SWU in Vieques

from the Comite pro-Rescate y Desarrollo de Vieques (English below)...

Durante esta semana tuvimos el priveligio de una visita del compañero Rubén Solís, del Southwest Workers Union (San Antonio, Texas, México). Rubén y otros compas del SWU han trabajado de cerca con el Comité Pro Rescate y Desarrollo de Vieques y otros grupos e individuos en Vieques desde la década de 1990 y, en particular, desde la lucha intensa de 1999 a 2003.

Como parte del Military Toxics Project, una delegación del SWU viajó a Vieques hace varios años para compartir sus estrategias de organización y mobilización comunitaria en el área de la cerrada base aérea, Kelly. Los problemas de tóxicos militares y salud en la zona adjacente a esa base se asemejan mucho a la situación de Vieques. Para conocer más sobre los proyectos del SWU, varios viequenses viajaron a San Antonio para participar en foros y talleres sobre los procesos de la descontaminación militar y otros asuntos relacionados con el problema internacional del militarismo. Ismael Guadalupe, Elda Guadalupe, Cynthia Martínez y Nilda Medina - todos deVieques - y nuestro asesor ambiental, el químico Dr. Jorge Colón, participaron en años recientes en reuniones con la SWU en Texas.

En esta ocasión, Rubén estuvo en Puerto Rico durante un mes para trabajar en la redacción de un memorial de veinte años de lucha de la SWU. Además, se reunión con diversos grupos políticos puertorriqueños para compartir experiencias y discutir proyectos de solidaridad.

En Vieques, tuvimos la oportunidad de dialogar con Rubén el pasado viernes en la noche en una reunión informal del CPRDV. Varios miembros del comité participaron en el conversatorio en lo cual Solís describió los proyectos del SWU: lucha en defensa de los derechos de miles de empleados no docentes del sistema de educación pública; trabajos de justicia ambiental y económica; proyectos agrícolas y una cooperativa de costureras - Hilos de la Justicia! - además de su importante trabajo contra el Muro de la Muerte que las fuerzas de seguridad nacional (EU) construyen en la frontera con México. Rubén participa activamente en las directivas del Foro Social de las Américas y en los trabajos del Foro Social de EU. El SWU fue instrumental en lograr la participación de una delegación del CPRDV en el Foro Social de EU y aportaron a nuestra participación en Venezuela y Ecuador.

La oportunidad de colaborar con y aprender de gente y organizaciones que hacen esfuerzos milagrosos a favor de un mundo mejor, un mundo más justo - como es el SWU y sus representantes como Rubén Solís - cuenta entre los grandes privilegios de nuestro trabajo en Vieques y figura entre los elementos de solidaridad que posibilitaron la gran victoria del pueblo
viequense-puertorriqueño el Primero de Mayo de 2003.

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During this past week we had the priviledge of a visit from comrade Rubén Solís, of the Southwest Workers Union (San Antonio, Texas, México). Rubén and other friends from SWU have worked closely with the Committee for the Rescue and Development of Vieques and other groups and individuals in Vieques since the 1990's and, particularly, since the intense struggle between 1999 and 2003. As part of the Military Toxics Project, a delegation from the SWU travelled to Vieques several years ago to share strategies from community mobilizing and organizing used in the area of the close Kelly Air Force Base. The problems military toxics and health in the zone adjacent to Kelly are very similar to those on Vieques. To know more about the SWU's work, several Viequenses travelled to San Antonio to participate in forum and workshops on processes of military decontamination and other issues related to the international problems of militarism. Ismael Guadalupe, Elda Guadalupe, Cynthia Martínez and Nilda Medina - all from Vieques - and our environmental advisor, chemist Dr. Jorge Colón, participated in recent years in meetings with the SWU in Texas.

ON this ocassion, Ruben was in Puerto Rico during the month to work a memorial text about the twenty year history of SWU. Also, he met with diverse Puerto Rican poliltical groups to share experiences and discuss solidarity projects.

In Vieques, we had the opportunity to dialogue with Rubén last Friday during an informal meeting of the CRDV. Several members of the committee participated in the conversation in which Solís described the SWU activities: struggle for rights of thousands of non professional workers in public schools; work on economic and environmental justice issues; agricultural and cooperative textile proyects (Threads of Justice!) - as well as important work against the Death Wall being build by US Security Forces on the border with Mexico. Rubén participates actively in the direction of the Social Forum of the Americas and works with the coordinators of the US Social Forum. SWU was instrumental in assuring participation the CRDV in the US Social Forum and helped us to participate in Venezuela and Ecuador.

The opportunity to collaborate with and learn from people and organizations that make miraculous efforts in favor of a better world, a more just world - like the SWU and its representatives like Rubén Solís - is one of the great priviledges of our work in Vieques and figures among the elements of solidarity that made possible our great victory of Vieques and Puerto Rico on 1 May, 2003.

More reflections from SxSW Albuquerque

At the south x southwest gathering in Albuquerque I really enjoyed meeting the youth from different states. The most memorable event for me was the film we saw on Chicano history at the museum. It really opened my eyes and showed me how similar the black and brown history is and how we share the same struggles. The time we spent hanging out with the youth from Mississippi and New Mexico was fun and I found that we were able to talk to each other as if we knew each other for years.
- Elisa, YLO intern

South by south west has been a cool learning experience and a strong loving environment. I’ve learned that it doesn’t matter where you come from, were you roots come from, you will have the same common struggles and goals in life.

