Lucky White Girl

Don't be a tool! Why we should think twice before jumping on the Iranian "revolution" bandwagon

I have mixed feelings about all the hoopla in the West over the Iranian elections.  Let me say this first and foremost, as a non-Iranian, it’s not really any of my business who they elect.  Citizens of the United States, being residents of a superpower, are so used to having the political world revolve around them that we get arrogant.  We think of course we should have a say in who rules other countries and whose political process is or is not legitimate, as if our position as Ultimate Arbiter of Fairness and Democracy were undisputed!  Ha! Look at our own history of electoral fraud and –worse—our own complacency in the face of a stolen presidential election (circa 2000).

However, to the extent that I can separate myself from the interests of my own country (and I don’t think it’s so cut-and-dried as that implies) I can say I’m interested from a humanistic point of view.  I’m not an isolationist and believe this is the basis for all international solidarity (e.g. workers of the world, unite!)

Residents of the U.S. have to balance those two realities very, very carefully.  No, we don’t have a right to pass judgment on other countries or other people’s political processes simply because we live in the world’s superpower but yes, as members of the human family, we do have as much of a right –and an obligation— to stand against oppression and for justice and equality as anyone else.  We also have to remember that it’s extremely difficult for us to get all sides of a story in this country so we’re often lacking vital information.

I’m always down for supporting popular movements as democracy-in-action and if Mousavi is a good guy and has the support of the majority of the Iranian people then good for him and good for them and good for democracy if they win.  However, recognizing my own position within a geo-political superpower, I also know that my country has very specific geo-political interests at stake here.  Also, history teaches me that I come from a country with a sordid history of interfering in other countries’ internal affairs and usually not on the side of the good guys (sometimes it happens e.g. Aristide in Haiti, but, unfortunately more often than not we support the neoliberal capitalist candidates and policies that cause a lot of harm and oppression around the world). 

I’m suspicious of supporting a movement against the leader of another country simply because my country’s leaders don’t like him/her or because my countries interests don’t coincide with their election.  That’s not a valid reason for international solidarity.  Do that and you are in danger of becoming a tool of geo-political forces that are cynically bending popular opinion to their will. 

Don't be a tool.  Examine the facts as best you know them within the light of all the geo-political and socio-economic factors that come into play.  Then look at your history.  Look at what you know about the way the world works.  Then decide.  You may, like me, decide that you just don't have enough information to act.  And that's okay because you know what? If you're not Iranian, this is not your game. 

Some righteous hurt about Proposition 8

wow this is the best commentary on Proposition 8 I've heard.  damn.  you go Keith!



"To those who voted for or supported this proposition, I have some questions: ...What is it to you? In a time of impermanence and fly-by-night relationships these people want the same chance at permanence and happiness that is your option. They don't want to deny you yours. They don't want to take anything away from you. They want what you want: the chance to be a little less alone in the world... The world is barren enough. It is stacked against love and against hope and against those very few precious emotions that enable all of us to go forward. With so much hate in the world, this is what your religion tells you to do?... This is what your conscious tells you to do?... You want to sanctify marriage, then spread happiness. You are asked now to stand on one side or another, on the question of love. You don't have to help it, applaud it, you just have to not put it out."

Well said, Keith, well said.

Two kinds of border patrol

This week's edition of Bob Edwards' Weekend on public radio (and XM) is a rebroadcast of a 2006 show about immigration.  The first part is an interview with a border patrol agent and I didn't catch this part when I heard the broadcast over the weekend (ergo my initial post praising the program).  He does a pretty good job of dehumanizing people.  No explanation of who they are, the circumstances that led them to risk their lives to cross the border into the U.S.  Nothing.  They talk like people crossing the border are a plague of bugs that must be processed and controlled.  It'll give you chills.

Then I guess to balance out the show he interviews two Samaritans (that's the name of the group) who patrol the trails leaving out water and other essential supplies for migrants.  One's a doctor.  The other is a photographer.  This is the part of the show that's worth a listen.  The stories they tell of the people they meet out there, the brutal conditions they have to go through...

