MIDTOWN GLOBAL MARKET: The Global is Local

Coats, hats sweaters, scarves, snow pants, purses, packages of new purchases are piled high on the tiny table. Outside it is eleven below zero, before the wind-chill is factored in. In this inner city neighborhood Latinos and Africans and African Americans make up 65 percent of the population and European Americans, Asian American and Native Americans sharing the remaining third. Thawing out on this make-shift dance-floor in the window corner of the Midtown Global Market last Sunday, were small children and grandparents, professional dancers and first-timers, a panoply of body types, ages, races and ethnicities, gathered for free Salsa lessons.

The Midtown Global Market is not just a colorful place to come and chase the winter blues away. It is sweet revenge, the lemonade from lemons, the silver lining after a horrific storm, a picking up the scraps left by the ravages of globalization and making something beautiful out of them.

The Sears Tower was a mammoth department store and one of nine regional catalog mail order centers in the country back when Sears was the primary source for department store merchandise. Located adjacent to the corner of Lake Street and Chicago Avenue, in the center of South Minneapolis, it opened in 1928, employed 2000 people at its peak and was the central shopping site for everything from clothing to car parts for thousands of neighbors near and far. My spouse, who grew up in small towns in Wisconsin in the 1960s, remembers the excitement of coming to Sears on Lake Street once a year for major purchases. I bought expandable bras there over eighteen years ago, while pregnant with my now high-school senior. In 1993, one year before Sears moved its operations, we became a home owners in south Minneapolis and purchased an oven from the Lake Street store.

Sears left the Phillips neighborhood in South Minneapolis some fourteen years ago. They traded up, moving to the Mall of America in Bloomington where they could attract suburban shoppers who make substantially more than the residents of Phillips, where the average annual wage is $13,000. When Sears left, the neighborhood was already depressed. Since the start of the cocaine epidemic in the mid 1980s the primary economic activities here have been street drugs and women’s bodies.

In the 1980s, if you remember, the Reagan administration was funding mercenary forces and death squads in Central America, some with drug money that poisoned urban centers like the Phillips neighborhood in South Minneapolis. Million of refugees of those Central American wars walked across hot deserts to escape, and some of them ended up in the South Minneapolis. Meanwhile, an ocean away U.S. arms manufacturers, like perhaps the Honeywell corporation that had its national headquarter in the Phillips neighborhood, reaped billions selling weapons to warring factions in East Africa while other corporation reaped subsoil and agricultural profits from the region. When the Somali government dissolved into anarchy in the early 90s Somalians poured into refugee camps in Kenya. A group was eventually settled in the Phillips neighborhood in Minneapolis and soon after thousands more of their compatriots joined them. I’ve heard it said that there are more Somalis in near-South Minneapolis than in Mogadishu now, but I don’t know if that is true.

There they mixed with Native Americans from the nation’s only urban reservation, the Little Earth of United Tribes; first, second and third generation African Americans who made their way “Up North”, third, fourth, and fifth generation Netherlands and other more recent European immigrants. In the mid 1990s a combination of drought in Mexico, NAFTA and job shortages in Minnesota, created the push and pull motivations that led Mexicans from the states of Morelos, Puebla and elsewhere to immigrate to Minnesota. They joined a new wave of Hmong and other Southeast Asian immigrants who came to Minnesota in the early 2000s. Many of these most recent immigrants were attracted to the increasingly global barrio of Phillips. In 2005 the Midtown Global Market, with shops owners reflecting the diversity of the neighborhood, opened in the Old Sears Tower, now the Midtown Exchange.

The Midtown Exchange is by no means some kind of small business utopia. All kinds of corporate compromises were made to fund the project, and neighborhood input was squelched several times in the process. Its survival is dependent on corporate tax dollars from Allina and Wells Fargo, whose offices in the building provide a financial anchor. The condos that fill part of the huge complex--- built right on the Greenway-- a bike, walk and soon-to-be-trolley path that connects the chain of Lakes with the Mississippi—would a great green addition to our city were it not for the sticker price per unit . At $1400 for a one bedroom, they are far from affordable for those who currently reside in the neighborhood.

Still when coats and purses are piled high without concern for security, and strangers from all over the world join each other in this urban core to dance at high noon on an arctic Sunday in January, one can be forgiven for feeling a little bit of euphoria. In the frozen tundra, the globe strikes back….. with a dance!

TRANSNATIONAL LABOR, THEN AND NOW: Century Old IWW

Century-old Industrial Workers of the World Still Offer Prescription for World Peace

The IWW is one hundred years old this spring but its political goals are just what we need today to promote peace and justice in the world. Farmworker organizer and musician Baldemar Velasquez continues the legacy of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). In 1905 the IWW founders saw themselves as an alternative to the American Federation of Labor (AFL). While the AFL generally confined itself to organizing white, male, skilled non migrant urban workers, the IWW members, or “Wobblies,” as they were dubbed, opened up their unions to women, African Americans, Mexicans, and people working temporary and “unskilled” jobs like ditch diggers and crop harvesters. While the American Federation of Labor was busy lobbying for immigration restrictions, the IWW conducted meetings in several languages, printed their publications in Spanish and English, and focused on recruiting new arrivals to the United States. The AFL organized along the lines of particular trades which made it easy for the bosses to pit one group of workers against another in a particular industry. In contrast, the IWW’s goal was to organize whole industries. The AFL put the national interests of U.S. workers above all others, but IWW promoted ONE BIG UNION, a labor federation that crossed all national borders. One century later workers face multinational corporations who use organizations like the IMF and the WTO to protect their global interests. Companies like Halliburton wave the red white, and blue to recruit soldiers to fight their battles for them, while pledging allegiance to the flag of cheap labor. One hundred years after the founding of the IWW, we need that ONE BIG UNION more than ever. Imagine if there was no place for oil companies, sneaker manufacturers, and agribusiness to go for cheaper labor; if every apple harvester from Chile to Minnesota belonged to the same labor federation; if every worker in the global soccer-ball industry carried the same union card; if every worker made a living wage, with safe and dignified working conditions; if no community was toxic-waste dumping grounds. Who would need barbed wire borders? What reason would there be to go to war? Is this a utopian pipe dream? No. In the last ten years AFL-CIO locals have been taking the first steps toward realizing this vision. They are organizing immigrant workers, with or without documents, and working with unions in other countries to build cross-border solidarity to stop runaway shops. One of the leaders of both of these progressive labor trends is Baldemar Velasquez, the president and founder of the Midwest Farm Labor Organization Committee AFL-CIO, based in Ohio. Velasquez has been working within the AFL-CIO to organize those sectors of the worker forces left to the marginalized Industrial Workers of the World 100 years ago. In addition, he is a leader of international efforts to promote labor solidarity across borders. Velasquez thinks and works locally and globally. Like the legendary IWW singer and songwriter Joe Hill, Baldemar Velasquez is a musician as well as a labor organizer. On April 9 Velasquez came to the Twin Cities to do a concert to raise funds for Centro Campesino, an organization by and for migrant workers in Southern Minnesota.Velasquez and his Aguila Negra Band sang old labor songs, Mexican folk ballads and new music of the labor and antiglobalization movements. Velasquez sprinkled stories of current struggle between his songs. His performance feeds the brain, the heart, and the soul.