- Melissa, YLO intern

South by Southwest how to start one of the best times of a life time. Learning how indigenous people survive and how they go threw a day searching for water. Learning how people have no water in the dessert and what they actually have to do just to have water. They reuse all the water they have and use solar panels to get some electricity. The thing that amazes me the most is that they all had to learn how to do it on their own. Learning about New Mexico and how they don’t have very much water. All of the water in New Mexico is used they are running on reusable water. Going up to Acoma was a wonderful experience Learning on how they ended up their and what their believes are. I believe every youth out there should get involved in change. Building the black and brown alliance is something we all have to struggle with and should accomplish.

- Liz, YLO intern

Reflections from the SxSW in ABQ

The South X Southwest Conference held in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Going to New Mexico didn’t simply offer a new place to travel or new food to taste; it gave me the opportunity to get in touch with my past, mother earth, and brothers and sisters in a struggle for a better world.

Albuquerque and the communities surrounding it are enthralled in the past. A small rural community outside of Albuquerque, Pajarito Mesa, is an example of people adapting to the lack of human resources by conserving water through recycling and using solar energy. Even though the people of Pajarito Mesa pay taxes, they struggle to get equal services like the other Bernalillo residents. The Petroglyph National Monument is described by many indigenous peoples as the “backbone of mother earth” and serves as a place of religious service.

The most inspirational program of the conference was the documentary, “500 years of Chicano History.” Within a few minutes of watching the film, I couldn’t help but feel like I was cheated out of having a truthful history in my education in Texas! The government had never kept any of its promises to Mexicans and has never truly acknowledged our contributions to American history. The lack of that acknowledgement separates our peoples. There is no doubt that African Americans, Indigenous peoples of America, and Latinos share a common history. This history is what can unite us in our struggles for an equal world, but government created a system where we ignore it.

- Uriel Gonzalez, SWU intern (aka the sleeping jaguar)

Domestic Worker Member, Araceli, in NY Times

Yana Paskova for The New York Times

Domestic Workers Organize to End an 'Atmosphere of Violence' on the Job

Conference participants rallied in Manhattan on Saturday for the New York State Domestic Workers’ Bill of Rights.

By CARA BUCKLEY and ANNIE CORREAL

Published: June 9, 2008, New York Times

The women’s stories seemed to come from a backward country, or from a shameful time in the United States that many would sooner forget.

Sharing stories from the workplace: Violet Anthony, top, was slammed against a wall and subjected to beatings after she arrived from India; Georgia Danan, middle, was paid just $70 for working a 24-hour shift; and Araceli Herrera, bottom, says employers searched her bags before they would allow her to leave for the day.

The march was part of the first National Domestic Workers Congress.

One woman, too scared to give her name, told of being struck by her employer in Bethesda, Md., as she scrubbed her hands raw polishing the floor. Another woman, Violet Anthony, who is 29 and from Mumbai, said her face became marbled with bruises after her employer in Queens slammed her into a wall and slapped her. Araceli Herrera said some of her employers inspected her bags before she left their homes and refused to drive her to or from the bus stop, a half-hour’s walk away. One employer, she said, fired her after she had a gallbladder operation and needed a month’s rest.

“With each job, I was exploited more. The thing is, the more you suffer, the harder it is to defend yourself,” said Ms. Herrera, 48, who trained to be an optometrist in her native Mexico and now works as a housekeeper in San Antonio. “We come from an atmosphere of violence, of blows, and we think we have to tolerate that.”

All three women were in Manhattan over the weekend for the first National Domestic Workers Congress, four days of workshops, meetings and a rally to demand rights for a work force that organizers describe as splintered, almost invisible, and staggeringly difficult to organize.

“Collective bargaining is not possible,” said Ai-jen Poo, an organizer with Domestic Workers United, an advocacy group for nannies, caregivers for the elderly, and housekeepers in New York. Workers usually achieve rights through strength in numbers, Ms. Poo said, banding together to pressure an individual employer to change. But in the New York City area, she estimated, there are 200,000 domestic workers working for perhaps as many employers.

“The power dynamics are different,” Ms. Poo said. “If you try to negotiate, you’re out.”

The conference drew about 100 women, most of them representatives from domestic workers’ groups in about 10 cities. Nearly all of them were immigrants, from Mexico, Central and South America, the Caribbean, the Philippines and India. They came together to build alliances and hone strategies to demand benefits that many of their employers almost assuredly take for granted: paid vacations and holidays, cost-of-living wage increases, health benefits and advance notice of termination. The workers threw their support behind a proposed New York State Domestic Workers’ Bill of Rights, which, if passed, would be the first in the nation.

“Right now, it’s like the wild, wild West — anything goes,” Ms. Poo said. “Our point is that there needs to be a basic standard of protections, because the majority fall under employers who abuse, and everyone is vulnerable.”

Ms. Anthony said she was duped into working for next to nothing after responding to an ad in India that promised her $600 a month for baby-sitting in the United States. Instead, she said, her employer took away her passport after she arrived in 2004, paid her $100 a month for her first job, in New Jersey, and later forced her to work without pay from 7 a.m. to midnight at his home in Queens, cleaning, cooking and baby-sitting. The man also threatened to tie her up in the basement, she said. After his wife beat her, she said, she fled to a neighbor’s home. Ms. Anthony later learned of a group for South Asian workers that helped her move on to a better job as a mail clerk at a law firm.

