Púlsar
La Suprema Corte de Justicia de México determinó este jueves la constitucionalidad de la ley de aborto vigente en México DF desde abril de 2007. Respondió así a una acción presentada por uno de sus ministros, Sergio Aguirre.
Fueron 8 votos contra 3 los que consideraron infundada la acción de inconstitucionalidad contra las reformas realizadas a la Ley de Salud y al Código Penal de la ciudad de México en abril del 2007.
Estas reformas determinaron la despenalización del aborto en esta ciudad dentro de las primeras 12 semanas de gestación.
La corte emitió un dictamen donde señala que la Constitución y los tratados internacionales suscritos por México no contemplan el llamado "derecho a la vida desde el momento de la concepción".
El presidente del supremo tribunal, Guillermo Ortiz Mayagoitia, expresó que esta declaración representa "un antes y un después" por las consecuencias jurídicas y sociales que supone.
De este modo, las autoridades del DF mexicano están obligadas a garantizar gratuidad y sanidad en la interrupción legal del embarazo durante el periodo señalado.
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9/4/08
Tyronegate and Trusteeship
Can SEIU Members Exorcize the Purple Shades of Jackie Presser?
By STEVE EARLY and CAL WINSLOW
http://www.counterpunch.com/early09032008.html
Thousands of SEIU members are expected in San Jose this Saturday, September 6, to protest spreading corruption and Andy Stern’s latest grab for control over SEIU’s third largest local (which has helped blow the whistle on scandalous behavior elsewhere in the union).
The rally is being organized by United Healthcare Workers (UHW) and allied dissidents in SEIU Member Activists for Reform Today (SMART). Both are reacting to their national president’s scheduling of a September 22-23 hearing to remove the elected officers of 150,000-member UHW, including its leader Sal Rosselli, and replace them with Stern appointees from Washington, D.C.
An SEIU activist for 25-years and now the union’s top reformer, Rosselli describes Stern’s latest move as “an act of desperation and retaliation,” designed to divert attention from serious problems in other locals.
Stern picked a bad time for his latest UHW take-over bid. His own skills as a union CEO and talent scout are now in question. In August alone, three close followers, all just appointed or promoted to big-paying jobs in key locals or at SEIU headquarters, have been forced to step down due to mishandled funds. Among those being investigated are Tyrone Freeman from Los Angeles, president of SEIU’s second- largest local union; Annelle Grajeda, chair of its California state council; and Rickman Jackson, a Michigan local leader involved in the widely-condemned disruption of the Labor Notes conference in Michigan last April by four bus-loads of SEIU staffers and stewards. (See “Purple Punch-Out in Dearborn,” CounterPunch, April 15, 2008.)
Thanks to Stern’s personal patronage all serve on the Executive Board of the 2 million-member union. At SEIU’s riot cop-protected convention in Puerto Rico (See “San Juan Showdown,” CounterPunch, June 3, 2008), Freeman, Jackson, and Grajeda were among the 60-odd staffers and local officials hand-picked by Stern in June to be part of his administration slate. All were then chosen, in rubber-stamp fashion, by the assembled delegates. Less than three months later, Freeman, who controlled Local 6434 while serving as an SEIU Vice-President, is now the subject of a criminal investigation of racketeering and embezzlement and a related Congressional inquiry by Rep. George Miller (D-CA), chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee.
As Paul Pringle of the Los Angeles Times has reported in a stunning investigative series, the U.S. Department of Labor is probing “payments of hundreds of thousands of dollars by the union and a related charity to firms owned by relatives of Freeman and expenditures of similar sums on a golf tournament, restaurants such as Morton’s steakhouse, and entertainment companies.” (Associated Press estimates the total amount misspent to be $1 million.) Freeman is a 38-year old former SEIU staffer from Georgia, whose 160,000 members in California earn $9 an hour as home care workers. He initially responded to The Times’ revelations in memorable fashion. “Every expenditure has been in the context of fighting poverty,” he told Pringle, a struggle that apparently includes even his $10,000 tab at the Grand Havana Room, a Beverly Hills cigar bar known for its Hollywood clientele. Within a week of that interview, Freeman took leave of his job “for the duration of the investigation” but is still collecting his $213,000 salary (quite a bulwark against poverty), while a Stern-installed trustee runs the local.
Going down in Freeman’s wake was Rickman Jackson, his former chief of staff at Local 6434, who is now on “voluntary leave” as well. Jackson moved from California to Detroit three years ago, becoming president of 50,000-member SEIU Healthcare Michigan last August. (That local’s many low-income members include home care workers like David Smith, who collapsed and died after the dust-up at Labor Notes in April, an event he was bussed to, under Jackson’s direction, for the alleged purpose of protesting “union-busting.”)
Jackson has run afoul of records showing that, despite his move to Michigan and Stern-backed political ascendancy in a new local there, he continued to collect $178,000 in salary and benefits from his alma mater in LA. (Plus, Pringle reports, he got another “$18,000 from SEIU national headquarters for consulting work.”) There’s also the little matter of Jackson’s home address in California being listed as the site of a Freeman-run “Long Term Care Housing Corporation” that’s now being investigated too; that entity, according to Pringle, “was founded in 2004 as a non-profit but was not granted an IRS tax exemption and had been suspended at one time from doing business in California for failing to file tax returns.”
Last but not least, over Labor Day weekend, Pringle reported a third investigation-related “voluntary leave.” With Stern’s backing, Annelle Grajeda became head of SEIU’s California State Council earlier this year after Rosselli was forced out of that position. She now has stepped down from the Council and two other union jobs over accusations that she permitted double- (or triple?)-dipping by her ex-boyfriend. Grajeda is a former local union staff director, who has never been directly elected by the rank-and-file to any SEIU office. Yet her loyalty to Stern was rewarded in San Juan just three months ago, in the form of new $200,000 a year paycheck as one of six SEIU international Executive Vice-Presidents. Her ex-boyfriend, Alejandro Stephens, is accused of remaining on the payroll of Los Angeles County, while collecting “tens of thousands of dollars” from various SEIU entities, including the state council headed by Grajeda, Grajeda’s own 75,000-member local, and the international union.
SEIU is now trying to recover some of the money paid to Stephens, in belated response to a formal complaint filed by SMART member Arturo Diaz, who is also a county worker. Diaz called the multiple pay-outs a “betrayal of the public trust and malfeasance.” He and other members of Local 721 want to know what role Grajeda might have played in enriching Stephens. Says Diaz: “I think he’s totally taken advantage of the membership.”
When CounterPunch last visited the embattled members of UHW in late March, they were rallying, by the hundreds, in their Oakland union hall and calling for Stern’s ouster. At that time, the SEIU President had just sent his first letter to UHW laying the groundwork for removal of its elected leaders on bogus charges. However, that politically-motivated missive was quickly followed by the PR fiasco of SEIU’s failed invasion of the Labor Notes conference in Michigan, where SEIU rival Rose Ann DeMoro from the California Nurses Association was scheduled to speak. And, then on May Day, the always image-conscious Stern opened his New York Times to find a highly unusual “letter of concern” addressed to him from 100 labor-oriented intellectuals around the country, including Frances Fox-Piven, Adolph Reed, Robin D. G. Kelley, Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, and Mike Davis. This half-page ad warned that “putting UHW under trusteeship would send a very troubling message and be viewed, by many, as a sign that internal democracy is not valued or tolerated within SEIU.”
But the powerful (and always persistent) SEIU president was not deterred for long. Stern quickly moved to Plan B, which called for dismemberment of UHW. If SEIU had to tolerate a dissident like Rosselli for awhile longer his local was at least going to be much smaller. (And, despite the International union’s on-going campaign of legal harassment and disruption, UHW has continued to grow through new organizing.) So, at the San Juan convention in June, Stern rammed through a “jurisdictional change” paving the way for 60,000 home care and nursing home employees to be moved from UHW to Tyrone Freeman’s local.
