MORE WOMEN ENTERING THE CONSTRUCTION TRADES IN NYC
from the NEW YORK TIMES:
New York’s Construction Boom Puts More Women in Hard Hats
Olga Aguilar walked through a tunnel of scaffolding at 6:30 a.m. on a recent weekday and into the Brompton, a 20-story condominium building going up at 86th Street and Third Avenue in Manhattan.
Passing groups of men in the lobby, she made her way into the basement and through a maze of plywood shacks, and opened the door to one of them in a corner.
Inside, there were none of the Playboy centerfolds that typically line construction shacks. Instead, there were vitamins, moisturizing creams and energy drinks.
The shack — a cross between a locker room and a tool shed — is reserved for women. “This is unprecedented,” said Ms. Aguilar, 31, who is one of four women working as apprentice carpenters at the Brompton.
Ms. Aguilar is part of a small but noteworthy shift in the construction industry: since 2005, more women have gone into the building trades in New York City than at any other period in history, according to trade union officials.
The women are training to be electricians, plumbers, steamfitters, ironworkers, bricklayers and, most often, carpenters. In the New York City District Council of Carpenters, 280 of 2,000 apprentices, or 14 percent, are women. Most are finding commercial construction jobs.
Though the work sites are decidedly male-dominated, the appearance of more women in hard hats is a result of a campaign by the city and some unions. In 2005, as a construction boom swept the city, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg formed a commission to recruit members of minorities, military veterans, high-school dropouts and women into the building trades.
At the same time, local trade unions agreed to fill 10 percent of new positions in apprenticeship programs with women — the carpenter’s union set its goal at 15 percent — and the State Department of Labor allowed women to jump to the front of the line when trade unions recruited apprentices instead of making them go through the traditional lottery system.
Two years ago, women made up 2.2 percent of the city’s 175,400 construction workers, according to the United States Census Bureau. That figure has inched up to about 3 percent today, industry officials said.
“We have a construction boom and a commitment by the unions to employ women,” said Amy Peterson, the local president of Nontraditional Employment for Women, a group that offers a free six-week training program in the building trades. “We can turn it around and make it not unusual to get women into construction.”
This year, the group placed 158 women in building trades apprenticeships, compared with 139 in 2006 and fewer than 50 in 2000.
For many women, the building trades represent an escape from poverty. Apprentice wages start at about $16 an hour, plus benefits. After a five-year apprenticeship, a carpenter makes about $42 an hour.
For some, a construction apprenticeship also is an opportunity to start over. Yordanis Jusino, 23, took a plumbing class while she was serving a prison sentence for attempted murder and is now enrolled in night classes held by Nontraditional Employment for Women. “There’s a big stigma,” said Ms. Jusino, who lives in the Bronx and was 16 when she went to prison. “Everyone thinks that once you’ve been an inmate, you can’t change.”
Elaine Stanley, 28, is a third-year apprentice at the Brompton and part of a different group of women going into the building trades: those who have college degrees or are changing careers. Ms. Stanley was teaching sixth grade in the Bronx but had not decided on a permanent career when she learned about the Nontraditional Employment for Women training program in 2005. “I was interested and open,” said Ms. Stanley, who added that she had long found architecture-related careers to be appealing.
Ms. Aguilar used to be a night manager at a bar in the West Village. “I knew from growing up that working with my hands was something that I enjoyed doing,” said Ms. Aguilar, who helped her father, a factory worker originally from Guatemala, renovate a building when she was a girl growing up in Chicago.
From 6:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. every weekday, the apprentices at the Brompton unload tractor-trailers, deliver materials, erect metal frames, lay down insulation and strap themselves into harnesses to hang and repair safety netting. “We started this building,” Ms. Aguilar said.
Elly Spicer has a rare perspective on how the construction industry has changed. She has been a construction worker and an organizer in the carpenters’ union for 22 years, and there was a time, she said, that “if a woman set down her hard hat, she could pick it up to find a male co-worker had used it as a toilet.”
When Tamara Rivera, 41, became a carpenter’s apprentice in 1994, she said, foremen routinely ignored her when handing out assignments. Co-workers would call her “butch” or, conversely, “precious.” She often did not have a separate bathroom to use. “Sixty guys, and I would be the only girl,” she said. Now, she added, “you might still be the only girl, but the attitude is changing.”
There is a new camaraderie between men and women in unions that veteran women carpenters said was once unheard of. “They’re just happy that you can pull your weight,” said Eva Paz, 36, a second-year apprentice in the carpenters’ union, who has a “No Cry Baby” sticker on her hard hat.
Dane Finley, 50, a shop steward at the Brompton who has been a construction worker for 28 years, said: “When there’s ladies on the job, you can’t be animals, knuckleheads. It changes the way everyone acts.”
Pat A. Di Filippo, executive vice president of Turner Construction Company, one of the city’s largest general contractors, said: “Women are finding this is a business, that it is not the boys’ club it once was. It’s a business that needs people to perform tasks, and you’re a woman who can do that task.”
The foothold that women have gained during the construction boom may expand in the coming years. Developers working on large projects at the World Trade Center site and the Atlantic Yards complex in Brooklyn are aiming to employ a work force that is at least 15 percent women.
“As long as the industry remains strong, there will be continued opportunities for women and minorities to join the building trades,” said Louis J. Coletti, president of the Building Trades Employers Association, which represents 1,500 contractors in the city that employ union workers.
But what will happen when construction slows is an open question.
“I do fear that,” said Ms. Stanley, the former teacher. “That’s why I try to learn as much as I can, so when that happens, I will have a reputation and people looking out for me.”
CARPENTERS LOCAL 157 TAKEN UNDER SUPERVISION BY INTERNATIONAL UBCJA
from the NEW YORK TIMES:
Manhattan: Supervision for Carpenters’ Union
The carpenters’ union local for the East Side was placed under emergency supervision yesterday by Douglas McCarron, the president of the parent union in Washington. In a news release, the parent union, the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners, said officials with Local 157 here had acted inconsistently with the standards expected of the union’s employees. Members of the carpenters’ union said its independent investigator was looking into allegations of no-show jobs at Local 157. Also yesterday, the union announced that the business manager of Local 157 had resigned. One business representative was fired, a second resigned and a third was suspended, the union said. Mr. McCarron has appointed the union’s Eastern District vice president, Frank Spencer, to temporarily oversee Local 157.
“taking a stand with humanity” liliana and the immigrant sanctuary church in simi valley
from REVOLUTION newspaper [http://revcom.us]:
“Taking a Stand with Humanity” Liliana and the Immigrant Sanctuary Church in Simi Valley
by Luciente Zamora
In May of this year, Liliana heard a knock on her door. It was Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). “We’ve come for you,” said the 5 ICE agents that were there to take her from her home in Oxnard, California and deport her back to Mexico.
Liliana had applied for legal residency years ago, but her application was denied because she had been detained trying to cross the U.S./Mexico border when she was 19 years old. She was put on a deportation list, and years went by without her hearing anything from immigration—until that morning in May.
Liliana, 29 years old with three kids, remembers pleading with the agents not to take her from her children. She told them that she was still nursing her 2-month-old, Pablito. They didn’t arrest her on the spot, but ordered her to report to an immigration center to be deported within five days.
Liliana is now seeking protection from deportation at the United Church of Christ in Simi Valley, California. She and Pablito live in a house on the church premises 24/7. Since the church decided to take a stand as a sanctuary church, Liliana, her son, and the church have been at the center of ugly anti-immigrant persecution.
Church Hit with
Anti-Immigrant Protests
Simi Valley is a predominantly white, middle class suburb with a reputation for being very conservative. In 1992, it was the site of the trial and acquittal of four white LAPD officers who were caught on video brutally beating a Black man, Rodney King, after he was pulled over for speeding.
The United Church of Christ is one of more than 50 churches in cities like Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, and San Diego that are part of the New Sanctuary Movement. Its goal is to “protect immigrant families who are facing the violation of their human rights in the form of hatred, workplace discrimination and unjust deportation” (newsanctuarymovement.org). The New Sanctuary Movement was inspired by the movement of the 1980s in which churches all over the country opened their doors to give sanctuary to and protect people from Central America who were fleeing U.S.-sponsored death squads in countries like El Salvador.