The woman who said she was beaten by her employer in Maryland has been living at a shelter. At the conference, she drew small hearts on her name tag, but fearing repercussions from her former employer, asked that her name not be made public. She is 37, a slight woman with small hands and a stud adorning her nose. She is from Kanpur, India, and arrived in Bethesda in December 2007 to work, she said, for a man who worked at the Indian Embassy. Her days started at 6 a.m. and lasted well into the night, and she said she was paid $200 for three months’ work. Exhausted, sickened by the chemical cleaning solutions that seared her lungs and burned her hands, she ran away in April and was placed in a shelter. “At first I had many dreams,” she said. “But I have let go of so many dreams.”

Casa de Maryland, an immigrants’ advocacy group, and its Committee of Women Seeking Justice took on her case and sent her to the conference.

Other women told less harrowing tales that still evinced how little their work was valued, and how little recourse they felt they had. One woman, who wore a yellow T-shirt emblazoned with the phrase “Tell Dem Slavery’s Done,” said she used to baby-sit full time in New York City for $275 a week, and was pushed to work for less. Georgia Danan, a 76-year-old who works as a caregiver for the elderly, said an agency in California paid her $70 for working a 24-hour shift; she is fighting for several months of back wages. Martha Alvarado, who is 41 and from Peru, said that in her first housekeeping job in the United States, in 1994, she was forced to live in a basement and work six days a week, until 11 p.m. at night.

Ms. Alvarado, like many of the women at the conference, said she considered herself lucky to be there because untold thousands of domestic workers remained exploited and deeply isolated.

“Many women feel they are alone,” she said, “and don’t dare come out in the light and speak.”

Domestic Workers Unite

Domestic Workers Unite
by Lizzy Ratner, The Nation


Georgia Danan was both laughing and crying. It was Friday, June 6, and she was sitting in a Barnard College classroom, telling the tale of how she came to be a 76-year-old Filipina domestic worker fighting to win $22,000 in back wages from a recalcitrant employer. Speaking in hurried, distraught sentences, she unfurled the story of how she immigrated to Los Angeles in 2005, sought a job as a domestic worker through the Mt. Sinai Home Care agency, and then, like so many before her, found herself being both poorly treated--she said she was regularly yelled at and accused of stealing--and cheated out of a minimum wage. For one fifteen-day period, she said, the agency didn't pay her at all.

"I am old. If I get sick, if I have no money, what will happen to me for my medicine and doctors?" said Danan, a former third-grade schoolteacher, as she wiped two streaks of tears from beneath her bifocals. "So I am appealing for the sake of all caregivers that are exploited like me. I am appealing that we should have justice!"

And then she chuckled.

This gesture of defiance in the midst of despair, of humor amid horror, was the dominant if unofficial theme of the first National Domestic Workers Congress, which took place June 5-8. For four days, some one hundred nannies, housekeepers and caregivers came together in New York City--one of the most important domestic-work capitals--to share their stories and to strategize solutions with regard to their collective mistreatment. Many of these women (and they were almost all women) had traveled long distances to be there: from Miami, Denver and as far as San Francisco. And many, like Danan, had undertaken personal journeys that stretched back even farther: to India, Mexico and the Caribbean.

These treks had been followed by excruciating tours of misery in the homes of wealthy, and occasionally violent, employers. Several women had actually been hit or otherwise assaulted in the line of duty. By the time they reached New York, they were determined to make themselves heard.

"For too long we women have been silenced," said Joycelyn Gill-Campbell, a Barbados-born nanny-turned-organizer for Domestic Workers United, one of the leading New York-based domestic rights groups, during a speech to her sister congressgoers. "But today we are in the forefront, we are moving forward... We are going to build an enormous movement!"

The time is certainly ripe for a movement of domestic workers. In the annals of contemporary American labor injustices, the ills suffered by domestic workers remain among the most stark and stomach-churning.

Barred from even the minimum protections of basic labor laws like the National Labor Relations Act and the Occupational Safety and Health Act, domestic workers float in a kind of legal zero-gravity zone where they have no right to organize and no guarantees of paid sick days, paid vacation days, severance pay or advance notice of termination. Some forms of domestic work are also excluded from portions of the Fair Labor Standards Act (a fact that helps explain the wide pendulum-swing of wages that domestic workers earn, from as little as 50 cents an hour to, say, $10). As a result, all too many women who make their living in other people's homes--cleaning their dishes, raising their kids and otherwise making their lives possible--find themselves enduring everything from humiliation to exploitation to worse.

"The lady said, 'Scrub it, scrub it, scrub it!'" recalled Araceli Herrera, a 58-year-old housekeeper in San Antonio, replaying a former employer's obsessive insistence that she clean, clean, clean even though Herrera was suffering from agonizingly painful gallstones. Later, when she tried to return to work after a monthlong recovery from gallbladder surgery, she found that the employer had hired somebody else.

