by the El Reportero wire services

Approximately 5,000 agricultural workers from Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras and Panama have filed five lawsuits in the United States, claiming they were left sterile due to the exposure to the pesticide, DBCP, in the 1970s.

Jury selection for the first of the lawsuits is scheduled to begin Tuesday in Los Angeles County Superior Court.

According to Duane Miller, one of the attorneys representing more than 30 Nicaraguan plaintiffs who worked on plantations from 1964 to 1990, this is the first time any case for a banana worker has come before a U.S. court.

Legal experts said the issue is raised by the cases that whether multinational companies should be held accountable in the country where they are based or the countries where they employ workers.

If those workers win the cases, a door could be open for others to file similar claims in the U.S., where juries are known for awarding bigger judgments.

“The administration of justice in developing countries in comparison to the administration of justice in the U.S. – there’s a big gap,” said Alejandro Garro, a Columbia University law professor.

“The significance of it is we’re talking about a global economy where big business does business all over the world and where we don’t have a uniform type of justice,” he added, according to an Associated Press report.

Dole Fresh Fruit Co. and Standard Fruit Co., now a part of Dole, is accused by the upcoming lawsuit, which was filed in 2004, of negligence and fraudulent concealment while using the pesticide.

According to the lawsuit Dow Chemical Co. and Amvac Chemical Corp., manufacturers of the pesticide, “actively suppressed information about DBCP’s reproductive toxicity”.

Attorney Erin Burke, who represents Westlake-based Dole, and Kelly Kozuma, a spokeswoman for Newport Beach-based Amvac, declined to comment.

A spokesman for Midland, Michigan-based Dow, Scot Wheeler said in an e-mail that the lawsuits were without merit, and that “there are no generally accepted studies in the scientific community of which we are aware which establishes an effect on sterility in banana farm workers” exposed periodically to the chemical.

Wheeler also wrote that workers bringing these claims rotated jobs often or changed jobs altogether with enough frequency that long-term exposure would have been fairly unusual and it is not likely that there is any injury whatsoever related to DBCP.

from the El Reportero staff

Three of a group of 26 students, rest in front of the SF City Hall during a seven-day hungry strike protest to ask Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi to support and act in favor of the D.R.E.A.M. Act, which will allow undocumentes students to pay and receive resident’s fees and benefits. (Photos by Marvin J. Ramírez).Adelia Sánchez

Eight days have past, and the students fasting for the D.R.E.A.M. Act (Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors) survived.

During the week-long fast, students from the California Dream Network have delivered the message that they refuse to give up hope. On July 9, students, parents, community leaders, education and immigration advocates from across the state gathered at San Francisco Civic Center Plaza to announce the end of the event.

“Till now, the office of Nancy Pelosi has hesitated in taking action … this hungry strike has been specifically focused at her to take action as a leader of the Congress,” said Adelia Sánchez, from the Coalition for Immigrant Rights. “I know we are facing a very challenging  year, but I very positive and have no doubt that we are and will receive the respect that we deserve as a community.”

This statewide fast, organized by college and university immigrant student groups that form the California Dream Network, was aimed at urging Speaker of the House Pelosi to move forward on immigration reform that includes the bipartisan federal D.R.E.A.M. Act, which would provide a path towards citizenship for undocumented youth.

On July 2, over 26 campus members held a one-day fast at four locations: Santa Ana, Pasadena, Bakersfield and San Jose, then moved in a caravan from each location to join the fast in San Francisco on July 5.

The current immigration laws, which set high assessments to higher education for undocumented students, are major obstacles for those youth trying to obtain legal status for college and the military. But with the Senate recently failing to move forward a viable immigration reform bill, the students must depend on the House of Representatives where Congressional leaders still have an opportunity to demonstrate their leadership.

Despite the unfriendly statement by a media personality, saying “let them fast until they starve to death then that solves the problem,” students have been fasting successfully for eight days, from July 2nd to 9th, in the hope of pursuing a college education and building a better future. Now the fast has ended, but the momentum continues, read a statement.

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by Javier Rodriguez

The recently defeated Senate immigration proposal and the one waiting to be addressed in the lower house, the Strive Act, are neither pro-immigrant nor pro-worker Immigration reform.

Both fall far short of the human rights standards set forth by the United Nations International Covenant for the Protection of Migrant Workers.

Under both proposals, the legalization offer is a torturous, expensive process of 10 to 15 years wait for the coveted “green card.” Combined with a guest worker program, a destruction of the family unity concept for a point system and, of course, the so-called national security framework which endangers civil and human rights standards, making mass persecution and the criminalization of immigrants palatable.

The two proposals are gross corporated esigned legislations that if approved will maintain undocumented immigrants in suspension of their basic human rights, leaving them brutally exploitable.

More than ever, the challenge of what is to be done comes to the fore.

Either the people and their organized forces conform to the crumbs on the negotiating table or fight back.

In the base, the millions of immigrants themselves are in a quandary.

But for the future of family unity and the millions more to come, the well-being of this nation’s whole working class and our civil and human rights as a society, the stakes are very high. The result will set the path for a higher or a lower standard of living for all for years to come.

Apologists for the dead Senate bill have been saying that while the proposals are not perfect to “fix” the broken immigration system under present conditions “it’s the best we can get.” Additionally, it has to happen this year because the presidential campaign will take precedence and there will not be another opportunity for years.

It’s imperative to look at history. From 1982 to 1986, until President Ronald Reagan signed the amnesty law, the masses of undocumented immigrants, then an estimated six million, organized and demonstrated militantly.