Very few UHW long-term care union activists —overwhelmingly women of color--have ever been fans of Tyrone. He’s viewed as a glib con artist and weak negotiator, far less aggressive than Rosselli in upholding SEIU contract standards. In balloting conducted by UHW last winter, the affected members voted by a large margin to stay put. But, this being SEIU, what the members wanted didn’t matter in Washington. Stern went right ahead with a two-day “jurisdictional hearing” held, in mid-July, in Manhattan Beach, California. There, more than 5,000 UHW members laid siege to the hotel where the hearing was held, protesting any decision by the Stern-appointed hearing officer that would tear their local apart and, according to UHW, “doom healthcare workers in California to years of substandard contracts and a weakened voice in patient care.”
Internal foes of dismemberment were backed by outsiders who share that UHW concern. Both fear that Stern wants to revive an industry-wide “organizing rights” deal with nursing home operators that compromised SEIU’s ability to engage in patient advocacy, while, at the same time, didn’t deliver promised improvements in pay, benefits, and workloads for union members. In a July 9 open letter, UC-San Francisco sociologist and nursing professor Charlene Harringon, a top researcher on nursing home financing , applauded a different kind of contract, negotiated recently by UHW with Mariner Health Care facilities in northern California. That agreement, she contends, “empowers caregivers to stand up for their residents” and “shows there is a better path to improve nursing home quality.” According to Harrington, SEIU’s attempt to push UHW out of long-term care lobbying and bargaining “may have serious negative consequences for nursing home residents and quality care.”
By mid-August,thanks to Tyronegate, Stern's attempted downsizing of UHW was looking pretty indefensible (although all parties are still awaiting a decision from former UAW lawyer Leonard Page, a friend of SEIU General Counsel Judy Scott, who conducted the controversial hearing in Manhattan Beach.) How could anyone now justify the transfer of so many UHW members, against their wishes, to a local they didn’t want to be in even before it was exposed as corrupt and had to be put under trusteeship?
Unfortunately, the ever-agile Stern just shifted back to his original plan, putting UHW in trusteeship! On August 25, SEIU headquarters issued a press release giving notice of a Sept. 22-23 “trusteeship hearing to address fraud charges” against UHW. The “fraudulent” acts cited are mainly the very reasonable steps UHW has taken, with full knowledge of its elected leadership, to protect itself, legally and organizationally, from any abuse of Stern’s trusteeship powers. In the release, Stern declares that he’s now “committed to leading a reform movement in labor.” His first objective is apparently to crush the reform movement that already exists in his own union, via a purge of Rosselli, plus all UHW senior staff and elected officers. Snuffed out along with them would be the local’s valuable website (www.seiuvoice.org), which has rallied SEIU dissidents around the country, before, during, and since the union’s Puerto Rico convention.
Laying the groundwork for this “nuclear option” and providing “left-cover” for his boss (as in the past) is none other than Stephen Lerner. Lerner is the much-heralded SEIU organizer and executive board member responsible for the union’s “Justice for Janitors” campaigns. Like Stern, he’s also no slouch at double-talk. Just a month ago, in an on-line exchange posted at MRZine, Lerner scoffed at the “myth that UHW has been threatened with trusteeship.” He reassured progressive readers that “this simply isn’t true, no matter how often repeated” and claimed that such “misinformation” is just a “distraction” from the “vibrant, open honest debate” that needs to go on about how labor can secure what he calls “Justice for All.” Standing in the way of that goal is “ ‘Left Business Unionism,’ or maybe more appropriately, ‘Neo-Business Unionism.’” According to Lerner, this previously unidentified species is exemplified by UHW which clings to “a business union model” and focuses too much “on servicing and defending remaining islands of unionization (ie local union interests).” In addition, UHW has apparently also been guilty of engaging in “left rhetoric about militant struggle, better contracts…and greater local autonomy.”
Lerner’s line would be laughable, given how factually challenged it is, if it were not for one fact. On August 25, Stern named Lerner and three other officials to act as his “Personal Representatives and Monitors” of UHW activity. So last week, instead of being down in L.A. where he could have been helping to secure justice for home care workers (whose treasury has been pilfered by Tyrone), Lerner was part of a lawyer-assisted crew of Stern “monitors.” All are now busily engaged in peppering UHW with burdensome “information requests” about every conceivable aspect of its daily operations, particularly those related to the local's legal defense against Stern. Of course, nothing in this intentionally disruptive intervention assists UHW members in any way, particularly those out on strike or in difficult contract negotiations; rather, it’s designed to impede “normal” union functioning, while manufacturing further justification for a full-blown take-over that would (with UHW added) leave the vast majority of California’s 700,000 members with un-elected leadership.
How do we know what life is like on the front-lines of UHW, in the middle of the local’s multi-front war for survival? Well, in the interests of full disclosure, the authors note that we both have daughters working as UHW reps. So we hear a lot about the added stress and frustration of doing day-to-day trade union work under such trying conditions. One of our young staffers reports that she’s been aiding nursing home members whose bosses have become increasingly recalcitrant in bargaining. Unlike Mariner, some UHW employers clearly hope that, by dragging their feet now, they’ll be able to negotiate more favorable terms later on. Outfits like Kindred Healthcare would much prefer to deal with friendlier faces from Local 6434--if UHW members ever end up there--or with any Stern appointees who gain control of UHW.
How did a national union culture, long touted as one of labor’s most dynamic and progressive, engender such a mess? How did it produce a Tyrone Freeman and the kind of press coverage he’s been getting lately (which hurts all unions, not just SEIU)? In Pringle’s Los Angeles Times reporting, this “rising star in local labor circles” is depicted, accurately, by all accounts (except his own), as a free-spending 21st century SEIU version of Jackie Presser, the biggest Teamster boodler of the 1970s and 80s. As other observers have noted, there’s a steady drift, in too many SEIU’ locals, toward Presser’s brand of plain old “business unionism.” First, SEIU operatives at the Labor Notes conference last Spring resort to the same kind of thuggish behavior once common in the Teamsters during the Presser era. Now, like purple shades of Jackie, SEIU leaders collect inflated salaries, tolerate executive board double-dipping, and ignore casual looting of local treasuries, until membership or media whistle-blowing forces them to announce a “clean-up.”
One of Freeman’s early mentors, who asked not to be identified, had this explanation of Tyrone’s rise and fall (as well as the career trajectory of similar Stern proteges): “These are folks who did not earn their status, they were handed it and that leads to a dependence on who handed it to you. The union’s leadership bench is actually very shallow today…A person’s talent and skill and upward mobility now seem to be in inverse proportion in SEIU.”
If loyalty to Stern, rather than competence or honesty, is what leads to rapid career advancemen, and that would appear to be the case, there may be two, three, many Tyrones in the union’s future. That’s because scores of Stern-installed leaders now preside over huge, consolidated locals with few structures for membership accountability or control; many have gotten where they are today via initial appointment rather than through membership election. Many have never worked a day in their life as an SEIU member but their local by-laws have been rigged to insure that they will not ever be easily replaced by anyone from the rank-and-file.
In Local 6434, for example, a worker who wanted to run against Freeman as president is required, within a mere three weeks, to collect and submit the nominating signatures of 4,800 fellow dues-payers! That would be an unheard of hurdle, even in a local with members employed in traditional workplaces. In a union of home-based workers who may not run into five other members in an entire month it’s a guarantee of “presidency for life.” Along with its criminal investigation of Freeman’s spending, the U.S. Department of Labor is also in the process of invalidating this nomination requirement and forcing a fair election.
Legal work in that Local 6434 election challenge was done by Arthur Fox, who is also assisting UHW. He got his start as a union democracy lawyer in the 1970s, as founder of the Professional Drivers Council, a truck drivers’ group that later merged with TDU — Teamsters for a Democratic Union. We also worked with many of the same Teamster dissidents during that period, brave members of PROD, TDU, and a rank-and-file caucus within United Parcel Service called UPSurge. What’s striking to us about the situation in SEIU today is how much the lessons of union democracy struggles during the 1970s have suddenly become relevant again.
