tagged w/ International Workers' Day
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Call or Email El Monte City Council to cancel its contract with American Reclamation unless it reinstates workers who were wrongfully terminated!
1-626-580-2001 or citycouncil@elmonte.gov
American Reclamation, a waste and recycling company that has public contracts to pick up and sort commercial trash, treats its workers worse than the garbage they haul and sort. It pays poverty wages with no benefits, exposes employees to health and safety hazards on a regular basis and fired workers who filed a safety complaint with CalOSHA.
http://youtu.be/nz2UEynrb_wCall or Email El Monte City Council to cancel its contract with American Reclamation... more
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Today, International Workers’ Day, is supposed to see the reemergence of the movement that’s come to be most commonly known by its acronym---OWS. (Occupy Wall Street).
“On the first of May, the Occupy Wall Street movement hopes to leverage the labor holiday known as May Day and muster enough people power to blockade the Golden Gate Bridge—assuming, that is, that striking bridge workers take the lead. ‘We can't do an action for them; we have to do the action with them," says Lauren Smith, a spokeswoman for Occupy Oakland. An union organizer for the bridge workers had no comment on their plans, but alluded to something big:’ Our actions are going to speak louder than words."Today, International Workers’ Day, is supposed to see the reemergence of the... more
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International Workers’ Day celebrates the concept of labor or liberal movements. The day is celebrated the world over (over 80 nations) on 1 May except in the U.S. Why? Because President Grover Cleveland moved the “celebration” of the day to September because he feared workers might use the day to rally around liberal events and causes such as the 1886 Haymarket Massacre in Chicago. Translated that means the one-percent who owned President Cleveland ordered him to change it for fear of the masses with pitchforks and torches. It is a one-percent reptilian-brained reaction to anything that resembles even the specter of their loss of control.
So what was the Haymarket Massacre about?International Workers’ Day celebrates the concept of labor or liberal movements.... more
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The new world one-percenters have ruled this nation since before the non-conformist, malcontents we term the founders waged a terrorist-like war called a “revolution” on the old one-percenters in the mother country. Today’s reporters might have referred to the colonies as, “break-away.”
Of course the plutocrats or oligarchs what Occupy Wall Street termed the one-percenters allowed the non-conformist malcontents and their followers and believers to do all the heavy lifting---don’t they always?The new world one-percenters have ruled this nation since before the non-conformist,... more
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On May 1st 2010, millions of activists across the country pushed for immigration reform in the streets for May Day rallies, expressing anger about the controversial Arizona immigration law. The new law, SB 1070, requires police to question people about their immigration status. Several thousands joined the AIRC march at the Texas State Capitol building to protest the law and to call for just and humane immigration reform.
May 1st is celebrated all over the world as labor day, May Day started in the U.S. in Chicago in 1886 during the fight for the 8-hour day. Immigrant workers know about “los martires de Chicago”–the Chicago martyrs, unionists who were executed on trumped-up charges of fomenting the Haymarket “riot” in 1886. We need to reclaim May Day as the real Labor Day, a day of struggle, and we thank immigrants for making this holiday big in the U.S. again.
Sponsored by the Austin Immigrant Rights Coalition. Speakers, music, entertainment. One of the scheduled speakers is Linda Chavez-Thompson, former vice president of the AFL-CIO and candidate for Lieutenant Governor of Texas.
This is a ZGraphix production. http://zgraphix.org/
Produced by Jeff Zavala.
Photography by Jason Cato.On May 1st 2010, millions of activists across the country pushed for immigration... more
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Austin’s first May Day demonstration focused on immigrant rights was in 2006. I was stunned then by an Austin crowd as large as any I had ever seen -- 30,000 -- massive numbers, snaking through downtown streets to the federal building. That was the year of the first national mobilizations for comprehensive immigration reform. There were unprecedented turnouts occurring in every major U.S. city, including Los Angeles, Chicago and New York. Other Texas cities -- Houston, Dallas, El Paso and San Antonio -- had large demonstrations that year.
Those national mobilizations met with considerable blowback. There were rants on cable television about Mexican flags. Vigilante Minute Men got publicity for assembling on the border. More important, there were raids on places of employment, deportations, and jailings. Along with repression, the collapsing U.S. construction sector and increased violence associated with Mexican drug cartels made for a perfect storm of declining participation in subsequent years.
Arizona’s law changed all that. The broad strokes of that recent legislation make the mere suspicion of undocumented status cause for questioning and detention. The potential impact on Latinos ignited Austin’s community as well as communities across the nation.
Organizers at the Austin Immigrant Rights Coalition (AIRC) had been holding their meetings in a small office. They moved to a church hall to accommodate the growing interest. AIRC describes itself as a grassroots, action-oriented coalition of immigrants, students, and allies including labor, faith, and community organizations. That is who they turned out for a spirited rally at the state Capitol and a march down Congress Avenue to City Hall.