COLLEGE RANKING: U.S. New and World Report Move Over:

Alternative Ranking System for Universities Shifts Priorities to Address Real Needs

Anne Winkler-Morey, W A M M Every year the conservative news magazine U.S. News and World Report (USNWR) ranks colleges and universities. Today Minnesotans are considering a "strategic positioning plan" aimed at raising the ranking of the University of Minnesota in the USNWR contest. In accordance with this occasion, we hereby inaugurate the first annual Alternative college and university ranking contest. International results will be tallied and announced later. In the meantime Minnesotans should heed this warning: The U of M's strategic positioning plan, if implemented as is, would plunge the U of M to a dangerously low spot (think triple digits) on our scale. Our Goal: We are looking for premier resource colleges and universities bold enough to tackle the world's most pressing problems, such as inequality, non-sustainability, maldistribution, and militarism. We have implemented the following measurement criteria for colleges and universities: 1. Are they financially sound? Does the community served by the institution demand "money for schools, not for war" and work to eliminate the single most wasteful and destructive drain on our education budgets-the military? Are for-profit motivated corporations funding research or does the community tax corporations and create their own research agenda? 2. Are they cooperatively managed? Do architects work with agronomists, urban planners, and educators to build cities that eliminate homelessness and hunger and provide access to mass transit and education in a manner that is sustainable for seven generations to come? Do medical researchers work hand in hand with places and people most in need of medical care to provide preventions and cures accessible to all who are afflicted? Do dancers, painters, and actors work hand in hand with educators and politicians committed to opening the doors of theaters, museums, and art curricula to reach every urban and rural community with art that genuinely reflects their realities? 3. Do they harness available brain power? Does the education institution have mechanisms in place to fully harness the knowledge of those who are experts in the problems that most acutely affect our society? For example, those who grew up without homes and people whose culture is not dominant and privileged? And people whose skin color makes them 27 times more likely to understand the inequalities of our judicial system, whose work and citizenship status makes them most acutely aware of the need for a global view of the world's problems? What about people who think differently than their teachers? What about communities where the current education system does not reach? Will people be included who best understand the need for education reform that truly leaves no child behind? 4. Do they appear to be equitable priorities? At the U of M, for example, we want to see the Rafael Espinosa School of Labor and not the Carlson School of Management have the most prestigious building on campus. We would also like to see that the building that houses the department of Chicano and American Indian Studies is fully handicappedaccessible and furnished with the best heating and cooling system, the cleanest water and the latest education technology available to students elsewhere on campus. While our final tallies will take months, today we issue the University of Minnesota this warning: The strategic positioning plan, as it is written, will plunge the U of M down in our ratings. To avoid this devastating fall in status, we suggest the following: 1. Keep General College open and expand its programs and budget. Because this is one of the programs at the U of M that addresses our brain power needs, it needs to be expanded and cloned until the entire university will, like General College, represent and serve the needs of the diverse brain power resources we have in this state. 2. Replace meaningless rhetoric with a budget and a concrete plan to make pre-K-12 education a college prep system for all in Minnesota. Eliminate deceitful rhetoric about alleged diversity and support for pre-K-12 education. Pre-K-12 education in this state has suffered horrendous budget cuts in the last five years, exacerbating education gaps between white and nonwhite, rich and poor, suburban and rural/urban students. Because the university is a land grant institution and the final stage of Minnesota's public education system, the university's strategic positioning plan must include a concrete financial plan to reverse this devastating trend. Implementing our new alternative ranking system could mean a world of change. The University of Minnesota could be not number three, not number two, but number one! May 2005: Anne Winkler-Morey is finally leaving the University of Minnesota for parts unknown, after ten years of teaching in the Chicano Studies Department.

LATIN AMERICA LEFT: Bolivians Take to the Streets Summer 2005

Bolivians Take to the Streets to Demand Fair Trade and Justice

As I write, barricades in the streets of the major cities of Bolivia, from the capital of La Paz, on the Peruvian border, to Cochabamba, in the highlands, have shut the nation down. A sea of humanity is using its bodies to stop all traffic, shut down oil wells, and prevent the government from conducting business. In doing so the protesters have toppled the presidency of Carlos Mesa and forced the resignation of the next two people in line. The people are demanding that the president of the Supreme Court assume Mesa’s position and make plans for new elections in a matter of months. So far their demands have been fulfilled. I cannot predict how events will unfold by the time you read this, but hope that this analysis will help you understand what has happened between my writing and your reading. Bolivia has the largest reserves of oil and natural gas in Latin America after Venezuela. Despite its immense natural subsoil wealth (for decades Bolivia was the world’s supplier of tin), Bolivia has not reaped the wealth of its resources. Currently foreign corporations buy the crude oil and gas, process, and sell it for seven times the price they pay Bolivia. Bolivians pay $49 a barrel for gasoline they sold to multinationals for $7. Grassroots pressure to nationalize the nation’s oil and natural gas resources have been mounting for the last five years. In early May, the Bolivian Congress passed a compromise law taxing corporations at the rate of 50 percent. President Carlos Mesa did not veto the congressional bill. Oil corporations, the U.S., and a tiny group of private elites clustered in the Eastern city of Santa Cruz and whined about the tax. Bolivian people meanwhile immediately began to mobilize protests. Led by the national labor union who were followed quickly by campesino and indigenous groups, they demanded a full nationalization of oil and natural gas resources. These demands and the militant protests of May and June 2005 should come as no surprise if we consider the following recent events: * During the election of 2002, Evo Morales with his Move toward Socialism Party (MAS) came in just 1.5 percentage points behind the winner, Sanchez de Lozada, on a platform demanding nationalization of natural gas. * In October 2003, a massive uprising removed President Sanchez de Lozada from office after he began a deal to sell natural gas to the U.S. for a pittance. Carlos Mesa became the interim president. * In a referendum in 2003 92 percent of voters said yes to nationalization. The uprising in Bolivia is also about indigenous rights. The indigenous people make up two-thirds of the population. They make up over 90 percent of those who are malnourished in Bolivia (about 70 percent of the population). In addition to nationalization of the oil and gas industries, the Aymara nation is demanding a new constitution for Bolivia. They want a Constituent Assembly that will for the first time bring indigenous people into the decision-making process in representative numbers. The Assembly would be mandated to create a new constitution for Bolivia. Unlike the Zapatistas of Mexico, the Aymara nation does not want autonomy. They want a new government for Bolivia, one based on cooperatives and local control and one that represents the culture of the majority of the population. Bolivia and the United States: Since 1990 the United States has been mired in deadly conflicts in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and East Africa while trying at the same time to impose free trade agreements and privatization campaigns on its southern neighbors. The United States has tried to use economic pressures and aid to proxy military forces (often hidden from the U.S. public or sold as an anti- drug campaign) to implement these “structural adjustments” in Latin America. The targets of privatization are not just the primary cash products like natural gas in Bolivia, but also internal necessities like health care, social security, education, water, and electricity. Bolivians engaged in a mass protest in 2000 to protect their right to water. The coalitions formed and tactics used five years ago provided an organizational starting point for the current uprising against oil and natural gas corporations. For over 105 years, the United States government has supported the interests of the petroleum industry in the region. It has threatened to cut off all aid to Bolivia if the nation’s subsoil resources are nationalized. But the U.S. public is not likely to support another war for oil. Without the Soviets to blame anymore, the United States has had to scramble to find justifications that will convince the U.S. public to support its Latin America policy. Beginning in the early 1990s, the U.S. Drug War replaced the Soviet Union as the justification for U.S. campaigns against democratic forces demanding rights in Latin America. In Bolivia drug enforcers have been poisoning the land and the farmers in the countryside in a supposed effort to stem the tide of cocaine in the U.S. Cocaleros, who are primarily indigenous farmers, have lost land and livelihood. The result has been that land ownership is increasingly in the hands of large agribusiness, and cocaine distribution in the U.S. continues. Given this reality it is no surprise that Evo Morales was able to gain widespread support demanding legalization of coca production during his 2002 campaign bid for the presidency. In this latest wave of protests the United States has found a new enemy, Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. At the OAS meeting in early June 2005, U.S. Ambassador Roger Noriega proclaimed that Hugo Chavez was the mastermind behind the uprising in Bolivia. No doubt the people of Bolivia are inspired by the Venezuela revolution, as are most people working for indigenous rights and against privatization and free trade in Latin America. Noriega, however, is not talking about inspiration, but money, guns, and deals. The fact that there is no evidence of this collusion is irrelevant to the U.S. ambassador. What an old story! Those of us involved in Central America solidarity in the 1980s remember well the claim that Soviets and Cubans were the bosses of Central American campesinos. The assumption was that the people of Nicaragua and El Salvador would never think of rebelling themselves if foreign agitators did not fill their heads with false promises, slush funds, and military hardware. But some things have changed since the 1980s. Latin America is not the primary focus of U.S. policy. It is clear that there are limits to the imperial reach of the United States. Conflicts in the Eastern Hemisphere have limited U.S. resources and have allowed Latin American social movements like those in Bolivia to gain ground. I don’t know what will happen in Bolivia, but I can say the following: First, the uprising of May and June 2005 was grassroots and indigenous (in more ways then one); and second, it will not go away; and finally, the United States will try to suppress it. Depictions of Bolivian freedom fighters as terrorists, coming soon to a TV near you!