To their credit, UHW organizers have been doing their best to brush up on this subject. Among the fifty workshops and training sessions being offered this weekend at a rank-and-file leadership development conference in San Jose is one entitled “Reform Movements Through History.” UHW stewards (and invited guests from other SEIU locals) will be grappling with the following questions: “What kind of role are we, as union leaders, playing in today’s SEIU reform movement? What kind of union are we building if there is no member involvement?” Stewards at the conference are urged to “come learn about the history of the labor movement and discuss lessons we can use in today’s struggle…”
Asked recently about this new focus of UHW staff training and member education, Vice-President John Borsos explained: “One challenge we face is creating a culture of solidarity in non-traditional worksites, where there may not be the traditional kind of union consciousness. So we have tried to be very conscious about instilling a sense of history and institutional culture. We want to demonstrate that what we are doing has been done before. We want people to realize there are precedents for it in SEIU and other unions. I think our struggle with SEIU has made UHW more democratic…”
That internal union battle has certainly made some SEIU rank-and-filers a lot angrier with their top officers than they used to be. Last weekend, for example, Bay Area hospital worker Maya Morris, a leader of SMART, was part of a delegation of 35 UHW activists who dogged Stern and his second-in-command, Anna Berger, at every stop on their “Take Back Labor Day” tour of the mid-west. At this series of post-DNC press events, designed to highlight the need for labor law reform, a busload of SEIU dissidents from California was not a particularly welcome sight, because of their broader conception of “workers rights.”
At a rally for passage of the Employee Free Choice Act, held in St. Louis last Friday, SEIU Secretary-Treasurer Burger gave a big speech “about the right of workers to have a voice on the job and form a union without having to face intimidation from their employer,” reports UHW member Lisa Tomasian.
But, as Tomasian notes, Burger “didn’t talk about whether SEIU members deserve a voice in their own union.” After the rally, Burger gave Tomasian the brush-off, so later in the day, in Iowa City, the UHW steward cornered Stern. She handed the SEIU president a video
of the July protest in Manhattan Beach where “members opposed SEIU’s attempt to force us out of our local and into another.” Tomasian also invited Stern to the UHW educational conference and rally in San Jose this weekend. “He was non-committal,” she says, “and referred me to an assistant.”
Finally, in Wisconsin, the whole California delegation confronted Stern, backing him into a tense hour-long meeting at a local union hall. There, SMART protestors challenged him to a public debate about the current direction of the union. Stern refused to answer any UHW trusteeship-related questions, citing advice from his lawyers. Given recent developments in SEIU—and the rising tide of rank-and-file discontent—such questions are not going away. As will be obvious this Saturday in San Jose, there are just too many SEIU members now determined to “take back” their own union, one way or another.
Cal Winslow is a labor historian, labor educator, Fellow in Environmental Politics, UC Berkeley, and Director of the Mendocino Institute.
Steve Early served for three decades as a national union staffer for the Communications Workers of America and is currently writing a book about the role of Sixties’ radicals in labor. Both are contributors to Rebel Rank-and-File, a forthcoming collection of essays, from Verso Press, on insurgent workers’ movements in the 1970s. They can be reached at cwinslow@mcn.org and Lsupport@aol.com
By STEVE EARLY and CAL WINSLOW
http://www.counterpunch.com/early09032008.html
Thousands of SEIU members are expected in San Jose this Saturday, September 6, to protest spreading corruption and Andy Stern’s latest grab for control over SEIU’s third largest local (which has helped blow the whistle on scandalous behavior elsewhere in the union).
The rally is being organized by United Healthcare Workers (UHW) and allied dissidents in SEIU Member Activists for Reform Today (SMART). Both are reacting to their national president’s scheduling of a September 22-23 hearing to remove the elected officers of 150,000-member UHW, including its leader Sal Rosselli, and replace them with Stern appointees from Washington, D.C.
An SEIU activist for 25-years and now the union’s top reformer, Rosselli describes Stern’s latest move as “an act of desperation and retaliation,” designed to divert attention from serious problems in other locals.
Stern picked a bad time for his latest UHW take-over bid. His own skills as a union CEO and talent scout are now in question. In August alone, three close followers, all just appointed or promoted to big-paying jobs in key locals or at SEIU headquarters, have been forced to step down due to mishandled funds. Among those being investigated are Tyrone Freeman from Los Angeles, president of SEIU’s second- largest local union; Annelle Grajeda, chair of its California state council; and Rickman Jackson, a Michigan local leader involved in the widely-condemned disruption of the Labor Notes conference in Michigan last April by four bus-loads of SEIU staffers and stewards. (See “Purple Punch-Out in Dearborn,” CounterPunch, April 15, 2008.)
Thanks to Stern’s personal patronage all serve on the Executive Board of the 2 million-member union. At SEIU’s riot cop-protected convention in Puerto Rico (See “San Juan Showdown,” CounterPunch, June 3, 2008), Freeman, Jackson, and Grajeda were among the 60-odd staffers and local officials hand-picked by Stern in June to be part of his administration slate. All were then chosen, in rubber-stamp fashion, by the assembled delegates. Less than three months later, Freeman, who controlled Local 6434 while serving as an SEIU Vice-President, is now the subject of a criminal investigation of racketeering and embezzlement and a related Congressional inquiry by Rep. George Miller (D-CA), chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee.
As Paul Pringle of the Los Angeles Times has reported in a stunning investigative series, the U.S. Department of Labor is probing “payments of hundreds of thousands of dollars by the union and a related charity to firms owned by relatives of Freeman and expenditures of similar sums on a golf tournament, restaurants such as Morton’s steakhouse, and entertainment companies.” (Associated Press estimates the total amount misspent to be $1 million.) Freeman is a 38-year old former SEIU staffer from Georgia, whose 160,000 members in California earn $9 an hour as home care workers. He initially responded to The Times’ revelations in memorable fashion. “Every expenditure has been in the context of fighting poverty,” he told Pringle, a struggle that apparently includes even his $10,000 tab at the Grand Havana Room, a Beverly Hills cigar bar known for its Hollywood clientele. Within a week of that interview, Freeman took leave of his job “for the duration of the investigation” but is still collecting his $213,000 salary (quite a bulwark against poverty), while a Stern-installed trustee runs the local.
Going down in Freeman’s wake was Rickman Jackson, his former chief of staff at Local 6434, who is now on “voluntary leave” as well. Jackson moved from California to Detroit three years ago, becoming president of 50,000-member SEIU Healthcare Michigan last August. (That local’s many low-income members include home care workers like David Smith, who collapsed and died after the dust-up at Labor Notes in April, an event he was bussed to, under Jackson’s direction, for the alleged purpose of protesting “union-busting.”)
Jackson has run afoul of records showing that, despite his move to Michigan and Stern-backed political ascendancy in a new local there, he continued to collect $178,000 in salary and benefits from his alma mater in LA. (Plus, Pringle reports, he got another “$18,000 from SEIU national headquarters for consulting work.”) There’s also the little matter of Jackson’s home address in California being listed as the site of a Freeman-run “Long Term Care Housing Corporation” that’s now being investigated too; that entity, according to Pringle, “was founded in 2004 as a non-profit but was not granted an IRS tax exemption and had been suspended at one time from doing business in California for failing to file tax returns.”
Last but not least, over Labor Day weekend, Pringle reported a third investigation-related “voluntary leave.” With Stern’s backing, Annelle Grajeda became head of SEIU’s California State Council earlier this year after Rosselli was forced out of that position. She now has stepped down from the Council and two other union jobs over accusations that she permitted double- (or triple?)-dipping by her ex-boyfriend. Grajeda is a former local union staff director, who has never been directly elected by the rank-and-file to any SEIU office. Yet her loyalty to Stern was rewarded in San Juan just three months ago, in the form of new $200,000 a year paycheck as one of six SEIU international Executive Vice-Presidents. Her ex-boyfriend, Alejandro Stephens, is accused of remaining on the payroll of Los Angeles County, while collecting “tens of thousands of dollars” from various SEIU entities, including the state council headed by Grajeda, Grajeda’s own 75,000-member local, and the international union.