And unlike the border patrol agent interviewed, the Samaritan was able to put a human face, not only on the migrants but on the opposition as well, in this case, the border patrol agents.  He said he has an appreciation for the agents as well, saying they're only enforcing laws they didn't make. and the laws they have to enforce determine the strategy they have to use.  He said he's met agents who agree with promigrant groups essentially saying, yeah "we're enforcing laws that are forcing people farther and farther out into the more dangerous places.."

He says he "knows from having spoken to a few of the [agents].... in the summer especially a lot of them consider their job as much rescue as arrest and they don't relish finding bodies out in the desert any more than the rest of us do.  They're human beings."

One of the Samaritans tells a story of a woman and her two sons who got lost in the desert.  She fell ill and the coyote left her.  She died and her father spent weeks looking for his daughter's body.  He found three other bodies before he found hers.  This, and no one can tell me we live in a civilized country.  Not with people dying like cattle in the desert.

crimey, it's amazing that anyone could be so cold-hearted to have anything but immense compassion for people forced to migrate in these conditions.

Cross posted at Citizen Orange

Migration stories (part 2)

My second foray into the documentary film festival got cut short.  I only saw one film today I had plans to see at least two more (after all, these are films that I probably will never have the chance to see again) but after I saw the first one at 10:30 this morning I felt so emotionally exhausted I couldn't do anything more.  I came home to think about it.  The story was that powerful. 

The film was Mi Vida Dentro (official site), also known as My Life Inside (Silverdocs site) by Mexican filmmaker Lucia Gajá.  It is the story of Rosa.

Rosa was 17 when she crossed the border (illegally, yes, what can you do?) into this country and at first things were good.  She met her husband, another Mexican, here, started a family, got a job babysitting.  One day she's watching her kid and another little boy in her small apartment.  The kids were both sick, sitting in the living room watching tv with runny noses.  She was in the kitchen cooking lunch.  When the boy came in clutching his throat choking on something she panicked.  She didn't know what to do so she ran to a neighbor's apartment.  The neighbor called 911 and the police came.  The officer blew hard into the boy's mouth.  Nothing.  He tried again.  Nothing.  The paramedics came.  They checked the airway found nothing and did the same thing.  The boy died.

It turned out there were paper towels blocking his airway. They accused Rosa of murder.  And just like that she was caught up in the complexities of the U.S. justice system.  She was barely twenty years old, didn't speak the language, knew nothing about the legal system of her adopted country.  She didn't stand a chance.

A woman from the Mexican consulate here says Rosa's situation is not unique.  Most of the people who immigrate here know very little about the U.S. legal system.  They don't know their rights, don't know what to do when confronted by the police.

Rosa was interrogated by an officer.  She wasn't under arrest so the officer didn't have to read her her rights.  She didn't know she could request a lawyer.  She called her husband who told her that officers had come by and taken their little girl away.  She was hysterical.  The film shows all of this on police footage.  She tried explaining that she had just wiped their noses with the paper towels.  They didn't believe her.  She asks finally "if I say I did it will you give me my daughter back?"  Yes, he said.  You will see your daughter again.

She did see her daughter --for about five minutes.  The she was charged with murder. 

A medical examiner for the defense testified that children do sometimes choke on paper towels.  The child might have twisted these into something to suck on.  The saliva generated from that would have triggered a reflex to swallow. 

Now maybe if Rosa or the neighbor or the police officer had known what to do, had checked his airway for a blockage they might've seen the paper towel, but once the police officer blew into the boy's mouth he just pushed it farther down.

The jury didn't just find her guilty of murder, they sentenced her 99 years.  99 years!  A human lifetime!  Even the boy's family did not think she was responsible for the child's death.  His uncle apologized to her at her sentencing.

What hurts so much about this story --and what I think the filmmaker did so well at conveying-- is that it's not just a case of bad luck for this one particular person.  It's bad luck compounded by that person's particular class status within the society she lives in.  An accident like this would have been tragic enough but add to the tragedy of random luck the tragedy of a grossly inequitable society filled with racism and classism and the sum is just too much.  I can't help but think that if Rosa had been someone like me (white middle class) the result would have been vastly different.  You cannot leave this movie without being outraged at the overwhelming cruelty of a system that failed and continues to fail.