Not that this was the first time she had been ill treated by an employer. An immigrant from Mexico City who arrived in the United States at the age of 40 after a harrowing weeklong trek across the border and through the desert, Herrera has experienced a post-immigration life that reads like a latter-day Steinbeck novel, from the forced separation from her then-16-year-old son--a memory that still makes her cry--to the story of her first employer, who paid her $45 a week, made her sleep on the kitchen floor, let her rest only a few hours a night and then fired her when a hip injury prevented her even from walking. Even some of her kindlier employers have often shown an all-too-callous thoughtlessness, taking vacations at whim while refusing to let her spend Christmas with her ailing mother--now deceased--in Mexico.

"They never think we are humans," Herrera said, her genial voice turning suddenly raw. "I am a lady. I am a woman. I have dreams. I want to do something. No, they never [think] that. They maybe think we are machines."

To many of the women at the congress, stories like these, enraging as they are, are hardly new. As Gill-Campbell observed, they've been playing out their brutal plots since the beginning of time--or at least since the earliest days of this country. "The roots really date back from the days of slavery," she said, tracing the evolution of modern-day domestic work from the forced household labor performed by women slaves, to the free but rarely voluntary housework performed by post-abolition-era African-American domestics, to her own degrading treatment in the house of her first employer.

"To see the way I was treated in that first job, having to wear a white uniform from head to toe and white shoes," said Gill-Campbell, describing a scene in which, while dressed in this full servant regalia, she was forced to push her employer's dog in a stroller.

Moreover, such scenes of humiliation just seem to be proliferating. The Census Bureau estimates that there are currently 1.5 million domestic workers toiling and struggling in the United States, and domestic-work advocates say that, anecdotally, this number is rising, spiking upward with the tide of increasingly wealthy Americans who feel that time, work or money makes them no longer capable of cleaning their own toilets.

"The documentation has shown that as wealth inequality grows, so does the domestic industry," said Ai-Jen Poo, 34, a tall, preternaturally calm organizer who also works for Domestic Workers United.

In an effort to begin reversing this trend--or, at the very least, the exploitation that so often accompanies it--domestic workers and the groups that represent them have been forced to conjure up canny and sometimes unexpected solutions, like, working with Jews for Racial and Economic Justice to educate and organize sympathetic employers. At the same time, the New York groups have been waging a fierce campaign for a bill of rights, which, if passed by the New York State Legislature, would finally extend basic labor rights to the state's roughly 200,000 domestic workers.

This campaign was in full swing on the third morning of the conference, when the women of the National Domestic Workers Congress gathered in front of City Hall in Lower Manhattan with banners, a sound system, and yellow T-shirts embossed with the words, "Rights, Respect, Recognition for Domestic Workers." In reality, this rally probably would not serve as the grand, suasive push that would tip certain legislators in their favor (despite the bill's uncontroversial, and incontrovertible, merits). And, it was excruciatingly hot. But none of this seemed to take any air out of the women's lungs.

"We are the strength of this city, whether they know it, yes or no," shouted Deloris Wright, a veteran nanny with a graceful Jamaican lilt, who served as master of ceremonies for the English-speaking part of the rally. "We are a powerful group of people!"

The crowd cheered, unleashing one of those wild roars usually reserved for large sporting events. The rally was just beginning. Perhaps some of those sleeping Albany legislators would hear them after all.

SWUtrailer: get ready

20 años en lucha!

here's a sneak pea

Happy Birthday SWU!!

20 years in the struggle for dignity & justice.

La Union es la Fuerza

FELICIDADES!!

20 years in the struggle report & reflection ... Southwest Workers Union started from the vision that members were an indispensable power base for change, and that workers hold a special role in systemic social change in this system...

San Anto marches for Primero de May (May 1st)

Un reporte de SWU (en espanol)

San Antonio Express News coverage here ; video

A Louder Voice: Activists strategize to stop fence construction

April 12, 2008 - 11:37PM

By Laura Tillman/The Brownsville Herald

As the No Border Wall Strategies Conference ended Saturday, Southwest Workers Union coordinator Ruben Solis stood before 20 people who had gathered to summarize events planned for almost every day this month.

At his back, a checkerboard of strategies was taped to the wall, outlining a calendar of community dialogue about immigrant rights.

The representatives of border wall protest groups came from across the Rio Grande Valley and had convened at the San Felipe de Jesus Church in Cameron Park to channel their voices into a louder battle cry and stop construction of the federal border fence.

At the conference, protesters characterized the structure as the "Wall of Death."

For months, groups from across the Valley have strategized, demonstrated, walked, talked and facilitated legal disputes of the border fence.

However, a few people gathered Saturday doubted whether any of these efforts have caught attention from the U.S Department of Homeland Security of if the efforts would help deter plans for the fence.

"We have one group on the east side, one on the west side, and yes, we hear each of them a little," said Elizabeth Garcia, cofounder of CASA, the Coalition of Amigos in Solidarity and Action. "We need to create a stronger voice and a space to organize."

To Garcia, the fence is a hot button issue in a larger debate about immigrant rights and solidarity. Like Garcia, University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College student Mario Garza said that he will continue to make his voice heard even if the fence is built.

"It would be far from over (if the fence were built)," Garza said, who heads up the UTB-TSC Comedy Club that has organized many local protests. "It would just infuriate me more. If they do start building, I'm going to do whatever helps to stop it - sit-ins, whatever."

Regardless of the outcome, participants said the conference was a success.

"There were a lot of good ideas I didn't come here with and I have the energy to go out and work against the border wall," said Greg Rodriguez, a member of the World Peace Alliance in Edinburg. "It's our future, right?"

