Workers Resistance

Author: Fight Back

  • Senate reaches agreement to restore Extended Unemployment Compensation (EUC)

    Washington DC – A deal was reached between Senate Democrats and Republicans, March 13, to restore benefits for the long-term unemployed. A group of 10 Senators – five Republicans and five Democrats – are sponsoring legislation to restore the cuts to emergency unemployment insurance. The accord would extend long-term unemployment benefits for five months and would be retroactive until the end of December 2013. A vote is expected soon.

    An uphill fight is under way in the Republican-dominated House. Representative Brad Schneider (D-IL), filed what is known as a discharge petition, March 12, which would force a vote on Extended Unemployment Compensation (EUC) if it signed by a majority of House members.

    Both the Senate and the House must pass the measure before it goes to the White House.

    Hope for extending long term unemployment benefits dimmed last December when Democrats in Congress did not insist on the inclusion of the unemployment extension in the budget deal.

    To date more than 2 million workers have lost unemployment benefits and pressure is mounting on Congress to restore them.

    The economic crisis that hit the U.S. and most of the capitalist world eight years ago left in its wake persistently high unemployment and lower wages.

     

  • Leftist wins presidency in El Salvador

    San Salvador, El Salvador – Salvador Sanchez Ceren, Marxist leader, former guerrilla commander, teacher and trade unionist, won the March 9 presidential run-off elections by a narrow 6634 votes of the nearly 3 million cast, over the right-wing candidate, Norman Quijano.

    Voters turned out in record numbers. 63% of the eligible population voted, and though the margin was narrow, Ceren’s 1.4 million votes were greater than any other president received in the history of the country. Sanchez Ceren is a leader of the left-wing Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), while Quijano is the candidate of the right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) party. El Salvador is still deeply polarized 22 years after the end of the country’s civil war that pitted FMLN rebels against ARENA’s right-wing military rule.

    As the Salvadoran National Electoral Authority (TSE) worked to verify the final vote count that showed the FMLN winning, members of ARENA took a slew of actions to delay the process and ultimately tried to nullify the process as a whole. Charging the TSE with fraud on election day but not publicizing any evidence, ARENA walked out halfway through the final count, only returning after the TSE said they would continue the count with or without ARENA’s participation. This followed inflammatory remarks issued by ARENA candidate Norman Quijano late on election day, in which he declared victory before the initial vote count was even completed, implored his party faithful to not “allow this victory to be stolen from us like it was in Venezuela” and to “prepare for war.” He further called upon the Salvadoran army to intervene in the nation’s politics and impose him as victor in spite of the official vote count showing him losing. This would have basically amounted to a coup.

    Quijano’s call for the military to intervene and impose his victory resulted in a tense situation for a country still recovering from the ravages of a bloody civil war that ended in 1992, in which the army was used as a brutal repressive force against popular movements and the left. Given the history of military repression in the country, many breathed a sigh of relief when the defense minister and military leaders held a press conference midweek to affirm their chain of command and to denounce efforts to manipulate the armed forces.

    Reports from thousands of national and international observers contradicted ARENA’s claims of fraud and instead congratulated Salvadoran voters and electoral authorities for conducting a transparent and efficient process. The United Nations, the Organization of American States and the U.S. State Department all echoed observers’ assessment of the elections as clean and fair. Many organizations that have observed all the Salvadoran elections since the 1992 peace accords stated that this was the most transparent election they have seen here, with several new anti-fraud and transparency measures implemented for the first time. Late on Sunday, March 16, the TSE certified the elections and officially declared Salvador Sanchez Ceren the president-elect.

    On Saturday, March 15, a week after the election, hundreds of thousands of FMLN supporters rallied to celebrate and defend the FMLN election victory. Meanwhile ARENA party faithful continue to protest the election results and call for the elections to be annulled. Their actions appear to be taking a page out of the Venezuelan right wing’s destabilization playbook. It comes as no surprise that JJ Rendon, former campaign manager for Venezuelan right-wing opposition candidate Henrique Capriles, was hired by ARENA to run their flagging electoral campaign last year. The cries of fraud in El Salvador echoed Capriles’s cries of fraud when he lost last year’s election in Venezuela against leftist Nicolas Maduro, despite international observers certifying the election as clean in both cases.