SEIU is now trying to recover some of the money paid to Stephens, in belated response to a formal complaint filed by SMART member Arturo Diaz, who is also a county worker. Diaz called the multiple pay-outs a “betrayal of the public trust and malfeasance.” He and other members of Local 721 want to know what role Grajeda might have played in enriching Stephens. Says Diaz: “I think he’s totally taken advantage of the membership.”
When CounterPunch last visited the embattled members of UHW in late March, they were rallying, by the hundreds, in their Oakland union hall and calling for Stern’s ouster. At that time, the SEIU President had just sent his first letter to UHW laying the groundwork for removal of its elected leaders on bogus charges. However, that politically-motivated missive was quickly followed by the PR fiasco of SEIU’s failed invasion of the Labor Notes conference in Michigan, where SEIU rival Rose Ann DeMoro from the California Nurses Association was scheduled to speak. And, then on May Day, the always image-conscious Stern opened his New York Times to find a highly unusual “letter of concern” addressed to him from 100 labor-oriented intellectuals around the country, including Frances Fox-Piven, Adolph Reed, Robin D. G. Kelley, Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, and Mike Davis. This half-page ad warned that “putting UHW under trusteeship would send a very troubling message and be viewed, by many, as a sign that internal democracy is not valued or tolerated within SEIU.”
But the powerful (and always persistent) SEIU president was not deterred for long. Stern quickly moved to Plan B, which called for dismemberment of UHW. If SEIU had to tolerate a dissident like Rosselli for awhile longer his local was at least going to be much smaller. (And, despite the International union’s on-going campaign of legal harassment and disruption, UHW has continued to grow through new organizing.) So, at the San Juan convention in June, Stern rammed through a “jurisdictional change” paving the way for 60,000 home care and nursing home employees to be moved from UHW to Tyrone Freeman’s local.
Very few UHW long-term care union activists —overwhelmingly women of color--have ever been fans of Tyrone. He’s viewed as a glib con artist and weak negotiator, far less aggressive than Rosselli in upholding SEIU contract standards. In balloting conducted by UHW last winter, the affected members voted by a large margin to stay put. But, this being SEIU, what the members wanted didn’t matter in Washington. Stern went right ahead with a two-day “jurisdictional hearing” held, in mid-July, in Manhattan Beach, California. There, more than 5,000 UHW members laid siege to the hotel where the hearing was held, protesting any decision by the Stern-appointed hearing officer that would tear their local apart and, according to UHW, “doom healthcare workers in California to years of substandard contracts and a weakened voice in patient care.”
Internal foes of dismemberment were backed by outsiders who share that UHW concern. Both fear that Stern wants to revive an industry-wide “organizing rights” deal with nursing home operators that compromised SEIU’s ability to engage in patient advocacy, while, at the same time, didn’t deliver promised improvements in pay, benefits, and workloads for union members. In a July 9 open letter, UC-San Francisco sociologist and nursing professor Charlene Harringon, a top researcher on nursing home financing , applauded a different kind of contract, negotiated recently by UHW with Mariner Health Care facilities in northern California. That agreement, she contends, “empowers caregivers to stand up for their residents” and “shows there is a better path to improve nursing home quality.” According to Harrington, SEIU’s attempt to push UHW out of long-term care lobbying and bargaining “may have serious negative consequences for nursing home residents and quality care.”
By mid-August,thanks to Tyronegate, Stern's attempted downsizing of UHW was looking pretty indefensible (although all parties are still awaiting a decision from former UAW lawyer Leonard Page, a friend of SEIU General Counsel Judy Scott, who conducted the controversial hearing in Manhattan Beach.) How could anyone now justify the transfer of so many UHW members, against their wishes, to a local they didn’t want to be in even before it was exposed as corrupt and had to be put under trusteeship?
Unfortunately, the ever-agile Stern just shifted back to his original plan, putting UHW in trusteeship! On August 25, SEIU headquarters issued a press release giving notice of a Sept. 22-23 “trusteeship hearing to address fraud charges” against UHW. The “fraudulent” acts cited are mainly the very reasonable steps UHW has taken, with full knowledge of its elected leadership, to protect itself, legally and organizationally, from any abuse of Stern’s trusteeship powers. In the release, Stern declares that he’s now “committed to leading a reform movement in labor.” His first objective is apparently to crush the reform movement that already exists in his own union, via a purge of Rosselli, plus all UHW senior staff and elected officers. Snuffed out along with them would be the local’s valuable website (www.seiuvoice.org), which has rallied SEIU dissidents around the country, before, during, and since the union’s Puerto Rico convention.
Laying the groundwork for this “nuclear option” and providing “left-cover” for his boss (as in the past) is none other than Stephen Lerner. Lerner is the much-heralded SEIU organizer and executive board member responsible for the union’s “Justice for Janitors” campaigns. Like Stern, he’s also no slouch at double-talk. Just a month ago, in an on-line exchange posted at MRZine, Lerner scoffed at the “myth that UHW has been threatened with trusteeship.” He reassured progressive readers that “this simply isn’t true, no matter how often repeated” and claimed that such “misinformation” is just a “distraction” from the “vibrant, open honest debate” that needs to go on about how labor can secure what he calls “Justice for All.” Standing in the way of that goal is “ ‘Left Business Unionism,’ or maybe more appropriately, ‘Neo-Business Unionism.’” According to Lerner, this previously unidentified species is exemplified by UHW which clings to “a business union model” and focuses too much “on servicing and defending remaining islands of unionization (ie local union interests).” In addition, UHW has apparently also been guilty of engaging in “left rhetoric about militant struggle, better contracts…and greater local autonomy.”
Lerner’s line would be laughable, given how factually challenged it is, if it were not for one fact. On August 25, Stern named Lerner and three other officials to act as his “Personal Representatives and Monitors” of UHW activity. So last week, instead of being down in L.A. where he could have been helping to secure justice for home care workers (whose treasury has been pilfered by Tyrone), Lerner was part of a lawyer-assisted crew of Stern “monitors.” All are now busily engaged in peppering UHW with burdensome “information requests” about every conceivable aspect of its daily operations, particularly those related to the local's legal defense against Stern. Of course, nothing in this intentionally disruptive intervention assists UHW members in any way, particularly those out on strike or in difficult contract negotiations; rather, it’s designed to impede “normal” union functioning, while manufacturing further justification for a full-blown take-over that would (with UHW added) leave the vast majority of California’s 700,000 members with un-elected leadership.
How do we know what life is like on the front-lines of UHW, in the middle of the local’s multi-front war for survival? Well, in the interests of full disclosure, the authors note that we both have daughters working as UHW reps. So we hear a lot about the added stress and frustration of doing day-to-day trade union work under such trying conditions. One of our young staffers reports that she’s been aiding nursing home members whose bosses have become increasingly recalcitrant in bargaining. Unlike Mariner, some UHW employers clearly hope that, by dragging their feet now, they’ll be able to negotiate more favorable terms later on. Outfits like Kindred Healthcare would much prefer to deal with friendlier faces from Local 6434--if UHW members ever end up there--or with any Stern appointees who gain control of UHW.
