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<div dir="ltr"><div><ol><li><h2 class="ReadMsgSubject" style="line-height: 24px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><font size="3">THE PRIVATE PRISON INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX </font></h2></li><li><h2 class="ReadMsgSubject" style="line-height: 24px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><font size="3">Film on Empire Zinc strike 60 years ago made history: They printed my Salt of the Earth essay in yesterday's paper </font></h2></li><li><h2 class="ReadMsgSubject" style="line-height: 24px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><font size="3">America's Last Hope: A Strong Labor Movement </font></h2></li><li><h2 class="ReadMsgSubject" style="line-height: 24px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><font size="3">ACN Independent Workers Gradually Join the Unions</font></h2></li><li><h2 class="ReadMsgSubject" style="line-height: 24px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><font size="3">Online Solidarity against Dirty DeMaio</font></h2></li><li><h2 class="ReadMsgSubject" style="line-height: 24px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><font size="3">Unions return to Democratic fold for 2012 election</font></h2></li><li><h2 class="ReadMsgSubject" style="line-height: 24px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><font size="3">Veteran of Mexico City Workers’ Occupation Shares Strategy with Occupy DC </font></h2></li><li><h2 class="ReadMsgSubject" style="line-height: 24px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><font size="3">seattle port strike challenges "independent contractor" lie </font></h2></li><li><h2 class="ReadMsgSubject" style="line-height: 24px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><font size="3">Research Brief: Black and Latino Retirement (In)Security </font></h2></li><li><h2 class="ReadMsgSubject" style="line-height: 24px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><font size="3">Charles Murray Surveys the Devastation of America’s Working Class, Shrugs</font></h2> </li></ol></div><div>@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@</div><div><span style="font-size: 10pt; "><br></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica; line-height: 17px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">From: CharlesM <MejiaRANGER8221@aol.com></span><br style="line-height: 17px; font-family: arial, helvetica; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica; line-height: 17px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">To: NetworkAztlan_News <NetworkAztlan_News@yahoogroups.com></span><br style="line-height: 17px; font-family: arial, helvetica; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica; line-height: 17px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">Sent: Mon, Feb 20, 2012 8:12 pm</span><br style="line-height: 17px; font-family: arial, helvetica; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica; line-height: 17px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">Subject: [NetworkAztlan_News] THE PRIVATE PRISON INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX</span><br style="line-height: 17px; font-family: arial, helvetica; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><br style="line-height: 17px; font-family: arial, helvetica; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><div style="line-height: 17px; font-family: arial, helvetica; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "> <div><div><div><div> </div><div><div align="center" style="text-align: center; "><img width="374" height="500" src="http://www.spokesmanreview.com/blogs/boise/media/r_CCA.jpg"></div><div align="center" style="text-align: center; "><b style="font-weight: bold; ">BREWER LINKED TO PRIVATE PRISONS HOUSING IMMIGRANTS</b></div><div align="center" style="text-align: center; "><a href="http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FREEDOMSFORUM/message/149583" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(0, 104, 207); cursor: pointer; ">http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FREEDOMSFORUM/message/149583</a></div><div align="center" style="text-align: center; "> </div><div align="center" style="text-align: center; "><img width="600" height="450" src="http://www.prisonpolicy.org/prisonindex/graphs/privateprisoners.jpg"></div><div align="center" style="text-align: center; "><b style="font-weight: bold; ">DOWNSIZING THE PRISON INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX</b></div><div align="center" style="text-align: center; "><a href="http://newscenter.berkeley.edu/2010/05/04/krisberg/" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(0, 104, 207); cursor: pointer; ">http://newscenter.berkeley.edu/2010/05/04/krisberg/</a></div><div align="center" style="text-align: center; "> </div><div align="center" style="text-align: center; "> </div><div align="center" style="text-align: center; "> </div><div align="center" style="text-align: center; "><img width="475" height="324" src="http://i2.cdn.turner.com/money/2010/08/17/news/economy/private_prisons_economic_impact.fortune/private_prisons.gi.top.jpg"></div><div align="center" style="text-align: center; "> </div><div align="center" style="text-align: center; "><b style="font-weight: bold; ">THE ECONOMICS OF INCARCERATION</b></div><div align="center" style="text-align: center; "><a href="http://www.infowars.com/the-prison-industrial-" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(0, 104, 207); cursor: pointer; ">http://www.infowars.com/the-prison-industrial-</a></div><div align="center" style="text-align: center; "><font color="blue" style="line-height: normal; ">complex-the-economics-of-incarceration-in-the-usa/</font></div><div align="center" style="text-align: center; "> </div><div align="center" style="text-align: center; "> </div><div align="center" style="text-align: center; "> </div><div align="center" style="text-align: center; "><img width="553" height="369" src="http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/NA-AU080_PRISON_G_20081118171930.jpg"></div><div align="center" style="text-align: center; "> </div><div align="center" style="text-align: center; "><b style="font-weight: bold; ">PROFIT MAXIMIZATION AND THE PRISON COMPLEX</b></div><div align="center" style="text-align: center; "><a href="http://www.concurringopinions.com/archives/201" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(0, 104, 207); cursor: pointer; ">http://www.concurringopinions.com/archives/201</a></div><div align="center" style="text-align: center; "><font color="blue" style="line-height: normal; ">2/02/profit-maximization-and-the-prison-industrial-complex.html</font></div><div align="center" style="text-align: center; "> </div><div align="center" style="text-align: center; "> </div><div align="center" style="text-align: center; "> </div><div align="center" style="text-align: center; "><img width="520" height="368" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_H6qCgKh3KiU/THPp4yd9R_I/AAAAAAAABao/tRjaHq_fCnY/s1600/private-prison.jpg"></div><div align="center" style="text-align: center; "><b style="font-weight: bold; ">PROFITEERS OF MISERY - THE PRIVATE PRIXON COMPLEX</b></div><div align="center" style="text-align: center; "><a href="http://www.nationofchange.org/profiteers" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(0, 104, 207); cursor: pointer; ">http://www.nationofchange.org/profiteers</a></div><div align="center" style="text-align: center; "><font color="blue" style="line-height: normal; ">-misery-us-private-prison-industrial-complex-1314288737</font></div><div align="center" style="text-align: center; "> </div><div align="center" style="text-align: center; "> </div><div align="center" style="text-align: center; "> </div><div align="center" style="text-align: center; "><img width="487" height="413" src="http://www.illegalimmigrationstatistics.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/cmimg_13032.jpg"></div><div align="center" style="text-align: center; "> </div><div align="center" style="text-align: center; "><b style="font-weight: bold; ">COMPANIES USE IMMIGRATION CRACKDOWN TO MAKE A PROFIT</b></div><div align="center" style="text-align: center; "><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/29/world/asia/" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(0, 104, 207); cursor: pointer; ">http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/29/world/asia/</a></div><div align="center" style="text-align: center; "><font color="blue" style="line-height: normal; ">getting-tough-on-immigrants-to-turn-a-profit.html?pagewanted=all</font></div><div align="center" style="text-align: center; "> </div><div align="center" style="text-align: center; "> </div><div align="center" style="text-align: center; "> </div><div align="center" style="text-align: center; "><img alt="Undocumented immigrants walk through the Maricopa County"></div><div align="center" style="text-align: center; "> </div><div align="center" style="text-align: center; "><b style="font-weight: bold; ">HOW CORPORATIONS EXPLOIT PRISON LABOR</b></div><div align="center" style="text-align: center; "><a href="http://www.alternet.org/world/151732/21st-century_" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(0, 104, 207); cursor: pointer; ">http://www.alternet.org/world/151732/21st-century_</a></div><div align="center" style="text-align: center; "><font color="blue" style="line-height: normal; ">slaves%3A_how_corporations_exploit_prison_labor/?page=entire</font></div><div align="center" style="text-align: center; "> </div><div align="center" style="text-align: center; "> </div><div align="center" style="text-align: center; "> </div><div align="left" style="text-align: justify; "><b style="font-weight: bold; ">VIDEO - WORKING IN THE US FOR 23 CENTS AN HOUR</b></div><div align="left" style="text-align: justify; "><a href="http://breakthematrix.com/government/pri" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(0, 104, 207); cursor: pointer; "><font color="#800040" style="line-height: normal; "><b style="line-height: 17px; font-weight: bold; ">http://breakthematrix.com/government/pri</b></font></a></div><div align="left" style="text-align: justify; "><font color="#800040" style="line-height: normal; "><b style="line-height: 17px; font-weight: bold; ">son-industrial-complex-prison-industrial-complex/</b></font></div><div align="left" style="text-align: justify; "> </div><div align="left" style="text-align: justify; "> </div><div align="left" style="text-align: justify; "> </div><div align="left" style="text-align: justify; "><b style="font-weight: bold; ">VIDEO - BIG MONEY MADE PUTTING PEOPLE IN PRISONS</b></div><div align="left" style="text-align: justify; "><a href="http://breakthematrix.com/government/big-money-putting-people-prison/" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(0, 104, 207); cursor: pointer; "><b style="font-weight: bold; ">http://breakthematrix.com/government/big-money-putting-people-prison/</b></a></div><div align="left" style="text-align: justify; "> </div><div align="left" style="text-align: justify; "> </div><div align="left" style="text-align: justify; "><b style="font-weight: bold; ">THE PRIVATE PRISON INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX</b></div><div align="left" style="text-align: justify; "><a href="http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FREEDOMSFORUM/message/159345" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(0, 104, 207); cursor: pointer; "><font color="#0000BF" style="line-height: normal; "><b style="line-height: 17px; font-weight: bold; ">http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FREEDOMSFORUM/message/159345</b></font></a></div></div></div></div></div></div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"></div><div><span style="font-size: 10pt; "><br></span></div><div><span style="font-size: 10pt; ">@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@</span></div><div><span style="font-size: 10pt; "><br></span></div><div><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="line-height: 17px; font-size: 13px; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Georgia; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><tbody><tr><td valign="top"><div><br><br><a href="http://www.scsun-news.com/ci_19997198?IADID=Search-www.scsun-news.com-www.scsun-news.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(30, 102, 174); cursor: pointer; ">http://www.scsun-news.com/ci_19997198?IADID=Search-www.scsun-news.com-www.scsun-news.com</a> <a href="http://ad.doubleclick.net/jump/scsun-news.com/%3bdeal%3d4%3bsz%3d76x24%3bord%3d667345231?" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(30, 102, 174); cursor: pointer; "><img src="http://ad.doubleclick.net/ad/scsun-news.com/;deal=4;sz=76x24;ord=667345231?" border="0" style="border-style: initial; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-top-style: none; border-right-style: none; border-bottom-style: none; border-left-style: none; border-width: initial; border-color: initial; "></a> <a href="http://ad.doubleclick.net/jump/scsun-news.com/%3bdeal%3d5%3bsz%3d76x24%3bord%3d567345231?" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(30, 102, 174); cursor: pointer; "><img src="http://ad.doubleclick.net/ad/scsun-news.com/;deal=5;sz=76x24;ord=567345231?" border="0" style="border-style: initial; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-top-style: none; border-right-style: none; border-bottom-style: none; border-left-style: none; border-width: initial; border-color: initial; "></a> <a href="http://ad.doubleclick.net/jump/scsun-news.com/%3bdeal%3d6%3bsz%3d76x24%3bord%3d467345231?" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(30, 102, 174); cursor: pointer; "><img src="http://ad.doubleclick.net/ad/scsun-news.com/;deal=6;sz=76x24;ord=467345231?" border="0" style="border-style: initial; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-top-style: none; border-right-style: none; border-bottom-style: none; border-left-style: none; border-width: initial; border-color: initial; "></a></div></td></tr></tbody></table><div class="ecxgmail_quote" style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Georgia; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="line-height: 17px; font-size: inherit; "><tbody><tr></tr></tbody></table><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="line-height: 17px; font-size: inherit; "><tbody><tr><td align="left" valign="top"><br></td></tr></tbody></table><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="line-height: 17px; font-size: inherit; "><tbody><tr><td align="left" valign="top"><br></td></tr></tbody></table><a name="1359e9e3b31014cf_1359e116d3d578fc_top" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(30, 102, 174); cursor: pointer; "></a><div align="center"></div><h1 style="line-height: 23px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 21px; font-weight: normal; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 5px; margin-left: 0px; ">Their View: Film on Empire Zinc strike 60 years ago made history</h1><div>By Hueteotl Lopez / For the Sun-News</div><div>Posted: 02/19/2012 01:00:00 AM MST</div><br><div><div></div>Had it been any other work-stoppage in the nation, not much would have been shared about its important historical significance. Not much would have carried over into our history books by way of its influence on American civil-rights history.<p style="margin-bottom: 1.35em; ">Not much would have been said at all had it not been for a persistent group of men, women, and film-makers who broke the mold and overcame inequality in a creative way 60 years ago on Jan. 25, 1952 when Grant County's underground miners were victorious in their fight against injustice on and off the job in a labor and civil rights struggle against the Empire Zinc Co. located in Hanover, NM.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 1.35em; ">This labor fight, known as the Empire Zinc strike, led to this little corner of southwestern New Mexico being made world famous by a resistant group of blacklisted Hollywood filmmakers who were labeled as communists during the McCarthy era. They came to town as outcasts with a fire for social, economic, and political justice in their hearts and found the same burning passion for justice in a group of workers from the International Mine-Mill & Smelter Union who were in the midst of a giant labor struggle taking on the local economic, social, and political powers and their unequal and negative treatment of Mexican-Americans.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 1.35em; ">The workers and their families won the strike, which led to both persecuted groups coming together in 1953 to create a masterful work of art now known as the Salt of the Earth movie. This film is so significant that at the 50th anniversary of the making of the movie it was inducted to the Library of Congress for posterity as one of the top 100 films representing Americana. It remains a very popular and widely used teaching tool that demonstrates the courage and ability of working people succeeding in taking on very powerful corporations, the courts, police, and institutional racism.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 1.35em; ">Shot on location in Bayard, N.M. with the actual strikers and their families playing most of the roles in the film, "Salt of the Earth" immortalizes the struggle of Grant County workers who were in the midst of battling one of the many rich and powerful mining companies for better hours, wages, working conditions, and most importantly racial justice. In fact, the main issues of the strike were primarily about racial injustice.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 1.35em; ">Grant County residents were fed up with indignities on and off the job. Life in general at that time in the small towns of Bayard, Hurley, Santa Rita, and Silver was marred by discrimination against Mexican Americans. On the job, the pay and job responsibilities (skilled vs. unskilled) were not equal with Anglos. The pay lines were segregated, one for the Anglos, the other for the Mexicans. Off the job, housing was segregated and Mexicans did not have access to the same comforts as Anglo residents with regard to sanitation, electricity, and paved streets. The swimming pools were segregated. The only day Mexicans could swim was at the end of the week when it was time to drain the pool and refill it. The movie theaters were segregated, with Mexicans on one side in the back and Anglos on the other. Mexican citizens also suffered greatly from police brutality.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 1.35em; ">The striking workers, all of whom grew up in the Depression era and many of whom served valiantly in the U.S. armed forces in WWII, rebelled against all of this inequality and used the union to break hundreds of years of discrimination by uniting and demanding an end to mistreatment and second-class citizenship. All of this is documented well in Ellen R. Baker's seminal work, On Strike and on Film: Mexican American families and blacklisted filmmakers in cold war America, which provides readers with an astounding historical account of union building, class-warfare, civil-rights, and questions of gender equality all through the lives and experiences of Grant County miners and their families.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 1.35em; ">As a result of contract negotiations breaking down, the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers (Mine-Mill) Local No. 890, as the workers were collectively called, decided to strike on Oct. 17, 1950. They formed picket lines blocking both of the company's gates and kept them up until June 1951, when Empire Zinc obtained a court injunction from then-Grant County District Judge Marshall and enforced by District Attorney Thomas Foy. The men were forbidden by this injunction from picketing the company gates and faced jail time if they ignored the order.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 1.35em; ">This is when a proposal from the miners' wives was put forth, that they would replace the men on the picket lines, thereby obeying the letter of the injunction against picketing miners while defeating its purpose. In an unprecedented move, women took over the picket lines on June 12, 1951 and they persisted and proved to be brave and strong fighters even when many were thrown into jail and threatened. They held the lines for more than six months, until the Empire Zinc Co. agreed to negotiate in January 1952. Miners won wage increases, other benefits, and improved housing conditions, and they considered the strike a victory. (Ellen R. Baker - On Strike and On Film)</p><p style="margin-bottom: 1.35em; ">The victory of the miners and their families during that time was and is forever indomitable. Together, after much hardship and sacrifice, the strike was successful. It was successful because of the support from other miner's unions in the country and the unity of all the workers and their families across class, racial, and gender lines. It is one magnificent example out of many in U.S. history that set a precedent for the rest of the country and for the world to follow — that struggle and sacrifice in the name of humane and equal treatment is not in vain and that standing together in the face of adversity, persecution, incarceration, and isolation for your belief in change is a testament to the power of right to win out over wrong.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 1.35em; ">The Empire Zinc strike, the very crucial labor and civil rights contributions that the International Mine-Mill & Smelter Union workers made, and the making of the movie Salt of the Earth all stand as important, meaningful, and unforgettable gems in the beautiful history of Grant County. Let us celebrate and honor that history on this 60th anniversary of the victory of striking miners by never forgetting those who paved a path for us in our lives.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 1.35em; "></p><p style="margin-bottom: 1.35em; ">Hueteotl Lopez resides in Grant County, NM and is a writer, labor organizer, and community activist and can be reached at<a href="mailto:wed2012@yahoo.com" style="color: rgb(30, 102, 174); cursor: pointer; font-family: Verdana; ">wed2012@yahoo.com</a>. He is a founding member of Juntos en la Union — an organization for the preservation and promotion of Grant County's labor history and a society for the preservation of The Mine Mill and Smelter Workers Local No. 890 headquarters located in Bayard, New Mexico. Please visit our website at <a href="http://juntosenlaunion.org/" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(30, 102, 174); cursor: pointer; font-family: Verdana; ">http://juntosenlaunion.org/</a></p></div><br></div><a href="http://hs-news.us1.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=a39eae445ddabb7d8f6ae4fd5&id=37a8beafe5&e=b3858a6b10" target="_blank" style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(255, 255, 255); cursor: pointer; font-family: Georgia; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><img alt="share on Twitter" border="0" height="20" width="55" style="border-style: initial; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-top-style: none; border-right-style: none; border-bottom-style: none; border-left-style: none; border-width: initial; border-color: initial; "></a><span style="color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Georgia; line-height: 17px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "> </span><br style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Georgia; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><div style="line-height: 23px; font-family: Georgia; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: 18px; color: rgb(101, 28, 0); "><a href="http://hs-news.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=a39eae445ddabb7d8f6ae4fd5&id=e5e4d7be16&e=b3858a6b10" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(128, 0, 0); cursor: pointer; ">Armed with Knowledge Instead of Guns, New Mexico Hispanic Ranchers Show Political Power</a></div><div style="line-height: 14px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: 11px; color: rgb(102, 102, 102); font-family: Arial; ">Feb 20, 2012 11:44 am</div><p style="line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 1.35em; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Georgia; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><a href="http://hs-news.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=a39eae445ddabb7d8f6ae4fd5&id=b0d43485c2&e=b3858a6b10" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(128, 0, 0); cursor: pointer; font-family: Verdana; "><img alt="Armed with Knowledge Instead of Guns, New Mexico Hispanic Ranchers Show Political Power" align="left" border="0" hspace="10px" vspace="3px" width="180px" style="border-style: initial; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-top-style: none; border-right-style: none; border-bottom-style: none; border-left-style: none; border-width: initial; border-color: initial; "></a></p><p style="line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 1.35em; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Georgia; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">Although in the past they were seen as ‘free loaders’ and ignored, New Mexico’s Hispanic ranchers are beginning to demonstrate their political prowess. </p><p style="line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 1.35em; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Georgia; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">Recently, activists have held forums throughout the state, raised money for a major lawsuit against the U.S. Forest Service, persuaded state lawmakers to create a new town based on 200 year old land grants, and challenged… <a href="http://hs-news.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=a39eae445ddabb7d8f6ae4fd5&id=39dfce491b&e=b3858a6b10" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(128, 0, 0); cursor: pointer; font-family: Verdana; ">Read More Here</a></p><p style="line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 1.35em; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Georgia; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><em>Published in <a href="http://hs-news.