Conchero dancers reminded those attending of the real non-immigrants in this country -- Native Americans. Linda Chavez, former union organizer and Democratic candidate for Lieutenant Governor, addressed the crowd. Marchers chanted:
Si se puede
[Yes, we can]
Obama, escucha, estamos en la lucha
[Obama, listen, we are in the struggle]
El pueblo unido, jamas sera vencido
[The people united will never be defeated]
Like it or not, President Obama, comprehensive immigration reform demands have moved from the shadows onto center stage.
May 1st is celebrated all over the world as labor day, May Day started in the U.S. in Chicago in 1886 during the fight for the 8-hour day. Immigrant workers know about “los martires de Chicago”–the Chicago martyrs, unionists who were executed on trumped-up charges of fomenting the Haymarket “riot” in 1886. We need to reclaim May Day as the real Labor Day, a day of struggle, and we thank immigrants for making this holiday big in the U.S. again. Sponsored by the Austin Immigrant Rights Coalition. Speakers, music, entertainment. One of the scheduled speakers is Linda Chavez-Thompson, former vice president of the AFL-CIO and candidate for Lieutenant Governor of Texas.
This is a ZGraphix production.Austin’s first May Day demonstration focused on immigrant rights was in 2006. I... more
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by Erin Rosa, Media Consortium blogger
The countdown is on. Half a million supporters of comprehensive immigration reform rallied across the country on May 1 to protest SB 1070, Arizona’s prohibitive new anti-immigration law and ratchet up pressure for a federal reform bill this year. In Washington, DC, police arrested a dozen demonstrators, including Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL), after they engaged in non-violent civil disobedience, as Esther Gentile reports for New America Media.
So far, legislators in the Senate have not introduced a proposal, and the longer they wait, the less likely it is that a bill will be debated in 2010, especially with an election on the horizon. The stakes are incredibly high because a lack of federal action leaves a wide opening for states to draft their own, increasingly restrictive versions of immigration reform.
Rally round the country
Feministing also reports on the Washington May Day rally, which was led by “the Trail of Dreams trekkers, Felipe Matos, Gaby Pacheco, Carlos Roa, and Juan Rodriguez, who walked 1500 miles from Florida to DC in support of the DREAM Act, which would make a college education possible and create a path to citizenship for some undocumented immigrants.”
Los Angeles had the largest rally attendance of about 60,000 according to Hatty Lee at RaceWire, but there were also significant numbers in other states. “The nationwide May Day rallies drew tens of thousands of protesters—the largest turnouts since 2006,” Lee writes, remembering the millions who marched in cities for immigration reform just four years ago.
Workers Independent News sheds some light on to the labor history involved with May Day, writing that May 1, also known as International Workers’ Day, has created a strong alliance between union members and immigration reform boosters.
Arizona on my mind
SB 1070, Arizona’s new immigration law which forces local police to check the immigration status of a person if there is a “reasonable suspicion” that they are undocumented, has only energized the reform movement.
“It has mobilized the entire pro-immigration community and triggered a large, visible, highly vocal and well-publicized backlash that some polling suggests is beginning to turn fence-sitters into advocates,” William Fisher reports at the Inter Press Service.
Jesse Freeston with the Real News found that “While the demands of immigration reform, fair education, and an end to deportations have been around for years, the recent developments in Arizona were on everybody’s mind.”
In the wake of Arizona, Democratic lawmakers released a rough draft of an immigration proposal for the Senate last week. Jessica Pieklo at Care2 reports that “the proposals suggested by the Democrats include enhanced border security, the creation of a new fraud-resistant Social Security card, and for those already in the country illegally, a series of penalties, taxes, and fees, in addition to passing a criminal background check would have to be satisfied before they would qualify for legal residency, ”
Despite the draft—one of two, the other co-authored by Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and released weeks ago—a bill has yet to be officially introduced in the Senate, and it’s unknown when it will be given a chance.
SB 1070 disproportionately affects women and children
SB 1070 will likely affect undocumented women the most, according to Laura Tillman at the Women’s Media Center. Tillman notes that domestic abuse could become worse for immigrant women in the state, now that the police are full-time immigration agents.
Tillman writes that the “new immigration law is set to give [domestic abuse] victims a heightened fear of deportation if they come forward to report crimes, and criminals the confidence to perpetrate crimes without fear of retribution.”
AlterNet also reports on a new study from the advocacy group First Focus, which finds that “Children are the hidden casualties of America’s war on immigrants, and the passage of Arizona’s new racial profiling legislation could open up countless opportunities for local law enforcement to break up families by putting undocumented parents on the fast-track to deportation.”
Today, with strong grassroots organizing, and after the countless injustices endured by immigrants on both the state and national level, the immigration battle of 2010 is nearing its most critical hour. And now, all eyes are on Congress to produce a bill.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about immigration by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Diaspora for a complete list of articles on immigration issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, and health care issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, and The Pulse . This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.by Erin Rosa, Media Consortium blogger
The countdown is on. Half a million... more
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