Pushback Network: SxSW report from Texas

South by Southwest: Report back from Texas

“The knowledge and experience our three sister organizations (CVH, S. Echo and SWOP) bring to table is invaluable. This type of sharing and work is a corner stone to our learning and vital for building a strong movement.”
– Genaro Rendon

SWOP, CVH and Southern Echo, three Pushback Network anchor organizations from New Mexico, New York and Mississippi respectively, went to San Antonio Feb. 15-16 to support the Southwest Workers Union (SWU) in its 2-day training entitled, “’Mobilizing Grassroots Voting Power”. We had members of the Pushback Network collaborating together to assist a key grassroots network in a fourth state to build their organizing process from the bottom up. This assistance actually arose out of the SWU, SWOP and Echo South x Southwest Experiment that focused on building black-brown bridges across the south and southwest. Through this Experiment, the Pushback Network developed a relationship with SWU. All in all, a great time was had by all.

SWU was most interested in hearing how New Mexico, Mississippi and New York explained their different models of grassroots community organizing, both historically and programmatically, and how each state brought their community into the political process. SWU’s goal was both to understand what others have done and to see what it could take from each of the models that would be most useful in the south Texas context. What was interesting to me was that SWU was not seeking a singular black and white roll out of do-this and do-that, but an opportunity to obtain a more complex overview of vision and strategy, as well as the critical details of program, to assess the best that each of the models had to offer that flowed from the variety of approaches and experiences based on their different circumstances.

The Texas process brings to life one of the principal values that we projected from the outset as a goal of the Pushback process, and also in the South x Southwest process. The question was, can we build bottom up grassroots models of work that would not only further the work in our own states, but be useful to like-minded communities in other states? I think the answer is affirmative.

Reported to Pushbacknetwork.org by Mike Sayer, Southern Echo, MS
By Samiya Bashir

Global Day of Action: in Atlanta

Real Talk: The GDA and the State of the Nation

By Marina Karides
USSF Documentation Committee

The United States is in the midst of a media blitz on the presidential nominees for the two dismal parties. While the possibilities of a woman or an African-American as president offers some hope that change is on its way in the belly of the beast, the real movement for justice taking place in the US was reflected in the Press Conference on the Global Day of Action (GDA) held on January 22 in Atlanta, Georgia. As it was in Press Conferences taking place all over the globe including Zurich, Switzerland; Fortaleza, Brazil; Recife, Brazil; Natal, Brazil; Belem, Brazil; São Paulo Brazil; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Chennai, India; Mumbai, India; Erbil, Iraq; Rome, Italy; Brussels, Belgium; Mexico City, Mexico; La Habana, Cuba; Ramallah, Palestine; Manila, Philippines; Seoul, Korea; Beirut, Lebanon and Barcelona, Spain—all a response to the Global Call to Action made by the WSF.

Alice Lovelace, lead USSF organizer and poet, set the mood claiming that this press conference was a place to talk “to talk about what is happening in the real lives of real people.” The conference set in the Auburn Library of Atlanta, the day after the nation celebrated Martin Luther King Day, brought together movement builders from around the US working on key political issues including immigrant rights, the right to return of Gulf Coast residents, the poverty, violence, and the racist imprisonment of young people, and the loss of political freedoms.

The press conference was highly charged with criticism of the US government’s failure to meet the needs of its population and marked how deeply connected US internal conditions were with the violence it wrought abroad. Sandra Robertson, speaking for Georgia Citizens Coalition on Hunger, described the dwindling of people’s economic resource in Georgia and lack of governmental assistance available to the poor and low income despite the fat wealthfare checks being cut for the corporate elite. The Poor People’s Caravan and Assembly on January 26 in Atlanta will draw strength and participation from the multiple groups participating regionally.

Links were clearly made in speakers’ presentations between the poverty and violence within US borders and outside of them. Monica Garcia, of the Southwest Workers Union, spoke to the immediate violence along the US-Mexican border and the resistance in the region to the vicious construction of a wall that will divide families and communities but porous to corporate greed. Ajamu Baraka, speaking for US Human Rights Network, spelled out US responsibilities abroad:

“ . . . this nation state is deeply implicated in the affairs of countries around the world from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe from Columbia to Haiti to Nepal to Serbia in the systematic and persistent violence of people around the world.” Presenting clear and concrete figures on the expansion of US empire, Allison Budschalow, from American Friends Service Committee, discussed the proliferation of US military bases here and abroad and her organization’s concern with the widening net of the US economic reach through military expansion.

The absence of mainstream press was not lost. After thanking the Independent Media for its presence, Emery Wright from Project South pointed to the absence of corporate media at the event and its lack of focus on “real issues in this country or in the world.” The continued absence of US media at key political moments in US history such as the USSF (despite organizers attempts to cajole them) are expected but always striking as the history of the people, their history, is missing from their daily view of news on their TV screens.

The solidarity of US activists and movement organizations with the rest of the world was a bright light to the grim descriptions of US imperialism. Cindy Wiesner the political coordinator of Grassroots Global Justice, positively remarking on “the advancement of the globe and US social movement acting together in a more coordinated fashion” reminded us of the alliances of justice that the WSF process has helped to foment around the world.