How did a national union culture, long touted as one of labor’s most dynamic and progressive, engender such a mess? How did it produce a Tyrone Freeman and the kind of press coverage he’s been getting lately (which hurts all unions, not just SEIU)? In Pringle’s Los Angeles Times reporting, this “rising star in local labor circles” is depicted, accurately, by all accounts (except his own), as a free-spending 21st century SEIU version of Jackie Presser, the biggest Teamster boodler of the 1970s and 80s. As other observers have noted, there’s a steady drift, in too many SEIU’ locals, toward Presser’s brand of plain old “business unionism.” First, SEIU operatives at the Labor Notes conference last Spring resort to the same kind of thuggish behavior once common in the Teamsters during the Presser era. Now, like purple shades of Jackie, SEIU leaders collect inflated salaries, tolerate executive board double-dipping, and ignore casual looting of local treasuries, until membership or media whistle-blowing forces them to announce a “clean-up.”
One of Freeman’s early mentors, who asked not to be identified, had this explanation of Tyrone’s rise and fall (as well as the career trajectory of similar Stern proteges): “These are folks who did not earn their status, they were handed it and that leads to a dependence on who handed it to you. The union’s leadership bench is actually very shallow today…A person’s talent and skill and upward mobility now seem to be in inverse proportion in SEIU.”
If loyalty to Stern, rather than competence or honesty, is what leads to rapid career advancemen, and that would appear to be the case, there may be two, three, many Tyrones in the union’s future. That’s because scores of Stern-installed leaders now preside over huge, consolidated locals with few structures for membership accountability or control; many have gotten where they are today via initial appointment rather than through membership election. Many have never worked a day in their life as an SEIU member but their local by-laws have been rigged to insure that they will not ever be easily replaced by anyone from the rank-and-file.
In Local 6434, for example, a worker who wanted to run against Freeman as president is required, within a mere three weeks, to collect and submit the nominating signatures of 4,800 fellow dues-payers! That would be an unheard of hurdle, even in a local with members employed in traditional workplaces. In a union of home-based workers who may not run into five other members in an entire month it’s a guarantee of “presidency for life.” Along with its criminal investigation of Freeman’s spending, the U.S. Department of Labor is also in the process of invalidating this nomination requirement and forcing a fair election.
Legal work in that Local 6434 election challenge was done by Arthur Fox, who is also assisting UHW. He got his start as a union democracy lawyer in the 1970s, as founder of the Professional Drivers Council, a truck drivers’ group that later merged with TDU — Teamsters for a Democratic Union. We also worked with many of the same Teamster dissidents during that period, brave members of PROD, TDU, and a rank-and-file caucus within United Parcel Service called UPSurge. What’s striking to us about the situation in SEIU today is how much the lessons of union democracy struggles during the 1970s have suddenly become relevant again.
To their credit, UHW organizers have been doing their best to brush up on this subject. Among the fifty workshops and training sessions being offered this weekend at a rank-and-file leadership development conference in San Jose is one entitled “Reform Movements Through History.” UHW stewards (and invited guests from other SEIU locals) will be grappling with the following questions: “What kind of role are we, as union leaders, playing in today’s SEIU reform movement? What kind of union are we building if there is no member involvement?” Stewards at the conference are urged to “come learn about the history of the labor movement and discuss lessons we can use in today’s struggle…”
Asked recently about this new focus of UHW staff training and member education, Vice-President John Borsos explained: “One challenge we face is creating a culture of solidarity in non-traditional worksites, where there may not be the traditional kind of union consciousness. So we have tried to be very conscious about instilling a sense of history and institutional culture. We want to demonstrate that what we are doing has been done before. We want people to realize there are precedents for it in SEIU and other unions. I think our struggle with SEIU has made UHW more democratic…”
That internal union battle has certainly made some SEIU rank-and-filers a lot angrier with their top officers than they used to be. Last weekend, for example, Bay Area hospital worker Maya Morris, a leader of SMART, was part of a delegation of 35 UHW activists who dogged Stern and his second-in-command, Anna Berger, at every stop on their “Take Back Labor Day” tour of the mid-west. At this series of post-DNC press events, designed to highlight the need for labor law reform, a busload of SEIU dissidents from California was not a particularly welcome sight, because of their broader conception of “workers rights.”
At a rally for passage of the Employee Free Choice Act, held in St. Louis last Friday, SEIU Secretary-Treasurer Burger gave a big speech “about the right of workers to have a voice on the job and form a union without having to face intimidation from their employer,” reports UHW member Lisa Tomasian.
But, as Tomasian notes, Burger “didn’t talk about whether SEIU members deserve a voice in their own union.” After the rally, Burger gave Tomasian the brush-off, so later in the day, in Iowa City, the UHW steward cornered Stern. She handed the SEIU president a video
of the July protest in Manhattan Beach where “members opposed SEIU’s attempt to force us out of our local and into another.” Tomasian also invited Stern to the UHW educational conference and rally in San Jose this weekend. “He was non-committal,” she says, “and referred me to an assistant.”
Finally, in Wisconsin, the whole California delegation confronted Stern, backing him into a tense hour-long meeting at a local union hall. There, SMART protestors challenged him to a public debate about the current direction of the union. Stern refused to answer any UHW trusteeship-related questions, citing advice from his lawyers. Given recent developments in SEIU—and the rising tide of rank-and-file discontent—such questions are not going away. As will be obvious this Saturday in San Jose, there are just too many SEIU members now determined to “take back” their own union, one way or another.
Cal Winslow is a labor historian, labor educator, Fellow in Environmental Politics, UC Berkeley, and Director of the Mendocino Institute.
Steve Early served for three decades as a national union staffer for the Communications Workers of America and is currently writing a book about the role of Sixties’ radicals in labor. Both are contributors to Rebel Rank-and-File, a forthcoming collection of essays, from Verso Press, on insurgent workers’ movements in the 1970s. They can be reached at cwinslow@mcn.org and Lsupport@aol.com
Voces Silenciadas, documental sobre ataques a la libertad de expresión
Guadalupe Cruz Jaimes
CIMACnoticias
El derecho humano a la libertad de expresión no es una garantía que se respete en México y el riesgo de ser reprimido aumenta cuando se trata de mujeres, como Teresa Bautista y Felicitas Martínez, indígenas triquis comunicadoras de la radio comunitaria La Voz que Rompe el Silencio, del municipio autónomo de San Juan Copala, Oaxaca, asesinadas el pasado 7 de abril en una emboscada.
Este crimen, al igual que el cierre del espacio radiofónico de Carmen Aristegui en W Radio, el 4 de enero pasado, fueron motivos de “preocupación y ocupación” que llevaron a Mari Carmen De Lara a producir y dirigir el documental Voces Silenciadas, el cual fue presentado hoy a medios de comunicación, en la sala Fósforo del Antiguo Colegio de San Ildefonso.
En el documental hay voces inteligentes, como les llamó De Lara, entre ellas las de las y los periodistas e intelectuales Carmen Aristegui, Miguel Ángel Granados Chapa, Javier Corral Jurado, Lorenzo Meyer, Vicente Leñero, Carlos Monsiváis y Jenaro Villamil, que exponen su punto de vista sobre la libertad de expresión desde una perspectiva crítica, que los caracteriza.
En el documental, cuyo montaje, edición y post-producción estuvo a cargo de Leopoldo Best, distintos críticos y relatores del acontecer político, como el periodista Granados Chapa, realizan un análisis sobre la “urgente” necesidad de legislar en materia de medios de comunicación.
Asimismo, la cinta señala que desde la llegada del Partido Acción Nacional a la presidencia de la República, se han registrado 24 asesinatos a periodistas y 7 desapariciones, por lo que México ocupa el segundo lugar en el mundo más riesgoso para ejercer esta profesión, sólo después de Irak, país que se encuentra en situación de guerra.
En conferencia de prensa, De Lara, creadora también del documental Costureras, mujeres sobrevivientes del terremoto de 1985 en la Ciudad de México, lamentó que por el asesinato de las dos periodistas indígenas, el gobernador de Oaxaca Ulises Ruiz “no haya realizado la más mínima investigación, cuando eran mujeres que tenían incidencia en su comunidad”.
La documentalista manifestó que la democracia en México no será posible, en tanto las distintas voces, críticas o no, no se hagan escuchar, ya que pareciera que “sólo una voz es la que va a dictaminar la información”.