    ARENA’s campaign focused on fomenting fear that if the FMLN won, El Salvador would become the “next Venezuela.” This drumbeat of fear was ramped up to a fevered pitch in the last few weeks before the March 9 runoff election. The right wing used their control of mass media to bombard people with the message that Venezuela means “chaos and violence.” They saturated the media with ads from the Nationalist Republican Youth playing ominous music over footage of snipers and street violence. This has an impact in a country like El Salvador with a recent civil war and high rates of ongoing street violence.

    Fear mongering and a massive infusion of campaign funds from ANEP, the National Association of Private Enterprise, raised the turnout for ARENA in the second round runoff election, but it was not enough to deliver the victory that the right wing hoped for. Instead. the Salvadoran people elected a left-wing former guerrilla commander who is openly allied with Venezuela, Cuba and socialists around the world, to be the commander in chief of El Salvador.

    The close results in the March 9 runoff election were a surprise for many, as Sanchez Ceren beat Quijano by 10 points in the first round election in February, but fell just short of the 50%-plus-1 needed to win without a runoff between the top two parties. In polls right before the March 9 runoff election, Sanchez Ceren held a commanding 10 to 15% lead over Quijano. However, in the first round, the right wing was divided between two candidates, ARENA’s Quijano and the Grand Alliance for National Unity’s (GANA) Tony Saca. GANA was formed in a recent acrimonious split from ARENA. Their candidate Tony Saca was president of El Salvador for ARENA from 2004-2009. GANA received nearly 10% of the vote in the first round election in February.

    Some assumed, incorrectly, that because GANA split so recently from ARENA that their supporters may lean toward the FMLN in the runoff election. But El Salvador is a country deeply polarized between left and right with virtually no political center. It seems likely that people who voted for GANA in the first round shifted their vote to the other right-wing party, ARENA, in the second round, contributing to the runoff election being closer than most had predicted.

    ARENA ruled El Salvador from 1989 to 2009, and its roots are in the right-wing death squads during El Salvador’s civil war. Its founder was Roberto D’Aubuisson, responsible for ordering Archbishop Romero’s assassination in 1980, and founder of the notorious right-wing death squads. In 20 years of governance, they implemented devastating neoliberal programs, including privatization of key services and the conversion of the economy to the U.S. dollar, which leaves the country tied to the ebbs and flows of the U.S. economy. During their terms in office, ARENA was also wracked with multiple corruption scandals. For example Francisco Flores, El Salvador’s president from 1999-2004 is being investigated by numerous agencies, including the U.S. Internal Revenue Service for the disappearance of over $10 million of Taiwanese development funds during his administration.

    The FMLN, on the other hand, voices their commitment to a socialist vision for El Salvador, though their ability to implement that vision has been and will continue to be limited by severe resistance from the rich and the right wing of the country, the lack of productive and natural resources, and pressure from international funding sources.

    The FMLN has held the presidency of El Salvador since 2009, but the current president, Mauricio Funes, is not a party member and the FMLN has had to govern in a sort of coalition, dividing up positions with Funes’s more moderate forces. So since 2009 the FMLN has focused their efforts on smaller social reforms that have been widely popular, and were largely responsible for the FMLN winning the rural vote that had been voting for ARENA for the past decade. They brought free health care to neglected areas of the countryside; eliminated the ‘voluntary’ fees for health care and schools; and issued land titles to small farmers that were first promised during the 1992 peace accords.

    FMLN President-elect Sanchez Ceren served as the Minister of Education in the Funes administration and oversaw the most popular of the programs, the Paquete Escolar, or School Packet, program that provides every public school student with supplies, uniforms and a daily meal, all for free. The health and education programs have had a particularly profound impact on women and girls, who are often left behind when families are forced to pay for education. The FMLN also instituted a number of significant labor policies, including full legal recognition of public sector unions and granting full protection to domestic workers, which benefits upwards of 80,000 women housekeepers, nannies and cooks who have often been working in slave-like conditions.

    Polarization and the belligerence of the Salvadoran right wing will be a challenge for the FMLN as they work to deepen their modest social and economic programs and further their vision for Salvadoran society. As Roger Blandino Nerio, Social Movement Secretary for the FMLN, stated, “We can only implement as much socialism as the population will allow.”