KATRINA, CORPORATIZATION: Water, Water Everywhere........

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The time was early September 2005. I was in South Mpls and my toilet was not working. I began saving used water to flush it. As I contemplated my water issues, I thought about what was happening in places I have been and places in the news, where water was a primary issue. 4000 miles away in Nicaragua, over 90% of the people had no hot running water. In fact, forty percent of Nicaraguans spent the day without potable water. Meanwhile the United States continued building a monstrous new embassy in Managua atop a hill overlooking the city. This new embassy will cost more than it would to provide potable water for the entire country. The new embassy represents future plans for increased U.S. political and economic intervention, but not to address such basic human needs as drinking water. The U.S. is instead getting ready to enforce the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) to reluctant Nicaraguans. CAFTA makes local environmental and labor regulations illegal. Nicaraguans can expect more toxic waste polluting their local water supply. Far from the capital, thousands of rural Nicaraguans, unable to grow crops on parched soil, and unable to find a market for their produce due to the flood of cheap foreign goods made possible by neo-liberal trade policies that CAFTA will codify, spent the day collecting timber to sell in the city where even middle class people use wood to cook their gallo pinto. This led to further deforestation, which led to more desertification, and soil erosion, which meant less water for crops and animals and people. • • • One hundred and fifty miles north, is a City built around the great waterway that connects East with West. Like all other port cities Duluth thrives on its ability to attract visitors, be they ships on the way to market or tourists hungry for Lake Superior’s mysterious beauty. Today it is full of refugees from closed mines and bankrupt family farms, victims of the same neo-liberal economic policies oppressing rural and urban workers in Central America. They are joined by hundreds of urban unemployed, under-employed and underpaid full time workers who moved from public space to public space, perhaps sharing a controlled substance and their sad stories, while tourists flocked to the water front of Lake Superior enchanted by seagulls, chocolates, and ocean liners. The poverty of Duluth’s inner city was not immediately obvious to vacationers to the Northland in early September, focused on swimming, fishing and drinking water in from plastic bottles. Yet you only needed to take a public bus from the Downtown to the West Side to see the erosion of hope. In this homogenous city the poor were predominantly white. The growing class divisions in Duluth and the universal destructiveness of poverty in the United States were obvious to those willing to look. • • • 2500 miles south at the other end of Mississippi, tens of thousands of people in New Orleans stood up to their necks in toxic water, throats burning with thirst. The vast majority were African American. The people without cars who could not flee Hurricane Katrina were almost all black. They were victims of a government that, before, during and after the storm, did not provide the most basic services. No public transportation, no jobs, no tax dollars for infrastructure, just military recruiters to convince parents that the best option for their youth is to join the Marines or Guard. So Louisiana National Guard were sent across the ocean to destroy bridges and water treatment plants in Iraq instead of fixing levees at home. After the storm, the convergence of race and class in this corner of the United States, where an African American population lives in “Third World” conditions, was laid bare for all the world to see. Seven thousand miles to the east, one thousand people in Iraq, struggling to escape what they thought was a suicide bomber, fell into the historic waters of the Tigris River and drowned. Out of this converging flood of human crises and inhuman conditions in early September, 2005, I struggled to find a way to hope I took heart in the lessons that Katrina was teaching. As funds and troops overseas were not available to aid victims of Katrina, it had never been more obvious to the U.S. public, especially those victimized by the storm, that we need money for human needs not war.” (One MPR journalist interviewing victims of Hurricane Katrina reported with a tone of incredulity. “they are talking about the war in Iraq!”) When George Bush’s asserted that ‘no- one expected the levees to break’; when Laura Bush’s commented that relief services at the Astrodome were a acceptable for poor people, who have never had anything to begin with; when FEMA representatives claimed they had delivered adequate provisions to thousands of people in the New Orleans convention center, who were in reality suffering from three days without food or water; It was clear to millions of people that “when this government lies people die”. And for the first time in my life I heard millions of people asking a more fundamental question - what is this government good for? Why did they allow so many people to die from Katrina? In Cuba when they had a category five hurricane last year, only a handful of people died! With extremely limited resources, the Cuban government took responsibility for every life, making sure everyone was evacuated. They took all available measures to secure homes and provide security for people’s possessions. Their medical doctors were trained to assist Hurricane victims, and with socialized medicine everyone was accounted for. (Cuba offered to share its medical expertise with U.S. victims of Katrina, by sending 1,586 doctors equipped with hurricane relief material to the Louisiana. Although doctors on the ground begged the United States to accept this aid, the government refused.) In contrast, the United States, the richest country in the world, was unwilling to put the needs of its poorest and most vulnerable citizens first. The disabled, people in nursing homes, babies, people who live without cars or access to mass transit, these were the groups who suffered the highest causalities in the Gulf region. People began to ask: who needs a government like that? In Nicaragua and Duluth, as in much of the world, there was no dramatic event on the par with the Louisiana Sunami, just ongoing economic crises, the kinds that simmer until something brings them to a full boil. In September 2005 we lived in one world, with one water supply, one oil supply, one global economic system that favors corporate profits over human needs. The struggles for peace and justice were on many fronts, each with its own level of intensity, but it was becoming more and more obvious that they all required the same first step. Anne Winkler Morey traveled to Nicaragua and Duluth and Cuba this year. She is back in Minneapolis, listening to her radio, dreaming of revolution . . . and a good plumber.