Every Sunday for weeks, vigilante forces like the Minutemen have protested outside the church. When Liliana first took sanctuary there, the protests were heated on both sides. An immigrant rights activist was even pepper-sprayed by a Minuteman outside the church and taken to the hospital. Skinhead youth carried signs that read “Unchecked Immigration—A Wildfire That Will Consume Our Nation…Stop the Invasion.” Other anti-immigrants held up signs that said: “Don’t Attend This Lawbreaker Church” and “Defend Our Borders.”
These Minutemen and other anti-immigrants have things totally upside-down. It’s your country that invaded Mexico—twice—once to steal half of Mexico’s territory in 1846 so that it could expand slavery and then again against the Mexican Revolution in 1916. It’s your country that has caused the destitution of the Mexican people by dominating their country and devastating agriculture to a point where people can’t even afford to grow their own food, because if they did they would end up in terrible debt. It’s your country that forced people to work in maquiladoras (sweatshops) so they could eat—and then moved those factories to China because the slave wages are even cheaper there, leaving many of these workers and millions of others with no alternative but to cross the border in search of jobs. It’s your country that viciously exploits these immigrants once they’re here—the very people who put food on your table by slaving away in meatpacking plants in the South, the fields in the Central Valley, and in Liliana’s case a food packing plant in Oxnard, even as they are viciously hunted down like animals by ICE agents and vigilantes. Minutemen, skinheads, and others who are helping to enforce all this: You’re standing on the wrong side of right and wrong.
The Mayor of Simi Valley, Paul Miller, has repeatedly stated that he does not want his city to be known as a sanctuary city. He sent the United Church of Christ a bill for $40,000 for the cost of added police presence around the church after the weekly protests. Reverend June Goudey at the church commented that this “places the burden of the current unrest on the church’s stand as a sanctuary congregation rather than on the reaction of extremist groups from outside the city who by their actions are a threat to public safety.”
Then the Mayor sent a letter to Michael Chertoff, the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, asking him personally to resolve this matter. His letter asked Homeland Security to “provide final adjudication of the individual’s status and either allow [Liliana] to stay or deport her.”
While ICE has not yet attempted to forcibly take Liliana from the church, immigration officials say they reserve the right to do just that at any time. Chertoff said, “We reserve our options, and we take the action that we feel is appropriate.” He added, “We don’t give people assurance that they have a sanctuary, nor do we necessarily indicate when we’re going to do something. They’re on their own if they’re going to defy the law.”
Transforming What People Think About Immigrants
Liliana came to the U.S. from Mexico in 1998 when she was 19 years old. She applied in Mexico to get a student visa to go to school in the U.S., but was denied the visa because she didn’t “qualify.” So, like millions of other immigrants, she made the journey across the border. The first time she crossed, she was detained by the Border Patrol. The Border Patrol routinely takes pictures and personal information, as well as fingerprints, of the detainees and enters it into a database before sending people back to Mexico. Liliana tried to cross again a few weeks later and was able to make it. She made her way to Ventura County and started to work in a corn-packing factory near Oxnard. She married soon after and applied for legal residency, and her husband became a U.S. citizen with the hopes of strengthening her application for legal status. Now she is being threatened with being ripped apart from her family, leaving her children and husband behind—or being forced into a situation where the whole family must leave the country so that they can stay together.
Reverend Goudey and members of the United Church of Christ say that being a sanctuary for immigrants is uncharted territory that initially brought out feelings of uncertainty and fear among some members of the congregation who were worried about the negative consequences of taking such a stand. But they say that through getting to know Liliana, they have transformed what they think about immigrants.
Reverend Goudey said, “Immigration is complex and huge, but Liliana has, which is part of the focus of the New Sanctuary Movement, now put a face on the movement. Just being with her in the house has been transformational…there’s a quality and dimension to Liliana that is very moving when you are with her.”
One member of the congregation commented, “I wish that people could put themselves in the shoes of a person like Liliana and think about what they would have done if they were in a situation like her.”
Another member of the congregation talked about a man who raised a lot of concern about the United Church of Christ being a sanctuary church—but at the same time, he wrote a substantial check toward the renovation of the house Liliana is now staying in with her baby. She said, “It’s been amazing where the contributions have come from… [People have called] and said ‘Hi, I’m not a member, but I never knew about the immigration laws, but now I’m looking at my neighbor as a human being. And I want you to know how important it is what you are doing’… There are people sending $40 and saying, ‘I’m retired, I don’t really have a lot of money, but I want you to know how important it is that you’re taking this stand.’”
This congregation member said, “I’m proud to be taking this stand with humanity.”
HOW THE CONSTRUCTION UNIONS BETRAYED A GENERAL STRIKE IN ALBERTA, CANADA
from the DOMINION:
November 22, 2007
Letting the Wildcat Out of the Bag
Alberta’s Averted Energy Tradesworker General Strike and the Fall Wildcat Walk-Outs
The Dominion - http://www.dominionpaper.ca
Members of a carpenters’ union local applaud after a strike vote in 2007.
There can be little doubt that this summer and fall yielded a significant page in Albertan Labour history. For the first time in 30 years, a collection of unions representing construction workers came to the brink of a general strike. No such strike vote has been carried out among Albertan tradeworker unions since the inception of Alberta’s 1979 Labour Code. The Labour Code makes a strike prohibitively difficult in Alberta due to the requirement that 60 per cent of unions with unsettled contracts agree to a strike vote in order for any union to be able to stage any work action. This means that no union can legally hold a strike vote on its own. As noted by Alberta Federation of Labour President Gil McGowan last July, the vote “speaks to how strongly rank and file construction workers feel, that they haven’t been treated fairly.”
Although a sector-wide construction strike did not actually happen, there are a few significant developments from the strike vote. The first is that, in an attempt to buy off union support, industry gave the concession of agreeing to recompense employees for the unpredictable impacts of inflation upon the wages of workers under contract. Inflation in Alberta is rapidly offsetting the high salaries being earned by workers in all sectors. The fact that industry would agree to offset these wildly unpredictable rates is an indication of the alarm caused by rumours of the impending work disruptions within tar sands sites.
In addition, the fall-out from the strike vote was a series of wildcat strike actions, for the most part carried out illegally by hundreds of rank-and-file carpenters in open challenge of the Alberta government’s hostile labour laws. Although this wave of worker direct action lasted little more than a week, they have prompted organized labour in Alberta to mount a Supreme Court challenge of the Alberta Labour Code, a process which has the possibility of removing one of the biggest stumbling blocks for organized labour in Alberta.
In case you missed all of this over the summer, the timeline below runs through the basic points of interest of the averted “summer of strikes,” culminating in September’s economic disruption of the energy sector.
July 4 – A strike vote is held by five unions representing 25,000 trade workers at energy industry worksites across Alberta. The representative unions of boilermakers, plumbers and pipefitters, electrical workers, millwrights and refrigerator mechanics hold simultaneous ballots in Calgary, Edmonton and Fort McMurray. Points of contention are largely “quality of life issues,” including conditions at work camps and the demand that employers provide flights for workers from their homes in Calgary to Fort McMurray rather than transporting them by bus. In addition, a predominant issue is the length of the contract offered by industry to these tradesworker unions; industry has offered a contract for four years, while the traditional standard, owing to uncertainty of inflation, has been for two years. Although the contract would offer wage increases alternating between 6.5 per cent and five per cent annually over four years, the unions argue that these increases would be eroded by skyrocketting inflation–inflation has increased by five per cent over the first six months of 2007 alone.
The unions had been without a contract since the expiry of the previous agreement in May. At stake is $100 billion worth of construction projects at oil sands sites in northeastern Alberta. The ballots are sealed until after an ironworkers union can hold its vote on July 13.
July 21 – Emergency Health workers in Calgary vote by a margin of 99 per cent for a strike, citing wage rates lower than other municipal workers. This vote, coupled with the looming strike vote of tradesworkers, prompts the Globe and Mail to warn of a “summer of strikes” throughout the West after rotating wildcat strikes also begin among 6,000 civic workers in Vancouver.