Mari Carmen De Lara reiteró que este documental, cuya producción fue apoyada por la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México y Organizaciones de la Sociedad Civil (OSC), es el resultado de su preocupación por el cierre de dos espacios “importantes para la vida democrática de este país, que son el de Carmen Aristegui y el de José Gutiérrez Vivó”.
Durante la conferencia de prensa, la politóloga Denise Dresser, quién además expone su punto de vista sobre la libertad de expresión en la cinta, aseguró que si en el país existiera un sistema plural en los medios de comunicación, a seis meses de su despido, Aristegui ya se encontraría al aire en otra radiodifusora.
Sin embargo, aseguró que esta situación revela “la gravedad del problema”, ya que aunque no se dice de manera abierta que existe un veto a la comunicadora, “se han vuelto más sofisticados, más perversos, menos obvios, pero siguen ahí”.
Agregó que el caso de Carmen Aristegui “la trasciende y vino a evidenciar algo mucho más amplio que tiene que ver con la distribución y el ejercicio del poder en este país, en una era formalmente democrática”.
La analista manifestó su deseo porque Voces Silenciadas “sirva como una sacudida de conciencia” para que la sociedad se cuestione sobre la manera “sutil” en la que se coartan las libertades de expresión en el país, lo cual quebranta la democracia en México.
Indicó también que aunque la Suprema Corte de Justicia de la Nación (SCJN) declaró la Ley Televisa inconstitucional, en junio de 2007, la norma aún no se encuentra a debate, por lo que es necesario seguir “presionando para que haya una ley de medios que desconcentre el sector, pues en la medida que haya otras opciones este poder concentrado ya no puede chantajear de la misma manera, por la competencia y regulación”.
Dijo asimismo que Televisa y TV Azteca, donde se concentra el 95 por ciento de los canales de televisión abierta a nivel nacional, son un “reflejo del poder creciente de concesionarios, su capacidad determinar la agenda pública, problema estructural para la democracia en México”.
“¿Quién gobierna, cuando en este país Ricardo Salinas Pliego se niega a transmitir los spots del IFE y no hay multa, no hay condena?, preguntó. Hay simplemente el inicio de un proceso administrativo por parte del IFE: eso es un ejemplo emblemático de lo que el gobierno de México ha permitido”, aseveró.
Voces Silenciadas no esperará hasta 3 años para exhibirse en cartelera, dijo Mari Carmen De Lara, el documental estará en la V Muestra de Mujeres en el Cine y la Televisión, que inicia el próximo jueves y en la Muestra Nacional de Documentales Ambulante.
CIMACnoticias
El derecho humano a la libertad de expresión no es una garantía que se respete en México y el riesgo de ser reprimido aumenta cuando se trata de mujeres, como Teresa Bautista y Felicitas Martínez, indígenas triquis comunicadoras de la radio comunitaria La Voz que Rompe el Silencio, del municipio autónomo de San Juan Copala, Oaxaca, asesinadas el pasado 7 de abril en una emboscada.
Este crimen, al igual que el cierre del espacio radiofónico de Carmen Aristegui en W Radio, el 4 de enero pasado, fueron motivos de “preocupación y ocupación” que llevaron a Mari Carmen De Lara a producir y dirigir el documental Voces Silenciadas, el cual fue presentado hoy a medios de comunicación, en la sala Fósforo del Antiguo Colegio de San Ildefonso.
En el documental hay voces inteligentes, como les llamó De Lara, entre ellas las de las y los periodistas e intelectuales Carmen Aristegui, Miguel Ángel Granados Chapa, Javier Corral Jurado, Lorenzo Meyer, Vicente Leñero, Carlos Monsiváis y Jenaro Villamil, que exponen su punto de vista sobre la libertad de expresión desde una perspectiva crítica, que los caracteriza.
En el documental, cuyo montaje, edición y post-producción estuvo a cargo de Leopoldo Best, distintos críticos y relatores del acontecer político, como el periodista Granados Chapa, realizan un análisis sobre la “urgente” necesidad de legislar en materia de medios de comunicación.
Asimismo, la cinta señala que desde la llegada del Partido Acción Nacional a la presidencia de la República, se han registrado 24 asesinatos a periodistas y 7 desapariciones, por lo que México ocupa el segundo lugar en el mundo más riesgoso para ejercer esta profesión, sólo después de Irak, país que se encuentra en situación de guerra.
En conferencia de prensa, De Lara, creadora también del documental Costureras, mujeres sobrevivientes del terremoto de 1985 en la Ciudad de México, lamentó que por el asesinato de las dos periodistas indígenas, el gobernador de Oaxaca Ulises Ruiz “no haya realizado la más mínima investigación, cuando eran mujeres que tenían incidencia en su comunidad”.
La documentalista manifestó que la democracia en México no será posible, en tanto las distintas voces, críticas o no, no se hagan escuchar, ya que pareciera que “sólo una voz es la que va a dictaminar la información”.
Mari Carmen De Lara reiteró que este documental, cuya producción fue apoyada por la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México y Organizaciones de la Sociedad Civil (OSC), es el resultado de su preocupación por el cierre de dos espacios “importantes para la vida democrática de este país, que son el de Carmen Aristegui y el de José Gutiérrez Vivó”.
Durante la conferencia de prensa, la politóloga Denise Dresser, quién además expone su punto de vista sobre la libertad de expresión en la cinta, aseguró que si en el país existiera un sistema plural en los medios de comunicación, a seis meses de su despido, Aristegui ya se encontraría al aire en otra radiodifusora.
Sin embargo, aseguró que esta situación revela “la gravedad del problema”, ya que aunque no se dice de manera abierta que existe un veto a la comunicadora, “se han vuelto más sofisticados, más perversos, menos obvios, pero siguen ahí”.
Agregó que el caso de Carmen Aristegui “la trasciende y vino a evidenciar algo mucho más amplio que tiene que ver con la distribución y el ejercicio del poder en este país, en una era formalmente democrática”.
La analista manifestó su deseo porque Voces Silenciadas “sirva como una sacudida de conciencia” para que la sociedad se cuestione sobre la manera “sutil” en la que se coartan las libertades de expresión en el país, lo cual quebranta la democracia en México.
Indicó también que aunque la Suprema Corte de Justicia de la Nación (SCJN) declaró la Ley Televisa inconstitucional, en junio de 2007, la norma aún no se encuentra a debate, por lo que es necesario seguir “presionando para que haya una ley de medios que desconcentre el sector, pues en la medida que haya otras opciones este poder concentrado ya no puede chantajear de la misma manera, por la competencia y regulación”.
Dijo asimismo que Televisa y TV Azteca, donde se concentra el 95 por ciento de los canales de televisión abierta a nivel nacional, son un “reflejo del poder creciente de concesionarios, su capacidad determinar la agenda pública, problema estructural para la democracia en México”.
“¿Quién gobierna, cuando en este país Ricardo Salinas Pliego se niega a transmitir los spots del IFE y no hay multa, no hay condena?, preguntó. Hay simplemente el inicio de un proceso administrativo por parte del IFE: eso es un ejemplo emblemático de lo que el gobierno de México ha permitido”, aseveró.
Voces Silenciadas no esperará hasta 3 años para exhibirse en cartelera, dijo Mari Carmen De Lara, el documental estará en la V Muestra de Mujeres en el Cine y la Televisión, que inicia el próximo jueves y en la Muestra Nacional de Documentales Ambulante.
Más represión contra Atenco, más decisión para seguir luchando
Encendienco Conciencias
Rebelión
El jueves 21 de agosto, en un acto más que se suma a la larga cadena de agravios en contra del digno pueblo de San Salvador Atenco, se dictaron sentencias en contra de 14 compañeros presos políticos desde aquellos sangrientos 3 y 4 de mayo de 2006 en que la policía ingresó a los pueblos de Atenco, golpeando, deteniendo arbitrariamente, violando y asesinando.