    The Salvadoran right-wing is hell-bent on preventing even modest reforms from being instituted and will continue its destabilization efforts. The U.S. government has stated that they will work with an FMLN government, but history has shown that they will work to undermine and prevent real reforms that alter existing relations of power from moving forward. The need for solidarity with the FMLN, the labor and social movement and the Salvadoran people will be great in the coming period as they build an alternative vision – one that isn’t based on capitalism – for their country.

    Cherrene Horazuk is the president of AFSCME Local 3800, the union of clerical workers at the University of Minnesota, and the former Executive Director of CISPES, the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador. She was an accredited observer of the March 9 presidential elections, and has been observing El Salvador’s elections since 1994.

     

  • Fukushima nuclear power disaster could last a very long time

    San José, CA – March 11 marks the third anniversary of the tsunami that overwhelmed the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan. The power plant’s owner, Tokyo Electric Power Company or TEPCO, says that it will take at least six more years to begin to remove the melted and radioactive uranium fuel, and even worse, that they don’t know how they are going to do it. The cleanup could go another 10 or 20 years and cost $50 billion or more.

    Three years ago the massive tsunami generated by a huge earthquake struck northern Japan, killing more than 15,000 people. The tsunami wave measured more than 100 feet in height, wiping out both the electrical power and the back-up generators at the seaside nuclear power plant (many nuclear power plants, including all the plants in California, operate by the sea to use seawater for cooling). This led to the melt-down of the nuclear fuel as the plant’s cooling equipment had no power, leading to the worst nuclear disaster since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.

    Some 300,000 people had to be evacuated because of the radioactive contamination. 1500 of them died because of hardships and lack of medical treatment. Radioactive cooling water has been leaking from the power plant’s storage tanks, going into the ground water and then the Pacific Ocean.

    Although most Japanese support the continued shutdown of Japan’s 50-plus nuclear power plants, the right-wing government of Shinzo Abe supports nuclear power. So far two nuclear power plants have been reopened in Japan.

    Despite the growth of worldwide opposition to nuclear power after the disaster, the Obama administration is also continuing support nuclear power. Two new nuclear power plants are now under construction, the first since the U.S. Three Mile Island nuclear accident in 1979. Two more are approved, and there are more than 25 applications by the utility industry to build more nuclear power plants.

    Nuclear power only exists because the government provides insurance against a disaster and it has proven to be an expensive form of energy. In addition, there is no safe way to store the radioactive waste from nuclear fission power reactors, which can last hundreds of thousands of years.

    However, with government backing, nuclear power can be very profitable, especially for the giant corporations such as General Electric, which designed the nuclear power plants at Fukushima. More than one-third of the 100 nuclear power plants in the U.S. have the same design (‘boiling water reactor’) as the Fukushima Daiichi and twelve are in seismically active areas prone to earthquakes, including both of California’s plants at Diablo Canyon and San Onofre.

    While the tsunami was a natural disaster, the Fukushima Daiichi disaster was manmade. People in the U.S. need to continue to push for the complete shutdown of nuclear power and an end to export of this expensive and dangerous energy to other countries.

  • Chicago International Women’s Day demands justice for Rasmea Odeh

    Chicago IL – To mark International Women’s Day (IWD) in Chicago, and to honor leading Palestinian women’s rights organizer Rasmea Odeh, 70 activists came together here, March 8, for a panel and dinner titled, “Winning Justice for Palestine & for Rasmea Odeh.”

    The dinner saw one woman speaker after another rising to recognize IWD and the guest of honor, Rasmea Odeh. Odeh is the community activist from Chicago who faces a trial in June on charges that could result in deportation and prison time. She was arrested in October 2013 and charged with violations on a questionnaire for citizenship from 20 years ago. She is the victim of another politically-motivated witch-hunt by federal law enforcement in their campaign to intimidate Palestinian community and solidarity activists.

    Professor Nadine Naber spoke about the history of IWD, and the honored place that Rasmea Odeh holds in the eyes of Palestinian people across the world for her history as a political prisoner and of organizing against Israel’s occupation. Naber offered a powerful analysis of how the U.S. empire claims that women in the Arab and Muslim worlds are oppressed and powerless, and cannot fight for their own rights, which is used to justify U.S. wars and occupations. She went on to say that Odeh and so many other strong women and women’s organizations are self-determined and do not want or need U.S. intervention.

    Sarah Chambers of the Chicago Teachers Union spoke about the teachers at her school, mainly women, who made national news when they refused to give the Illinois Standard Achievement Test to their students in protest of the education program of Mayor Rahm Emanuel, which values non-stop standardized testing over critical thinking and creative learning skills.