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=a39eae445ddabb7d8f6ae4fd5&id=484b240c50&e=b3858a6b10" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(128, 0, 0); cursor: pointer; font-family: Verdana; ">Notitas de Noticias</a></em></p><p style="line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 1.35em; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Georgia; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><br></p></div><div>@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@</div><div><br></div><div><pre style="line-height: 17px; white-space: normal; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">America's Last Hope: A Strong Labor Movement<br>To achieve economic justice in the 21st century, we<br>need to fight for democracy in the workplace<br><br>By Dorian Warren<br>February 19, 2012<br>Salon.com<br><br><a href="http://www.salon.com/writer/dorian_warren/" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(0, 104, 207); cursor: pointer; ">http://www.salon.com/writer/dorian_warren/</a><br><br>The 99 Percent Plan is a joint Roosevelt Institute-<br>Salon series that explores how progressives can shape<br>a new vision for the economy. This is the third essay<br>in the series.<br><br>The fate of the labor movement is the fate of American<br>democracy. Without a strong countervailing force like<br>organized labor, corporations and wealthy elites<br>advancing their own interests are able to exert undue<br>influence over the political system, as we've seen in<br>every major policy debate of recent years.<br><br>Yet the American labor movement is in crisis and is the<br>weakest it's been in 100 years. That truism has been a<br>progressive mantra since the Clinton administration.<br>However, union density has continued to decline from<br>roughly 16 percent in 1995 to 11.8 percent of all<br>workers and just 6.9 percent of workers in the private<br>sector. Unionized workers in the public sector now make<br>up the majority of the labor movement for the first<br>time in history, which is precisely why - a la<br>Wisconsin and 14 other states - they have been targeted<br>by the right for all out destruction.<br><br>The urgency is striking. Instead of being fundamentally<br>discredited, the oligarchs and plutocrats who crashed<br>our economy are raking in record profits and acting<br>even more aggressively to bury the American labor<br>movement once and for all. Over the last year, several<br>labor leaders have told me that they believe unions<br>have only about five more years left if they don't<br>figure out some kind of breakthrough strategy.<br><br>The complete collapse of unions would have devastating<br>consequences. The labor movement has played a crucial<br>role in advancing economic justice in the workplace and<br>in politics. Union membership raises median weekly<br>earnings and reduces race- and gender-based income<br>gaps, and union workers are much more likely to receive<br>health care and pension benefits than workers who are<br>not members of a labor union. The decline of organized<br>labor is directly linked to the rise in economic<br>inequality over the last 40 years and the onset of a<br>"Second Gilded Age." The decline in union density<br>coupled with the decline in the real value of the<br>minimum wage explains one-third of the dramatic growth<br>in wage inequality since the early 1970s.<br><br>Over the past 30 years, American employers have become<br>even more aggressive at violating their workers' rights<br>to organize under a toothless and outdated labor law<br>regime. Contrary to the intent of the 1935 National<br>Labor Relations Act, which made it national policy to<br>encourage and promote collective bargaining, the NLRA<br>now provides incentives for employers to break the law<br>routinely and ignore any compulsion to negotiate<br>collective agreements. When there is little outrage for<br>the daily violations of workers' liberty (employers<br>fire workers illegally in 1 in 3 union campaigns for<br>attempting to exercise freedom of association), our<br>democracy is in peril.<br><br>As worker power has eroded in the workplace, the labor<br>movement's political clout has also declined. Measured<br>by both members and money, unions are still the most<br>influential and resourceful left-wing constituency in<br>American politics. Organized labor also remains the<br>most powerful core of the national Democratic Party by<br>several measures, including campaign contributions,<br>grassroots mobilization efforts, lobbying and setting<br>the party's legislative agenda. Indeed, the labor<br>movement spent a record amount of money to help get a<br>Democrat elected to the White House in 2008.<br><br>With a labor-friendly White House and a Democratic<br>Congress, organized labor began strategizing about how<br>and when to push for its No. 1 priority, the Employee<br>Free Choice Act (EFCA). Labor law reform would not only<br>help the flagging movement survive but also offer an<br>indirect solution to our growing problems of economic<br>inequality and the catastrophic Great Recession. By<br>leveling the playing field between workers and<br>employers, higher union density decreases wage<br>inequality in the American labor market while<br>increasing purchasing power of consumers.<br><br>But the move to pass EFCA failed, revealing just how<br>weak organized labor has become. Now, with no hope for<br>labor law reform in sight, is the time to rethink the<br>role of the labor movement in the 21st century.<br>Progressives need a strong and vibrant labor movement<br>that focuses not just on workers' rights, but can also<br>act as a democratizing force advancing social justice<br>and expanding worker, citizen and resident power in the<br>workplace and in their communities.<br><br>The labor movement is the critical anchor and enabler<br>of democracy grounded on a notion of freedom. Most<br>people have an intuitive understanding of what<br>democracy means: rule by the people (as opposed to rule<br>by the few or an elite). Yet, as Corey Robin so<br>eloquently points out in his book on fear, Americans<br>give up their individual freedom and democratic voice<br>every single day they walk into work. The workplace is<br>an authoritarian dictatorship, and we accept this as<br>legitimate.<br><br>Now is the time to challenge that feudal relationship.<br>We need to call into question the assumption that<br>Americans believe democracy stops at the workplace<br>door. If we would not stand for a despot to rule over<br>us with impunity, why do we let the boss do so every<br>day of the workweek? Any progressive advance needs a<br>strong labor movement to achieve a fully free and<br>democratic workplace and society. This vision of<br>freedom and democracy manifests in two domains: the<br>workplace and the southern region of the country.<br><br>First, labor's role must be made much more central at<br>the workplace and in the economy more broadly. Labor<br>can, and should, be a governing co-partner with<br>business and government in the economy. What labor<br>brings to the table is a vision of growth with equity.<br>And there are already examples of this kind of union<br>and worker organizational influence in the economy at<br>the regional level. The Los Angeles Alliance for a New<br>Economy (LAANE) and Working Partnerships USA, both in<br>California, have shown how labor can become a governing<br>partner in economic decision-making at the regional<br>level.<br><br>Another aspect of centralizing labor's role in the<br>economy and advancing workplace democracy is to expand<br>workers' voice and power at the bargaining table. A<br>21st century vision of the American labor movement is<br>one that destroys the divide between labor and<br>community that has long governed the politics and<br>practices of unions. What the emergence of new forms of<br>worker organizations have taught us is that workers are<br>also residents in communities, while residents are also<br>workers, and there are organizational models available<br>that take all workers' identities into account.<br><br>While labor law constricts the scope of issues that<br>unions can negotiate at the workplace, it doesn't<br>prevent worker organizations from bargaining in the<br>political arena for affordable housing, equitable<br>development, local, regional and national economic<br>policy, criminal justice, or the wide range of issues<br>that affect poor and working class people. Stephen<br>Lerner, among others, has outlined what a wider scope<br>of collective bargaining might look like. Imagine, for<br>instance, that the United Auto Workers could negotiate<br>over the environmental standards of the cars they<br>produce instead of just wages and benefits. Such a<br>vision requires a far-reaching campaign to redefine the<br>scope of collective bargaining and workers' voices at<br>work. This is a 10- or 20-year effort to be sure, but<br>one that will be crucial to any future the labor<br>movement has in the U.S.<br><br>Directly related to expanding labor's role in the<br>economy and expanding the scope of collective<br>bargaining is advancing freedom in the workplace. In<br>short: democracy, over autocracy, at work. This would<br>go beyond the softer slogan of the AFL-CIO's "voice at<br>work." This is an admittedly long-term project. But<br>several concrete demands arise out of the broad notion<br>of a workplace democracy. For instance, the Employee<br>Free Choice Act would have allowed workers a modicum of<br>political liberty at the workplace; it aimed to restore<br>workers' rights to freedom of association. But a deeper<br>and even more controversial demand proposes an end to<br>management prerogative over all workplace decisions.<br>Workplace democracy means truly giving workers a<br>"voice" at work. Whether through work committees or<br>required seats for employee representatives on the<br>company's board of directors, a deeper vision of<br>workplace democracy enables workers' voices to have a<br>real impact.<br><br>The second domain for a 21st century labor movement is<br>geographic: finally democratizing the South through the<br>building of a Southern labor movement. After the CIO's<br>Operation Dixie failed to organize Southern workers in<br>the late 1940s, with a few exceptions mostly in the<br>public sector, organized labor gave up on the South.<br>We've been suffering the consequences ever since. The<br>Southern, Walmart model of low-wage labor markets is<br>being imported to the North. We only have to look at<br>the attack on public sector workers in Wisconsin and<br>Michigan and the recent passage of Right-to-Work<br>legislation in Indiana to understand that Northern<br>governors and the Republican Party are trying to turn<br>their states into Yankee versions of Southern Right-to-<br>Work (for less) states.<br><br>Instead of retreating to a defensive posture, organized<br>labor should launch an ambitious and bold campaign to<br>organize the South. A Southern labor movement would<br>galvanize workers in the region who, contrary to<br>popular belief, would like to become dues-paying union<br>members. Given the dramatic demographic changes<br>occurring in the South involving increased migrations<br>of people of color who tend to be the most pro-union<br>and pro-worker organization (see the Coalition of<br>Immokalee Workers' recent victory over Trader Joe's),<br>the opportunity for organizing and building a Southern<br>labor movement is greater today than even 60 years ago<br>under Operation Dixie. This effort would not only<br>transform the low-wage economic model of the South, it<br>would prevent the race to the bottom from North to<br>South, and most important, it would transform the<br>politics of the region and fundamentally the country.<br><br>What grounds this vision of a 21st century labor<br>movement is the core idea of extending what Americans<br>claim to cherish in politics and civil society to the<br>workplace: democracy, liberty and freedom. The<br>consolidation of income, wealth and political power by<br>the 1 percent over the last several decades is directly<br>related to the decline of workers' voice and power.<br>Rebuilding a truly countervailing (and democratic)<br>power, as the labor movement did in the 1930s and<br>1940s, will require a bold and convincing vision of<br>workplace democracy and freedom. Workers and their<br>organizations have historically played this anchoring<br>role for progressive politics throughout American<br>history. Now is the time to reclaim this historic<br>charge for the 21st century.<br><br>Dorian T. Warren is a Fellow at the Roosevelt<br>Institute. He is also an Assistant Professor of<br>Political Science & Public Affairs at Columbia<br>University. You can follow him on Twitter<br>@dorianwarren.<br><br>____________________________________________<br><br>PortsideLabor aims to provide material of interest to<br>people on the left that will help them to interpret the<br>world and to change it.<br></pre><pre style="line-height: 17px; white-space: normal; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><br></pre></div><div>@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@</div><div><pre style="line-height: 17px; white-space: normal; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">acnnews 7<br>Independent Workers Gradually Join the Unions <br><br>CAMAGUEY, Cuba, Feb 20 (acn) The majority of independent workers in the<br>province of Camaguey, amounting to more than 26,000 total, have joined<br>their respective unions associated under the Cuban Workers Confederation<br>(CTC).