July 23 – Results of the trades strike vote are presented to the Alberta Labour Relations Board. Electrical workers vote 94 per cent in favour, while the boilermakers and plumbers vote 99 per cent and 97 per cent in favour respectively. Millwrights vote 90 per cent in favour and refrigeration mechanics vote 85 per cent in favour. However, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers(IBEW) spokesman Barry Salmon downplays the idea of a general construction workers strike, suggesting that what may happen would be rotating walk-outs.
“It just shows the level of frustration among trades,” says Salmon, “This is all about getting back to the table.”
August 10 – The unions representing plumbers and pipefitters, millwrights and refrigeration mechanics agree on settlement terms with the Construction Labour Relations Association, which represents construction contractors and industry. The plumbers and pipefitters, and millrights accept the four-year wage increase offer (alternating between 6.5 per cent and five per cent for the following four years), although manage to gain adjustment to inflation for these wage increases. The unions representing refrigeration mechanics enter into a memorandum of settlement.
August 14 – The unions representing electricians formalize a memorandum in respect to the settlement framework, largely accepting the same conditions as the plumbers and pipefitters, and millwrights.
August 23 – Following the settlements on August 14, and August 10, hundreds of electrical workers and pipefitters rally in Fort McMurray in protest of their union leadership’s resolution with contractors. “My thoughts on a four-year contract is it’s too long,” says worker Shane Brooks, referring to the skyrocketting housing costs in Alberta, as well as the potential erosion of their wage increases due to run-away inflation. “We don’t know what’s going to happen in four years from now.”
August 30 - A settlement is reached with the Labourers’ Union, based upon the plumbers and pipefitters’ settlement of August 10. This brings the number of represented tradesworker group settlements to 17 out of 25, although the carpenters and roofers have yet to vote on the offer. Under Alberta’s labour laws, if 19 trades groups reach agreement, the rest are stripped of their right to strike. But union leaders who have accepted the settlement claim that the concession by contractors to guarantee indexing of wage increases to inflation is a significant victory. “There wasn’t much more to get,” says IBEW local spokesman Barry Salmon.
Results of ratification votes from the electricians, plumbers and pipefitters, and labourers are expected by September 10.
September 2 – The Alberta Federation of Labour threatens to take the Alberta government to court over the the 1979 Labour Relations Code, the Alberta law that, according to AFL President Gil McGowan, “was designed to make it almost impossible for [construction] workers to go on strike.” Under the labour law, no strikes can be allowed for tradespeople if agreements are reached with 75 per cent of the bargaining units in the construction industry. McGowan’s warning comes after a Supreme Court of Canada ruling in favour of B.C. healthcare workers in June. The Supreme Court ruled that the right to join a union and the right to collective bargaining were protected under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
September 5 – Two months after the strike vote by the five tradesworker unions, 4,000 carpenters and 100 roofers who had not been among the five trade groups to make a strike vote on July 4 vote to strike by a margin of 97 per cent. A strike notice is served to the Alberta Labour Relations Board, with job actions scheduled to take place on September 8.
September 7 – The Alberta Labour Relations Board rules that the strike vote by carpenters is illegal, claiming that another union representing labourers had not served a strike notice at the same time as the carpenters. The Alberta Regional Council of Carpenters and Allied Workers vows to carry out work stoppages in spite of the ruling.
September 10 – Wildcat strikes, focused moreso on the Labour Relations Board (LRB) than energy corporations, begin at energy industry worksites throughout Alberta. Two hundred and fifty workers walk off the job at a Petro Canada refinery project east of Edmonton and others stage a walk-out at the Long Lake project southeast of Fort McMurray. Other walk-outs occur in Calgary. The industry-backed Construction and Labour Relations Association (CLRA) responds by obtaining cease and desist orders from the LRB. Workers continue picketing outside of the LRB offices.
Electrical workers vote 50.8 per cent in favour of the CLRA settlement, although several workers claim that they never received ballots for the mail-in ballot process. Regardless, this ratification ultimately signals that, under Alberta’s Labour code, no other tradesworker unions, including the carpenters who rejected the settlement, have the right to strike until the end of the contract in 2011. Meanwhile, plumbers and pipefitters vote against ratification of the CLRA settlement.
September 11 – After hundreds of tradespeople walk off job sites for the second day in a row, hundreds converge upon the Alberta legislature to demand the right to strike under Alberta Labour legislation. Alberta Regional Council of Carpenters and Allied Workers President Martyn Piper distances himself from the wildcat strikes, claiming that he has ordered workers to return to work. Piper’s back to work order comes in response to Alberta Employment Minister Iris Evans’ government order prohibiting pickets “at any general construction site or maintenance site in Alberta.”
The Petro-Canada upgrader project in Edmonton remains closed after other unionized tradespeople refuse to cross the carpenters’ picket-line.
September 12 and 13 – In spite of the government’s ‘cease and desist’ order, as well as a back-to-work order from the Carpenters’ Union, walk-outs and protests continue throughout the week. Outside of a Petro-Canada refinery in Fort Saskatchewan, workers stage what they call a “social gathering.” Workers wave plackards bearing the slogans “don’t ever give up,” “united we stand, divided we beg,” and “liberate Alberta, not Afghanistan” at passing traffic. Hundreds of other union workers protest in front of Edmonton’s courthouse.
Frustration with union leadership seems evident at these walk-outs. “All the workers are here by their own choice, not by the union’s choice,” says a scaffold worker taking part in a rally at the Edmonton courthouse. “My union told me to go back to work and let them deal with it.” A speaker at the demonstration who urges workers to return to work is booed off the stage.
CBC News reports that 200 unionized employees working at a steam injection site near Long Lake have been fired after clocking off work to take a first-aid course. The workers were apparently given two hours to remove their belongings from the work camp.
September 14 – Although information pickets and protests continue in Edmonton, Fort Saskatchewan and elsewhere, including a march by 300-400 workers on the Alberta legislature, the actions are much smaller than earlier in the week. Workers have begun to return to work. Union leaders and industry negotiators both welcome the end of work stoppages.
Members of the union representating Labourers (Local 92 of the Labourers International Union of North America) vote against a strike by a margin of 66 per cent, thereby ratifying the four-year contract offer by the energy industry. This brings the total number of tradeworker unions voting in favour of the contract to 20 out of 25, well over the 75 per cent required to render a strike action by any union illegal under Alberta law.
September 22 – In a weekend demonstration, hundreds of workers stage a mock funeral of the Alberta Labour Relations Code. Says Alberta Federation of Labour President Gil McGowan: “Alberta’s labour laws don’t facilitate collective bargaining, they discourage it…It’s not only wrong; It’s now illegal.”
October 1 – Four Construction unions mount a constitutional challenge to Alberta’s Labour Relations laws on the basis that it violates workers’ rights to freedom of assembly.
Although most tradesworker unions, including most of the unions which had initially voted for strike preparation in July, have ratified settlements with the energy industry, carpenters, roofers, and plumbers and pipefitters remain holdouts against this contract.
abandoned, then bulldozed: the system’s plan for public housing in new orleans
from REVOLUTION newspaper [http://revcom.us/]:
Abandoned, then Bulldozed: The System’s Plan for Public Housing in New Orleans
In late October, the U.S. government, through HUD, gave the go ahead to demolish four of the largest public housing projects in New Orleans. On November 15, a federal judge refused to block the demolitions – clearing the way for the demolition of the BW Cooper, CJ Peete, Lafitte and St Bernard developments.
These projects aren’t just structures. These were people’s communities — where 1000’s of people grew up, met, fell in love and raised families. These buildings suffered less damage than other housing in the floods because of their solid brick construction and could house 4,700 families. But the government plans to demolish them and build “mixed income” housing that will include less than 750 units for people with low incomes.
Much of the Black population of this city has been dispersed throughout the country since Katrina. By March of 2007, it was estimated that 200,000 former residents had still not returned to New Orleans and that more than 150,000 of them are Black. The demolition of public housing is yet another way the government is discouraging and preventing people from coming back to New Orleans. In effect the message is: “You’ll never be able to come back home because there will be nowhere you can live.”