    Kait McIntyre talked about the efforts of the Anti-War Committee-Chicago to oppose new wars, as well as that group’s ongoing support for Palestine and for Rasmea Odeh . McIntyre used the opportunity to announce that she is running on an anti-war platform for the board of directors of Boeing Company. Chicago-based Boeing is the second largest arms manufacturer in the world and is bidding for the Pentagon contract to build a new, more deadly combat drone.

    Delores Phillips of the United Electrical workers thanked Odeh for standing up for her rights, in the same way that Phillips, newly elected president of UE Local 1118, and her fellow union activists have been standing up for their rights against the bosses in her workplace. She closed with, “We should support Rasmea in her struggle by showing other women that they are not alone. No woman should go without emotional, physical, educational, mental and financial support!”

    And Lulu Martinez of the Immigrant Youth Justice League described the international headlines made by her and eight other undocumented students – the Dream 9 – who ‘self deported’ by presenting themselves to federal agents in Arizona. She spent 15 days in a federal detention center there, and talked about that experience in prison, which made her respect greatly Odeh’s history as a political prisoner, as well as the tens of thousands of Mexican and other Latino women who have been deported in the past decade.

    The pre-dinner panel began with Palestinian activists Rama Kased, who is based in San Francisco and is a National Coordinating Committee Member of the U.S. Palestinian Community Network, and Tarek Khalil of the Chicago chapter of the American Muslims for Palestine, speaking on the prospects of the peace talks in Palestine.

    Khalil criticized the terms of the negotiations, which he believes violated Palestinians’ rights from the outset. He suggested, like most Palestinians around the world, that the right to return for all Palestinian refugees and their descendants should be the main demand in any negotiations.

    Kased declared that the Palestinian national bourgeoisie, represented by a small sector of the Palestinian Authority, stands to gain economically from a peace treaty, but that the vast majority of Palestinians will not. She also suggested that Palestine-support activists in the U.S. must analyze the issue not only from a human rights standpoint, but mostly from a “liberation framework,” especially since, as she explained, “We are not in the state-building stage of our struggle yet. We are still in the national liberation stage.” In answer to a question from the floor, she supported that the Palestine Liberation Organization needed to be reconstituted, and stated confidently that unity discussions happen regularly in Palestine and beyond, but “this fact just does not make the news here in the states.”

    After the analysis, solidarity activists on the panel held up the gains made by the Boycott, Divest, Sanctions (BDS) movement. Leila Abdelrazaq, a leader in both Students for Justice in Palestine at DePaul University and on the national level, expressed the power of the BDS campaigns to pressure Israel. “BDS forces everyone to see that they can participate in opposing the occupation of Palestine.” She also gave an account of the BDS victories nationally; including the forced resignation of Hollywood star Scarlett Johansson from Oxfam International, the global human rights organization. Johansson chose being a spokesperson for the Israeli company, SodaStream, with its main factory located on occupied Palestinian land in the West Bank, over human rights. BDS activists declared victory and made international news pressuring her to uphold the boycott of SodaStream.

    Bill Chambers of the Palestine Solidarity Group wrapped up the panel by describing local BDS efforts, and asking people to join the BDS coalition in Chicago. Chambers also called for support of a new effort in Illinois to stop a bill in the state legislature. The bill would punish any college or university where faculty members went along with the boycott of Israeli educational institutions. The bill is in reaction to the historic resolution against Israeli apartheid adopted by the American Studies Association in the fall.

  • Obama administration threatens economic sanctions on Venezuela

    Jacksonville, FL – In the latest move by the U.S. to topple the progressive, democratic Venezuelan government, Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz announced on March 3 that President Barack Obama was considering economic sanctions on Venezuela. Schultz, who represents a district in south Florida and who chairs the Democratic National Committee, made the disturbing announcement on the heels of a proposed Venezuela sanctions bill introduced and sponsored by Florida’s two senators, Marco Rubio and Bill Nelson.

    Other U.S. representatives joined Schultz in calling for economic sanctions on Venezuela, including Miami Republicans Mario Diaz-Balart and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. Under pressure from the far right of the Republican Party of Florida, which includes sections of the large anti-Castro Cuban exile community in Miami, Governor Rick Scott joined calls for Obama to impose sanctions on the South American country.