Youth Rock National Immigration Conference

Carlos Guerra: Youthful wave of Latino activists tackling both past, present issues

Web Posted: 01/21/2008 11:03 PM CST

Carlos Guerra, San Antonio Express-News

HOUSTON — Times have changed since the late 1960s, when civil rights struggles raged in America, and I was among the students demanding solutions to civil rights issues, many of which still bedevil us.

This came to mind when I attended the National Conference on Immigration and Refugee Rights and saw how many attendees were young people ready to take on the world.

In the late 1960s, my generation also was facing a worsening war, and America was learning that having both guns and butter was easier said than done. And seething were racial and economic inequities that were tolerated, if not openly accepted.

In South Texas, Mexican American baby boomers had not inherited the patience of their antecedents. So, in the barrios and hamlets amid Texas' farms and huge ranches, young activists organized to demand more and better schooling and economic opportunities.

But most of all, they demanded dignity and respect of their worth as human beings.

The Latino baby boomers' movimiento focused on civil rights, and it spread through the Southwest where Latinos were most concentrated, and later, through the small Latino settlements that dotted virtually every state.

The popular uprising transformed many things in our nation, which finally — if begrudgingly — started giving Latinos some of the respect and visibility they had been denied.

School funding eventually was made more adequate — if not much more equitably distributed — and the doors to colleges and universities and better jobs were cracked just a bit wider.

But as more of the young activists advanced — and aged and became parents — their assertiveness diminished.

Today, many of the old issues remain, at best, only partially remedied. But a growing litany of new issues has arisen to revive a youthful activism among the progeny of warriors of the 1970s — and the many others who now have become part of the fabric of a new America.

In the 1960s, María Jiménez worked for the United Farm Workers. She now works for the Central American Resource Center. Asked if activism among youth was on the rise, she answered, "Definitely!" as did others, like Monica García, youth coordinator for San Antonio's Southwest Workers Union.

"Some of the issues go back to the '60s and the Chicano Movement," García said, "but the (immigration) raids, the separation of families are very strong issues with youth because they're happening to their families."

"They are dealing with problems with schools and access to universities," Jiménez said, "but young people are responding to their communities being denied rights in different ways, from attitudes about immigrants to many other issues.

"Many of the (young activists) are U.S. citizens, but a parent or a brother or sister may not be," Jiménez added, "so they are defending themselves, their families and their communities."

Just as in the 1970s, the new activism among Latino youth is spreading nationally. But given that Latinos are no longer heavily concentrated only in the Southwest, the emerging movement has a more national face.

And how the youth are organizing has changed dramatically.

"The activism manifests itself in very different ways these days," says Felipe Vargas, a St. Mary's grad now on the Indiana University faculty who brought a dozen students to the confab.

"We were used to seeing kids on the streets," he said. "But given that so many of these kids are challenged with their document status, they have to express themselves in different forms, in other media.

"They do this by organizing online, text messaging, MySpace, Facebook, electronic media, doing videos," he added.

"Their purpose is not so much to bring down some multinational corporation but to influence their friends," Vargas said. "They're being educated by the media, not necessarily by the schools, so they're creating new media to counter what is being said about them."

Equal Voices in the Valle

Organizers say San Juan Equal Voice event saw launch of national movement
21 January 2008
Steve Taylor and Joey Gomez, Rio Grande Guardian

Marguerite Casey Foundation President and CEO Luz Vega-Marquis speaks at the Equal Voices town hall meeting in San Juan on Saturday.

SAN JUAN, January 21 - Coordinators of the Equal Voice for America’s Families campaign believe the 400 Rio Grande Valley residents who attended a town hall meeting on Saturday may have just sparked a national movement.

“With the weather being so bitterly cold, we were not sure we were going to hit our 300 target figure. We ended up with about 400 people and no spare chairs,” said a delighted Armando Garza, South Texas regional coordinator for the Equal Voice campaign.

“I also saw folks that have never been involved in civic participation before get excited. This campaign is about movement building and I think we started building a national movement here in San Juan, Texas.”

The $5 million Equal Voice campaign is being funded by the Marguerite Casey Foundation and facilitated by the 200 non-profit groups the Foundation supports.

Among the Valley grassroots groups participating are La Unión del Pueblo Entero (LUPE), ARISE, AVANCE, the Azteca Community Loan Fund, the Brownsville Community Health Center, the Community Action Council of South Texas, Colonias Unidas, Proyecto Azteca, Proyecto Digna, Proyecto Libertad, SCAN (Serving Children and Adolescents in Need), the South West Workers Union, Su Casa de Esperanza, and Texas RioGrande Legal Aid.

The Equal Voice campaign starts off with the premise that no American family should live in poverty. Through the development of a national platform of issues of concern to families, Equal Voice wants to spark a national dialogue, preferably including the 2008 presidential candidates, about the policies and attitudes that negatively impact families.

The campaign wants to ensure that the working poor are part of that national discussion, build a movement of families to sustain long-term change, and increase civic engagement among families.

Saturday’s town hall meeting, held inside a big tent on LUPE’s grounds in San Juan, was the first of 40 to be held across the country this year. Two similar events are planned for Brownsville and Rio Grande City later, with a special gathering for the region’s youth at South Texas College’s campuses in McAllen, Weslaco, and Rio Grande City.

Once the 40 town hall meetings have been held, the campaign moves to the national stage, by bringing together approximately 10,000 families in a multi-city convention of families on Sept. 6 in Los Angeles, Chicago, and Birmingham, AL. The platform approved at the national town hall meetings will then be presented to the presidential candidates in October.