A 3 de los presos pol íticos se les condenó a alrededor de 4 años de cárcel, aunque tienen derecho a fianza. Otros 10 compañeros fueron condenados a casi 32 años de prisión sin derecho a fianza. En el caso de Ignacio del Valle, preso en el penal de máxima seguridad de Almoloya, se le fijó una nueva condena de 45 años de cárcel por "autoría intelectual de secuestro", sumándose esta nueva sentencia a los 67 años que previamente se le habían imputado, llegando así la condena de Nacho a 112 años de prisión.
Los compañeros sentenciados, como todos los que dignamente han dado la batalla en defensa de la tierra, no son delincuentes y mucho menos secuestradores. Los delitos fabricados en su contra son parte de la venganza política preparada desde 2002, cuando el pueblo de Atenco y su Frente de Pueblos en Defensa de la Tierra (FPDT) derrotaron la intentona del foxismo y los dueños del dinero por construir un aeropuerto en sus tierras. Nunca los compañeros de Atenco lucraron con el sufrimiento de una familia, ni pretendieron dañar la integridad de nadie. El único agravio que cometieron fue no bajar la cabeza y defender con su vida y hoy con su libertad el patrimonio que heredaron de sus abuelos y que heredarán a sus hijos: la Tierra.
Desde la detención sin orden de captura, y los allanamientos sin permisos judiciales, el proceso jurídico en contra de los presos políticos de Atenco ha estado lleno de anomalías. Tal es el caso de las contradictorias declaraciones de los policías que nunca reconocieron a los integrantes del FPDT, de forma individual, como ejecutores de hechos delictivos; así como el hecho de que desde el inicio de proceso no se aportaron más pruebas incriminatorias. Aún así se les condenó.
Antes de esta última sentencia, se había logrado la libertad de varios de los compañeros que fueron detenidos en los mismos operativos, otorgada por un juez que se basaba en los hechos. Hace no mucho tiempo, ese juez fue removido del caso y en su lugar se instaló a un juez de consigna, que fue el que dictó las nuevas sentencias. Este nuevo juez, colocado específicamente para resolver sobre el último proceso penal en contra de los compañeros, confesó ante un familiar de los detenidos que la sentencia no fue dictada por él, sino que se la mandaron desde el Tribunal Superior de Justicia del Estado de México. De este modo queda confirmado que no se trata de la decisión de un tribunal, sino que son órdenes dictadas directamente por Enrique Peña Nieto. Esta confesión pone asimismo en entredicho las anteriores condenas a Felipe Álvarez e Ignacio del Valle, que los mantienen en el penal de máxima seguridad.
No es casual que Peña Nieto haya escogido ese preciso día para dejar caer la sentencia sobre los compañeros. Recordemos que ese mismo 21 de agosto se celebraba en Los Pinos una reunión entre toda la clase política del país sobre la delincuencia y la inseguridad. La finalidad de dicha reunión no fue afinar estrategias de combate en contra del crimen organizado, el cual es en gran medida solapado, propiciado y financiado por los ahí reunidos. Se trataba de mandar un mensaje a los dueños del dinero y de los negocios más prósperos en este país. Fue una pasarela en que cada uno de los politiqueros que están en el poder prometían la mano dura suficiente para garantizarle a los poderosos que sus ganancias no se verían más afectadas. Peña Nieto, con la mira puesta en la candidatura presidencial de 2012, quiso lucirse ante sus jefes con una muestra de barbarie en contra de "los revoltosos", como ya lo hizo una vez al presumir ante empresarios estadounidenses que él es el responsable de los ríos de sangre de los operativos de mayo de 2006 . El mensaje de Peña Nieto fue: yo sí puedo aplicar la mano dura contra aquellos que amenazan las ganancias del capital.
Mientras se condena injustamente a los compañeros de Atenco, y se mantiene la persecución en contra de otros integrantes del FPDT (América del Valle, Bernardino Cruz y Adán Espinoza), los verdaderos criminales disfrutan de una impunidad que indigna. Los asesinos de Alexis Benhumea y Javier Cortés, los policías que torturaron y violaron a las compañeras detenidas y quienes orquestaron todo ese salvajismo, gozan tranquilamente de la libertad. A pesar del alud de denuncias de organismos de Derechos Humanos, independientes y oficiales, nacionales e internacionales (la ONU, la CNDH, Amnistía Internacional, la Comisión Civil Internacional de Observación de los Derechos Humanos, etc.), las autoridades encargadas de impartir justicia en este país se han hecho de la vista gorda. Parece que nadie se enteró de lo que todos en todo el mundo saben. La indignante condena de 112 años contra el ejemplar luchador social Ignacio del Valle, en contraste con la absoluta impunidad de los violadores y asesinos, es una muestra más de cómo la justicia en este país se rige por una lógica política y no con apego a ningún derecho.
Sin embargo, todos sus esfuerzos serán en vano. Por más que intenten mancharla con su salvajismo infame, no podrán borrar de la memoria del pueblo de México la derrota que sufrieron a manos de un pequeño pueblo que decidió mantener la frente en alto y no venderse. Entre más se ensañan en contra de Ignacio del Valle, más engrandecen su imagen a los ojos del pueblo, pues sabemos todos que ni con 112 ni con mil años más de cárcel lograrán nunca doblegar su espíritu solidario y guerrero. A cada golpe que dan, lejos de desmoralizar al pueblo de Atenco y a los integrantes del FPDT, los llenan de más razones y más coraje para seguir luchando hasta lograr la libertad de todos los suyos. El castigo ejemplar que pretenden mostrar los poderosos como trofeo, se convierte poco a poco en la insignia de una lucha ejemplar, pues no hacen más que mostrar su miedo a los hombres y a las mujeres humildes, conscientes y valientes de Atenco, y a todos aquellos que se organizan para combatir a los dueños del dinero. Cada muestra de brutalidad de la que hace gala Peña Nieto, en lugar de acercarlo más a la presidencia, lo va hundiendo en el basurero de la historia y lo coloca, junto a otros más, en la mira del pueblo conciente que sabe que un día los verdaderos criminales pagarán sus fechorías.
La represión no va a vencer al digno pueblo de Atenco. Ellos mejor que nadie saben que los arranques de prepotencia de gobiernos envalentonados nada valen cuando llega la hora en que los pueblos se levantan. Ya antes han obligado a los poderosos a tragarse sus palabras, sin duda lo harán de nuevo, y junto a ellos, tendremos el honor de caminar en esta difícil pero heroica batalla.
encendiendo.conciencias@gmail.com
Rebelión
El jueves 21 de agosto, en un acto más que se suma a la larga cadena de agravios en contra del digno pueblo de San Salvador Atenco, se dictaron sentencias en contra de 14 compañeros presos políticos desde aquellos sangrientos 3 y 4 de mayo de 2006 en que la policía ingresó a los pueblos de Atenco, golpeando, deteniendo arbitrariamente, violando y asesinando.
A 3 de los presos pol íticos se les condenó a alrededor de 4 años de cárcel, aunque tienen derecho a fianza. Otros 10 compañeros fueron condenados a casi 32 años de prisión sin derecho a fianza. En el caso de Ignacio del Valle, preso en el penal de máxima seguridad de Almoloya, se le fijó una nueva condena de 45 años de cárcel por "autoría intelectual de secuestro", sumándose esta nueva sentencia a los 67 años que previamente se le habían imputado, llegando así la condena de Nacho a 112 años de prisión.
Los compañeros sentenciados, como todos los que dignamente han dado la batalla en defensa de la tierra, no son delincuentes y mucho menos secuestradores. Los delitos fabricados en su contra son parte de la venganza política preparada desde 2002, cuando el pueblo de Atenco y su Frente de Pueblos en Defensa de la Tierra (FPDT) derrotaron la intentona del foxismo y los dueños del dinero por construir un aeropuerto en sus tierras. Nunca los compañeros de Atenco lucraron con el sufrimiento de una familia, ni pretendieron dañar la integridad de nadie. El único agravio que cometieron fue no bajar la cabeza y defender con su vida y hoy con su libertad el patrimonio que heredaron de sus abuelos y que heredarán a sus hijos: la Tierra.