<br><br>Approximately 17,248 self-employed people in the province have become<br>members of local unions, mostly those in the fields of trade, food<br>service, transportation, light industry and construction. <br><br>Cafeteria-owner Jorge Casanova Carvalleira said through the Trade and Food<br>union he can voice out his problems and demands and noted that he counts<br>on the support of the organization. <br><br>Among the main concerns shared by the self-employed are the high taxes,<br>excessive bureaucracy during inspections, the lack of raw material supply<br>and of a wholesale market for the sector. <br><br>Jose Luis Menendez, member of the Provincial CTC in Camagüey, said the<br>organization provides orientation and labor support to the self-employed,<br>in addition to being a means for a better organization of the<br>non-government sector. <br><br>Cubannews/ycr/ycr/18:20<br><br>Sindicalizados mayoría de cuentapropistas camagüeyanos<br><br><br>Cuban News Agency<br>www.cubanews.ain.cu<br>ainnews@ain.cu</pre></div><div>@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@</div><div><br></div><div><div style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">Brothers and Sisters:</div><div style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "> </div><div style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">As you may know, over the past decade, Carl DeMaio has waged war against working families and taxpayers - while fighting on behalf of some of the nation's most troubling special interests.</div><div style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "> </div><div style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">In 2000, DeMaio helped craft a plan to outsource more than 425,000 American jobs for the Bush Administration. He honed his skills at the right-wing Reason Foundation and in 2003, advised Republican candidates for governor with proposals for privatizing government jobs that included outsourcing state park rangers. He's spearheaded ballot measures attacking the living wage and public pensions, and as a member of the city council, has pushed for outsourcing and deep cuts to essential public services like fire protection and libraries.</div><div style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "> </div><div style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">Now DeMaio is running for Mayor of San Diego. And we need your<b style="font-weight: bold; "> "online solidarity"</b> to help get the truth out.<b style="font-weight: bold; "> If you have a website that can list endorsements of candidates, I need you to link to our accountability website -</b> <a href="http://www.dirtydemaio.com/" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(0, 104, 207); cursor: pointer; "><b style="font-weight: bold; ">www.DirtyDemaio.com</b></a><b style="font-weight: bold; "> - so we can help spread the word about this dangerous politician.</b></div><div style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "> </div><div style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">So we are asking all of you - our friends and allies, brothers and sisters - to join us in online solidarity by sharing our site with your members and even more importantly, placing a link to our site on your organization's website.</div><div style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "> </div><div style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">We hope you can help us with this exercise in online solidarity. If you have any questions, or need help in figuring out how to do this, please feel free to email Lucas O'Connor on my staff here at the Labor Council. His email is loconnor@unionyes.org.</div><div style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "> </div><div style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">In Solidarity,</div><div style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">Lorena</div><div style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "> </div><div style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "> </div><div style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><i>____________________________</i></div><div style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><i>Lorena Gonzalez</i></div><div style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><i>Secretary-Treasurer / CEO, San Diego and Imperial Counties Labor Council, AFL-CIO</i></div><div style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><i>3737 Camino del Rio S. #403</i></div><div style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><i>San Diego, CA 92108</i></div><div style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><i> </i></div><div style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><i>(619) 228-8101, ex 1</i></div><div style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><lgonzalez@unionyes.org></div><div style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><br></div><div style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><i>www.UnionYes.org</i></div></div><div style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><i><br></i></div><div>@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@</div><div><br></div><div><pre style="line-height: 17px; white-space: normal; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">Unions return to Democratic fold for 2012 election<br>After a falling out with the party, labor is back with<br>cash and other support, driven largely by Republican<br>attacks on collective bargaining.<br>By Matea Gold and Melanie Mason<br>The Los Angeles Times<br>February 19, 2012<br><a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2012/feb/19/nation/la-na-labor-politics-20120220" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(0, 104, 207); cursor: pointer; ">http://articles.latimes.com/2012/feb/19/nation/la-na-labor-politics-20120220</a><br>Reporting from Washington<br><br>Last May, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka stood a few<br>blocks from the White House and issued a stern warning:<br>Union members could not be counted on as the Democrats'<br>foot soldiers anymore.<br><br>"If leaders aren't blocking the wrecking ball and<br>advancing working families' interests, then working<br>people will not support them," he said in a speech at<br>the National Press Club.<br><br><br>Flash forward to today: Labor appears squarely back in<br>the Democrats' corner for the 2012 election -- pushed<br>there in large part by Republican attacks on collective<br>bargaining rights for public employees.<br><br>Those and other anti-union measures are rallying<br>organized labor to the side of its longtime Democratic<br>allies, and not just in states such as Wisconsin, Ohio<br>and Michigan, where they are battling efforts aimed at<br>curbing union organizing.<br><br>The country's biggest unions also have played a central<br>role in helping a network of federal pro-Democratic<br>"super PACs" get off the ground, pouring more than $4<br>million into those groups in 2011, even as many wealthy<br>liberals kept their checkbooks closed.<br><br>And some major labor groups have even inserted<br>themselves into the Republican presidential primaries<br>with ads that take aim at White House hopeful Mitt<br>Romney.<br><br>The decision by unions to act again as an early<br>firewall for Democrats speaks to how stepped-up<br>hostility by Republicans has curtailed labor's hope to<br>be an independent political force.<br><br>Across the country, state GOP lawmakers -- many of whom<br>were swept into office by the tea-party-fueled wave<br>that dominated the 2010 midterm election -- are<br>aggressively pushing right-to-work laws that would make<br>it harder for unions to collect dues. And in the<br>presidential campaign, Romney has taken a particularly<br>antagonistic posture against what he calls "big labor."<br><br>"I think we'll be more engaged in 2012 than certainly<br>in the last 20 years," said Mike Podhorzer, political<br>director for the AFL-CIO, a federation of 57 unions.<br>"Working people realize in a way they never have what a<br>threat the current Republican platform is to their<br>well-being."<br><br>Organized labor is now expected to match or slightly<br>exceed the estimated $400 million that unions spent to<br>help elect Barack Obama and congressional Democrats in<br>2008, according to Marick F. Masters, a business<br>professor who studies the labor movement at Michigan's<br>Wayne State University.<br><br>The political power of unions was amplified by the<br>Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United case freeing<br>corporations and unions to do independent political<br>spending. That means that organized labor no longer has<br>to limit its outreach to union members during its<br>vaunted door-to-door field programs. Unions can also<br>pay for political ads directly with dues, rather than<br>through separate political action committees.<br><br>So far, however, labor groups have been cautious about<br>exploiting that tool, wary that using member dues for<br>television spots would trigger criticism. For now,<br>union leaders say they plan to focus their political<br>spending on expanding their ground efforts to turn out<br>voters.<br><br>One of the biggest unions, the American Federation of<br>State, County and Municipal Employees, plans to put in<br>as much as $100 million this year -- money that will<br>largely benefit Obama and other Democrats at the local,<br>state and national levels. "What's the alternative?"<br>Gerald McEntee, the federation's president, told the<br>Washington Post in October.<br><br>Last month, AFSCME spent $1 million in Florida on a<br>television ad attacking Romney for his ties to a<br>medical company that admitted to defrauding Medicare --<br>the first time the union had weighed in during a<br>Republican primary. The Service Employees International<br>Union, working with the pro-Obama super PAC Priorities<br>USA Action, ran its own anti-Romney radio ads in<br>Florida and Nevada.<br><br>Labor officials insist their recent political activity<br>does not mean they are a de facto arm of the Democratic<br>Party, a frequent charge made by conservatives. Larry<br>Scanlon, AFSCME's political director, noted that the<br>union backed GOP officials at the local and state<br>level.<br><br>But the political climate has made it increasingly<br>difficult to find pro-labor Republicans on a national<br>level.<br><br>"We're trying, because we want to work with anybody who<br>wants to work with us, but the options have not been<br>great," said Brandon Davis, political director for the<br>service employees' union.<br><br>The aggression on the right led to a shift in labor's<br>strategy from what it was less than a year ago, when<br>union leaders complained that Democrats were not<br>fighting hard enough for their issues. They ticked off<br>a litany of complaints, including the failure of<br>Congress to pass "card check" legislation that would<br>make union organizing easier and Obama's support for a<br>trade deal with Colombia, where union members have been<br>killed.<br><br>Last April, Harold Schaitberger, president of the<br>International Assn. of Firefighters, announced the<br>group would cease its contributions to federal<br>candidates, citing a lack of support for organized<br>labor.<br><br>"Where are the congressional delegations en masse<br>standing up and fighting with us?" he asked at the<br>time.<br><br>The freeze didn't last long. By December, citing the<br>passage of legislation that included $730 million in<br>grants to local fire departments, the union announced<br>it would reopen the spigot to congressional candidates.<br><br>In fact, relations between the firefighters union and<br>Democrats had warmed months earlier, when the union<br>quietly cut a $250,000 check to the House Majority PAC,<br>a super PAC supporting Democrats in House races.<br><br>Labor observers said that and other donations to<br>Democratic super PACs revealed that -- despite their<br>calls for autonomy -- unions still relied heavily on<br>Democrats to shape their political fate.<br><br>"In this business, if you want to play, you've got to<br>pay," Masters said. "And so despite what you might say<br>about wanting to be nonpartisan or more independent,<br>when these PACs come to you and say, 'We're at a<br>pivotal time period and we need your support. Can you<br>help?' it's hard to say no."<br><br>Indeed, unions provided the seed money for the four<br>major Democratic super PACs last year, contributing<br>$4.2 million, more than 30% of the $13.6 million the<br>groups raised altogether, according to an analysis by<br>the Los Angeles Times/Tribune Washington Bureau.<br><br>More than $2 million of the $3 million that the House<br>Majority PAC raised in 2011 came from labor. And nearly<br>a quarter of the money brought in by Priorities USA<br>Action came from a single union: Service Employees<br>International, which gave $1 million.<br><br>The AFL-CIO has largely steered clear of financing the<br>Democratic super PACs, choosing instead to launch its<br>own, called Workers' Voices. Last year, the federation<br>put $2.2 million from its general treasury into<br>Workers' Voices, which raised $3.7 million overall.<br><br>Podhorzer said the super PAC would finance field<br>efforts, not television ads, and would be used to<br>strengthen the independent role that Trumka laid out<br>last year.<br><br>"It obviously sounds somewhat farcical because the<br>Republican Party has made itself so anti-labor, but the<br>paradigm shift that he was trying to effect was to get<br>out of the box of thinking that political parties or<br>politicians could be the salvation for workers," he<br>said. "Our support can't be counted on by any<br>politician as a matter of course."<br><br>____________________________________________<br><br>PortsideLabor aims to provide material of interest to<br>people on the left that will help them to interpret the<br>world and to change it.