BICYCLE TOURING: Biking Across the Great Divide

I am a city kid. As a matter of fact, far back as I know about, my ancestors have been urban people. Perhaps because of laws prohibiting Jews from owning land in Eastern Europe where my wandering ancestors harken from, the stories passed down are not filled with pigs and chickens. As for me, though I have lived in diverse urban neighborhoods—some wealthy, some impoverished, some insulated University towns and some huge international cities—I have always been close to the inner-city action. This summer I spent five weeks bicycling from Minneapolis to Estes Park, Colorado, with my partner, daughter and niece. For 33 days we moved from one rural community to another, seeking shelter, food, shade and water—and a place to rest during the heat of the day. By the end of the first day when we bedded down in Chaska, Minnesota, we had entered red—as in “red state” or Bush territory—and never left it. Much of the time I was struck by the width and depth of the rural/urban divide. We traveled through five states, several geographic strata and across one time zone, but the most graphic barometer of a community was not its location but its size. I learned to differentiate between places that I’d previously considered as all rural. Heck, I’m the one who thought I was working in a rural area when I commuted from Minneapolis to St. Cloud, to teach history at the University there, many moons ago. That’s how ignorant I was. Now I know the difference between “rural” communities with populations of 25,000; 10,000; 5,000; 1,000 and those under 500, and to my surprise, I prefer the latter. In these tiny communities (we stopped in every one we came across) there were no McDonald’s, no Dairy Queens and certainly no Wal-Marts. In fact there were usually no choices. If you sought water, food and shelter from the sun and heat, you went to the only café, gas station or bar in town. If there were two or more places, we soon learned how to find the place where the entire town was gathered. It was Sue’s Diner in Peterson, Iowa, Porky’s Bar in Winside, Nebraska, and the Sands Café in Merriman, Nebraska— where pictures of every visitor adorn the walls (we’re in the bike corner). The wayside bar and café in Hawk Springs, Wyoming—where this shellfish-eating vegetarian made the mistake of ordering Rocky Mountain Oysters—has, at any given time, three times as many diners than town residents. Then there’s the local gas station in a Nebraska town 20 miles outside of Sioux City, Iowa, whose name I can’t remember for the life of me, but whose people I will never forget. Some 30 people gathered at the gas station to kibbitz on Sunday morning, making us honorary members of their community, despite our ridiculous-looking neon bike clothing and our urban origins, and their conservative politics. Conservative, yes, as was evident from the emblems on their cars and houses. They wanted the world to know they supported the war in Iraq, and knew many loved ones fighting in it. Snippets of rabid local radio told me not to start a conversation about immigration or gay marriage with these people I depended on to fill my water bottles. I will never know how much my “white” skin, deep brown from over-exposure to the sun, and my obviously heterosexual relationship (“this is my husband, my daughter, my niece ...”) eased my interactions with my new rural friends. And yet ... Did you know that Nebraska is the first and only state in the nation to have a state-owned electric company? “If that sounds like communism,” a local book on the subject opined, “it is not an indication of the political persuasion of the people of Nebraska, who are in general very conservative.” So how did this happen? Well sometime in the ’30s the people of rural Nebraska realized they would never get electricity if they did not socialize it because there was no profit in providing this utility to such tiny and disparate communities. I can attest that this socialist mentality continues to exist when it come to basic services in Nebraska. Over and over again, people we met encouraged us to keep our eye out for windmills on every ranch, “Each has a water spigot, the water is good to drink and it’ll cool you off.” We were advised not to be deterred by barbed wire fences—“Those are for cows, not people” or property rights, “People aren’t like that here.” Two things struck me: the generosity to strangers, and the comfort in inviting us to trespass on their neighbor’s land as if it was their own. We never had to figure out how to get water from a windmill because enough people offered us water from their kitchens and garden hoses. We did, however, borrow shade from a rancher’s only tree or a farmer’s barn. Down we plopped right on someone’s front lawn— can you imagine that in the city? The only question we got was “Are you OK? Is there anything I can do for you?” I wish I had entered into some conversations with the people about the war. I did learn that in communities like Wayne (which is big enough to have a community college, but small enough to have only one movie theater) a whole national guard platoon had left this dying Nebraska Sandhills community to destroy another sand-hill community in Iraq. Every home and business declared its support for these local youth. Other economic options are few in Wayne. If you go to the community college, there is no guarantee you will get a job in your chosen field. There are simply too few people in the region to support much economic activity of any kind. The drought of several years has wilted the agricultural possibilities in a region where cows outnumber people. We had only one intimate conversation about the war during the trip, with a young man we met in an ambulance when my daughter slit her leg open (another story). This man once lived in South Minneapolis—just off Lake Street—and loved it, but had to move because he could not afford it. He moved to a tiny town in South Dakota. We met him in a town of 5,000 in Iowa, where he was training as an Emergency Medical Technician before going to Iraq. When we were about to leave the hospital he gave us his address and told us to write when we made it to Colorado. He said he would write us when he started basic training next month. When it turned out we were staying in the same hotel, we spent the evening trying to convince him there were options for him other than the military—but with no financial resources, he could not see them. We never found out what all the flags, “God bless America” signs and yellow ribbons meant, in terms of depth of support for the war or the Bush administration, but I wished I’d had a “Vets for Peace” button that suggested supporting the troops by bringing them home. I wondered how a gold-star-mother-for-peace would be treated in these communities. I don’t know. All I can tell you is that people who sported such emblems believe in social cooperation—they share with their neighbors, are intelligent, creative and kind to strangers. They live in places where there are no bookstores within a 300-mile radius, and their libraries, wonderful and inviting as they are, are decorated with posters claming that God loves America. They get only one radio station, and although I imagine they have access to every TV station and internet website, I never saw any other channel but FOX when I turned on TV. While traveling across country this news-aholic experienced the longest dry spell in her adult lifetime. I have to tell you that out there on the prairie, snippets about Israel and Lebanon, Fidel Castro’s illness and Mexico’s post-election upheaval seemed like absurd science fiction from another planet. Concerned as I was about meeting drunk drivers on the road, the only thing I knew for sure was that I hoped Mel Gibson was nowhere in the vicinity. Perhaps that is the way news from the “rest of the world” appears all the time to the hardworking rural people in these depopulated regions whose lives are filled with concerns about drought and calves and corn. I don’t know. Despite the dearth of people in these intensely rural farming and ranching communities, these European-American rural folk share with Latinos, African Americans and American Indians the tradition of providing more than their share of human cannon fodder for this country’s military adventures, generation after generation. Veterans from these parts, who return to their communities, often become recluses, sheltered from other humans by the vast empty spaces of Wyoming and Nebraska. I can only imagine the difficulty returning veterans face as they try to talk to people in these tiny communities. In the library in Basset, Nebraska, a patriotic local community group decided to interview all the veterans in their county. They found that while World War II vets might tell a battle story or two, Vietnam veterans and those from either of the Gulf wars were decidedly silent. The only comments about these more recent veterans came from relatives. One of the more extensive reports about a Vietnam vet who died at home in an “accident” was submitted by a sibling who wrote, “Like most veterans from Vietnam, he refused to talk about his service.” I wish I had some real words of wisdom, some way of crossing the chasm between rural and urban. All I have to report is this: The people out there in the so-called “red” regions are as tender and vulnerable as those in the inner city. And this war is leaving a gaping wound in their communities, as the howling prairie winds muffle the cries of veterans. The myriad yellow ribbons and the red, white and blue buntings may paper over the crimes of the government against the people for now, but for how long? When they, in the rural areas, and we, in the urban areas, have had enough, who will we turn against? Each other, or the corporations and politicians who seek to divide us and conquer us? ||

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EDUCATION GAP: WWJN (What Would Janelle Need )

January 15 2008

Janelle (not her real name) is a bright African American teenager, two years behind in school and currently failing in her course work. She is clearly a child not performing at her academic potential. What if we made policy as if the needs of Janelle, a public school student I tutor, were our primary concern?