The number of homeless people in New Orleans is double what it was before Katrina. Lafitte, which could house almost 900 families but is now almost empty, sits across the street from a homeless encampment where dozens of people live under a freeway overpass.
New Orleans desperately needs affordable housing. Yet the authorities are determined to destroy 1000’s of housing units that could be made suitable for people to live in. Where’s the logic in this?
To anyone concerned about the needs of the people, this is insane. But the people who run this system operate based on a cold capitalist logic. For them what matters is keeping their system in effect and as lean and mean a profit-making machine as possible. To do this, they will demolish public housing, no matter how this impacts people’s lives. For this system, a disaster that killed 1,800 people and forced 200,000 out of the city is an opportunity to rebuild a New Orleans that’s smaller and whiter and rid of those who the system has no need for.
What’s Behind the Drive to Demolish?
There’s been a nationwide assault on public housing for more than a decade that reflects the changing needs of US imperialism. Many of the projects in the US were built after World War 2 to house Black people who were being drawn into the cities in large numbers to work in factories. These projects were a way to enforce racial segregation. In New Orleans, three of the seven projects built in this period were reserved for whites, while the others housed Black people. By the 1960’s the racial composition of the projects had shifted, and the overwhelming majority of residents were Black.
In the 1970’s, as part of striving to remain competitive with their imperialist rivals, US corporations began to move factories from the inner cities to the suburbs and to other countries. At the same time, immigrants from Mexico and other countries began to be hired for many of the jobs on the bottom of the work force that used to be filled by Black people.
Several factors drove these developments. Many immigrants can be forced to work for super low wages and in miserable conditions because they lack legal status. At the same time, long experience with brutal oppression, and the struggle against that oppression, has led many Black people to develop an attitude of both defiance and unwillingness to take shit jobs. This is a very positive quality to anybody who wants to change the world-but it’s considered dangerous by the ruling class.
The result of all this is large numbers of Black people have been pushed out of the work force. Jobs and opportunity have been sucked out of the ghettos. And residential segregation means the places Black people live have become concentrations of poverty. So the very operations of the system has created a situation where the capitalists face the “problem” of millions of Black people they can no longer profitably exploit.
From the point of view of this system, the masses of Black people have become so much surplus population — in the way and potentially explosive. When Katrina hit, in places where many Black lived, like the Lower 9th Ward and Central City half of all working age people were not in the work force! A key part of the way the system has been dealing with this is the warehousing of Black people in prison. Between 1984 and 2004, the number of Black people in jail in the US skyrocketed from 98,00 to 910,000! (For a full discussion of this, see Crime and Punishment … & Capitalism, Revolution # 106.)
This was the context in which government plans to demolish housing projects have been developed. Between 1996 and 2002, 80,000 units of public housing were demolished nationwide. In New Orleans the number of public housing units was reduced from 14,000 in 1988 to 6,000 in 2005. The Desire housing development was demolished in the 1990’s, and St Thomas was demolished in 2001. Fisher was partly demolished before Hurricane Katrina. The mixed income developments that replaced these projects has 75%‑90% fewer low income housing units!
The authorities seized on Hurricane Katrina to empty the projects. Everyone who came to the emergency shelters was taken out of the city. Some people who lived in the projects stayed in their homes during Katrina because they knew the projects usually suffered less damage during storms. People who didn’t live in the project even came there to ride out the storm.
On September 6, 2005, the city issued an order authorizing law enforcement to forcibly remove people from their homes. People who refused to leave were taken from their homes and forced to leave the city. And people weren’t allowed to return to the projects. The city put a barb-wire fence around the St Bernard project and part of BW Cooper. They put metal enclosures over the doors and windows In Lafitte. They also shut down CJ Peete and partially fenced it in, even though it had suffered NO flood damage.
The authorities consider the replacement of St Thomas with the mixed income River Gardens development a success story which they promise to repeat with these demolitions. St Thomas had 1,500 units of low income housing. River Gardens has only 150 such units. Now, two years after Katrina, less than 100 former residents of St Thomas have gotten into River Gardens. Others who applied to move back in were told they didn’t make enough money. As far as the ruling class is concerned, these people can just go somewhere and die!
The Need for Resistance
The authorities plan to begin the demolitions before the end of the year. Court cases, congressional legislation, appeals to reason‑‑all that is being shoved aside or bottled up. If these demolitions aren’t met with determined resistance, the rulers will get away with cleansing New Orleans of much of its Black population. What’s needed now is massive resistance.
Demolishing the projects won’t provide people with decent housing. It will mean that 1000’s more poor people will have nowhere to live. It will mean that many of those currently exiled from New Orleans will remain unable to return. These demolitions must be stopped. But the goal in this fight isn’t to get back to how the projects used to be. Capitalism has made the projects places where poor Black people live, in miserable conditions with little hope for the future.
The total inability of this system to provide people with decent housing is yet another sharp example of why we need a whole new society where power is in the hands of the people and is wielded in their interests. And we need a revolution to make this possible.
If the authorities are allowed to get away with this, people’s communities will be reduced to piles of rubble. And the killing program the rulers are enforcing on Black people will escalate.
But if people build a powerful political struggle against this attack. If the justice of fighting these demolitions is brought out to different kinds of people throughout society and many of them join the fight. If protest and resistance forces the system to stop their bulldozers. This can create a whole new ball game. The people must derail the rulers’ plans to drive out much of the Black population of New Orleans and such resistance needs to become part of a growing revolutionary movement.
the jena 6, the nooses and why we need a revolution
from REVOLUTION newspaper [http://revcom.us/]:
The Jena 6, the Nooses, And Why We Need a Revolution
Enough is enough! The statement was made again on November 16 when thousands of people—mostly Black people—marched around the so-called “Department of Justice” in D.C. chanting No Justice No Peace! The marchers were demonstrating against the whole wave of oppression going down on Black people: in particular, the rampant police murder and unequal justice; the prosecution—and persecution—of the Jena 6; and the epidemic of nooses that erupted in response to the struggle to free the Jena 6, and which has been winked at by the authorities.
The rally in D.C. came two months after tens of thousands of people marched in Jena, Louisiana on September 20. Nothing like that—nothing like its spirit or turnout or determination—had been seen in a long, long time. Things have been way too quiet in American for way too long when it comes to the situation for Black people. But now a sleeping giant is waking up.
The battle to Free the Jena 6 is shining a light on the reality of the situation for Black people in America: A “whites only” tree in a schoolyard. Lynching nooses hanging from the tree. And then, when Black students stood up, the system hit back with vicious criminal charges against the Jena 6. This is America, 2007.
And then there is the reactionary counterattack. Nooses springing up like dead ghouls coming back to life in a horror movie: Pittsburgh, Jacksonville, Cincinnati, and New London, CT. At Columbia University in New York City, an African-American professor found a noose hanging outside her door. Nooses were hung at the University of Maryland near the offices of several Black campus groups in early September. On September 29, a noose was found hanging in the locker room of the Hempstead, NY police department. On October 2, a noose was hanging on a utility pole at the Anniston Army Depot in Alabama. In Jefferson Parish, Louisiana (where Jena is), parish supervisors refused to dismantle a display in a public works department office that included a noose and a bullwhip. The display came down only after a Black worker expressed outrage and went to the media.
Meanwhile, Mychal Bell was throw back into prison in what amounted to a secret court proceeding supposedly on the basis of “probation violation”—despite the fact that his conviction was overturned, despite the fact that he has already served 10 months of his young life for a crime for which he has not been convicted. On top of that, the establishment has been using the media to demonize Mychal and the rest of the Jena 6 as well, spreading totally unsubstantiated and, frankly, irrelevant rumors as if they were the truth—while covering up and even prettifying the reality that is Jena, Louisiana—and that is also America, 2007.
Yes, things are dividing out. Everyone has to choose where they stand. To stand on the sidelines is to stand on the wrong side, with the white supremacist status quo, with the nooses, with the powers-that-be.
Fight the Power, And Transform the People, For Revolution
Where’s this all coming from, where’s it all going, and what needs to be done?
This system has failed—repeatedly—to deliver on its promise of equality. First there was the Civil War, which was supposed to finally end slavery. But just a decade later, the plantation owners were back in power in the south, and Black people were working in near-slave conditions.