<br></pre><pre style="line-height: 17px; white-space: normal; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><br></pre></div><div>@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@</div><div><br></div><div><h2 style="line-height: 24px; font-size: 22px; font-weight: normal; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 5px; margin-left: 0px; color: rgb(0, 110, 18) !important; font-family: Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">Veteran of Mexico City Workers’ Occupation Shares Strategy with Occupy DC</h2><div class="ecxsocial" style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "> </div><div class="ecxsocial" style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "> </div><table width="22" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="0" align="left" style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><tbody><tr><td><img border="1" src="http://mail.aol.com/35549-111/aol-6/en-us/mail/get-attachment.aspx?uid=31777462&folder=NewMail&partId=3" title="Photo credit: Lorraine Clewer" alt="Photo credit: Lorraine Clewer"></td><td> </td></tr></tbody></table><p style="line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 1.35em; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><strong style="font-weight: bold; ">Solidarity Center’s Lorraine Clewer sends us this report.</strong></p><p style="line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 1.35em; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">Humberto Montes de Oca, an union leader from the Mexican electrical workers union, Sindicato Mexicano de Electricistas (SME), knows a few things about long-term public occupations to protest injustice. He recently shared some of his knowledge with the activists of Occupy D.C., now nearing the two-month mark at McPherson Square Park in the nation’s capital.</p><p style="line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 1.35em; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">In September, SME ended its six-month occupation of Zocalo, Mexico City’s main square. The action was one the strategies the union has employed since the Mexican government <a href="http://blog.aflcio.org/2009/11/03/global-unions-condemn-mexicos-move-to-bust-44000-member-union/" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(0, 104, 207); cursor: pointer; ">forcibly disbanded the union in 2009</a>.</p><p style="line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 1.35em; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">Montes de Oca visited the McPherson encampment with Julia Kahn from the <a href="http://www.dclabor.org/" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(0, 104, 207); cursor: pointer; ">Metropolitan D.C. Council, AFL-CIO</a>. Despite the cold and rain, the pair drew a crowd of Occupiers who wanted to know how the long-term action was conducted.</p><p style="line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 1.35em; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">He talked with the activists about the best ways to conduct community outreach, building sustainable ally networks and growing the occupation in a stressed-out city where people barely have time to stop and breath. Montes de Oca also shared strategies on educating people about economic inequality and the changes needed to overcome it.</p><p style="line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 1.35em; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">There were practical tips on how to prevent or deal infiltrators who might try to provide excuses for the police to forcibly evict the camp. He also talked about how to keep your eyes on the prize and not be sidetracked, even after weeks and months of occupation.</p><p style="line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 1.35em; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">The 97-year-old SME had one of Mexico’s strongest collective bargaining agreements before the government staged what Montes de Oca calls a coup d’état. Two years ago, police and military forces forcibly removed more than 44,000 unionized electrical workers from more than 400 workplaces across Mexico and took over the nation’s electrical utility system.</p><p style="line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 1.35em; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">Since then, the work previously performed by union workers was given to those hired by the new government-run company. Those workers lack collective bargaining rights and suffer from significantly worse working conditions than SME members and lack adequate health and safety protections, which have resulted in the death of more than 30 subcontracted workers during the past two years.</p><p style="line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 1.35em; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">SME has used a combination of traditional and newer union tactics, including marches, lawsuits, hunger strikes, negotiations with the government and the six- month occupation of the Zocalo. The union has filed petitions with the U.S. and Canadian governments urging them to step in under the terms of international labor and trade agreements to force the Mexican government to enforce labor and workers’ rights standards. (Click <a href="http://blog.aflcio.org/2011/11/17/mexican-electrical-workers-union-goes-global-with-its-struggle/" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(0, 104, 207); cursor: pointer; ">here</a> for more.)</p><p style="line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 1.35em; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">Several of the McPherson Square occupiers noted the similarities between the unparalleled attack on Mexico’s public-sector workers’ right to freely exist in an independent union and collectively bargain with those attacks being resisted by teachers, firefighters and other public sector workers in Ohio and Wisconsin this year.</p><p style="line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 1.35em; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">But they also said they believe there is an emerging worldwide movement of people— the 99 percent, angry at the way the world has been dominated by the interests of economic elite. We can turn the tide on the overwhelming negative social consequences of corporate greed if we join together.</p><p style="line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 1.35em; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><br></p></div><div>@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@</div><div><br></div><div><div style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Georgia; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><font color="#000000" style="line-height: normal; ">SEATTLE PORT STRIKE CHALLENGES "INDEPENDENT CONTRACTOR" LIE</font></div><div style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Georgia; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><font color="#000000" style="line-height: normal; ">Truck drivers in the Puget Sound shut down ports for two weeks-and begin to shift the balance of power.<br style="line-height: 17px; ">By David Bacon<br style="line-height: 17px; ">In These Times, Website edition, 2/21/12</font></div><div style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Georgia; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><font color="#000000" style="line-height: normal; ">http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/12775/seattle_port_strike_challe<span style="line-height: 17px; "></span>nges_independent_contractor_lie</font><br></div><div style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Georgia; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><img src=""></div><div style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Georgia; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><font color="#000000" style="line-height: normal; "><br style="line-height: 17px; "></font></div><div style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Georgia; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><font color="#000000" style="line-height: normal; "><i style="line-height: 17px; ">Abdulkader Ali asks a driver to join the strike.</i></font></div><div style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Georgia; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><font color="#000000" style="line-height: normal; "><br style="line-height: 17px; ">SEATTLE-Employers say they're "independent contractors." Drivers call that a legal trick to deny them their rights-a nice-sounding label obscuring an ugly reality.<br style="line-height: 17px; "><br style="line-height: 17px; ">For two weeks in February, this argument raged at terminal gates in the ports of Seattle and Tacoma. Hundreds of truckers, who normally ferry huge shipping containers from dockside to waiting trains and warehouses, refused to get behind the wheel and drive. Instead, they caravanned to the terminal gates and appealed to their coworkers to climb out of their cabs and join their strike.<br style="line-height: 17px; "><br style="line-height: 17px; ">Port managers claimed that it was business as usual on the docks. Standing in front of the BNSF rail yard, though, the strikers could see stacks of containers that weren't going anywhere. When they wouldn't drive, the "cans," as they're called, stacked up on ships, in rail yards, and at warehouses. The port's lifeblood slowed to a crawl. Cargo has to move for shippers and trucking companies to make money. A still container, a waiting ship and an idle truck all mean lost profits. It was clear the strike was costing employers a lot of money.<br style="line-height: 17px; "><br style="line-height: 17px; ">Finally, after the standoff had gone on for two weeks, on February 14 the two sides basically declared a truce, and drivers went back to work. In their eyes, however, it was only a step, not yet an agreement that resolved their problems. They had made their point, however, by showing the trucking companies they work for-and the huge shipping corporations behind them-that drivers have power over the movement of cargo. And they could and would use it to bring about the changes they demanded.<br style="line-height: 17px; "><br style="line-height: 17px; ">The truckers came away from the strike better organized than they'd ever been before. Every morning they'd gather at the Teamsters Union hall in Tukwila before heading to the docks. Then, in the evening they'd return. The hall would fill with drivers in intense conversations in Amharic, Somali, Urdu and English as they repeated their demands and decided on tactics for the following day. After two weeks, a hardened core of 400 were veterans of the flying squads, deployed in winter rainstorms from gate to gate. They had testified in hearings and spoken to reporters.<br style="line-height: 17px; "><br style="line-height: 17px; ">In the end, many agreed their most important achievement was the organization that emerged strengthened from the strike: the Seattle Port Truckers Association.</font></div><div style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Georgia; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><font color="#000000" style="line-height: normal; "><br style="line-height: 17px; "></font></div><div style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Georgia; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><img src=""></div><div style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Georgia; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><font color="#000000" style="line-height: normal; "><i style="line-height: 17px; ">One driver signals his support for the strike.</i><br style="line-height: 17px; "><br style="line-height: 17px; ">Ultimately, the drivers want a change in their status, as does the union helping them, the Teamsters. "We want to be considered employees," said striker Burhan Abdi, by which he meant that the companies should assume real responsibility for the conditions they impose.<br style="line-height: 17px; "><br style="line-height: 17px; ">While the containers with the cargo and the trailers that carry them belong to the shipping companies, the tractors-that is, the engines and cabs that pull the trailers-belong to the drivers. In theory. In reality, ownership is a not-so-polite fiction.<br style="line-height: 17px; "><br style="line-height: 17px; ">To drive for the trucking companies, the workers have to lease them their trucks. "But when I need to use the truck for some other purpose, it's not mine," explained Abdi. "It's the company's. It looks like I own it, but that's not real. It's my truck but it's not my truck." Abdi said that if he even used it to move his family's furniture to a new apartment, the company would fire him for it.<br style="line-height: 17px; "><br style="line-height: 17px; ">That's just one reason truckers refused to haul loads for two weeks. Since the deregulation of the trucking industry in the 1970s, the fiction of ownership has been the lever the companies use to dictate conditions and prevent bargaining over them. Trucking companies pay a set amount for each load a driver hauls-usually between $40 and $48. Out of that, drivers have to pay all the costs of running their rigs-the gas, the repairs and maintenance. The trucking companies in turn get paid by the huge corporations that own the ships, railroads, container cranes and terminals.