What Would Janelle Need to succeed?

Janelle would need a warm safe home that is securely hers. She and her mother and siblings have been shuffling from one shelter to another for at least two years. Whenever she moves she misses school for days, even weeks. Sometimes when I meet with her issues of security, lack of sleep and fear are too great to focus on reading.

Janelle’s family would need a steady form of income. With a preschool child at home, this means her mother must either earn income to stay home with her child or earn enough at a job to pay for high-quality day care. Economic needs are so overwhelming in Janelle’s home that academic needs must be secondary.

Janelle and her family would need comprehensive health care like all families do so they proceed with the rest of their lives without fear of illness or disability. In Janelle’s young life she has dealt with more than her share of death and disease, exacerbated by lack of access to health care.

Janelle would need a future. She would need to see people like herself who succeed- not fantastic rags to riches stories that she can only dream about but real possible paths to a future that provides a diverse array of positive choices.

Janelle would need a school system that allows her to make real progress. Now when she goes to school she is faced with overwhelming task of running to catch up to a moving train. Her progress is not measured, only the growing distance between her and her class mates. Testing kids to death, closing schools, reducing teachers’ benefits, don’t benefit Janelle. Only fully funding our schools to provide the teachers and materials needed to fulfill the needs of all students, will help Janelle succeed.

As a reading tutor I dream of the day that there is no shortage of books to chose from written to address cultural, academic, social and emotional needs of African American children, and other children of color. We treasure every new book because of its rarity, and the cost of procuring it. Janelle would need books and curricula that speak to her soul and her academic needs. She would need the funds to flood children like herself with books so they can find their own voices through literature.

As the white over-educated mother of a public school high school senior excelling in the same public school system that is failing Janelle, I know how much daily assistance my child has needed in the last thirteen years, from adjusting to kindergarten rules to mining the college application process. If we are ever going to close the education gap Janelle would need a school that provides evening and weekend homework assistance. This is a tall order. It means providing transportation, lights, and heat and salaries.

Janelle would need to know there will be a place for her in college when she gets there. We need to pay her tuition and find her an institution that will take her the next step. As a college educator I know that despite the current hype, selectivity does not create excellence in the higher education institutions. It only ensures that the next crop of college-educated leaders will be as insular and narrow-minded about protecting their class privilege, as the last. We need more colleges and more access, more ideas and backgrounds in the best and brightest pot, so that the next generation of people with

know-power will have the interests of Janelle’s children in mind.

From a home to live in, to college tuition, everything Janelle needs costs money. Anyone who thinks they have a solution to the education gap that will not involve spending more on the needs of our neediest children is wasting their breath and our time.

But here is a question to ask yourself: Would your life be better or worse if the policy makers, from the President to local school boards, asked What Would Janelle Need before they acted?

Would you be better off if no-one was homeless; if everyone had adequate work, and mothers could afford to choose to stay home or access high quality childcare; if everyone had health coverage and every child felt they had a future with choices and a positive and fulfilling role to play in society? Would your world be better or worse if every child was given the resources to reach their education potential at their own pace; if every child had the choice to become a college-educated adult?

It’s an election year. The pundits would have you believe that you, the public, can be divided by your issues – domestic or foreign, economic or social, health care, or housing, or education. Tell them these are fools’ choices. Demand that the candidates and the media spinners dig deeper. Tell them to ask WWJN?---- What Would Janelle Need? And when they come back with “How do we pay for it?” Tell them to begin by STWS---- Stopping The War ……Sweetie !

Anne Winkler-Morey, Ph .D teaches history at colleges and Universities in the Twin Cities area and is a reading tutor for “Janelle” and others in the Minneapolis Public school District.

IMMIGRATION DEBATE: Back of the Line

The Back of the Line

To hear some Presidential candidates tell it, Americans’ problems will be solved if we just send the lowest paid workers in this country home and make them, “get to the back of the line.” Yes, to those who clean our nations toilets, break their backs in our fields, stand in a frozen puddle of blood processing our nation’s meat, change the diapers of our nation’s children: we not only refuse you citizenship, we not only call you names, but we act as though you are criminals, we arrest you and deport you and tell you to get in the back of the line.

Lets call this what it is: scape-goating. It happens every time things get worse for the majority of us in the vast and diverse middle. We look for someone to blame.

And things are defiantly getting worse for those of us living on $20-100 thousand. Some of us must sell that second home, some of us are cutting back on everything else to pay that mortgage, some of us are facing foreclosure and some of us are looking for a place to rent that we can afford. We all feel the squeeze of rising healthcare, rent, mortgage, food and gas prices. We are seeing our real wages decline.

We are looking for someone to blame.

Instead of looking in front of us to those mortgage, health insurance, pharmaceutical, and utilities corporations, making a killing off our hard times, we turn around and glare at the back of line, to those who feed families and relatives in other nations on salaries of $12,000; those who live without drivers licenses and health care access, those who face discrimination in housing and education. We look back and say “get to the back of the line”!

Immigrants are already at the back of the line. They share that growing backspace with Iraq War veterans, homeless citizens, inner city kids, small farmers and a growing number of people losing their livelihoods as factories cross borders seeking cheaper wages. Let’s show those corporate hogs who say we have money for war, but not housing and education and veteran health care, that we know who is to blame.

It’s not immigrants.

Anne Winkler-Morey has three college degrees, works four jobs, makes $20,000 and would have no health insurance if not for the husband’s union job. She is trying to figure out how to pay her daughter’s college tuition.

IMMIGRATION, GLOBAL VIEW: As Paris Burns: Unfinished Thoughts on Race, Class, and Immigration

As Paris Burns: Unfinished Thoughts about Race, Class, and Immigration.