Luz Vega-Marquis, president and CEO of the Marguerite Casey Foundation, was present to see the launch of Equal Voice campaign in San Juan. She said the enthusiasm of the participants and the organizational skills of the grassroots groups that hosted the San Juan event have set the bar high for the town hall meetings to follow.

“I’m thrilled. I’m very touched by the level of participation, by the preparation, by the groups in the Valley,” Vega-Marquis said. “The training of leaders and bringing families out and the families realize the importance of their voices being heard. I am elated.”

Saturday’s town hall meeting was conducted entirely in Spanish. Participants were asked to list the issues that matter to their families. Gathered around tables, they were then encouraged to discuss those issues with those they were sitting next to. At the end of the discussions, priority lists were drawn up.

Garza said it was empowering just to watch the dialogue emerge.

“Participation is the way to affect change and I saw a group people who had frustration on their faces. They wanted to verbalize those frustrations, write them down on paper, and then share them with the person next to them, who they may or may not have known. It was, hey, we can do this together. I think it was this shared experience that was so empowering,” Garza said.

Lorena Rodriguez, a young mother from San Juan, listed immigration reform as a top priority. Rodriguez and her family live in a colonia with no electricity. Her three-year-old son Daniel has a heart condition and the family cannot afford health insurance.

“Living in house with no electricity makes it hard. I want the politicians to know that we have arms, we have legs; we can work like anybody else. But they do not take us into consideration. Give us the right to be here legally and we can change our situation,” Rodriguez said.

Alamo resident Elsa Rangel said education and immigration reform were key concerns. Her daughter Adaida is a student at South Texas College hoping to become a registered nurse. “We do not qualify for financial aid and we cannot afford the textbooks my daughter needs,” Rangel said.

YES! Magazine: We Saw Another World in Atlanta

by Sarah van Gelder

Since 2001, tens of thousands have been gathering at World Social Forums.
The United States has been slow to catch on, but on June 27, it finally happened.
Poor people, young people, people of color, gays and lesbians, and all manner of people who believe “another world is possible, another U.S. is necessary” joined together by the thousands in Atlanta for the first U.S. Social Forum.

It was a moment organizers in the United States and in many parts of the world had been waiting for. After years in the planning, the United States joined a global movement of movements that comes together under the banner: Another world is possible.

The United States Social Forum (USSF) was led by people of color and representatives of grassroots organizations, some of whom count their members in the thousands. Instead of drawing crowds with superstar speakers and performers, the participants were the stars. Those who are accustomed to being excluded were at the center, and those who were used to being silenced were heard.

... ... ...

... Organizers of the USSF drew on their experiences attending the World Social Forums to prepare for Atlanta. “We saw the power that comes from opening up a space in which all the issues and all the different movements can converge,” said Genaro Rendon, co-director of the San Antonio, Texas, based Southwest Workers Union.

To get people to Atlanta, organizers from many parts of the country organized caravans of cars, vans, and buses. The People’s Freedom Caravan was among the largest. Each stop of the Caravan’s six-day journey from Albuquerque to Atlanta was hosted by a different local group. In Albuquerque, the attention centered on Native American sacred sites and immigrant rights. In Houston and San Antonio, it was pollution from oil refineries and an Air Force base that was harming the health of those living nearby. In New Orleans, Freedom Caravan riders helped clean up a public housing project and learned of the struggle of Katrina survivors to return home. In Jackson and Selma, it was the movement for living wages and efforts to find and prosecute those involved in the murders of civil rights workers decades ago.

Local activists from each stop joined the Caravan; by the time it reached Atlanta, this Social Forum on wheels was 500 people strong.

... read whole article

Residents join in social activism

San Antonio Express-News
Michelle Mondo

George Valdez often has wondered what it takes to be a social activist. The first U.S. Social Forum this month gave him a close-up look.

Valdez had bought a house near the former Kelly AFB that sits on land he now believes is contaminated.

"I didn't believe (other neighbors) when they first told me, but then they showed me tests," he said, referring to long-term environmental studies of soil and underground water samples at the former air logistics center.

Valdez, 49, said that once he became influenced by the Kelly AFB environmental testing, it changed his way of thinking. He joined the ranks of the socially active on the South Side.
That's why he also joined 50 other San Antonians who recently took part in the People's Freedom Caravan that traveled to Atlanta to participate in the inaugural U.S. Social Forum. The Southwest Workers' Union — a local grass-roots, membership-based group — helped to organize the trip.

The Caravan left San Antonio on June 24 and traveled five days, visiting several cities along the way until it joined approximately 10,000 other social activists in Atlanta for the Forum on June 28-30.

The event brought together political activists from across the nation and around the world to discuss immigration, climate change, poverty, trade agreements and social inequality, according to its Web site.

It was the first Forum of that size that Valdez and several others on the trip had attended.
"Everyone had their struggles," Valdez said. "It was eye-opening; it was mind-boggling; it was a lot of things."

The Forum was a first-time trip for Marsha Womack, 18, who never had been outside of Texas. Womack said she decided to get involved because she thinks young people need to make their voices heard. The immigration debate is one of the topics she wanted to learn about on the trip.
But Womack said she learned much more.