</font></div><div style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Georgia; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><font color="#000000" style="line-height: normal; "><br style="line-height: 17px; ">Drivers often have to wait in long lines to pick up a load. Dozens of cabs and empty trailers stand with their big diesels running. The air turns thick and acrid from their blue smoke. In the distance, huge ships are pulled up next to the docks, containers stacked so high on their decks they seem like tall buildings. Enormous cranes stack and unstack the cans, moving them like toys from dock to ship and back.<br style="line-height: 17px; "><br style="line-height: 17px; ">One driver described his life: "In order to get a load, you have to get up early, at four o'clock in the morning. You pull yourself up into the cab of your truck while you're still half-awake - you don't even see your family before you leave. Then you go down to the harbor and get into the lines. And you wait. Finally, you get to the head of the line, and you get a container. Then you're on the freeway, making time as fast as you can, to deliver it to the customer. When you get there, you usually have to wait to unload as well, before you go back down to the harbor for another pick up. No one pays you for all those hours of waiting."<br style="line-height: 17px; "><br style="line-height: 17px; ">"When we stay at a terminal we don't get paid," said another driver, Michael Kidane, who drives for Pacer Cartage. "When we haul heavy loads or reefers (refrigerated containers), we don't get paid for that. When we return a chassis, we don't get paid. The company gets paid for all this, but we don't."<br style="line-height: 17px; "><br style="line-height: 17px; ">Often the trailers are in poor condition, and drivers can be cited if their brakes don't work properly. Cans are stuffed so full they weigh more than the legal limits. Starbucks, for instance, according to drivers, is well known for overweight containers. If they take on the load and later are stopped by the Highway Patrol, they're fined for excessive weight. Drivers, not companies, have to pay the fines, and if they get too many tickets, they can lose their licenses. But if they refuse the loads, the employers will punish them by denying them work for a few days.<br style="line-height: 17px; "><br style="line-height: 17px; ">One of the strike's demands, Kidane noted, was that companies should give them copies of the cargo manifests for the containers. They show how much the cans weigh, and even more important, how much the companies get for hauling them. Unsurprisingly, this was a demand the trucking firms resisted strongly.<br style="line-height: 17px; "><br style="line-height: 17px; "><b style="line-height: 17px; font-weight: bold; ">'Babies' and 'monkeys'<br><br></b>Companies charge drivers $120 a week for liability insurance, even though the freight is already insured by the shippers. Sometimes a driver gets sick or there's not enough work, and the rig sits idle. Then drivers get the symbol they detest the most, that more than any other inspired their strike: the negative paycheck. Their employers hand them a check with a $120 charge they'll deduct from future earnings, for a week when the truck never moved. Drivers doubt that the companies actually spend that $120 on insurance, and instead believe they pocket most of it.</font></div><div style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Georgia; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><font color="#000000" style="line-height: normal; "><br style="line-height: 17px; "></font></div><div style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Georgia; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><img src=""></div><div style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Georgia; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><font color="#000000" style="line-height: normal; "><br style="line-height: 17px; "></font></div><div style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Georgia; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><font color="#000000" style="line-height: normal; "><i style="line-height: 17px; ">Burhan Abdi hold one of the notorious negative paychecks.</i></font></div><div style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Georgia; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><font color="#000000" style="line-height: normal; "><br style="line-height: 17px; "></font></div><div style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Georgia; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><font color="#000000" style="line-height: normal; ">"They are making $120 each week, $480 per month, times 50 trucks," calculated striker Jaswinder Singh about his own employer. "There they're ripping off our money. They are robbing us, robbing us."<br style="line-height: 17px; "><br style="line-height: 17px; ">Sometimes, drivers said, the companies let them know their position in graphic language. According to Kidane, when truckers ask about the weight of their loads at his company, the dispatcher calls them babies. "I'm 37 years old, and she calls me a baby," he fumed. "One of my coworkers is over 50, and he's a baby too. A baby cannot drive a truck. A baby cannot get a license. I should get an award or something, instead of being called a baby."<br style="line-height: 17px; "><br style="line-height: 17px; ">In another company, drivers heard themselves referred to on the radio as monkeys. "There are white drivers, black drivers, Indians, Chinese, and Africans. They call all of us a bunch of monkeys," said Abdulkadir Ali, as he held aloft a sign saying "Respect Drivers' Rights!"<br style="line-height: 17px; "><br style="line-height: 17px; ">In every Pacific coast port, most drivers are immigrants. Seattle and Tacoma's truckers are mostly East African, from Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia and Kenya, along with Sikhs from the Punjab region of India. As immigrants, drivers often feel vulnerable. Abdi explained that they have to learn quickly to confront racism in the U.S. in a way they didn't have to in Africa.</font></div><div style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Georgia; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><font color="#000000" style="line-height: normal; "><br style="line-height: 17px; ">"We are mostly immigrants and mostly blacks," he said. "I come from Somalia. Nobody even knows the word discrimination back there. But over here, I see discrimination when something wrong is happening. And everything wrong is happening in the Port of Seattle. We may come from countries far away, but we still have rights."<br style="line-height: 17px; "><br style="line-height: 17px; ">About 100 Sikhs, who make up 10 percent of the workforce, met at their local church to talk about whether or not to join the strike. "We understand," Jaswinder Singh recounted, "and we are not scared." The Sikh's memory of their own history, he explained, helped them understand the issues in their conflict with the companies. "We come from India, and we fought there against the British and kicked them out. We are fighting for the same thing here-integrity and simple respect and fairness. We believe in democracy, and we will fight peacefully, the right way. But we will fight to the last breath."</font></div><div style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Georgia; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><font color="#000000" style="line-height: normal; "><br style="line-height: 17px; "></font></div><div style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Georgia; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><img src=""></div><div style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Georgia; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><font color="#000000" style="line-height: normal; "><br style="line-height: 17px; "></font></div><div style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Georgia; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><font color="#000000" style="line-height: normal; "><i style="line-height: 17px; ">Jaswinder Singh talks with drivers in the hall after a day striking at the terminals.</i></font></div><div style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Georgia; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><font color="#000000" style="line-height: normal; "><br style="line-height: 17px; "></font></div><div style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Georgia; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><font color="#000000" style="line-height: normal; ">The federal government says harbor truckers, and millions of workers like them, cannot join a union. They may look, think, talk and work like workers, but the government tells them they are not workers at all-they are "independent contractors."<br style="line-height: 17px; "><br style="line-height: 17px; ">That status is a product of the deregulation of the trucking industry. In 1973, the federal government began pulling apart the web of rules that had set prices for transporting goods from one point to another, and had provided minimum safety standards for drivers. That process was completed when President Carter signed the Motor Carrier Act of 1980. In the following era of cutthroat competition, trucking companies cut their costs to the bone. The most common method used to pare expenses was getting rid of drivers. Company after company laid off men and women who had been employees for years. Then they offered to pay a driver with his or her own truck a set amount of money to carry a load.<br style="line-height: 17px; "><br style="line-height: 17px; ">Old-timers remember that the companies had big lots full of used trucks, and sold them to the same people who'd been their employees. Once drivers got loans and bought rigs, though, they drove for the bank. From then on, all the expenses were theirs-gas, insurance, loan payment, repairs-everything.<br style="line-height: 17px; "><br style="line-height: 17px; ">Federal deregulation of the trucking industry essentially put drivers on a piece rate. For the companies, it was a good deal-they could pay by the load without assuming any of the risks. They no longer had to pay workers compensation, disability or unemployment insurance premiums for the drivers. If taxes or the price of gas went up, drivers had to absorb it. If a truck broke down, it wasn't the company's concern.<br style="line-height: 17px; "><br style="line-height: 17px; ">Freed of these costs, company profits went up. But truckers say as a result, their income dropped. Median income for Seattle drivers is now $28,500 per year, for an average workweek of 60 hours, but strikers on the picket line said they make as little as $15-20,000. Meanwhile, a union hourly wage in the trucking industry can reach $60,000 annually.</font></div><div style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Georgia; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><font color="#000000" style="line-height: normal; "><br style="line-height: 17px; "></font></div><div style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Georgia; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><img src=""></div><div style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Georgia; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><font color="#000000" style="line-height: normal; "><br style="line-height: 17px; "></font></div><div style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Georgia; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><font color="#000000" style="line-height: normal; "><i style="line-height: 17px; ">Striker Siefe Biru holds up a sign in Amharic, spoken by Ethiopians, urging drivers to join the strike.</i></font></div><div style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Georgia; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><font color="#000000" style="line-height: normal; "><br style="line-height: 17px; "><b style="line-height: 17px; font-weight: bold; ">West coast preludes<br><br></b>Long before the strike in Seattle, drivers tried to change conditions, especially in North America's largest port, Los Angeles/Long Beach. In the summer and fall of 1984, drivers unhappy over declining conditions spontaneously struck and shut down the harbor. In the strike's aftermath, they tried to set up a cooperative, but it failed. After trucking companies refused to improve conditions, drivers struck again in 1988 for six weeks. Rising gas prices led to a national wildcat movement in 1993, as owner-operators refused to pick up loads until trucking companies absorbed part of the increased cost.<br style="line-height: 17px; "><br style="line-height: 17px; ">On Terminal Island, between San Pedro and Long Beach harbors, police drove strikers from their lines with tear gas and rubber bullets, and forced them back to work. In January 1994, Los Angeles port drivers organized the Latin American Truckers Association, and in 1996 they struck for two weeks with the Communication Workers union. They lost that one as well.</font></div><div style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Georgia; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><font color="#000000" style="line-height: normal; "><br style="line-height: 17px; ">Over the last decade, the Teamsters union, environmentalists and drivers in many ports organized the Coalition for Clean and Safe Ports. Near the Seattle port, in the immediate adjacent neighborhoods of South Park and Georgetown, the EPA has found that cancer risk is 27 times higher than the national average. An estimated 95 percent of the nation's 110,000 port trucks fail to meet current U.S. EPA emission standards. To reduce the health dangers of the smoke from the long lines of waiting trucks to workers and residents, the coalition has proposed local ordinances. They would make the drivers direct employees of the companies they work for, and set up a dispatch system that wouldn't require them to wait so long in line for loads.