    According to Schultz, the proposed sanctions considered by Obama would target many individuals in the Venezuelan government. Senators Rubio and Nelson’s bill would restrict individuals in the Venezuelan government and many leaders of the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) from traveling to the U.S., freeze assets in U.S. and U.S.-allied banks and treasuries, and restrict access to credit markets.

    Sanctions are latest move by Washington to topple Venezuela’s progressive government

    These sanctions represent the latest episode in the U.S. government’s long campaign to topple the democratically elected government of Venezuela and stop the Bolivarian revolutionary process. In 2002, U.S. and Venezuelan business elites supported a military coup against then-President Hugo Chavez, who was returned to power within 47 hours by a mass uprising of working people. Less than a year later, rich Venezuelan oligarchs linked to the oil industry halted petroleum production in order to force Chavez from office. The oil bosses locked out the oil workers and threatened violence. Despite support from the U.S., their plot failed due to the continued popularity of the Venezuelan government among the majority of people. Even now, Wikileaks documents show far-reaching connections between the CIA and the right-wing opposition leaders, like Leopoldo Lopez, and instigator of protests and street violence.

    Additionally, the U.S. government spends an incredible amount of money funding the far-right opposition groups protesting President Nicolas Maduro’s government today. Estimates by the Center for Economic and Policy Research found $90 million reaching these groups since 2000. In 2014 alone, the U..S Congress passed a budget containing $5 million in funding for the Venezuelan opposition. While the Obama administration funds the right-wing opposition in Venezuela, they also signed $8.7 billion in cuts to food stamps into law, highlighting how imperialist meddling also hurts the U.S. working class.

    ‘Targeted sanctions’ actually target poor and working people

    Although the politicians calling for sanctions emphasize that they are against individuals, rather than the entire country, the brutal history of U.S. ‘targeted sanctions’ makes clear that the Venezuelan people will suffer from these measures.

    In 2001, then-President George W. Bush signed the deceptively named Zimbabwe Democracy and Economy Recovery Act (ZDERA) to punish the progressive government of Zimbabwe for its land reform program. These sanctions legally targeted only 113 individuals in the government and 70 entities, but the individuals included important government officials and huge state-owned enterprises vital to Zimbabwe’s economy. For instance, the individual restrictions on Minister of Finance Herbert Murerwa’s access to international credit indirectly limited the entire elected government of Zimbabwe, leaving the state unable to pay public workers their full salaries and pensions.

    In order to meet their obligations to workers and African farmers who received land in the redistribution, Zimbabwe was forced to print money. This led to staggering hyperinflation and a shortage of necessary goods like food and AIDS medication. The U.S., UK, and the EU imperialists caused the entire crisis through their ‘targeted sanctions’, and then criticized Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe.

    The U.S. placed more comprehensive sanctions on the Republic of Iraq under President Saddam Hussein throughout the 1990s. They pushed and enforced the punishing sanctions through the United Nations. The U.S. claimed the sanctions were in response to Hussein and the 1990 invasion of Kuwait, but the world knows it was so the U.S. could attempt to dominate the Middle East and seize Iraq’s oil fields.

    Like in Zimbabwe, the real victims of U.S. sanctions on Iraq were ordinary working people. A groundbreaking study by the Food and Agriculture Organization in 1995 found that the UN sanctions on Iraq caused the deaths of more than 567,000 Iraqi children, by restricting access to food, medicine and critical infrastructure. Other studies since then have placed the child death toll alone closer to 1 million.

    Obama’s consideration of sanctions on Venezuela echoes the sick policy justifications of the former Democrat President, Bill Clinton. U.S. Ambassador to the UN, Madeleine Albright, appointed by Clinton, infamously attempted to justify the horrifying deaths of Iraqi children by saying, “We have heard that half a million children have died. I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it? We think the price is worth it.” When it comes to economically devastating the people of Iraq, Zimbabwe or Venezuela, both the Republicans the Democrats see eye-to-eye.

    Sanctions on Venezuela will hurt working families in the U.S.

    It is likely that such sanctions on Venezuela would prevent Maduro’s government from continuing the legacy of Chavez, one in which poor and working families in the U.S. receive free and reduced price oil. Starting in 2005 after Hurricane Katrina, the Venezuelan government partnered with CITGO to provide free heating oil to more than 100,000 families in the U.S. According to CITGO, more than 252 American Indian communities and at least 245 homeless shelters also received this aid. To this day, the program continues, but the sanctions considered by Obama threaten this important economic aid for working families.

