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.

Students from Youth Making a Change (YMAC), ask San Francisco City Hall on June 19 to provide more funds for the schools to provide them with jobs.: Photo by Penny Zhou

by Dick Meister

Taco Bell did it. McDonald’s did it. Now it’s time for Burger King and the rest of the country’s other fast food chains to join the drive to guarantee decent pay and working conditions to the tomato pickers whose back-breaking work is essential to their hugely profitable industry.

The pickers work in the Immokalee area of southern Florida where more than half of the country’s tomatoes are grown. Most are undocumented Latinos who have had little choice but to accept the truly miserable conditions imposed on them.

They work under the blazing sun in open air sweatshops, usually dawn to dusk, for up to seven days a week, rarely for more than $10,000 a year. They have no paid holidays or vacations, no overtime pay, no health insurance, sick leave, pensions or other benefits, no union rights. Most live in dilapidated trailers or other substandard rental housing.

Some workers are held in virtual slavery by the sometimes physically abusive labor contractors who hire them for the tomato growers. They make deductions from the workers’ wages for transportation, food, housing and other services that can force them to turn over their entire paychecks and continue working against their will until the debts to the contractors are paid off.

Pressures from animal rights activists have led most fast-food chains to insist on humane treatment for the farm animals that provide their main ingredients.

But only Taco Bell and McDonald’s have acted to ensure that the farmworkers employed by their suppliers also are treated humanely.

It took years of hard work by a coalition of workers, student and labor activists, religious leaders and others to get the two chains to act and for tomato pickers to win the significant improvements in pay and working conditions that have been the result.

The first victory came in 2005, after a four year-long boycott against Taco Bell, one of several outlets owned by Yum Brands. The others include Kentucky Fried Chicken, Pizza Hut, A& W, Long John Silver’s and All America Food restaurants.

Yum Brands agreed to increase by a penny what Taco Bell and its other outlets had been paying growers per pound for tomatoes, with the understanding that the extra penny would go directly to workers. That nearly doubled their pay of just a little over one cent per pound picked, a piece rate that hadn’t been increased since the 1970s. It added as much as $7,000 a year to the average worker’s pay, enough finally to provide a living wage.

What’s more, the coalition won rights unheard of among most farmworkers of any kind. It has the right, for instance, to monitor the payment and treatment of the workers, investigate complaints of poor treatment and join with them to confer with growers on improving working conditions. They also have joined to develop a code of conduct for growers and to create a system for resolving disputes.

The agreement warns that growers who might nevertheless continue to abuse workers risk having the fast-food chains quit buying tomatoes from them.

The coalition reached a similar agreement with McDonald’s early in April of this year, just as it was about to launch a threatened nationwide boycott of McDonald’s. The chain had been insisting for two years that responsibility for improving the pickers’ pay and working conditions rested solely with the tomato growers who employed them.

The growers, however, had adamantly refused—then, as now— to act on their own, in part because McDonald’s and other chains have consistently pressured them to keep their prices and labor costs as low as possible.

McDonald’s agreement with the workers’ coalition seems very likely to lead to agreements with other holdout chains, given McDonald’s standing as the largest and most influential entity in the $100-billion-ayear fast-food industry. It has almost 14,000 outlets nationally, using about 15 million tons of tomatoes a year.

The coalition has picked another major chain, Burger King, as the next target. It already has served notice that Burger King must sign an agreement similar to those signed by McDonald’s and Yum Brands by the end of the year or face a nationwide boycott. New targets also may include Subway, as well as super markets and others outside the fast-food industry that buy tomatoes from Florida growers.

As before, the coalition is relying heavily on students and other young people, the fast-food chains’ main sales targets, to deliver the message at rallies and demonstrations and on picket lines nationwide with the conspicuous backing of major labor, church and political leaders.

The strong commitment of the young people and their prominent elders, their genuine concern for some of our most vulnerable and mistreated workers and their effective action in the workers’ behalf is rare and inspiring. Hispanic Link.

(Dick Meister is co-author of “A Long Time Coming: The Struggle to Unionize America’s Farm Workers~ (Macmillan). Contact him through his website, www.dickmeister.com.)