Then, there was the civil rights movement of the 1950s and ’60s, followed by the Black Liberation struggle, aimed at overcoming inequality. But after all the sacrifice, where do things stand? The policeman’s bullet has replaced the lynch mob, and a death sentence still hangs over the head of young Black men in the United States. From the nearly one million Black people in jail, to the apartheid-like educational system, to the relentless and deepening discrimination in every sphere of life and the pervasive demonization of African-Americans in political campaigns and the media, the oppression has taken on new forms, becoming in many respects more entrenched, more grotesque, and both more subtle and more blatant—at the same time.
What politician of any influence at all is even talking about radically changing any of this? Who, anywhere near the halls of power, is calling for freedom for the Jena 6? The Attorney General, the one who is supposed to enforce whatever civil rights laws are left on the books, says he cannot tell that waterboarding is torture. What does that tell you?
The problem is that since Day One in this country, the oppression of African, and then African-American, people has been built into the economic functioning of this system, and this has been reflected in and reinforced by the whole political system and culture. When faced with massive movements of millions to demand change, the system refused to grant Black people equality. As Bob Avakian has put it, “It was not simply a matter that the ruling class would not do this, but more profoundly it was the fact that they could not. They could not because it would have torn up their whole system, it would have undermined their whole economic base and their whole superstructure to do this.” (See “How This System Has Betrayed Black People: Crucial Turning Points,” online at revcom.us)
To really get rid of inequality and the oppression of Black and other minority nationality peoples, as well as all the rest of this system’s outrages and abuses, we need nothing less than a revolution, one that brings in a whole new system—socialism—and a whole new form of state power, which would support the masses in challenging every form of exploitation and oppression.
And as part of that whole revolutionary movement, this has to be clear from the git: the day is long over when these oppressors are going to be able to get away with outrages like the railroad of the Jena 6.
Which Side Are You On?
When ten thousand people got on the bus to Jena on September 20, there were hardly any white people on board. And again, at the march in DC on November 16, there were very few whites or people of other nationalities in the crowd.
A guest editorial printed in this paper (“The UNITY WE DO NOT NEED & the UNITY WE DO NEED,” Revolution #105, October 21, 2007 available at revcom.us), posed this challenge to people of all nationalities: “Who are you standing with—those standing up against oppression, or with the oppressor? While the vast majority of white people, even those caught up in reactionary things, are not actually the same as the relative handful who actually owns, controls and runs this society and fundamentally benefits from exploitation and oppression, in a basic sense, you can be part of the solution or part of the problem.”
White people who say they oppose racism but are standing on the sidelines need to understand, and act on the fact, that there is no sidelines. Silence is complicity. When you stand by in silence, you are allowing the system to maintain white supremacy. And you are leaving Black people isolated in the just struggle against all this. On the other hand, large numbers of white people standing with the struggle against the oppression of Black people—as happened during the 1960s—would be a powerful thing. It would give heart to people struggling against white supremacy. And this kind of unity—based on opposing white supremacy—can contribute to the revolutionary movement we need.
We Don’t Need to “Clean Up Our Own Backyard” — We Need Revolution!
Ever since the early capitalists kidnapped millions of people from Africa and put them in chains, its apologists have come up with racist excuses to justify what the SYSTEM has done. Back then, they said that it was in the nature of Africans to be slaves—and they quoted from their Bible to justify it. And with every new form of oppression, the system has come up new bullshit to justify it.
Today—when the decent jobs have been taken from the inner cities, when Black people continue to be discriminated against in hiring and housing and health care, when unequal justice puts African-Americans behind bars way out of proportion—flunkies like Bill Cosby run around playing this same game: blaming the people for what the system has done. Cosby may have been a comedian, but today he’s the butt end of a tired ventriloquist act, sitting like a dummy on his master’s lap while his master’s words come spilling out of his mouth.
And any conciliation with this crap is poisonous. Even in the form that “well, discrimination is wrong, and Cosby is going too far, but Black people still share some of the blame for their situation.” This is not true, and because it is not true, it cannot lead to liberation, and indeed it can only lead to defeat in the crucial battles we face right now. It will lead people to confuse right and wrong, to compromise and give in at the very moment they should fight harder, to lower their sites, and to round-off the sharp edges of the truth. This kind of thinking reflects the social position of the petty bourgeoisie, or middle class, which is “caught in the middle” between the basic people and the imperialist rulers. The middle class may have made it a little bit, but their position is precarious, and they still face oppression. They can play an important and positive role in the struggle—but their social position pulls them towards viewpoints and programs that blame the masses for their own oppression and that do not see (or sometimes shrink from and even oppose) the fact that the only way out of this oppression is revolution, and a whole new system.
Cosby and his type say that Black youth need to “take more responsibility for their situation.” Well, the Black high school students in Jena did take responsibility—they stood up against the nooses, and they need to be supported. That’s the kind of “responsibility” people need to take. That’s the kind of “good choice” you can make for real. And the movement to free them has to spread, and become more determined, as part of building a revolutionary movement. Every time youth do the right thing, people need to have their backs. And if you want to be “responsible,” and make “good choices,” then you need to be supporting that struggle.
****
Battles like the one to Free the Jena 6 are extremely important, and can play a vital role in building a revolutionary movement. We cannot allow the system to crush people, and beat the rebellious spirit out of them. And through this struggle, and through the role that communist revolutionaries play, people can learn about the real nature of this system: who are our friends and allies, and who is the enemy. What is the problem, and what is the solution. And they can begin to see need and basis for revolution.
A pillar of this whole system is the vicious exploitation and oppression of Black people in this country. And the struggle against the oppression of Black people can be—and must be—a powerful component of a whole struggle to end that global system of plunder.
Get involved in the struggle and take up this paper, and as you do get into the works of Bob Avakian. In short, spread revolution and build resistance!
Fight the Power, And Transform the People, For Revolution
Jena Youth Speak Out on Racism…
Revolution correspondent Alice Woodward spoke with a group of youth who attended Jena High last year about the situation in the school. The following comments are from that interview:
On the “white tree” in the schoolyard:
We used to sit by the stairs and the white people used to sit under the tree. And sometimes we feel like we want to go under the tree, and they be actin’ all funny. Like teachers be acting funny towards us when we go under the tree, they act like we can’t go up under the tree, they act funny towards us, like towards us, making jokes and stuff under the tree and stuff, and we’d go up under the tree. And one day we told them, we’re gonna take over the tree we told them. We went under the tree and the white people start scattering, start moving around like they’re scared of us, we told them, “Why y’all gonna be scared of us, we ain’t gonna do y’all nothing? As long as you all don’t do us nothing we’re not going to do y’all nothing, we’re just trying to get under the shade too.”
We used to try to sit under that tree way before [the nooses were hung from the tree]. Before all this stuff ever happened. It’s the same results every time. We’d go under the tree, white people moved, there’d be a bunch of tension. Then they’d be acting like we came to start trouble. The teachers come ask why you trying to go up under there, why are you trying to start stuff, why are you messin? We say we’re not trying to start somethin, we’re just tryin to unite the school, ya know what I’m sayin. On the football team we’re united, in sports we’re united, why can’t we unite students. Why can’t we be all friends, instead of—this has to sit under the tree, this has to sit over there, this over there. It don’t make sense, that’s dumb.
On day-in, day-out inequality in school:
Everything you can see just like white people getting treated better. It’s like you drive to school, white people drive to school they can park their car anywhere. We park our car, like say we don’t have enough room, we park our car across the road off campus, we’ll get in trouble for that, they wouldn’t get in trouble. They might act like they’re going to say something to them, but they don’t say nothing to them. It’s just a tension at school, it’s a racist school. But you ain’t got no choice but to cope with it, because you ain’t got no other place to go but in school so you gotta stay there.
…We don’t get what we deserve down here, we just get treated lower than white people down here. We don’t get what we deserve, like if we get in trouble. Like say we’re saggin, we might get suspension. Say a white person might get caught with hemp in his mouth, and there ain’t no tobacco products allowed at school. He don’t get nothin but a detention or a slap on the wrist. And they still keep the tobacco in the back of their mouth as of today. They ain’t gonna do nothin about it.