We mounted the massive effort for amnesty into the historic “Jesse Jackson for President campaign of 1984. It was this campaign through California’s Democratic primary, which I was directing in the Latino community.

10~000 GATHER IN DOWNTOWN L.A.

On May 19 of that year we held the largest yet street protest for immigration rights, 10,000 in downtown Los Angeles.

Jackson and my brother Antonio Rodríguez led it. It was for legalization’ no raids or deportations, and against the Simpson-Mazzoli immigration bill.

We then tactically had Jackson stay at the home of Carmen Lima, an undocumented immigrant female leader of the Los Angeles grassroots movement.

That was a radical and highly symbolical move by the highest African-North American leader of the time.

From there we catapulted to the San Francisco Democratic National Convention, where several hundred Latino delegates frenetically demanded from the leadership to kill the bill.

13ut what put the icing on the cake was civil disobedience.

The offices of the top gurus of the National Democratic Party, the law firm of Mannat and Associates in Beverly Hills, were taken by 30 undocumented immigrants and leaders and held for several days.

The Simpson-Mazzoli bill was killed and replaced by lRCA 1986, the Simpson Rodino law.

Although it introduced employer sanctions and set four years of residency in the country to qualify, it was a generous amnesty. It empowered millions with “a permit to work, a one-year wait to get the green card and six total to gain citizenship and vote”.

It was the class action lawsuit, then the mass upsurge, the street heat, the presidential campaign, civil disobedience, militant tactics and a radical leadership that did it. The rest is history.

In this potentially last stage of the present struggle for the empowerment of the millions of undocumented workers, conditions for a more creative expression to fight back have to be analyzed and logically placed into practice.

IN 2006, HISTORYWAS MADE

In 2006, history was made with the largest mass movement in this country’s history. Today’s gigantic struggle for immigration reform is rich in its political and organizational expressions and legacy.

The immigrant rights movement and the immigrant worker have generated respect and solidarity, not only here but worldwide. In Los Angeles alone, the May 1 National Great American Boycott stopped a whooping 75% of production in, almost all the industries where Latino immigrants labor was critical.

Latest polls clearly indicate majority support for legalization. The millions who marched in 2006 and 2007 did so to demand empowerment, not near slavery.

WE NEED TO PUSH RIGHT BUTTONS

We need to push the right buttons. Set the network of forces on the chosen targets which could give premium political results that will essentially force the political establishment to concede.

All targets in the political arena are fair game, including the Republicans, the Democrats, the Latino Establishment and brokers. The fundamental tactics of mass expression include street demonstrations, the boycotts and civil disobedience that exist in our political memory and our history. Hispanic Link.

(Political strategist Javier Rodriguez was the initiator of the 1.7 million digitally counted mass protest of March 25, 2006 In Los Angeles. E-mail him at jrodhdztf@hotmail.com)

by the El Reportero’s wire services

GUATEMALA – Politicians from all parties appealed on 5 July for an end to the violenc. The country’s murder rate has increased sharply in recent weeks prompting some politicians to claim that General Otto Pérez Molina, the rightwing candidate for the Partido Patriota, wants to create a climate of fear to improve his chances in the forthcoming general elections. Pérez Molina advocates tougher anti-crime policies (mano dura).

Since campaigning started officially in mid May, 44 politicians have been murdered: in the whole of the previous election campaign only 23 politicians were killed. The country goes for the polls in the first round of elections on 9 September.

On 4 and 5 July, 12 people were murdered including two (centre left) candidates for office. So far this year 30 candidates for public office, mostly from the left and centre left, have been gunned down. In the past month alone eight candidates have been killed. In addition, the killing of political organizers and even violent attacks on party activists fly-posting on behalf of their candidates has increased.

Bolivia’s constituent assembly awards itself four more months

BOLIVIA – Delegates to Bolivia’s constituent assembly celebrated the anniversary of their election on 2 July by extending their mandate to draft a new constitution by four months until 14 December.

Debating in the assembly in Sucre provided a marked contrast with the carnival atmosphere in the affluent east of the country, where the Media Luna departments of Santa Cruz, Tarija, Beni and Pando staged big events to mark a year since they voted “yes” in referenda on autonomy.

Departmental prefects and civic committees presented individual statutes of autonomy that provide a direct challenge to the assembly which is supposed to decide the nature of the autonomy to be established in Bolivia.

Cuba, facing drop in food production

HAVANA – Cuba is repaying debts to farmers and promising higher prices for milk and meat in an attempt to increase flagging food production in a communist society that depends on the state for most of what it eats.

It’s trying to head off a crisis in its food system: Production dropped 7 percent last year, imports are becoming more expensive and consumers complain their tiny government salaries don’t allow them to buy more than a few items a month at supply-and-demand farmers markets.

Hundreds march in Ecuadorian Amazon to protest Chevron’s delay tactics

LAGO AGRIO, Ecuador – Hundreds of local indigenous people and campesinos marched today to protest Chevron´s delay tactics as a judgment approaches in a landmark multi-billion dollar environmental lawsuit against the company.

After the march, the community members, including leaders of several indigenous tribes and dozens of cancer victims, gathered at Texaco’s (now Chevron’s) first Ecuadorian oil well — opened 40 years ago in 1967 — in formation to spell the international “SOS” distress signal, and the words “Justicia Ya” (Justice Now) in 40-foot letters across the rainforest clearing.

The stunning images, captured by photographers from a helicopter circling overhead, send a message from the people of the Amazon to the Live Earth concert broadcast this Saturday, organized by former US Vice President Al Gore to draw international attention to the effects of global warming and the world’s unsustainable dependence on fossil fuels.