In order to rally people, governments need enemies. They want us to be afraid, to hate, so we will rally behind them. And if they do not have a real enemy, they will invent one in order to mobilize us. Thich Nhat Hang—Vietnamese monk, activist and writer Writing about her years in Paris, Maya Angelou related a conversation she had with someone who claimed that racism did not exist in France, because the French never engaged in the slave trade. Incredulous at the native’s lack of historical consciousness, Angelou replied, “What about Haiti? What about Martinique? ” France, of course, profited mightily from slave plantations in its Caribbean colonies. The fruits of Haitian slave labor sweetened French coffers in the 18th century. Cheap Caribbean-grown sugar, mixed with succulent French grapes, produced the finest wines in the world, and sipping these liquors during long afternoon lunches became synonymous with being quintessentially French. Unlike in the United States, French slave plantations were located far from the European continent. This made it easier for the French people to harbor the illusion that their society was free of the racism so blatant in the U.S. South where Maya Angelou grew up. At the same time many French people believed the false notion that there was such a thing as a homogenous French (white) culture; that must be protected. It is such an idea that helped nurture the seeds of racism, manifested in oppressive conditions experienced by French citizens of non-European heritage living in Paris suburbs today Angelou’s experience reminds me of conversations I have had with white Minnesotans about my move from North Carolina to the Midwest. “It’s really racist in the South, isn’t it?” they would ask. Often they would follow with an aside that seemed relevant to them about “those black single mothers who come up from Chicago to take advantage of our welfare system” or “those Mexicans who cross the border in order to break the law and take our jobs,” or “those Indians who use treaty rights to gain special favors.” I had never heard the term “I’ve been Jewed” before moving to Minneapolis. It was a favorite at the grocery store where I worked in Dinkytown, used whenever someone shortchanged the cashier. While shocked and personally insulted, at the time I was still using “gypped” to connote the same thing, totally unconscious of the racist origins of that term. What all these deeply racist comments indicate is that people feel that they are being cheated. When resources are tight, humans look for those who are different from them to blame. We tell ourselves that we belong. We harbor this illusion that our lives would be better if the “other” were removed. Today racism is on the rise, and its origins are in the global economy which continues, not unlike the Atlantic slave trade that produced wealth for France and the United States hundreds of years ago. Like the French Angelou encountered, many of us use geography to remove ourselves from the scene of the crime while reaping its benefits. Sweatshops produce products that consumers thousands of miles away can enjoy without seeing the slavelike conditions sewn into the fibers of their shirts. On the other hand, try as so many of us do to find a NIMBY (not in my backyard!) haven, a home, a neighborhood, a suburb, a vacation spot, we cannot shield ourselves from the gross injustices and devastating fallout of this system of global capitalism. That is what the white population of Paris is discovering today. As disenfranchised children of North African immigrants demand to be seen and accounted for, middle and upper class French today are confronting a legacy of racism that is centuries old and decades new. But let us not get carried away picking on the French. Immigration is a global phenomenon, as is the racism that attends it. Our global economy is based on having a cheap labor force that can be moved from place to place to do the dirtiest work. For nearly 400 years Europeans forcibly removed Africans to the Americas to produce labor-intensive plantation crops. In the United States, European and Asian immigrants were recruited to build railroads in the 19th century. North Africans provided a cheap labor force to rebuild war-torn Europe in the 1950s. Mexicans have been recruited since the beginning of the 20th century to work in factories and farms from Texas to Minnesota. Today immigrants from all over Asia and the Middle East are recruited to work in war-torn Iraq. Even Louisiana is looking south to find cheap labor to rebuild after Hurricane Katrina. Immigrant labor is more attractive than native labor for employers because: 1. When you remove people from their homes they are more easily exploited. 2. The local population, resentful of the competition for labor, will shun the new arrival, rather than invite them into their unions, especially if they are from a different ethnic group whose life-ways can be demonized. 3. Language and cultural barriers will make it difficult for them to organize and understand their rights. 4. It is easier to hire and fire foreign workers, which mitigates against organizing. The often temporary nature of the employment makes it difficult for workers to commit to organizing in the new place. The system of immigrant labor works because there are rich countries and poor countries and the system depends on the perpetuation of internal class distinctions based on race. In turn, it feeds on and multiplies inequalities. And it happens everywhere. Not just in white-dominated societies like France and the United States. In the Caribbean region there is a spiral of oppression that begins, at the outer edge, with Haiti. Haitians working in the Dominican Republic, Nicaraguans working in Costa Rica, and Guatemalans working in southern Mexico are all experiencing virulent racism in their host communities and hyper-exploitation in the workplace. Race, class, and nationality are one as Dominicans, Costa Ricans, and Mexicans distinguish themselves as “whiter” than the immigrant workers, thereby perpetuating the legacy of indigenous conquest and Atlantic slave trade. If Haiti is at the outer edge of this immigration spiral, the United States is at the center. We are indeed in the belly of the beast. What do we do? Here are some unfinished thoughts. When Camilo Mejia (the young soldier who went to jail rather than return to Iraq) was in the Twin Cities in November he talked about the intense solidarity that develops between comrades on a platoon. It is this solidarity that is essential to keep an army fighting. Mejia described this bond as “greater than the bonds of family.” That is a profound thing to say. Also, when questioned, Mejia downplayed the idea that the army particularly discriminated against Latinos, saying that class was the most important distinction and poor whites were equally its victims. Although there are many stories of racism, I have also heard people talk wistfully of the interracial solidarity that develops in the army. Some people, whites included, actually experience the army as a haven from the racial divisions that poison civilian society, even as they propagate new racist ideas about the “enemies” in order to make them killable. Can we create such a bond in our own communities? Can we stop the endless search for bigger backyard fences and start building interracial solidarity in our neighborhoods? To do so, the focus of our protest needs to be not just on the ugly manifestations of racism by people who feel put upon, but on the giant crimes of corporations who use immigrant labor and race/class distinction to keep us from working together. In the Twin Cities the potential of solidarity in our increasingly racially mixed neighborhoods is powerful. And it is happening—in some unions, some classrooms, some religious institutions, and community groups. The army has a system of building platoon solidarity that seems to fill a basic human need for profound connection, in ways that few other experiences do. Maybe we need to borrow a page from their book and build our own bonds of solidarity, name our own comrades, define our own adversaries, but in order to pursue an infinitely more worthy mission than killing.

IMMIGRATION, GLOBAL VIEW: When the Walls Come Tumbling Down

Dateline: June 7, 20XX:

Jerusalem is aglow with color and light; teeming with people from every corner of the globe. The third annual international labor convention, GLOBAL3, is about to begin.
GLOBAL1 set worldwide wage and benefit standards, making it impossible for corporations to find cheaper labor costs by moving to impoverished regions or inducing super-exploited workers to migrate for jobs offering substandard wages. Overnight, centuries of inequalities began to vanish as workers everywhere began receiving just wages for their work. But there was still much to be done.

GLOBAL2 set about designating reparations needed to adjust for centuries of environmental devastation, neglect of health and education and other basic human needs, and robbery of natural resources in oppressed regions. Creating sustainable local economies enhanced by global fair-trade networks is the focus of GLOBAL3.

The delegates are easily identified. They all wear colorful ribbons designating their union, ethnic group, and country. They all have wires attached to their ears, since everything that is said is simultaneously translated into any language, and all are carrying tote bags, with the number 3 in rainbow colors against a tan background. The bags hold conference schedules, guides to Jerusalem, commemorative coffee cups and two little pebbles. One represents the wall that once divided Israelis from Palestinians, the other—the wall that once divided Mexico from the United States.

The walls came down a few months after GLOBAL2. Without inequitable wage scales and with reparations there was no longer a need for walls to hold people from each other. The guns and army tanks that fortified these walls have also been removed. People began crossing borders to resolve conditions of the heart and soul rather than for economic need. Loved ones were reunited. Others moved to “find themselves” in the places that suited their temperaments best.

The delegates’ first task is to decide how best to spend their three weeks at the conference. There are thousands of workshops to choose from. Only one is required, it is entitled: “Never Again: Learning from 2006.”

There is no set canon for this workshop. Many presenters offer their evidence and theories for the delegates to consider. Still, there are some common themes, and the basic facts to review. 2006 was the year the United States sent the armed National Guard to protect the United States from working people in Mexico seeking jobs across the border. That was when construction began on a 350-mile wall between the two countries. It was the same year that Israel built its so-called “separation barrier” walling in Palestinians, depriving them of water rights and access to productive land, and blocking essential food and medical aid.

Many panelists are quick to point out that the walls were only symptomatic of long-term policies in Israel/ Palestine and the U.S./ Mexican border: seizing land, stealing natural resources like water and oil, creating wage differentiations based on race, ethnicity, nationality, and religion, and a super-exploited migrant labor system. Always, state-supported violence was needed to hold these systems of inequality in place. In addition, many panelists emphasize the role of racism in upholding these systems of inequality. They argue that negative stereotypes kept working people across borders of race, nationality, religion, and ethnicity from uniting.

One panelist provides a quick review of the history of the immigration debate in the United States in 2006. She shows slides of “minutemen” volunteering to build the wall in San Diego on the Mexican border. The crowd breaks into peals of laughter when someone cracks that they don’t even appear to have a minute’s worth of humanity.