Rosa's might be one of the more extreme cases but as the woman from the Mexican consulate says this is all too common.  At the end of the film there is a series of still shots of the major characters standing within different settings: the judge in his chambers; the defense attorney at the apartment complex where it all happened; the woman from the consulate's office overlooking the city; Rosa's mother in her home in Mexico; her husband in front of his home in the U.S..  And then there are more people, others who were interviewed in the film about their journey to the U.S. ("Was it worth it? Do you regret it?") and then still more people we never heard from, face after face after face.  And then there's a young girl in her jail cell.  My name is Rosa.  I'm 23 years old and I have 99 years.

Mi Vida Dentro will be playing in theaters in Mexico this fall.

Migration stories

"Do you know what it means to leave everything you have as a human being, for you to leave your family to leave your childhood, memories and go to a country where you are a total stranger to start life over again?  -
                                                    -Nigerian refugee

No, we don't know what it means.  Most of us in this country don't know what that means at all.  We cannot imagine.  And so when people here see refugees, we think... I don't know ...I think we think that maybe these people --refugees-- are greedy and selfish, they want what we have.  Maybe they see this country as an easy life, (and for many of us who hate refugees life is easy.  It's so easy we don't see how it could possibly be anything but easy for anyone else).  I think that is what we think.

Forgive us.  We are blinded by our own privilege.  We cannot see you.  We cannot hear you.  You remind us our own complicity in a "dirty rotten" system that gives some people much more than others (adjectives courtesy of Dorothy Day).  We don't like to be reminded of this.  So we hate you.

You think I exaggerate?  You think that people in this country don't really hate refugees?  Let me tell you this: a few months ago I went to a briefing here by a big civil rights group who was revealing the results of a nationwide survey they had done on attitudes of US citizens towards immigrants and you know what they found? 

The word "refugee" now tests worse than "illegal immigrant".  Really.

So don't believe the xenophobes when they say they don't have a problem with LEGAL immigration, that it's only the ILLEGAL ones they hate.  They feel threatened and vulnerable and so they lash out at the easiest target: those who are still more vulnerable than they themselves.  But I digress.

I saw two really good documentaries about migration today at the Silverdocs Documentary Film Festival here in Washington DC.

The first was called The Infinite Border, by Jose Manuel Sepúlveda from Mexico.  It was about the journey of Central Americans northwards through Mexico to hop on trains on their way to the United States.  There is much waiting and hiding to avoid the Migra.  Some get caught in Mexico, in Guatemala and deported over and over again only to try again because in the words of one young man, "what else can you do"?

Then I saw a movie by Paul Rowley called Seaview about a very surreal place in Ireland: an abandoned amusement park on the sea shore that has been converted into a sort of living prison for asylum seekers from all over the world.  You can see a trailer for it below.  The quote above comes from a Nigerian woman who was interviewed in this movie and I thought her words were hauntingly relevant to the immigration debate in this country, they explain so much of the irrational xenophobia that I've had such a hard time understanding lately. 

Both movies were really well done. Excellent cinematography.  Sepúlveda did a great job at capturing the heaviness of time --the time they spent waiting for the trains-- with these long, slow panning shots.  And the sense of isolation and rejection at the end as the camera slowly pans across this endless dark gray wall in the desert --yeah that wall-- which workers are still constructing, just drives the point home even more. 

But Seaview, I thought, had something extra.  Narrative voice overs with still shots of inanimate objects, empty rooms, dusty furniture-- a bizarre juxtaposition.  And sometimes, as in the case of the Nigerian woman, you never see the person's face, only hear their voice.  And when they translate, the subtitles fade in and out in the picture with the person not under it, like they normally are.  It made their words seem less removed, less translated from speaker to audience, more a part of them.  Their words.  Their stories.  Owned by them.  It was very moving.

Just two of the great films you can catch this weekend at the Silverdocs.  Check it out.

Why hire a PR firm when you have the Washington Post?

A few weeks ago I pointed out the Washington Post's editorial in support of the free trade deal with Colombia.  On Sunday there was an interview published with Colombian president Alvaro Uribe, a man who has openly acknowledged having ties to paramilitary groups in the past.  Here are some of the questions this hard-hitting PR flak --er, I mean "reporter" had for Mr. Uribe:

• Haven't you stuck your neck out to be a good US ally in the war on terrorism and the war on drugs? Are you thinking about alternatives  to your alliance with the US if this [trade deal] does not go through?