They try to stop us from—all Black people wear like, tall tees they stop about right there [just above the knee]—they try to stop us one year, told us we couldn’t wear them, talking about, “No y’all can’t wear that.” They try to make us wear little bitty ol’ shirts and stuff, man I don’t wear that stuff. White people wear what they want, why can’t we wear what we want? That’s how I feel. Ya know they wear they boots and stuff, why can’t we wear what we want? That’s our fashion. We gonna wear what we want to wear. They’re just stupid at that school.
Every day we sag our pants, but we might get a Saturday morning for saggin. It’s against the rules, but tobacco is really against the rules, I’m talking about it’s supposed to be alternative school, but they get light stuff like detention. For saggin we might get Saturday morning, we might get alternative school, depending on how many times we’ve done it.
What’s “alternative school”?
Uh, it’s hell. [All laugh.] You have to go up there, it’s behind a fence, it’s a little building behind a fence you got to sit up in these dividers and you can’t talk, you have to look forward into these dividers and you have to sit there all day, it’s a school and you have to sit there, they bring you your food, and they bring you your work and you have to sit there all day. Can’t go to sleep in there, gotta sit there in that one spot all day, can’t do nothin, just sit there, you go to sleep you get an extra day.
About supporting the Jena 6—and punishment for that
Indeed, when you’re up there you can’t talk about it. They don’t want no students talking about it, like we had wore t-shirts saying Free the Jena 6, they made us take it off, some students got expelled from it because they refused to take it off. They told them they weren’t gonna have that up at their school and said take it off. Some students they got expelled, got alternative school, cause they wouldn’t take it off.
Sports
In sports we always get along, we got to because if you want to get somewhere you got to stay together. And that’s how it is, and we try to show that, that if we can do it in sports, why can’t we do it every day? Not just when we playing in sports, in the streets, after school and stuff, why can’t we talk to each other, after school and stuff? When we’re in school, some of them act funny, but some of them don’t. It’s not their fault though, it’s their grandparents’ fault. Most of the stuff that’s happening now, it’s white people’s grandparents saying they don’t want them doing this and that, and they do this or that and they end up getting hurt because of the choices they made.
Yeah, if we just all stick together and forget this other stuff. Forget what other people are talking about, never mind what other people are talking about, just keep focus, do what we normally do, as one. Don’t let what other people do stray you away from what you do every day, normally we hang together every day, then somebody say the wrong word then we be against each other, why should we do that? Forget that, forget that one word and let’s just still be friends. That’s how it happens most of the time.
The march of 10,000 people on September 20th to Free the Jena 6
Oh my god, I was freakin, I was freaked out man, I couldn’t believe it was happenin, I was like cryin it was so… I ain’t ever seen so many Black people in my life! I swear to god I mean man I never in my life seen so many Black people, I was so happy to feel that ya know what I’m saying. That for once we weren’t outnumbered, ya know what I’m saying, for once we were like more than them, ya know what I’m sayin, like yeah, I’m feelin like yeah, I feel secure. But then they left and I’m like, oh man, back to the struggle again.
Thousands Say “Enough Is Enough”
Revolution received the following correspondence:
Many thousands of people converged in Washington, D.C. on Friday afternoon November 16 in response to hate crimes, nooses being hung, police murders and brutality of the youth, racial attacks on Black people on television and in the print media and mainly the vile outrage of the case of the Jena 6. All of this was on people’s minds.
I went to Washington D.C. with 300 people traveling from New York City from Al Sharpton’s National Action Network that called and organized the demonstration. There were people from Atlanta, Chicago, Virginia, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Detroit and California.
I ran into a lot of people whom I’ve met at one time or another in this city who had come to the demonstration. There were three peace activists that I always seem to bump into a lot in D.C. They had happened to hear about this on the radio. They were among the literal handful of white people who came. One of them was this guy who is wheelchair bound and has a peace symbol permanently and prominently mounted on his chair. They were making a point of being in solidarity and looking to build bridges between the different aspects of the struggle against the awful direction that the Bush regime is taking society. One friend from Queens, New York—right out of the neighborhood where Sean Bell was murdered—came with our group. He wore his black hoodie calling out the 50 shots that killed Sean and a white Ku Klux Klan mask with the letters NYPD across the brow. It was a great display and he drew a lot of attention. I was telling people about police murder of 18 year old Khiel Coppin in Brooklyn only two days ago and how just last night another unarmed Black man was executed by the police in Newark, New Jersey. People were chanting “No Justice! No Peace and appreciated how we creatively added, “No Murdering Ass Police” in call-and-response.
I talked with people about what time it is in America. This was Orange Alert Day (people wearing orange to drive out the Bush Regime) and the front page of Revolution said “Who Really Holds the People of the World Nuclear Hostage? Why a U.S. Attack on Iran Must Be stopped.”
I got to agitating about this as people were arriving and entering the main site of the rally after a spirited march around the U.S. Department of Justice building. Some points I brought attention to was the fact that the U.S. is the only country in the world that has ever used nuclear weapons and the president has the nerve to tell people that they should support an attack on Iran on the basis of preventing others (specifically Iran) from doing the same! We are inside the belly of the beast! In our name they’ve massacred over 3/4 of a million people in Iraq to preserve and extend the empire! We cannot stand by and let this outrage continue. The entire world is watching right now and we have the responsibility and the duty to prevent this from happening!”
This was really welcomed by many. A lot of people stopped and listened. More than a few people gave me two, three, or even five dollars for a paper while quite a few barely had a couple of quarters. At one point I had a line of several people buying the paper. I distributed nearly 100 papers and collected $91. I initially had some trouble getting traction with folks and ran into a lot of anti-communist sentiment. There were people who were shocked that I was selling a communist newspaper—like I was some kind of dupe being Black and distributing this paper “for white people”. The agitation really cut through a lot of this and opened up engagement to all kinds of stuff. People would continue to be skeptical of communism but more open to engagement.
Nearly everyone was receptive to the need for revolution (they had different ideas of what this meant). Reading to people the Chairman’s statement (on page 7 in this edition [“Refusal to Resist Crimes Against Humanity Is Itself a Crime” at revcom.us]) and the “Three Main Points (see page 2) was a real good way to dig into what we mean by revolution and what kind of world is possible if we were in power. “But can we really do this?” To me a lot of what was revealed by this event was how people are really struggling to go beyond just marching around and protesting stuff that continues to happen to us and moving in ways that will actually stop this. I came up on a guy talking to someone just as he was saying, “We got to have a revolution!” He had believed that we could depend on these elections and the democrats but had become thoroughly disgusted with this especially after the latest Democratic candidate debate which I hadn’t seen but apparently Barack Obama had been particularly awful. A number of people (including this guy) voiced considerable disgust with the Democrats and Obama in particular. “None of these people even bother to mention Jena or the nooses or the police murders and I’m just sick of all of them!”
The Jena 6 and the “Freedoms We Enjoy”
On Monday November 12, the Alexandria, LA Town Talk newspaper published a guest editorial “Continue the struggle to free the Jena Six.” The editorial was signed by “Alice Woodward and Hank Brown, correspondents for Revolution newspaper reporting from Jena,” and was the product of consultation with many people in Jena involved in the struggle to Free the Jena 6.
The editorial said, “The people must continue to build the struggle and fight on to free the Jena Six! This is not a time to chill. The events that sparked a movement—the protests and resistance of the black people in Jena against the hanging of the nooses, and the authorities coming down on these six youth to enforce the racist status quo—are still playing out today. Jena is a racist and segregated place, in a racist and segregated society where black people are systematically discriminated against. There can be no ‘reconciliation’ with this.”
And, the editorial called for “[A] day of protest, and soon. A day for people across the country and in Jena, to deliver the demands that all the charges be dropped, and that it is completely unacceptable that Mychal Bell or any of the Jena 6 be held in jail or put on trial for one day more. Details of this call to action will be announced. We urge supporters of the Jena Six to contact us to contribute their ideas on this next step and get involved.”