The panelist does not laugh. She holds up her hand to silence the crowd. “Yes, we can laugh now,” she says. “But we must not forget how easy it is for people to be fooled into thinking that those with a different language, religion, ethnicity, history, are to blame for the oppressed conditions imposed by elites. For example,” she continues, “remember that in 2006 government officials and citizens’ groups were calling for an English-only United States.” She pauses for effect, as the crowd gasps and guffaws. “Yes, I know it sounds absurd now . . .”

She pauses to let the point sink in and then ends with: “My friends, the events of 2006 are now a receding nightmare. To keep the walls and wars from happening again, we must learn to forgive these trespasses against humanity. But making sure that it is never again will also require that we never forget.”

The next speaker takes an entirely different tack. “The second half of 2006 was the beginning of the Great Coalition. Antiwar forces came together with immigrant-rights advocates. The labor movement, already showing its backbone in the early months of the year through its participation in the burgeoning immigrant-rights movement, began to see itself as the glue that connected peace and immigrant-rights causes. They began to speak of a ‘human-rights movement without borders.’ Many of the policies passed during GLOBAL1 and GLOBAL2 were beginning to be discussed during that long summer. The mass mobilizations of that fall were unprecedented in size and diversity. We must never forget how, in one local community after another, turf and territory receded and solidarity moved from slogan to core emotion. We would do well to study this transformation so that we never move backward.”

The workshop ends there, and the delegates, exhausted but enlightened, head for the best potluck in the history of the world.

LATIN AMERICA LEFT: Thoughts about the Mexican Election on September 11, 2006

Thoughts about the Mexican Election on September 11, 2006

When I used to teach U.S./ Mexican relations at the University of Minnesota, there was always a student who would brush his or her hand in the air dismissively and pronounce, sometimes with a smirk, other times with a look of genuine concern and frustration: “Why don’t the Mexicans care for their own people? Why do Mexicans put up with so much corruption?” In response I would acknowledge that Mexican history is indeed rife with examples of government corruption. I would then embark on a semester-long project to erase two areas of ignorance, common to so many of us educated in the United States. 1. Ignorance of the United States. The comments assume that Mexican corruption and inequality make it a society apart; that its history can not be compared to that of one’s own, in this case, the United States. There is a racist assumption here: that what is wrong with Mexico is cultural. But mostly there is a profound ignorance of U.S. history. As we make our way through the semester and through the decades, comparing and contrasting the U.S. and Mexican experiences, the parallels are astonishing. From the U.S.-Mexican War when both governments were motivated by a desire to conquer indigenous groups and both woefully mistreated their conscripts, to the Bush/Fox administration under which privatization is the watchword, and electoral victory at any cost is the practice. Overlaying these parallels is a consistent tale of robbery. The United States government, in cahoots with big business, steals Mexican land, oil, food, and workers, impoverishing the Mexican majority, depleting resources for generations to come, while a tiny Mexican elite holds the door open and shares in the profits. One hundred and sixty years ago Mexico lost half its territory to the United States. Today Halliburton and other oil interests wait eagerly for the new president, Felipe Calderon, to fulfill his promise to privatize PEMEX, Mexico’s state-owned oil company, cutting the heart out of Mexico’s economic sovereignty. 2. Ignorance of Mexican social movements. The student’s remarks also reveal a common false assumption about the Mexican people; that they are docile, willing to put up with ever greater amounts of corruption. It has to do with conflating the Mexican government with Mexican people, and with a misunderstanding of how in Mexico, as in the rest of the world, class interests usually trump national ones. Then there is our basic ignorance of the remarkable history of Mexican resistance. Not that we have learned much about U.S. resistance either. When we study both together we can see that here too, there are historical parallels. At the end of the 19th century U.S. workers and farmers rebelled against railroads conglomerates, many of whom were the same companies and individuals that gained control of Mexican mines and agriculture, inspiring Mexicans to engage in revolution. In the 1930s, U.S. workers, farmers, farm workers, students, and veterans engaged in mass protests and Mexican workers, peasants, and students took over takeovers of mines, universities, and plantations in response to the Great Depression. Likewise, in the late 1960s, huge demonstrations against U.S. imperialism occurred in both nations. However, there is no denying a general difference of degree: The people in the U.S. protest; Mexicans revolt. While students in the United States might be able to stage a one-day sit-in to protest a tuition increase, or effort to break a union on campus, in Mexico, teachers, students, and workers shut down the national university (UNAM) for months at a time on a regular basis, to protest wage decreases, tuition increases, or efforts to curtail academic freedom. Today, as Mexico faces a fraudulent election, the losing candidate, Lopez Obrador, is promising to create a parallel government. If that sounds unlikely to those of us who grew up in the United States, it is because we have no experience with that level of political action. We can hardly imagine Al Gore or John Kerry making such a declaration. The Democratic Party is too invested in the status quo to risk unleashing such a social movement in the U.S.. In Mexico, however, there is a long tradition of parallel governing structures, erected when the powers that be are unresponsive to the demands of the people. According to the Associated Press (August 29, 2006), Lopez Obrador likes to see himself as the modern-day Benito Juárez, who ran a parallel government during the French occupation of Mexico in the 1860s. There are many other precedents, however. During the colonial period up until the eve of the revolution in 1910, regional indigenous political structures existed parallel to the official colonial and post-colonial government. Emiliano Zapata himself was one of those local leaders whose power was legitimized by his ability to address the demands of his people. During the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920) there were no less than four parallel governments at one point. And of course the Zapatistas in Chiapas have been operating since 1994 within their own regional autonomous governing structure. As I write, what began as a teachers’ strike in Oaxaca has become a regional revolt. The coalition of teachers, students, indigenous groups, and others has wrested control of the region from the official government. Now there is talk of throwing their support behind Lopez Obrador’s “legitimate government.” Why is the soil so much more fertile for grassroots democracy in Mexico? I can’t tell you for sure, but I don’t believe it has anything to do with superior ethnic or cultural ways. Rather it has to do with the hundreds of years of Spanish colonialism and U.S. imperialism that have left Mexicans with less to lose and more to win when they unite and fight. We, the ordinary people in the United States, have always been in an awkward in-between position. We are oppressed by multinational corporations who lower our wages to increase their profits, yet at the same time we profit from sweatshop conditions in places like Mexico that provide us with lower consumer prices, and Mexican workers who cross borders and provide cheap labor that lowers the cost of food and services in the United States. Understanding the complex economic relationship between Mexico and the U.S. without blaming Mexican workers (for leaving home to seek better-paying work) is a huge challenge. Instead of feeling threatened by Mexican immigrants, U.S. workers would be better served by analyzing the commonalities they have with the Mexican working class. If racism was not part of the equation, Mexican and U.S. workers working together would prove a formidable bloc to the globalized corporate structure that defines so much suffering and exploitation in North and South America.