• Try to explain to the American people how important the [deal] is to your country --what it means in terms of growth and how damaging it would be to you, who have been a strong US ally if the agreement is rejected?

• You put so much on the line for an ally, and Washington doesn't come through for you?

Today Mr. Uribe's administration is in the news again for another scandal (they've been having to deal with recent revelations that many other people in his administration have ties to paramilitary groups also.  The documentation of corruption and human rights violations in Colombia under the Uribe administration is compelling.  Here's just a sampling:

Reuters: Colombia scandal creeps closer to Uribe (April 2007)

National Security Archive: Documents Implicate Colombian Government in Chiquita Terror Scandal (March 2007)

Washington Post: Paramilitary Ties to Elite in Colombia (March 2007)

Council on Foreign Relations: Colombia Scandal Imperils US Alliance (May 2007)

The House Democrats are right to block a trade deal with a country so corrupt.  Uribe is not a honorable character and we should not be validating his administration with any kind of alliance. 

ouch.

"Anyone who escapes or tries to leave without authorization will go to jail"

If that doesn't sound pretty much like slavery I don't know what does!  That's a quote from a really interesting This American Life expose of what happened to some guestworkers from India who came to work for a company in the U.S.  Workers beware!  Give it a listen.

Christmas 2007

(there's a video here in case you can't see it.  Click below)

Maybe next year things'll be different...

What makes me mad

Funeral held for girl denied transplant by insurance company.

"A leukemia patient, 17-year-old Nataline had been in intensive care at UCLA Medical Center for about three weeks after suffering complications following a successful bone marrow transplant Nov. 21, according to relatives. She was covered under the policy of her mother, a real estate agent.

UCLA doctors put her on a list for a liver transplant on Dec. 6 and a liver became available four days later, the family said. Her doctors told Cigna in a letter that patients in similar situations have a 65% chance of living six months if they receive a liver transplant.

But the transplant was not performed because Cigna deemed it experimental in Nataline's case and refused to pay for it....

She died last week.

'Tis the season... for exploitation?

"Between December and May, Florida produces virtually the entire US crop of field-grown fresh tomatoes. Fruit picked here in the winter months ends up on the shelves of supermarkets and is also served in the country's top restaurants and in tens of thousands of fast-food outlets.

But conditions in the state's fruit-picking industry range from straightforward exploitation to forced labour. Tens of thousands of men, women and children - excluded from the protection of America's employment laws and banned from unionising - work their fingers to the bone for rates of pay which have hardly budged in 30 years. [from The Unapologetic Mexican but originally from:Slave labour that shames America; Migrant workers chained beaten and forced into debt, exposing the human cost of producing cheap food]

Fighting xenophobia

MigraMatters is a really excellent blog by the way.

I stole the image up there to the left (under "Credo") from them.

No way to treat guests

Excellent video on guestworkers in North Carolina.

Paul Krugman on Universal Health Care

One of my favorite columnists is being interviewed today on the Diane Rehm Show.  Paul Krugman on race, class and universal health care: "I think we have the best chance now of getting universal health care than we have since Harry Truman."

Check it out if you get a chance.  He's a good man with a lot of good old fashioned common sense.  Also, he's got a new book out, The Conscience of a Liberal (buy it here at Powell's) which will probably be on my bookshelf before too long and if you don't buy the book or check out the interview, at least give a look at his blog, here.

Guess who opposes indigenous rights?

This is one of those news items that just make you roll your eyes and think how typical!  It's so not unexpected that it's painful and almost funny in a dark-humor kind of way. 

If you don't rely exclusively on corporate US news sources, you might have heard recently that the UN passed a resolution last week in favor of human rights for the world's indigenous peoples, specifically the right to self-determination and control of their own resources.   Now you'd think that'd just be common sense (I mean hey, one could wish we would have evolved past the colonialism stage yet, eh?) and that such a resolution would be a warm and fuzzy declaration that only The Simpson's Mr. Burns could object to. 

But you would be wrong.  Four countries objected to the resolution.  Guess which ones?  Here's a hint: they all have long histories of colonialism and all have sizeable chunks of indigenous people still living under occupation within their borders. 

The United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.  My roommate and I marveled over the fact that Britain didn't join them.  Good for Britain.  For the rest of us, how embarrassing!

p.s. This is why I'm a big fan of the General Assembly. 

