping with life. She longs to go to the United Nations school her older brothers attend and begins by learning to write the letter alef (the first letter of both the Arabic and Hebrew alphabets) with a piece of chalk she pockets when visiting one of their classrooms.

When she was finally old enough to go to school , she did well and continued her education at Bir Zeit University and came to the US for an internship at The Nation magazine in 1986. She later earned M A degrees in journalism and family studies from the University of Missouri-Columbia. She now lives in Columbia, Missouri. This is her first book.

Barakat was three years old in 1967, when her family was forced to leave their home and driven with other villagers toward the border with Lebanon. Because she wasn't able to tie one of her shoes and had to abandon it, she wasn't able to keep up with her parents and two older brothers. She became separated from them but was helped along by the crowd fleeing under Israeli bombardment. I took two frightening days for her to be reunited with her family.

Although classified as a juvenile book, this powerful memoir about growing up in the West Bank under Israeli occupation is appropriate reading for anyone who wants to better understand the Palestinian side of the Middle-East Crisis.

In her introduction Barakat gives some history of the many events that have led to the current conflict. These include the 1st World War and the European colonization of the Middle East that followed; World War II, the Holocaust, and the urgent need for Jews to find a home; the subsequent creation of the State of Israel on land that for the most part was populated by Palestinian Arabs. The war of 1948 resulted in the establishment of Israel on what used to be Palestine, leaving the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem under Arab administration. In June 1967, when the Six-Day War ended, Israel had occupied the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and had taken over East Jerusalem.

"This is not only a struggle between two peoples," she says. "Many countries have an intense involvement with the Israelis and Palestinians. But the approach of siding with one group or the other rather than both, seems to add to the strife. A genuine solution must allow not only freedom and security for both Israelis and Palestinians but also room for both peoples to heal from having having been victimized as well as heal from having victimized others. When achieved, this solution is sure to offer tremendous hope for all of humanity, since this conflict has become one of the great obstacles to world peace today."

by Dan La Botz
from MRZine

Mexican Federal Police last night and early this morning seized the plants of the Central Light and Power Company of Mexico (LyF) which provides electricity to Mexico City and several states in central Mexico. The government of President Felipe Calderón also announced the liquidation of the company, the termination of the workers, and thereby the elimination of the Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME) which has opposed the government's policies. (See the call for Solidarity with Mexican Electrical Workers Union at end of this article.)

The government's action has two goals, one political and the other economic. First, the government wants to eliminate the Mexican Electrical Workers Union which has been the leading force in organizing to oppose the Calderón government's economic policies and in particular its plan to privatize the electrical industry. Second, the government plans to actually eliminate the Central Light and Power Company, possibly to merge its facilities with the Federal Electrical Commission (CFE), and eventually to sell the facilities to a corporation.

Pivotal Moment

While we have become accustomed to the Calderón government's attacks on labor unions such as the Mexican Miners and Metalworkers Union, and its massive use of police and military force, this is not just one more incident. This is a turning point. The Mexican government's attack on the Mexican Electrical Workers Union -- a union central to resisting government policies and building labor and social movement coalitions, and located in Mexico City which is the center of political opposition to the government -- may well turn out to be a watershed event in the country's recent history.

As Mexican journalist Luis Hernandez Navarro wrote in the Mexico City daily La Jornada, "The police and military attack against the electrical workers represents a serious setback in the precarious democratic life of the country. It provokes a huge short circuit. It establishes and unfortunate precedent. By attempting to use violence to solve a conflict created by the government itself, it takes us back to the darkest stages of authoritarianism."

The Union Response

Martín Esparza, Mexican Electrical Workers Union general secretary, called Calderón's action "unconstitutional." He called upon its 65,000 active and retired members to remain calm and to resist provocation. At the same time a union statement said its members would defend the nationalized electrical industry, their union, and their constitutional rights. Members gathered in front of the SME union hall and also at the Monument of the Revolution in Mexico City and rallied in defense of their state-owned company, their jobs, and their union.

A union statement issued early Sunday morning said, "They have declared war on us and we are going to respond, always exercising our Constitutional rights and guarantees, of that there is no doubt."

Humberto Montes de Oca, a union spokesman said the union had three demands:

1. The revocation of the government decree liquidating the company.
2. The immediate evacuation of the Federal Police from the plants.
3. Discussions between the government and the union about financial and administrative issues.

The Mexican Electrical Workers Union has called upon Mexican unions and unions of other countries to rally to their support.

The union said that with the military having occupied the power plants, it was no longer in a position to insure the delivery of electrical power in the region.

Some SME union members were reportedly calling upon the union to declare a general strike, which would shut off power to Mexico City and surrounding states, affecting tens of millions of people. So far the union has not decided to take any such action.

No Surprise

While the Calderón government moved suddenly last night and this morning to seize the plants, its actions were no surprise. (See the government decree "DECRETO por el que se extingue el organismo descentralizado Luz y Fuerza del Centro" published at the Web site of the Diario Oficial de la Federación.) The Calderón government and its predecessors have often expressed their desire to merge the Central Light and Power Company with the Federal Electrical Commission, which provides power to the rest of the country, and to privatize electrical power generation.

Secretary of Labor Javier Lozano declared in September that the Mexican Electrical Workers Union elections were invalid and that general secretary Martín Esparza and other union officers would not be recognized by the government. Without legally recognized union officials, the union could not engage in contract negotiations or other activities.

Members of a dissident group in the union, tacitly supported by the government, had also carried out an armed attack on the union hall and robbed union documents and checks.

And last month there were already rumors of the government plan to use the police to seize the facilities.

The government justified its actions by arguing that the Light and Power Company was both inefficient and exorbitantly expensive. The government said it was prepared spend $20 billion pesos (about US$2 billion) to pay workers severance and retirement.

Long History of State Violence

At the moment 500 Federal Police officers have taken control of over 100 Light and Power plants, reportedly roughing up some workers in the process. While so far there has been no serious violence, in the event of union resistance, the police -- possibly backed up by the army -- will use force to suppress the union. In past instances of government-union conflict in Mexico, such repression has led to deaths and beatings, while the government has then indicted union leaders, resulting in convictions and long jail terms.

Federal Police have been used in the last three years to attempt to break strikes of miners and steelworkers as well as to try to crush popular social movements, resulting in deaths, rape, and beatings. Mexican police have been used repeatedly in the past to occupy the facilities of telephone workers and others to break strikes. The Mexican government used the police or army to crush militant movements of workers in 1959, of students in 1968, and of electrical workers in 1975.

Solidarity with the Electrical Workers

The Mexican Electrical Workers Union has asked for international solidarity in resisting the government liquidation of the company, the termination of the workers, and thus the destruction of the union. If you wish to protest this action, you should write to President Felipe Calderón at felipe.calderon(at)presidencia.gob.mx If you wish to show your solidarity with the Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME), you should copy your protest email to sinmexel(at)sme.org.mx.

***
Dan La Botz is a Cincinnati-based teacher, writer and activist. Contact him through his home page: <DanLaBotz.wikidot.com>