GLOBAL, LOCAL CONNECTIONS: Lurking With Intent to Seek Justice

Lurking, with Intent to Seek Justice

March 2007 This past week a discussion has ensued over whether to make amends to immigrants fleeing Hitler who were denied U.S. visas, by giving Anne Frank citizenship. Well, as a historian and one who seeks justice I’m all for reparations. But first, let’s stop manufacturing crimes for the next generation to repair! If we want to right the injustices of our immigration system, let’s first provide citizenship and, while we are at it, livable wages and collective bargaining rights for all farm, service, construction, and other underpaid workers. What does immigration have to do with workplace justice? Everything. According to a March 4 New York Times article, farmers in Colorado are bringing in prisoners to replace undocumented workers who aren’t showing up there due to recent immigration crackdowns. Iowa is following suit. The prisoners make 60 cents a day. Yes, you read that correctly. Those farmers pay a fee to the state. So prisoners are subsidizing both farmers and the state of Colorado. Colorado Corrections officers tout it as a way to provide job skills for inmates. The desire of employers for an exploitable workforce knows no bounds. The government needs to intervene with subsidies for certain sectors if necessary, to make sure that all workers make a decent living for their labor. Otherwise employers will continue to search for more vulnerable workers, communities who are criminalized and can’t fight for their rights, be they undocumented immigrants or prisoners. Speaking of criminalization, Minneapolis city councilperson Cam Gordon is introducing a motion to repeal a 47-year-old law that, in effect. criminalizes African American men. In 2006, 133 of 167 of those arrested for “lurking with the intent to commit a crime” were people of color, the vast majority of them African American men. The law allows the police (and those people calling in with complaints) to decide what someone is intending to do. At a March 7 Urban League Forum on the subject, the moderator asked, “Where are African American men in Minneapolis safe to just be?” Duane Reed, president of the Minneapolis NAACP, replied, “In my home.” While we fight lurking legislation in Minneapolis, George Bush has been lurking in Latin America with the intent to retain supremacy over the region. He is stealing the rhetoric of resistance. He is countering moves by Latin Americans to use their high-profit resources to fund human needs and build sustainable diverse economies based on fair trade and regional economic interdependence. Bush wants to make sure those natural resource profits stay in the hands of multinational corporations. So he has exhibited a sudden awareness of Latin American poverty and offered aid, such as a naval ship hospital, as if that could address continental health-care needs. Guatemalans greeted Bush’s recent visit with a demonstration of 2,000 demanding: No to the war in Iraq, U.S. military out of Guatemala, yes to immigrant rights, social justice, and fair trade between all peoples! Bush’s assertion to Latin America that the United States is “about health care and education” is especially galling as we continue to struggle in Minneapolis with a yawning race/education gap kindergarten through grade school. Everyone (including me) has their theories. But it is action we need. One thing we can do immediately is to pass the Dream Act now so that this year’s senior high students who came to Minnesota without documents have the possibility of college. And we need to stop the war. Money for schools, not war. Money for health care, jobs, immigrant resettlement, not war. Let’s do that first. And yes, we must take care of our wounded soldiers. Properly. But first: Stop the state-sponsored spread of a mass epidemic of PTSD; stop the war. Then we will need to talk about reparations. In Iraq, Latin America, at our borders, for our veterans, for those conquered and enslaved, and those abused by our military-industrial complex, here and around the world. It will be a long conversation. And when we begin to sort out reparations priorities, I vote that we do as Mother Jones said: Pray for the dead (including my childhood heroine, the beloved Anne Frank) and work like hell for the living.

IMMIGRATION DEBATE: "But this is Not Honduras...."

But this is not Honduras……..

My friend Michael Livingston once told me that teaching social justice involves lying a little - if you tell the uninitiated the straight truth they’ll write you off. I have found this to be true about teaching in general, whether its trying to persuade a person on the street to oppose the war, teaching history to college students, helping 13 year-olds learn how to read, or even teaching dance to middle school girls - I need to meet my students half-way even if it means walking in the opposite direction of where I want to go with them.

Sometimes however, I wonder.

The immigration debate is heating up in Minnesota and nationwide. Last December Governor Pawlenty presented a “study” that claimed that illegal immigrants and their offspring are costing Minnesota tax payers more than they contribute.

Similar caustic rhetoric coming out of Washington, in the guise of proposed legislation illustrates that Pawlenty is not the only politician using hate- mongering as an election year, vote-getting ploy.

Meeting these politicians and their unwitting supporters half-way we point out that undocumented immigrants pay taxes and pay into social security without receiving a dime. We say that immigrants do work that other Minnesotans don’t want for wages they would not accept, providing citizens with inexpensive goods and services. We remind them that we are a nation full of immigrants. We tell them to thank an immigrant for their high quality of life.

These arguments, may help someone to reject the latest hate campaign but they do not get to the heart of the immigration issue: Our economy has been dependent on the super- exploitation of a labor underclass for centuries. Substandard immigrant wages perpetuate labor and race inequality, imperialism and war.

How does this system work?

1. PERPETUATATING RACISM Throughout U.S. history the hierarchy of labor has been justified by dehumanizing workers on the bottom of the ladder: People from Africa: “ 3/5 of a person“, women: “property of father or husband“, children: ‘half the size, half the pay,” the last off the boat: “of inferior ethnicity.” People of the global south “simple people who need less.” Prisoners: “in debt to society- not deserving.”

Today, defining immigrants as illegal and therefore undeserving is the lynch pin behind Pawlenty’s anti-immigrant campaign. Children of undocumented immigrants (regardless of their citizenship) are not deserving of an education, their parents do not deserve a decent wage and labor protections, and none in the family deserves health care.

2. VULNERABLE WORKERS
Slavery worked by keeping workers as vulnerable as possible. The middle passage -mass torture- left people physically and emotionally battered. Language barriers among slaves made it difficult to organize. Legally sanctioned corporal punishment heightened the cost of rebellion. Laws defining this sector of the population as not deserving of political representation made legal recourse impossible. Jim Crow laws legalized a race hierarchy post-slavery. Similar tactics have kept women, children and prisoners vulnerable, allowing employers to super exploit these workers. Neo-colonial policies left workers in other countries working for U.S. corporations in mono-crop economies without employment alternatives or the ability to vote out their oppressors, forcing many to seek work across borders.

New immigrants have always been in the most vulnerable worker category. Language, cultural and citizenship barriers and the desperate economic and political conditions that prompted their decision to leave home, create vulnerable conditions for immigrant workers. Illegal status, like slavery and disenfranchisement is a powerful way to intensify the vulnerability of a group of workers.

Free trade policies, illegal status and geographic proximity- which make it easy deport organizers and replace them with other desperate workers, are factors that together help to maintain the super-exploitation of working people from Mexico and Central America.

Preserving a super-exploited labor force requires military force. The Iraq war is not just about oil but oil profits. Migrant laborers from all over the world are working in Iraq today.


Well yes Anne, that’s all quite true, but what do you say to the dedicated Mpls. Public school teacher, who when faced with job of incorporating a non-English speaking student into her overcrowded classroom exclaims

“after all, this is not Honduras!

How do you meet her half way so she can hear you? Maybe this is not the time to talk about global capitalism or how immigrants shore up social security. Maybe this is the time to talk about social change, posing the question: How are we going to get the sources we need to teach our children?

We can remind her of the gains made by past labor, civil rights and peace movements. It is through organization and coalition building that we can turn bombs into books, bring teachers the resources they need to serve an increasingly diverse student body, and parents the salaries and benefits they need to provide kids with what they need to be school-ready.

Today more than ever these movements overlap. The immigrant rights movement not only brings all these issues together, but here in the Twin Cities it provides the opportunity for unprecedented coalitions of diverse ethnic communities and representatives of labor, religious and civil rights organizations.

Peace activists can help make Governor Pawlenty deeply regret he ever commissioned an immigration study. Let’s not miss this opportunity to build a coalition against racism, inequality and war that is unprecedented in this North Star state .