In Memorium: Steve Biko

Yesterday was the anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center, also in Chile, it was the anniversary of the assassination of Salvador Allende and the beginning of the Pinochet dictatorship.  Today, September 12th is the 30th anniversary of the assassination of South African anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko.  Biko had been arrested by the South African police on the 18th of August under Section 6 of the Terrorism Act (yikes! sound familiar?) and was found dead in his cell on this day in 1977.  One of the greatest voices for freedom and equality silenced forever.  You can find visit the Steve Biko Foundation and read a short biography here.

"We have set on a quest for true humanity, and somewhere on the distant horison we can see the glittering prize. Let us march forth with courage and determination, drawing strength from our common plight and brotherhood. In time we shall be in a position to bestow upon South Africa the greatest gift possible - a more human face." --Steve Biko

Okay to hate X group of people?

A friend of a friend of mine who is a retired priest has often said that sex offenders are the modern world's lepers --the people that decent people (e.g. not psycho killers) believe it's okay to hate: the people who are society's outcasts, the scorned, the rejects.  In Biblical times people with leprosy, a highly contagious skin disease, were the lowest of the low.  People spit on them and ignored them and were not embarrassed by the disgust towards them that festered in their hearts.  It was just the socially-sanctioned thing to do and feel: one did not talk to, look at, touch or in any way associate with lepers.  Period.  (On the other hand Lot, who slept with his own daughters, was a pillar of ancient Hebrew society.  Go figure.)  No one cared about lepers; they were non-humans.  (Well Jesus did.  He'd walk right up, sit down and have a conversation.  He'd even touch them without gloves on!  The radical!  No wonder they crucified the guy!)

But I don't want to talk about Jesus in this post.  I want to talk about the phenomena of socially-sanctioned hate-- when it's socially acceptable to hate an entire group of people.  Who are today's lepers?  Why is it that still today we have people that otherwise decent, compassionate individuals are not ashamed to admit they detest.  This quote comes from a story in today's local paper:

"She said people don't want to [go to this place] because of all the ________  people there."

What kind of people do you think she's talking about?  Lepers?  Sex offenders?  People of color?  Which group of people is it okay to publically admit that you hate?  Thirty years ago a woman like this might have said without hesitation that, "[her kind of] people don't want to go to [the place she's referring to] because of all the black people there".  The racism of thirty years ago was socially sanctioned.  She's not now (and wouldn't have been then) mortified to be quoted in the daily paper saying something like this. 

In this case, the people's she's talking about are homeless.

Since she's not at all ashamed of her prejudice, I'll print her name here to be attached to her words.  Her name is Linda McGurn.   She's a rich downtown developer and she is proud to be a paragon of one of the worst characteristics of human nature: that part of us that fears and despises and dehumanizes large segments of the human population based on random biases within our culture.  Ms. McGurn, when your life is over and you lie looking back on all you've accomplished rest assured of one thing: No one will ever confuse you with a big-hearted person.

No more pity! A word about "disabilities" and the Jerry Lewis telethon

Oops!  Complete brain-fart here.  I meant to post this Monday but I was busy helping my roommate disassemble a toilet (very much fun, it's true! lol)  Anyway, better late than never and if you missed this on Monday it's a very interesting read.  Here's the story:

I got an email last week from Miss Crip Chick asking me to participate in a sort of Blog Against Pity Day on Labor Day, the day when Jerry Lewis hosts his annual telethon to raise money for Muscular Dystrophy Association.  I had never thought much about the telethon and I have to admit that I don't usually think much about what life is like for those whom our society has taught us to think of as "disabled" so this was very educational for me.  The banner on Miss Crip Chick's blog sums it up well though: a hand-made sign on the back of a wheelchair says "disability is cultural, not medical". 

Think about it for a minute.  What does seeing a person in a wheelchair as "disabled" say about our concept of human-ness?  That human-ness means having two functioning arms and legs and other appendages, the ability to move our bodies in certain ways?  And where's the line to be placed between functioning "able" bodied and non-functioning "disabled" bodies?  Is Mary Lou Retton more human than me because she can certainly do much more with her body than I can with mine?  Is there a scale of human-ness based on one's physical ability?  What about mental ability?  What does this mean for end-of-life questions (think Terri Schiavo)?  The philosophical questions could go on and on...