    With more and more people opposing the 54-year long U.S. embargo against Cuba, Obama will likely encounter large resistance to sanctions on Venezuela from progressives across the U.S. Nevertheless, the danger of sanctions remains high for both working people in the U.S., who benefit from the solidarity of the Venezuelan government, and the entire people of Venezuela. It will take a nationwide movement of progressives committed to ending U.S. imperialism and supporting the Bolivarian revolutionary process to stop history from repeating itself.

  • House to deal with Extended Unemployment Compensation (EUC)

    Washington, DC – In a surprise move, Representative Brad Schneider (D-IL) announced here today, March 11, that he would undertake a rarely used procedure in an attempt to force a House vote on Extended Unemployment Compensation (EUC). According to a press statement, Schneider will file a discharge petition on March 12, which would force a vote on benefits for the long-term jobless if a majority of House members sign it.

    This will be an uphill battle. The House of Representative has 232 Republicans and 199 Democrats. When the Democratic leadership in Congress failed to insist on placing Extended Unemployment Compensation (EUC) in the December 2013 budget accord, they effectively gave Republicans veto power over measures to extend unemployment benefits.

    Republicans, who often blame high unemployment rates on the unemployed, are in general hostile to an extension of jobless benefits. For example, the prominent conservative Rand Paul states that Unemployment Insurance should be limited to 26 weeks.

    A measure to extend benefits for the long-term unemployed needs to pass both the House and Senate to be signed into law.

    More than 2 million workers have been hit by the cutoff of Extended Unemployment Compensation. Many are losing their homes, face repossession of their cars and are unable to make utility payments.

    Many states continue to have extremely high unemployment rates. California has an 8.3% unemployment rate and in Illinois it is 8.6%. Rhode Island has the highest unemployment rate, coming in at 9.1%.

  • Tampa speakers slam political repression

    Tampa, FL – About two dozen people gathered here, March 7, at the United Church of Christ to hear from speakers on civil freedoms. The topics ranged from solitary confinement to the persecution of peace activists. Friends of Human Rights in Tampa Bay organized the event and many other organizations participated.

    In the room, the organizers had constructed a mock 6 by 9 foot solitary confinement cell to show people what Arab, Muslim and political prisoners have to go through. The event opened up with a video of Sami Al-Arian. You can view the video here: http://youtu.be/NPdpxxBR2jk. Sami Al-Arian was the University of South Florida professor who was thrown into jail in 2006 for alleged “material support for terrorism.” He is part of the ongoing persecution of Arab-Americans throughout the U.S. At his trial, he was found not guilty, but is currently under house arrest in Virginia.

    Jared Hamil, a local activist, spoke of the work of the Committee to Stop FBI Repression. He talked about the 23 activists who were raided by the FBI or subpoenaed to a grand Jury in 2010, and their connection to the case of Rasmea Odeh. Odeh is a Chicago Palestinian leader who was arrested in October 2013 on bogus immigration fraud charges.

    Hamil also said that only a few weeks ago, the anti-war and international solidarity activists had received the unsealed affidavits that were used to obtain the search warrants for the FBI raids in 2010. He noted, “Like many anti-terrorism cases against Arabs and Muslims, the affidavit contained lies and out of context statements taken by the police spy. They pieced together a fabricated story. The affidavits only reveal that they were targeted specifically for speaking out and organizing against U.S. wars and for building solidarity with movements across the world.”

    Speaking about Rasmea Odeh, Hamil said, “Rasmea has done nothing wrong. She has been singled out because of who she is. She’s a Palestinian woman, a respected community leader, and an activist who speaks out against U.S. Israeli occupation of Palestine. For the U.S. government, though, that’s a lot of wrong.”

    The last speaker was Laila Yaghi, mother of imprisoned Ziyad Yaghi from Raleigh, North Carolina. Ziyad is currently locked up in solitary confinement in a federal prison in Coleman, Florida. He was arrested in July 2009 when he was 19 years old for allegedly “conspiring to materially support terrorists.” He was one of seven young men who the U.S. government followed for years and were singled out for being Arab, Muslim and against the war in Afghanistan.