<br style="line-height: 17px; "><br style="line-height: 17px; ">The trucking companies have challenged all the ordinances and legal battles continue over them. In January in Washington State, the legislature debated a bill that would hold the companies responsible for overweight loads or unsafe trailers, and another that would reinstate the employee status of port truckers. The Washington Trucking Association and the Washington Public Ports Association testified against them both.<br style="line-height: 17px; "><br style="line-height: 17px; "><b style="line-height: 17px; font-weight: bold; ">The beginning of a new balance of power<br><br></b>When one came up for debate on January 30, however, more than 100 drivers took off work and showed up in Olympia (the capital) to support it. Many of those who testified were threatened. After one driver, Yared Maconnen, was fired at Western Ports Transportation, the other drivers in his company walked off the job. The strike soon spread to other companies. Work stopped at major outfits like Seattle Freight Service Inc., Pacer Cartage, Western Ports Transportation Inc., Edgmon Trucking, Elliott Bay Service Transfer and PCC Logistics. As the strike progressed through demonstrations at the terminal gates and in meetings at the Teamsters Hall in Tukwila, it gave real power to the Seattle Port Truckers Association.<br style="line-height: 17px; "><br style="line-height: 17px; ">On February 13, drivers and supporters mounted a big rally in the Seattle port. With the help of Local 19 of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union-the workers who run the cranes and load and unload the ships-the drivers met with the port director and representatives of the trucking companies. The following day they agreed to continue talking, a de facto recognition of the power of the truckers' organization, and drivers went back to work.<br style="line-height: 17px; "><br style="line-height: 17px; ">As they climbed back into their cabs, some companies offered to increase the price per load by $4 if drivers have to wait more than an hour in line, and to pay for some trips taken without loads. Most of the original demands of the strike are still unresolved, but the balance of power in the port is shifting. Drivers who strike once can obviously do so again.<br style="line-height: 17px; "><br style="line-height: 17px; ">A similar shift may also be taking place in the tactics of the Teamsters union itself. The effort to win local and state ordinances requiring the companies to restore employee status will undoubtedly continue. But legislative efforts may now be combined with direct pressure in the terminals themselves, by drivers who undertake their own independent action to force immediate changes in conditions.<br style="line-height: 17px; "><br style="line-height: 17px; ">Seattle and Tacoma are no backwaters. Together they make up the third larges container port in North America, moving 1,700,000 cans a year. What happens on these Northwest docks will be felt in other ports as well, especially if drivers there adopt a similar strategy.<br style="line-height: 17px; "><br style="line-height: 17px; ">Whether in Seattle, Oakland or Los Angeles, the drivers' problems are the same. And the companies they "contract" for are too.<br style="line-height: 17px; "><br style="line-height: 17px; ">"We are considered like containers, thrown out after we're used," Kidane declared bitterly. "But I'm a human being, and I want them to see me and treat me like a human being."</font><br></div><div style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Georgia; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><img src=""></div><div style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Georgia; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><font color="#000000" style="line-height: normal; "><br style="line-height: 17px; "></font></div><div style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Georgia; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><i>Striker Michael Kidane.</i></div><div style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Georgia; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><br></div><hr style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Georgia; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><div style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Georgia; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><font color="#000000" style="line-height: normal; ">For more articles and images, see http://dbacon.igc.org</font></div><div style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Georgia; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><font color="#000000" style="line-height: normal; "><br style="line-height: 17px; "></font></div><div style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Georgia; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><font color="#000000" style="line-height: normal; ">See also Illegal People -- How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants (Beacon Press, 2008)</font></div><div style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Georgia; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><font color="#000000" style="line-height: normal; ">Recipient: C.L.R. James Award, best book of 2007-2008</font></div><div style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Georgia; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><font color="#000000" style="line-height: normal; ">http://www.beacon.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=2002</font></div><div style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Georgia; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><font color="#000000" style="line-height: normal; "><br style="line-height: 17px; "></font></div><div style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Georgia; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><font color="#000000" style="line-height: normal; ">See also the photodocumentary on indigenous migration to the US</font></div><div style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Georgia; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><font color="#000000" style="line-height: normal; ">Communities Without Borders (Cornell University/ILR Press, 2006)</font></div><div style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Georgia; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><font color="#000000" style="line-height: normal; ">http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/cup_detail.taf?ti_id=4575</font></div><div style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Georgia; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><font color="#000000" style="line-height: normal; "><br style="line-height: 17px; "></font></div><div style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Georgia; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><font color="#000000" style="line-height: normal; ">See also The Children of NAFTA, Labor Wars on the U.S./Mexico Border (University of California, 2004)</font></div><div style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Georgia; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><font color="#000000" style="line-height: normal; ">http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/9989.html</font></div><pre style="font-size: 15px; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">--
</pre><div style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Georgia; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">__________________________________<br><br>David Bacon, Photographs and Stories<br>http://dbacon.igc.org<br><br>__________________________________</div></div><div style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Georgia; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><br></div><div>@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@</div><div><br></div><div><table class="ecxMsoNormalTable" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" align="left" style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border-collapse: collapse; margin-left: 6.75pt; margin-right: 6.75pt; "><tbody><tr><td width="267" colspan="6" style="width: 200.35pt; padding-top: 0in; padding-right: 5.4pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 5.4pt; "><p class="ecxMsoNormal" align="center" style="line-height: 20px; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0in; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: center; "><a href="http://laborcenter.berkeley.edu/" target="_blank" style="color: purple; cursor: pointer; "><span style="line-height: 17px; font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; color: windowtext; text-decoration: none; "><img border="0" width="226" height="169" id="ecx_x0000_i1025" src="" style="border-style: initial; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-top-style: none; border-right-style: none; border-bottom-style: none; border-left-style: none; border-width: initial; border-color: initial; "></span></a><span style="line-height: 17px; font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; "></span></p></td><td width="608" colspan="12" valign="top" style="width: 456.25pt; padding-top: 0in; padding-right: 5.4pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 5.4pt; "><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="line-height: 20px; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; 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color: purple; cursor: pointer; "><span style="color: gray; text-decoration: none; ">Publications</span></a></span></b></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" align="center" style="line-height: 20px; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0in; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: center; "><span style="line-height: 9px; font-size: 5pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 3.5pt; "> </span></p></td></tr><tr style="height: 5.75pt; "><td width="875" colspan="18" style="width: 656.6pt; padding-top: 0in; padding-right: 5.4pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 5.4pt; height: 5.75pt; "><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="line-height: 20px; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 14.45pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; "><b style="font-weight: bold; "><span style="line-height: 9px; font-size: 5pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(93, 122, 203); "> </span></b></p></td></tr><tr style="height: 182.25pt; "><td width="498" colspan="11" valign="top" style="width: 373.5pt; padding-top: 0in; padding-right: 5.4pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 5.4pt; height: 182.25pt; "><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="line-height: 20px; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 8.1pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; "><span style="line-height: 17px; font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(31, 73, 125); "> </span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="line-height: 20px; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 8.1pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; "><strong style="font-weight: bold; "><span style="line-height: 31px; font-size: 18pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; ">Black and Latino Retirement (In)Security</span></strong><span style="line-height: 31px; font-size: 18pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; "></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="line-height: 20px; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 8.1pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; "><span style="line-height: 17px; font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; ">February 2012, by Nari Rhee</span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="line-height: 20px; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 8.1pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; "><span style="line-height: 17px; font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; "> </span></p><p class="ecxDefault" style="line-height: 20px; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 8.1pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: Georgia, serif; color: black; "><span style="line-height: 17px; font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 102); ">» </span><span style="line-height: 17px; font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; color: blue; "><a href="http://laborcenter.berkeley.edu/research/retirement_in_security.shtml" target="_blank" style="color: purple; cursor: pointer; ">Research Brief</a></span><span style="line-height: 17px; font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 102); "> <br></span><span style="line-height: 17px; font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; color: windowtext; ">» </span><span style="line-height: 17px; font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(31, 73, 125); "><a href="http://laborcenter.berkeley.edu/press/release_feb12.shtml" target="_blank" style="color: purple; cursor: pointer; ">Press Release</a></span><span style="line-height: 17px; font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 102); "></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="line-height: 20px; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 8.1pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; "><span style="line-height: 17px; font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; ">As Black History Month draws to a close, our latest study finds that Black and Latino seniors face even tougher times in retirement than American seniors as a whole. This research brief is based on data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Current Population Survey.