But why blog against the telethon?  Jerry Lewis is just raising money for a good cause isn't he?  He isn't causing any harm by doing it, right?  Maybe and maybe not.  It's a question worth examining.  For me, I would have to say that I don't normally watch the thing but I know the telethon is filled with cloying sentimentality for those who it's trying to help, which can certainly be patronizing and offensive.  "Look at these poor children in wheelchairs --please send money to help them out of their miserable existences!"  For many of us, the Jerry Lewis telethon is the only representation of differently-abled people we see all year.  It does two things, first it defines the individual by their medical condition until they are not themselves but merely a representation of a particular physical state, a noun frozen into a verb or adjective.  Not me or you but someone "disabled".   As Miss Crip Chick explains in her post, From a place of Love:

"I have Muscular Dystrophy, but like NO explains on Think Freestyle I believe disability is a cultural identity and don’t feel the need to label myself with a medical diagnosis....

Second, as mentioned above, that physical state is then represented as being some how less valuable than any other given physical state.  That is an assumption that should also be called into question:

"the main reason I oppose the telethon is because I can’t sit by and let someone tell my people what we should think of ourselves. I can’t let a telethon, drenched in pity, define disability;

Amen to that!  Don't let Jerry Lewis define your idea of what is or is not normal (read: valuable) human life, read the blogswarm and decide for yourself if the spectrum of human experience is wider than we've been led to expect. 

Katrina Remembrance

2 years ago today...

Mining the land and people: more effects of economic globalization

The Guardian today has an excellent editorial illustrating the negative effects of neoliberal globalization using the case of the British multinational mining corporation Anglo American.

Anglo American, the world's second-largest mining company, today announces its financial figures for 2007, on the back of record profits in 2006 of more than $6bn. Last year I visited Obuasi in Ghana, the site of Africa's largest gold mine, run by AngloGold Ashanti (AGA), an Anglo American subsidiary. The mine had polluted local water systems, while many people told me how they live in fear of joint company/police "security" patrols. In the past year, the appalling poverty of villagers literally living on top of gold has not improved one jot.

That's pretty much par for the course in their operations around the world, not just in Africa.  They're also exploring in Colombia in the department of Sur de Bolivar (I visited there once) where the Army and paramilitaries are engaged in a campaign of terror, clearing the land of people and adding to Colombia's huge population of IDPs (internally displaced persons --i.e. refugees) and the Philippines, a land also rich in political killings where mining has been called the most "systematically destructive" industry ever.

The bloody side of economics: the case of Chiquita Banana in Colombia

For Kyle of Immigration Orange who solicited posts on this subject.

A few months ago it came out that Chiquita Banana admitted to paying "protection money" to right wing terrorist groups in Colombia.   In Colombia, a country still engaged in a 40 year old ongoing low-scale civil war, this is nothing new.  For a company that works in the area that Chiquita did* (an area that has a heavy presence of armed actors), to have to pay una vacuna to ensure their continued operation is pretty normal.  It's one of the ways the illegal armed groups on both sides finance their war.  It is, however, the first time a US company has admitted such actions to US authorities and it's notable --and commendable-- that it was the US Justice Department who was one of the ones who initiated the investigation (Colombians complain that in their country corruption and apathy mean something like this is rarely investigated).

But Chiquita did more than allow themselves to be extorted, according to this article from La Semana. The general manager of the Chiquita subsidiary, Banadex, met personally with the infamous Carlos Castaño, former head of the largest paramilitary group in the country, the AUC.  Banadex even smuggled in 3,400 AK-47s and millions of rounds of ammunition for the group.  That's not simple extortion; that's active collaboration with a terrorist organization. 

"During the time Chiquita was paying the paramilitaries, thousands of people across Colombia died at the hands of the right-wing militias" (according to this article from the Christian Science Monitor).  For many of them, being affiliated with a union made them targets.  Colombia is the most dangerous country on the planet for a union organizer.  Paying off/working with the paramilitaries is not exactly an effective policy if your goal is to protect workers. If your goal is to intimadate them however it makes much more sense.  It is reasonable to inquire into what sort of incentives a company doing business in that country would have to collaborate with a terrorist organization that targets those trying to subvert or protect themselves from the capitalist system.