    Laila Yaghi spoke of how the FBI had followed both her and her son for years. After he was arrested the FBI pressured Ziyad to lie about the other men who were arrested to get a lesser sentence. He did not. At the court, she said, the prosecutor used unclear recordings and statements to make a case to the jury. Yaghi also said the prosecutor had made use of unrelated videos showing armed fighters with black masks for dramatic effect. Ziyad Yaghi is expected to be released from prison in 2037.

  • FRSO hosts International Women’s Day panel in Utah

    Salt Lake City, UT – Four women leaders spoke to a room full of activists, March 8, at an International Women’s Day event hosted by the Freedom Road Socialist Organization. Across the country, FRSO joined the Committee to Stop FBI Repression in demanding justice for Rasmea Odeh and is circulating a petition to drop the charges against Rasmea Odeh.

    Summer Smith, a member of Worker’s World Party and Women for a Change, talked about the importance of recognizing “women’s rights are workers’ rights.” She stressed that while reproductive rights are important to women, women are also at the forefront of other struggles such as the immigration rights, education and anti-war movements.

    Alicia Cervantes gave an emotional account of her service with Border Angels, “There are 700 bricks in a cemetery representing unidentified men and women who died crossing the border.” Border Angels looks after Mexican and Central American immigrants who cross the border by leaving supplies, such as water and blankets, in the desert. The U.S. Border Patrol often harasses these human rights heroes. Cervantes said, “We wrote messages on bottles of water such as ‘Don’t lose faith,’ ‘You are not alone’ and ‘We are with you.’”

    Sarah Simmons, the president of the Salt Lake Community College Revolutionary Students Union, gave an account of the history of International Women’s Day and affirmed its socialist roots. Simmons described women’s organizing for equality and against discrimination since the early 1900s. For example, women textile workers in Saint Petersburg went on strike on March 8, 1917, calling for “Bread and Peace,” to end World War I and food shortages. This initiated the February revolution in Russia. Simmons emphasized that unlike other holidays, International Women’s Day, “encourages women to stand in solidarity with other women.”

    Next the room was awestruck when Victoria Sethunya, with the accompaniment of David Owens, sang a rendition of Lascia ch’io pianga by George Frederic Handel. This describes the feelings of being a hostage, a sentiment Sethunya relates to. Sethunya left an abusive spouse in the Kingdom of Lesotho in South Africa and came to the U.S. She then struggled to correct a clerical error jeopardizing her immigration status and tried every legal means possible. She even wrote to President Barack Obama pleading her case and received no response. However she did gain the attention of local church authorities. Instead of helping her, they barred her from participating in church activities, groups and the church buildings, under threat of being charged with trespassing. Through it all, Victoria Sethunya was able to achieve victory, to maintain her life here, and she continues to protest against injustice.

    Andrea Canedo, a member of the Revolutionary Students Union, said, “I thought the turnout was great. I’m glad so many people came to hear about different people’s everyday struggles along with, like Sarah said, the real history of International Women’s Day.”

     

  • Tampa honors Rasmea Odeh on International Women’s Day

    Tampa, FL – Activists from Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO), the Committee to Stop FBI Repression and Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) gathered here, March 8, to celebrate International Women’s Day. At this event, representatives from each group talked about the radical roots of International Women’s Day and spoke about Rasmea Odeh, a Palestinian-American leader facing jail and deportation for on trumped-up immigration charges.

    Jessica Schwartz from SDS presented on the history of women’s resistance in the U.S. “When teaching women’s liberation or feminism in the U.S., the starting point cited tends to center on women’s suffrage, but indigenous women in the Americas who fought against colonialism and continue to fight against white supremacy are the true foremothers of women’s liberation,” she said. “We cannot detach the struggle of the workers, oppressed nationalities and others from women’s liberation.”

    Marisol Marquez from the FRSO delivered a passionate speech about the importance of International Women’s Day. Marquez mentioned the fact that the day was started in 1910 by German socialist Clara Zetkin and reminded listeners that this day should not be co-opted by the rich and powerful.

    “We hear in the U.S. how women like Hillary Clinton, Michelle Obama and even Laura Bush are women that we should all strive to be. To that, I have one very important fact to note: all of these women represent an extension of their partners; the promoters of the U.S. imperialist-driven agenda of taking over oppressed countries like Palestine, Colombia, the Philippines and Mexico to name a few.” She also talked about how, out of the 23 activists who were raided by the FBI or subpoenaed to a grand jury in 2010, many were women.