"The caravan was awesome — I loved it," Womack said. "Going to all those places and helping all those people, it's really cool."

But it also left her feeling that much more needs to be done.

"When we went to New Orleans to clean up the projects, I couldn't believe that place was still like that after two years. It's like the government hasn't done anything to move people back in there."

Another surprise for Womack was the support the volunteers got when they arrived in the various cities, including Jackson, Miss. While in Jackson, the group protested at a local Wal-Mart.

"In Mississippi, there were 400 of us there, and I didn't know that there were so many protesting around the world or in the United States," she said.

For Eulogio Contreras Jr., social activism has been a passion since he was young. His father fought for Chicano rights while Contreras was growing up. Contreras said he feels it's his duty to continue that fight, especially now that immigration is being debated.

"When we were having a discussion on (immigration) in Atlanta, we found out the reform bill had been turned down and there were mixed emotions," Contreras said. "There are two points of views, and it's kind of sad because now you have a division between the same race saying some wanted it but others did not. Now it's dividing people instead of uniting them."

He said, on one hand, the trip to Atlanta reinvigorated his passion for social activism. But on the other, it saddened him.

"It was exhausting," he said. "We visited the (Lower Ninth Ward) in the aftermath of Katrina and that really had an impact on me personally. What really got to me was a little girl stating she had no home, and her tears.

"It was more of a sad trip to realize what has happened to a lot of people in this nation. Poverty-wise, it was everywhere."

More news from the People's Freedom Caravan

"We can change the world, we can we can. We're the People's Freedom Caravan."

• Democracy Now! with Monique Harden, Nearly Two Years After Katrina, Gulf Coast Residents Fighting Environmental Neglect, Privatization
• Gulf Watch: Grassroots Activists to Visit NOLA on way to U.S. Social Forum
• Houston IndyMedia: Change the World
• New Mexico Blog Radio: Freedom Caravan works to bridge Democracy Gap
• YES! Magazine
• MySA blog: postcards home - a youth perspective
  
• SWOP
  
• Picture gallery
  
• Video blog: traveling with caravan

see previous posts for lots more

News from Walmart Action

Living Wage Protest at Clinton Wal-Mart

by Kate Royals
Photo by Kate Royals
July 3, 2007

Several grass-roots organizations joined together on Tuesday in front of the Clinton Wal-Mart on Highway 80 to rally in support of a living wage. The group, comprised of members of the People’s Freedom Caravan, protested against low wages and a lack of health coverage for Wal-Mart employees.

The People’s Freedom Caravan, according to member Jill Johnston, is comprised of “75 plus organizations from the South and Southwest fighting to bridge what we call the ‘democracy divide.’”

The 75 organizations range from immigrant rights groups to workers’ rights groups. Additionally, film crews from Spain, Germany and Japan were present at the rally shooting footage to include in documentaries.

The caravan will stop in 11 cities to highlight various issues of social justice. The buses, which began their trip in New Mexico, stopped in Clinton on their way to Atlanta, where the first ever United States Social Forum was held last weekend.

Special Report: Live from the People's Freedom Caravan

See the People's Freedom Caravan picture gallery here.

YES! Magazine's Sarah van Gelder is blogging live from the vans.

SouthWest Organizing Project will also have updates from this historic "social forum on wheels".

Go to MySA.com, the website of the San Antonio Express News, for live blogging from one of the young women on the caravan.

Go here to see some video...

People’s Freedom Caravan rolls through Houston

Bringing energy and innovation to the struggle for clean air and healthy neighborhoods

Houston, TX – Hundreds of “freedom riders”” made their way to Houston today, visiting East Houston’s Manchester neighborhood to show solidarity with the community living adjacent to a massive petrochemical complex. In the shadow of the Valero Refinery spewing a toxic cloud overhead, residents welcomed the caravan to Hartman Park with lunch and a rally.

“Thanks for being here,” said one mother of Manchester, standing with her children. “We’re trying to clean our air.”

Port Arthur residents spoke of their recent victory stopping trucks of nerve gas from Indiana from being incinerated near families in Port Arthur, already home to 3 refineries.

The rally concluded with a short march to the fenceline of the refinery where marchers placed 300 white crosses on the fence, representing cancer victims in the community.

"The people in Houston filled me inspiration, says Victoria Rodriguez, who rode the People’s Freedom Caravan from New Mexico. "I don't know how they live next to those refineries, you can smell it. Truly an environmental injustice."

"We heard about children having heart surgery, families dealing with high instances of cancer, yet the community is still filled with hope,” added Rodriguez.

Houston is the hub of the global oil industry, home to hundreds of toxic petro-chemical industries and polluting refineries.

“We need to make change happen in the world, and stand together with the people in this community in East Houston to make [Valero] clean the air, “ says Sandra Garcia, from Southwest Workers’ Union in San Antonio Texas.

“The foundation laid by the environmental justice movement is a critical component of what brought about the US Social Forum,” says Ruben Solis, from San Antonio currently in Atlanta preparing for the Caravan’s arrival. “The caravan is about bringing the stories of folks unable to attend the Forum to Atlanta.”

2007 marks the 20^th anniversary of the eye opening report ‘Race & Waste’ that documented the disproportionate siting of toxic facilities in people of color communities. Despite the effort by countless communities, 20 years later the situation has grown worse.

“Environmental Justice is a human right just like housing, health care and education,” explained Solis.