And, still, a big business in alliance with paramilitary forces in Colombia is not anything new.  It's long been known that Coca-Cola used paramilitary thugs to intimidate workers as well (for more info see www.killercoke.org).  As the article from La Semana says:

"The Chiquita case reveals the responsibility of the private sector for the reach of paramilitary dominion in large parts of the country.  And just as we speak of the para-political alliance, there is also a para-industrial alliance"

That's the nature of the conflict in Colombia.  The war is between right-wing paramilitary forces that support neoliberal economics in which the few become wealthy while the majority remain poor and Marxist guerrilla groups who, inspired by Che Guevara and Fidel Castro and the wave of insurrectionary movements across Latin America in the 1960s, believe that it is not only possible but imperative that a different system be put into place.  And both sides are willing to kill and die for what they believe in.

Any particular corporation may engage in bloody practices such as these but those of us concerned with justice have to ask why.  It’s not because of an irrational hatred for humanity.  It’s because such behavior is profitable. In a neoliberal economic system, a corporation thinks only of the bottom line; human life is of secondary concern.  It’s a bloody political economy.

To pressure individual companies to NOT rely on paramilitary armies to make a country safe for capitalism is like trying to convince water to NOT flow downhill.  We can put some dams up but that will just redirect the flow.  Until we have an economic system that does not encourage or give incentive to this sort of behavior more cases of gross human rights violations will continue to occur.

So sure, boycott Coca-Cola and condemn Chiquita for being shitty corporate citizens, but understanding the bigger picture of the role economics plays in the world of business and politics pushes us further towards a more lasting resolution to human rights violations by corporations not only in Colombia but around the world.

* Chiquita sold off its Colombian subsidiary in 2004.

What we should REALLY be concerned with in the immigration reform bill

On one of my recent posts about guest worker programs Mimenbro wondered about whether it was really true that employers using the guestworker programs are not required to pay their guest workers the minimum wage.  Good question!  So I'm doing more research on the subject.  I don't have a clear answer yet; it seems to be that if they are required to pay a minimum wage there's little/no enforcement of the requirement (plus I would imagine it wouldn't apply to agricultural workers anyway as none of them --domestic or foreign-- are entitled to a minimum wage anyway).  But I did find lots more articles and editorials criticizing the programs for this than I did back in February when I first started looking into the subject in this post. 

One of the best articles I found was this one by Linda Chavez-Thompson of the AFL-CIO writing of her own experience spending her summers doing farm work as a young girl:

"For foreign workers toiling as "guest workers" (or "braceros") alongside us in the cotton fields, the five-day work week was an impossible luxury. They were often stiffed on wages, and health care was simply non-existent... although most people like to think of bracero programs as a phenomenon of the past, the reality is that their legacy of exploitation and abuse continues to thrive in contemporary American society through modern guest worker programs such as the H2-A and H2-B." [and this was published on Forbes.com (yes, Forbes!]

Chavez-Thompson says there are laws on the books but enforcement is "almost nonexistant" and workers have little recourse to complain. 

The best way to guarantee the rights and wages of all workers in this country is to give every immigrant the opportunity to become a citizen, with all the rights and duties that entails. [Amen to that!]

The exploitation of immigrant workers hurts us all. When standards are driven down for some workers, they are driven down for all workers. For this same reason, guest worker programs must be squarely rejected. Because workers in these programs are always dependent on their host employers for both their livelihoods and legal status, these programs create a disenfranchised underclass of workers.

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel agrees.  He says guest worker programs are "the closest thing I've ever seen to slavery" (source: Southern Poverty Law Center report by the way they have an online petition you can sign here). 

And here's another article, this one from Time magazine (don't get more mainstream than that!)  Although this one is admittedly more concerned about whether guest worker programs "work" rather than if they are exploitative to workers the author does clearly state this:

By definition, guest workers are tremendously vulnerable. And of all the steps in the process, none is more ripe for abuse than the recruiting of workers back in their home countries....

Well, I beg to differ on that last point as it seems to me that getting exploited by employers here or getting exploited by recruiters there is about the same thing in the long run and I feel much more responsible for the actions of people and companies within my own country, I'd say it's the former that concerns me more (which doesn't mean I condone the latter).  The article doesn't go any further into the potential for abuses but an article in the Sun-Sentinel delivers this sentence in the opening paragraph of this editorial:

[Guestworkers] are routinely cheated out of wages, forced to live in substandard conditions, and denied basic medical benefits.