    Everyone in attendance signed the Committee to Stop FBI Repression’s petition to drop the charges against Rasmea Odeh.

     

  • Dream Defenders confront lawmakers, Governor Scott, at opening of legislative session

    Tallahassee, FL – About 150 members of Dream Defenders, an organization dedicated to fighting against racism while building the power of Black and Brown youth, marched into the Florida Capitol, March 3 to confront the Florida law makers and Governor Rick Scott with chants and protest on the first day of legislative session.

    The Dream Defenders started with a press conference, where speakers denounced Governor Rick Scott’s draconian policies directed against Black and Brown youth and told how racism is still alive and killing our children in Florida.

    “Look around you,” said Amanda Merced, member of FSU Dream Defenders, “We’re in a war zone,” describing Florida’s political climate.

    Speakers blasted racist laws like ‘Stand Your Ground,’ the school-to-prison pipeline, and the murders of black youth like Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis.

    “We’re out here with Dream Defenders from chapters all over Florida to make it known that America never loved us, Governor Scott never loved us and this criminal injustice system never loved us,” said Regina Joseph, Vice-president of the FSU Dream Defenders.

    After the press conference the Dream Defenders marched to the fourth floor of the capitol building and formed two lines in between the Senate and House chambers, as politicians gathered for the first day ceremonial legislative services. Dream Defenders sang, “Mama, can’t you see, what the system’s done to me,” to the chagrin of Capitol Police and the Senate Sergeant at Arms, who rushed to shut down the chants.

    “You can’t sing or chant in here or you’ll get kicked out and arrested,” said the Sergeant at Arms of the Florida Senate.

    However, Dream Defenders organizer Michael Sampson kept singing and chanting as Capitol police approached him and the other protesters.

    “They thought they could intimidate and scare us from using our voice,” said Sampson. “However we kept chanting and we kept disturbing business as usual because that’s what it takes for these corrupt politicians to understand that we’re serious.”

    Jacques Jean-Pierre, of FSU Dream Defenders, spoke of his first direct action, “Mike [Michael Sampson] was the first to be told to shut up to his face by an angry security guard. But he stood his ground and gave us all strength to persevere. They had no choice but to let us be.”

    Phillip Agnew , executive director of Dream Defenders addressed the crowd after the Capitol Police scare tactics: “They want us to be quiet or leave. You know what we’re gonna do? We ain’t going nowhere. We ain’t going nowhere. Turn up! Turn up! Turn up!”

    Dream Defender Elijah Armstrong led chants of, “We fired! We can’t take it no more!” Regional organizer Sherika Shaw led chants of “Who are we? Good kids! Who are we? Good kids! Where are we? Mad cities! Where are we? Mad cities!”

    Members of the Florida legislature were even tweeting during the session that they could hear the Dream Defender chants inside the Senate and House chambers.

    Governor Scott was slated to give his State of the State address at noon in the House Chambers. The Dream Defenders positioned themselves in front of the House Chambers to directly confront him before he entered. Unlike most past governors delivering State of the State addresses, Scott avoided the protesters and found a way in the House Chambers through back way passages.

    “He was cowardly,” said Tallahassee Dream Defender activist Delance Burnsides. “If you look at it from a political image standpoint, he conceded power to us because he feared us.”

    The Dream Defenders is the same organization that held the historic Florida Capitol occupation for 30 days last summer, demanding Justice for Trayvon Martin, after the not guilty verdict of George Zimmerman.

    Governor Scott and the Republican-dominated legislature passed legislation earlier this week, inspired by the last year’s Dream Defenders occupation of the Capitol that bars protesters from staying overnight in the capitol.

    “He’s doing everything to close us out and close the people out,” said Dream Defender Brian Marshall, President of the FSU chapter of Dream Defenders. “They can try to keep us out all they want but best believe we’re ready and we’re coming.”

    Currently Dream Defenders is involved with numerous campaigns addressing racial injustice including pushing legislation to repeal Stand Your Ground law, the school-to-prison pipeline, along with campus campaigns, including university divestment from private prisons at the University of Central Florida, Justice for Reefa Hernandez (a young latino male killed by police brutality) in Miami, fighting for Black and Brown studies, and against racist hate speech at FSU.

    To learn more visit dreamdefenders.org.