To arrogant white supremacists in the region, publishing this kind of truth in a mainstream Louisiana newspaper was intolerable. One reader wrote, “demanding the dismissal of all charges against the Jena 6 fits the mode and agenda of the communists in their opposition to the freedoms we enjoy under a freely elected government.” Among those, obviously, the freedom to put away the Jena Six for decades because Black students stood up to lynch ropes hanging from the “whites-only tree” in their school, and the freedom to censor and suppress anyone who wants to expose and oppose that.
In another expression of those great “freedoms we enjoy under a freely elected government,” the only copy shop in Jena refused to print this statement. The owner of the store told Hank Brown, “I don’t know you, but I do know Reed Walters and Craig Franklin, and they’re not liars, and I’m just not gonna print it.” A letter to the editor of Town Talk exposed this incident, and set off another round of comments like “The last time I looked, I believe this is still America. They have the right to refuse service to anyone, regardless of color or race.” And white supremacists posted threats like “If you commie ba$t@rd$ and the rest of you Jena haters don’t like it here, pack up and get the he!! out of town,” along with requests for Alice’s address.
Meanwhile, on the streets, people are saying things like “There’s not a word in there that’s untrue.” Alice Woodward reports that, “Overwhelmingly Black people agree that the struggle must continue, that we gotta do something to continue. That we can’t let the authorities think we just came and had a little march and now its over and they can go ahead. People see a need for the momentum to continue from the 20th. People are discussing how to make the next call a massive expression of our demands, and people felt this had to be on a national level. In order for this next step to come forward the grassroots movement must continue to grow and broaden everywhere becoming more determined to Free the Jena 6.”
seattle carpenters union uses homeless pickets
from the SEATTLE WEEKLY:
Union Yes? Maybe Not
For the first time: picketers scared of the camera.
By Mark D. Fefer
November 14, 2007
Mark D. Fefer
These supposed strikers claim to be nonunionized hired guns. A union rep claims otherwise.
For several days last week, a labor protest broke out on the streets of downtown Seattle. “Labor Dispute,” read the large banner unfurled in front of the Wells Fargo Center at Third and Madison. “Shame on Moss Adams LLP.”
Three ladies stood holding the sign. They handed out leaflets depicting a rat chewing an American flag. Moss Adams, the flyer said, was guilty of “Desecration of the American Way of Life.” According to the flyer, put out by the Pacific Northwest Regional Council of Carpenters, Moss Adams was using a subcontractor that pays a “substandard wage.”
This appeared to have something to do with an office building in Portland. But it was hard to know for sure. One of the women holding the sign said she was under instructions not to say anything—to just simply hand out the flyer. She said they weren’t part of the union but were just hired to stand there. The women did not want to be photographed holding the sign, and one hid behind it when a camera came out.
All of which raised questions about what sort of labor standards the union itself was upholding. When a union staffer, Pedro Espinoza, drove up later to cart away the rolled-up sign, he said the women, who declined to provide their names, were indeed members of the union.
The flyer suggested calling the Portland office of the carpenters’ union for more information. Messages left there were not returned.
EXECUTION AT 590 GATES AV - the NYPD murder of Khiel Coppin, 18
from the NEW YORK DAILY NEWS:
Teen Khiel Coppin said he was ‘prepared to die’
Wednesday, November 14th 2007, 8:41 AM
” src=”http://www.nydailynews.com/img/2007/11/14/amd_choppin4.jpg”>Troubled Brooklyn teen Khiel Coppin told his mother he was ‘prepared to die’ and repeatedly yelled, ‘I’ve got a gun!’
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Click on the image for a graphic depicting Khiel Coppin’s tragic last day.
“Come get me! I have a gun! Let’s do this!” Khiel Coppin shouted at cops when they arrived at his Bedford-Stuyvesant building late Monday, police said.
Though Coppin’s mom told a 911 operator and a captain at the scene that her son did not have a gun, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said Coppin gave five cops no choice but to shoot when he ignored their orders to stop and gestured as if he had a gun.
The object in his hand was a black hairbrush.
Coppin was fatally wounded, with 10 bullets hitting his upper body and legs. Police said they found handwritten notes in his pockets, including one that read, “Happyness iz death.”
“This was a terrible tragedy for Khiel’s family, no question about it,” Kelly said. “Our condolences go out to his mother and to his family.”
An hour later, Coppin’s mother, father and siblings stood with their lawyer outside the morgue where the 18-year-old’s body was taken and called for a more extensive investigation.
The lawyer, Paul Wooten, said Coppin’s mom, Denise Owens, told a 911 operator and cops her son was unarmed.
“We know from his mother that when police officers arrived at her front door that she told those officers that he did not have a gun,” Wooten said.
Wooten said the family believes police rushed to judgment in their determination that the shooting was justified.
“Nobody but Houdini himself could have decided that in 24 hours,” Wooten said.
Coppin’s downward spiral began long before cops arrived at his family’s apartment shortly after 7 p.m. Monday.
Earlier that day, his mom had called the Interfaith Medical Center’s mobile crisis team to ask it to help with her mentally disturbed son, who had a prior arrest for robbery and got out of juvenile detention center in August.
She told the Interfaith team about noon that “Khiel would eventually do something bad and that he was talking about suicide,” Kelly said.
An Interfaith psychologist responded to the Gates Ave. home about 6:30 p.m., but Coppin was not home.
A psychologist from Interfaith later told detectives Owens was afraid of her son because he was not taking his anti-psychotic and anti-depressant drugs - Risperdal and Concerta. Coppin had previously spent time in the Kings County Hospital psych ward, Kelly said.
The psychologist told cops Owens said she had taken her son’s apartment keys and asked him to leave the home. But he refused, the psychologist said.
About a half hour after the Interfaith team left, Coppin returned home. His mom said she pretended to dial 911 twice to “scare him” and get him to leave, police said. This time, she really dialed for help.
When Coppin heard her talking to the 911 operator, he picked up a tape dispenser, put it under his shirt and said that he was “prepared to die,” she told cops.
In tapes of the 911 call, Coppin can be heard in the background cursing and yelling, “I’ve got a gun, and I’m going to shoot you!”
At one point, the 911 operator asks Owens if her son has a gun, and she doesn’t answer directly.
“You heard him,” she said. “… I didn’t say … you heard it outta his mouth.”
The operator later called back and asked for a description of the gunman. The mom said, “He does not, hmmm, who says … He does not have a firearm.”
When cops arrived at apartment 1-D, the door was ajar and they could see Coppin in a hallway with two knives, Kelly said. Owens and her 11-year-old daughter were also in the home.
Cops got Owens and her daughter out of the three-bedroom apartment and Owens told the officers her son was not carrying a gun, police said.
As the cops approached Coppin, he brandished the knives, lunged toward them and yelled, “Shoot me! Kill me!” police said.
The cops retreated into an outside hallway and Coppin went into a back bedroom, Kelly said.
At one point, the teen yelled, “Come get me! I have a gun! Let’s do this!” cops said.
The cops in the building then heard Coppin moving a window gate and cops outside yelling, “He’s going out the window!”
Coppin dropped about 4 feet from the window to the sidewalk and walked through an exterior gate toward cops in front of the building, police said.
NYPD Capt. Charles McEvoy ran from the apartment as the teen came out the window. He told the cops outside to back up and take cover, Kelly said.
They retreated and positioned themselves behind two parked cars. Coppin continued toward the cops, ignoring repeated orders to show his hands and get down on the ground, Kelly said.
He then reached under his sweatshirt, brandished an object and pointed it at cops “as if he were aiming a gun,” Kelly said.
Five cops responded by firing a total of 20 rounds. Medics took Coppin to Woodhull Hospital, where he was declared dead.
The medical examiner said bullets hit Coppin in the chest, hip, forearm, knee, thigh and ankle. The wounds to his left lung and intestines were fatal.
“He didn’t have to be killed,” said Coppin’s stepfather, Reginald Owens.
The shooting enraged some residents and community leaders, who likened it to last November’s police shooting of Sean Bell, an unarmed bridegroom.
“The police have gotten out of control,” City Councilman Charles Barron said.
Kelly said the shooting appeared to be “within department guidelines” and noted 10 witnesses told police Coppin ignored the cops’ orders to stop. They included a 50-year-old woman who said she saw him raising an unknown dark object in his right hand while lunging at cops.