</span></p><h6 style="line-height: 11px; font-size: 7.5pt; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 5px; margin-left: 8.1pt; color: rgb(0, 110, 18) !important; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; "><span style="line-height: 17px; font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-weight: normal; ">The study shows that retirees of color rely more heavily on Social Security and have less access to other types of retirement income than their white counterparts. The results of the study also serve as a reminder that the jobs crisis we face today may have long-term repercussions, and that is it critical to address both job access and job quality in order to improve retirement prospects for current workers.</span><span style="line-height: 19px; font-size: 11.5pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; "> </span><span style="line-height: 19px; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; "></span></h6></td><td width="377" colspan="7" style="width: 283.1pt; padding-top: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; height: 182.25pt; "><p class="ecxMsoNormal" align="center" style="line-height: 20px; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 9pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: center; "><span style="line-height: 19px; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: rgb(31, 73, 125); "><a href="http://laborcenter.berkeley.edu/research/retirement_in_security.shtml" target="_blank" style="color: purple; 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margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0in; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: center; "><span class="ecxfooter1" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; color: white; font-weight: bold; "><span style="line-height: 17px; font-size: 10pt; color: gray; font-weight: normal; ">Center for Labor Research and Education, Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, University of California, Berkeley</span></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" align="center" style="line-height: 20px; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0in; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: center; "><span class="ecxfooter1" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; color: white; font-weight: bold; "><span style="line-height: 17px; font-size: 10pt; color: gray; font-weight: normal; "> 2521 Channing Way # 5555 · Berkeley, CA 94720-5555 · TEL (510) 642-0323 · FAX (510) 642-6432</span></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" align="center" style="line-height: 20px; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0in; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: center; "><span class="ecxfooter1" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; color: white; font-weight: bold; "><span style="line-height: 17px; font-size: 10pt; color: gray; font-weight: normal; "><br></span></span></p></td></tr></tbody></table></div><div>@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@</div><div><br></div><div><span class="ecxApple-style-span" style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(73, 73, 73); font-family: Georgia; text-align: -webkit-left; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><span class="title" style="line-height: 22px; font-size: 20px; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); "><a href="http://tnr.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=5b72ee2210c940d46daad959b&id=873e5a7ef3&e=4684f3856b" target="_blank" style="line-height: 26px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; color: rgb(153, 0, 0); cursor: pointer; "><span style="font-weight: bold; ">The Two Americas </span></a></span></span><span class="ecxApple-style-span" style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(73, 73, 73); font-family: Georgia; text-align: -webkit-left; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><span style="line-height: 15px; font-size: 12px; "><strong style="font-weight: bold; ">Timothy Noah</strong></span>*|FACEBOOK:LIKE:</span><span style="color: rgb(73, 73, 73); font-family: Georgia; line-height: 14px; text-align: -webkit-left; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">http://www.tnr.com/book/review/charles-murray-white-america</span><span class="ecxApple-style-span" style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(73, 73, 73); font-family: Georgia; text-align: -webkit-left; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">|</span><span class="ecxApple-style-span" style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(73, 73, 73); font-family: Georgia; text-align: -webkit-left; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">*</span><br style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(73, 73, 73); font-family: Georgia; text-align: -webkit-left; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><a href="http://tnr.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=5b72ee2210c940d46daad959b&id=b1c4944d7c&e=4684f3856b" target="_blank" style="line-height: 17px; text-decoration: none; color: rgb(153, 0, 0); cursor: pointer; font-family: Georgia; text-align: -webkit-left; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><br class="ecxApple-interchange-newline"></a><a href="http://tnr.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=5b72ee2210c940d46daad959b&id=f47792d9fe&e=4684f3856b" target="_blank" style="line-height: 17px; text-decoration: none; color: rgb(153, 0, 0); cursor: pointer; font-family: Georgia; text-align: -webkit-left; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><img align="left" alt="" height="250" src="http://www.tnr.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/detail_page/constructionwork.jpg" width="250" style="border-style: initial; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-top-style: none; border-right-style: none; border-bottom-style: none; border-left-style: none; border-width: initial; border-color: initial; float: left; width: 250px; height: 250px; "></a><span style="color: rgb(73, 73, 73); font-family: Georgia; line-height: 14px; text-align: -webkit-left; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">Charles Murray has lost interest in changing anybody’s mind. When the author of </span><em style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(73, 73, 73); font-family: Georgia; text-align: -webkit-left; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">Coming Apart</em><span style="color: rgb(73, 73, 73); font-family: Georgia; line-height: 14px; text-align: -webkit-left; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "> wants to substantiate some assertion that few would dispute—usually one demonstrating how differently life is lived by Caucasians at the bottom and the top of the income distribution in America—he harvests statistic after statistic to the point of tedium. But when Murray reaches any conclusion that his readers might quarrel with, he turns strangely diffident. Here’s where I go with this, he says with a shrug. Others would make a perfectly reasonable case arguing the opposite, he says. It’s a free country.</span><br style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(73, 73, 73); font-family: Georgia; text-align: -webkit-left; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><br style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(73, 73, 73); font-family: Georgia; text-align: -webkit-left; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><span style="color: rgb(73, 73, 73); font-family: Georgia; line-height: 14px; text-align: -webkit-left; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">If this sounds like humility, it isn’t. A humble author wouldn’t devote more than half his nine-paragraph acknowledgments section to thanking himself for writing various earlier books on related topics that helped refine his thinking. Nor would a modest author conclude, at the end of his book, that it doesn’t really matter what those reasonable-sounding others deduce from today’s available evidence because future evidence will prove the author right. Thus Murray, writing about the “European model,” at first concedes magnanimously that, “If you think that providing economic equality and security are primary functions of government,” then “you can easily find evidence on behalf of social democracy.” But a few pages later Murray breaks the bad news that these European welfare states will eventually bankrupt themselves. Americans “will have a chance to watch these events unfold before our own situation becomes as critical, and the sight will be a powerful incentive to avoid going down the same road.” A prophet without honor in his own time, Murray is serenely certain that posterity will thank him for telling hard truths his contemporaries didn’t want to hear.</span><br style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(73, 73, 73); font-family: Georgia; text-align: -webkit-left; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><br style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(73, 73, 73); font-family: Georgia; text-align: -webkit-left; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><span style="color: rgb(73, 73, 73); font-family: Georgia; line-height: 14px; text-align: -webkit-left; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">Murray’s book has taken some unfair criticism for ignoring lower-to-middle-income African Americans and Latinos. Murray focuses on white America not because he doesn’t care about non-whites, but rather because he wants to describe various self-destructive behaviors afflicting the working class—he doesn’t call them “pathologies,” but that’s more or less what he means—without drawing accusations of racist victim-blaming. That has been an occupational hazard for Murray ever since he coauthored, with Richard J. Herrnstein, </span><em style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(73, 73, 73); font-family: Georgia; text-align: -webkit-left; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life</em><span style="color: rgb(73, 73, 73); font-family: Georgia; line-height: 14px; text-align: -webkit-left; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">, in 1994, which attributed much of the achievement gap between blacks and whites to what Herrnstein and Murray claimed was blacks’ inherent and genetically-based mental inferiority. The scholarly community was near-unanimous in finding Herrnstein and Murray’s evidence on this point unpersuasive and their conclusion repugnant.</span><br style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(73, 73, 73); font-family: Georgia; text-align: -webkit-left; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><br style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(73, 73, 73); font-family: Georgia; text-align: -webkit-left; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><em style="line-height: 17px; color: rgb(73, 73, 73); font-family: Georgia; text-align: -webkit-left; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">Coming Apart</em><span style="color: rgb(73, 73, 73); font-family: Georgia; line-height: 14px; text-align: -webkit-left; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "> excludes non-whites from its discussions of unemployment, out-of-wedlock births, and other troublesome social indicators, but at the end of the book Murray recalculates his findings to demonstrate that in nearly every instance the same dismal patterns hold within the colorblind proletariat. (The only notable exception is the incarceration rate, which shoots way up when you include blacks.) Murray’s larger point is that the social problems he describes extend to all the have-nots, and they aren’t driven by race or ethnicity.</span><a href="http://tnr.us1.list-manage2.com/track/click?u=5b72ee2210c940d46daad959b&id=eea91c67d2&e=4684f3856b" target="_blank" style="line-height: 17px; text-decoration: none; color: rgb(153, 0, 0); cursor: pointer; font-family: Georgia; text-align: -webkit-left; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><br><br><strong style="font-weight: bold; ">Continue Reading "The Two Americas"</strong></a><a href="http://tnr.us1.list-manage2.com/track/click?u=5b72ee2210c940d46daad959b&id=b38607e0bd&e=4684f3856b" target="_blank" style="line-height: 17px; text-decoration: none; color: rgb(153, 0, 0); cursor: pointer; font-family: Georgia; text-align: -webkit-left; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "> </a><a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.facebook.com/share.php?u=http://us1.campaign-archive2.com/?u%3D5b72ee2210c940d46daad959b%26id%3De4ff18eed0&t=Charles%20Murray%20Surveys%20the%20Devastation%20of%20America%E2%80%99s%20Working%20Class%2c%20Shrugs" title="Facebook" target="_blank" style="line-height: 17px; 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