Simple as that.  All of these articles, commentaries and editorials seem good news to me because, as I mentioned, a few months ago I found very little on guest worker programs.  Thanks to the controversial immigration bill that has changed somewhat.  That's a good thing, but to get back to the original question I think I would say that after this latest round of research it seems that there is a consensus that whatever the laws may be about minimum wage requirements it's clear it's all too easy for those requirements to be ignored.  It's a program ripe for abuse and that should be the real center of concern about this [now stalled out] immigration bill.

Guest worker programs: The mountain comes to Mohammad

Another thought on guest worker programs.  Here's an interesting way to look at them: In this era of neoliberal economic globalization, where multi-national corporations can move their sweatshops around to the country desperate enough to offer the most misery and exploitation of their workers and thus the more profit for the corporation, who is the corporate sector left out of this game? 

Of course it's the big agribusiness companies who can't move fields of corn and wheat as easily as Nike can move a maquiladora.  So it seems to me, the point of the guestworker programs is a case of if Mohammad can't come to the mountain, the mountain can come to Mohammad.  If you can't move your company to the third world, you can bring the third world to the US, in a sense.  A permanent subclass of workers, they call it.  The slave class maybe they will come to be known.  A new era in globalization!  And few people are talking about it.

Anyone else concerned about worker's rights in this immigration bill?

The thing that bothers me about the debate over the immigration bill is that my concerns aren't really reflected by either the Dems or the Republicans.  As I understand it, Republicans are concerned about letting people become citizens (they call this giving them amnesty) and (some) Dems are concerned about depressing wages here in the US.  It's this latter that at least reflects part of my concern, though still not nearly all of it.  I want to hear someone talking about the dangerous potential for exploitation that these guestworker programs carry with them.  How revolting it is that we would let corporations import workers who then are entirely dependent on that corporation for their legal standing in this country.  How companies can use that to hire workers who will work for less, not being bound by minimum wage laws.  How they might use them to take away workers only leverage with a company: their mass numbers, sidestepping unions with their irksome demands for fair wages and humane working conditions.  I'm not saying this happens in all cases where companies have hired foreign workers but I am saying that it has happened.  Why?  Because there's nothing in these guest worker programs to prevent them from happening.  There are few safeguards here.  In my previous posts there are links to stories that chronicle some of the abuses of foreign workers under such programs.  Cases of people living in inhuman living conditions and being paid sub-minimum wages.

But few people talking about how the new immigration bill would affect immigrants themselves.  It seems it's another case of it being taboo to care about human life beyond those who happen to have been born in this country.  All these lives worth so much less...

The new immigration bill is currently stalled out in the Senate.  NPR story: <a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=10819109">Guest Workers Vote Stalls Immigration Bill</a>.  I say good riddance.  Someone please proposal an alternative that reflects a new, humane, progressive immigration policy for this country!  Please?  Even if it doesn't pass it will help people like me at least feel like we're not alone out here in our concern for workers and worker's rights, no matter what country they come from.

For more information, see my past posts on guestworker programs:
More sad stories about guestworker programs
A bit of history of guestworker programs in the US
And We should be outraged: guest worker programs mean slavery and exploitation in the US.

Also MigraMatters seems to be a highly informative blog on the subject, filled with tons of information and good analysis.

Cost of hunger: $90 BILLION

Hmmm... this is interesting.  Sodhexho --you know that huge food services corporation that brings you lunch on campus (corporate profile here)-- commissioned this study which the Washington Times is reporting on today evaluating the cost of hunger in the United States.  90 billion dollars is the number they came up with.  90 BILLION!

"We ought to debate this," said J. Larry Brown, founding director of the Center on Hunger and Poverty at Brandeis University and lead author of the report, "because if we're right, we're spending far more by letting hunger exist than it would cost to end it."

End it how, he doesn't say but the article mentioned that the federal food stamp program is up for renewal this year in Congress. I can't find anything about that online... anyone know anything?

For the record I'm all for expanding federal and state food stamp programs.  Food is not a privilege; it's a right.