When asked by Internal Affairs Bureau detectives whether he could have been raising his hands in surrender, Kelly said, she responded, “Absolutely not.”
All the cops involved in the shooting were given Breathalyzer tests, and all passed.
Kelly said cops did not know that Coppin had a history of mental illness. He said the incident unfolded too fast “to enable us to put the resources in place to appropriately restrain him.”
jena 6 defendant bryant purvis faces 22 years
from REVOLUTION newspaper [http://revcom.us/]:
Jena 6 Defendant Bryant Purvis Faces 22 Years “There’s racism still out there in the world…”
On November 7, Bryant Purvis, one of the Jena 6, was arraigned. District Attorney Reed Walters charged Purvis with second-degree battery and conspiracy to commit second-degree battery—the same charges all the Jena 6 face. Bryant Purvis pled not guilty on both counts and a jury trial was set for March 24, 2008. Robert Bailey’s court date is still set for November 26. Theo Shaw and Carwin Jones have trials set for January 2008. They were all 17 and 18 years old at the time of arrest and can be tried in adult court.
All this makes clear, once again, that the system, through its enforcers, is determined to press ahead with the unjust prosecution of the Jena 6. The system is determined to use this case to enforce white supremacy. And the only way this railroad can be stopped is by building a mass nationwide struggle that is determined to NOT STOP until all the Jena 6 are free.
Going into the hearing, Purvis faced charges of second-degree attempted murder. When asked about the charges being reduced, his mother, Tina Jones, said, “He’s still facing 22 years—that’s nothin’ to smile about.”
The September 20 protest in Jena, when tens of thousands of people demonstrated in support of the Jena 6, brought this case to the attention of people around the country and the world. And national and international reporters were present at the November 7 hearing. Many wanted to know what Purvis wants people across the country and the world to learn from this case. Bryant said, “There’s racism still out there in the world, you might not see it every day but it’s devastating to know it’s still out there.”
Bryant’s lead attorney, Dale Hickman, said that Purvis has maintained from the beginning that he had nothing to do with the fight on December 6, 2006 (in which a white student, Justin Barker, was hurt) that led to the Jena 6 being charged with attempted murder.
Mychal Bell, the only member of the Jena 6 who has gone to trial, had his conviction from adult court overturned in September 2007. After nine months in jail he was finally released—only to be put back in custody after 14 days when the court ruled that he had violated probation from a previous case. At a court hearing on November 8, Bell’s lawyers argued that to try Bell in juvenile court for the same charges he was tried for in adult court is a case of double jeopardy. But the judge rejected this motion to have the charges dismissed. Bell is now being tried in juvenile court and there is a media blackout and gag order on the lawyers and family, giving the judge and District Attorney the freedom to go forward with the prosecution of Mychal Bell out of the eyes of the media and public. A court hearing is scheduled for November 21 to consider a petition filed by a group of major media organizations that argues that according to a Louisiana statute the trial should be opened to the public.
District Attorney Reed Walters continues to spread the lie that this case has nothing to do with racism and the hanging of nooses. But the truth is: The Jena 6 are being prosecuted for standing up against the status quo of a racist town in a racist society. In September 2006 a student asked to sit beneath a “whites-only tree,” the principal said students could sit where they wanted, and so Black students sat under the tree. Nooses were hung by white racist students, and in response to this Black students protested. Then District Attorney Reed Walters threatened Black students at a school assembly, saying, “With the stroke of my pen, I can take your lives away.” Two months later he made good on this threat, arresting and charging the Jena 6, making the point that the system will not tolerate rebellion against segregation and racism.
The Jena 6 case both reveals and concentrates the fact that Jena is a racist and segregated town. And things are extremely polarized right now in Jena, with white racists jumping out and defending the status quo of white supremacy. Case in point: Revolution correspondent Hank Brown recently went to a local printer in Jena to have copies made of an editorial piece we wrote in response to the latest court rulings to move ahead with the unjust prosecution of the Jena 6. It commented, “The District Attorney Reed Walters now along with a reporter from the Jena Times have been spreading lies and half truths in the media to justify the outrageous persecution of the Jena Six and confuse those who have stood up for what is right.”
After Brown paid and waited for over an hour, the manager emerged to say he would not print the flier. He said: “I don’t know who you are, but I know the District Attorney and the Jena Times writer, and they aren’t liars.” To this Brown replied, “Is this another case of Jena not being racist? A Black person comes in and you refuse to serve them?” The store manager still refused to print the statement. And as for his defense of the DA and Jena Times: there are many, but take just this one example of how they distort and outright lie about the Jena 6 case. They don’t even mention the fact that Black students protested nooses being hung on a “whites-only tree.” In fact they deny that there even was a “whites-only tree”!
Talk to the students at Jena High, both Black and white. Talk to the Jena 6 and their families. And they will all recount stories that show how the school is segregated, in the schoolyard, in the classroom, at basketball games, etc. When we interviewed Marcus Jones, Mychal Bell’s father, about the school assembly where the DA threatened Black students, he said: “At any activity done in the auditorium—anything—Blacks sit on one side, whites on the other side, okay? The DA tells the principal to call the students in the auditorium. They get in there. The DA tells the Black students, he’s looking directly at the Black students—remember, whites on one side, Blacks on the other side—he’s looking directly at the Black students.”
The case of the Jena 6 has touched a raw nerve and outraged people around the country who see this as a concentrated example of the unequal and racist justice system that criminalizes Black youth today. At the courthouse a Black student from Jena High was waiting to find out whether or not he would be sent to a juvenile facility. He showed us the long list of alleged offenses for which he was written up—things like taping a piece of paper to his desk and drawing on it and waking up another student who was sleeping. He said that at a certain point the “write ups” lead to legal prosecution, that this was a new policy at Jena High. And now he had been accused of stealing a wallet he found on the ground. He said he wished that there could be a camera inside Jena High School so people could see what goes on.
Many more people need to join the struggle to free the Jena 6. At the courthouse Bryant Purvis told reporters it was “amazing” to see tens of thousands of people in Jena on September 20. This was a great day for the people and this must be built on, taken higher and wider—and must not stop until all the Jena 6 are free.
Prison Nightmare for Jena 6 Youth
In a Democracy Now interview in September 2007, two of the Jena 6 exposed the degrading and life-endangering treatment they endured behind bars. (The interview can be found at Democracynow.org and on Youtube.com.)
Robert Bailey and Theo Shaw describe how they were repeatedly maced—and the authorities knew Shaw had asthma. Bailey talks about trying to get someone to do something when Shaw was maced and couldn’t breathe. Bailey says, “It took them forever to come back there. I had to holler like 30 times. You know, you bang on the wall if they’re spraying, so I’m banging on walls. ‘He can’t breathe! He can’t breathe!’ So I’m like kicking, I’m kicking. I’m kicking the wall and jumping in front of the camera. ‘Hey, what you want?’ They gonna spray me, so I’m running like, you know (covering his face). ‘He’s having an asthma attack, he’s got an asthma attack.’ ”
Theo Shaw was taken to the emergency room and two other times had to see a doctor after being maced by prison guards—who would mace inmates for being noisy or for no reason at all. Bailey and Shaw also said that authorities tried to separate them, that they didn’t want them together.
The Jena 6 were unjustly arrested. They were unjustly thrown into jail. According to the system’s own rules, you are supposed to be innocent until found guilty. But they were punished and brutalized in prison. This is yet another outrage in the case of the Jena 6.
This kind of criminalization and brutalization is the norm for Black youth in this country—millions who are abused, attacked, and even outright murdered by the police and the so-called “justice” system. None of the Jena 6 had ever been to prison prior to their arrest in December 2006. Even though they hadn’t been found guilty of anything, they were kept behind bars, abused, and treated as less than human. This must be exposed and opposed as part of continuing to bring to light the truth about the case of the Jena 6 and why the people must demand that ALL the charges be dropped and that the Jena 6 be FREE.
MINNESOTA CARPENTERS REGIONAL COUNCIL DISBANDED
from WORKDAY MINNESOTA:
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Sunday 11th November 2007 01:07 PM |
Carpenters councils in Minnesota, northern Wisconsin merge7 November 2007
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