Desde la detención sin orden de captura, y los allanamientos sin permisos judiciales, el proceso jurídico en contra de los presos políticos de Atenco ha estado lleno de anomalías. Tal es el caso de las contradictorias declaraciones de los policías que nunca reconocieron a los integrantes del FPDT, de forma individual, como ejecutores de hechos delictivos; así como el hecho de que desde el inicio de proceso no se aportaron más pruebas incriminatorias. Aún así se les condenó.
Antes de esta última sentencia, se había logrado la libertad de varios de los compañeros que fueron detenidos en los mismos operativos, otorgada por un juez que se basaba en los hechos. Hace no mucho tiempo, ese juez fue removido del caso y en su lugar se instaló a un juez de consigna, que fue el que dictó las nuevas sentencias. Este nuevo juez, colocado específicamente para resolver sobre el último proceso penal en contra de los compañeros, confesó ante un familiar de los detenidos que la sentencia no fue dictada por él, sino que se la mandaron desde el Tribunal Superior de Justicia del Estado de México. De este modo queda confirmado que no se trata de la decisión de un tribunal, sino que son órdenes dictadas directamente por Enrique Peña Nieto. Esta confesión pone asimismo en entredicho las anteriores condenas a Felipe Álvarez e Ignacio del Valle, que los mantienen en el penal de máxima seguridad.
No es casual que Peña Nieto haya escogido ese preciso día para dejar caer la sentencia sobre los compañeros. Recordemos que ese mismo 21 de agosto se celebraba en Los Pinos una reunión entre toda la clase política del país sobre la delincuencia y la inseguridad. La finalidad de dicha reunión no fue afinar estrategias de combate en contra del crimen organizado, el cual es en gran medida solapado, propiciado y financiado por los ahí reunidos. Se trataba de mandar un mensaje a los dueños del dinero y de los negocios más prósperos en este país. Fue una pasarela en que cada uno de los politiqueros que están en el poder prometían la mano dura suficiente para garantizarle a los poderosos que sus ganancias no se verían más afectadas. Peña Nieto, con la mira puesta en la candidatura presidencial de 2012, quiso lucirse ante sus jefes con una muestra de barbarie en contra de "los revoltosos", como ya lo hizo una vez al presumir ante empresarios estadounidenses que él es el responsable de los ríos de sangre de los operativos de mayo de 2006 . El mensaje de Peña Nieto fue: yo sí puedo aplicar la mano dura contra aquellos que amenazan las ganancias del capital.
Mientras se condena injustamente a los compañeros de Atenco, y se mantiene la persecución en contra de otros integrantes del FPDT (América del Valle, Bernardino Cruz y Adán Espinoza), los verdaderos criminales disfrutan de una impunidad que indigna. Los asesinos de Alexis Benhumea y Javier Cortés, los policías que torturaron y violaron a las compañeras detenidas y quienes orquestaron todo ese salvajismo, gozan tranquilamente de la libertad. A pesar del alud de denuncias de organismos de Derechos Humanos, independientes y oficiales, nacionales e internacionales (la ONU, la CNDH, Amnistía Internacional, la Comisión Civil Internacional de Observación de los Derechos Humanos, etc.), las autoridades encargadas de impartir justicia en este país se han hecho de la vista gorda. Parece que nadie se enteró de lo que todos en todo el mundo saben. La indignante condena de 112 años contra el ejemplar luchador social Ignacio del Valle, en contraste con la absoluta impunidad de los violadores y asesinos, es una muestra más de cómo la justicia en este país se rige por una lógica política y no con apego a ningún derecho.
Sin embargo, todos sus esfuerzos serán en vano. Por más que intenten mancharla con su salvajismo infame, no podrán borrar de la memoria del pueblo de México la derrota que sufrieron a manos de un pequeño pueblo que decidió mantener la frente en alto y no venderse. Entre más se ensañan en contra de Ignacio del Valle, más engrandecen su imagen a los ojos del pueblo, pues sabemos todos que ni con 112 ni con mil años más de cárcel lograrán nunca doblegar su espíritu solidario y guerrero. A cada golpe que dan, lejos de desmoralizar al pueblo de Atenco y a los integrantes del FPDT, los llenan de más razones y más coraje para seguir luchando hasta lograr la libertad de todos los suyos. El castigo ejemplar que pretenden mostrar los poderosos como trofeo, se convierte poco a poco en la insignia de una lucha ejemplar, pues no hacen más que mostrar su miedo a los hombres y a las mujeres humildes, conscientes y valientes de Atenco, y a todos aquellos que se organizan para combatir a los dueños del dinero. Cada muestra de brutalidad de la que hace gala Peña Nieto, en lugar de acercarlo más a la presidencia, lo va hundiendo en el basurero de la historia y lo coloca, junto a otros más, en la mira del pueblo conciente que sabe que un día los verdaderos criminales pagarán sus fechorías.
La represión no va a vencer al digno pueblo de Atenco. Ellos mejor que nadie saben que los arranques de prepotencia de gobiernos envalentonados nada valen cuando llega la hora en que los pueblos se levantan. Ya antes han obligado a los poderosos a tragarse sus palabras, sin duda lo harán de nuevo, y junto a ellos, tendremos el honor de caminar en esta difícil pero heroica batalla.
encendiendo.conciencias@gmail.com
Tiempos interesantes
Luis Hernández Navarro
La Jornada
Tres grandes movilizaciones sociales se efectuaron en tres días seguidos. El sábado 30 de agosto se realizó la manifestación de Iluminemos México contra la inseguridad pública. El domingo 31 se concentró el Movimiento Nacional en Defensa del Petróleo para comenzar la tercera fase de la lucha en contra de la privatización del oro negro. El lunes primero de septiembre tuvo lugar el Paro Cívico Nacional al que convocaron organizaciones obreras, campesinas, populares y magisteriales contra la austeridad y la carestía.
En las tres protestas participaron, por razones diferentes, miles de personas. En cada una se mostró el profundo descontento existente en prácticamente todos los estratos de la sociedad mexicana con la situación actual. Tanto los sectores más ricos del país como los más pobres coincidieron en expresar su enojo. En las tres movilizaciones sopló un fuerte viento contra la política institucional y los políticos profesionales.
La expresión organizada del enfado social se desenvuelve en un clima particularmente adverso para el gobierno federal. La economía mexicana casi no crece, a pesar de los altos precios del petróleo. Según la CEPAL, México fue el país de América Latina con el producto interno bruto (PIB) más bajo. La inflación ha aumentado, al igual que el desempleo. La inversión extranjera directa ha caído dramáticamente, al tiempo que el monto de las remesas de los mexicanos desde Estados Unidos disminuyen. El futuro inmediato será aún peor.
La violencia ha alcanzado niveles inauditos. Los asesinatos y descabezados crecen vertiginosamente por todo el país. La versión oficial de que estas muertes son la respuesta de los narcotraficantes al éxito gubernamental en su combate contra el crimen organizado carece de toda credibilidad. En cambio, las narcomantas acusan al presidente Calderón de ser el responsable de la desestabilización al haberse aliado con el Chapo Guzmán y el Mayo Zambada en contra de los otros cárteles de la droga.
La ola de secuestros crece en toda la república. Los funcionarios responsables de combatirlos se pelean entre sí. El “si no pueden, renuncien”, enarbolado por el movimiento contra la inseguridad pública, dirigido a los políticos de todos los partidos, ha calado hondo en el conjunto de la población.
A la inconformidad magisterial contra la Ley del ISSSTE se ha sumado ahora el enojo con la Alianza por la Educación y la decisión de Elba Esther Gordillo de acabar con el normalismo. Los maestros de Morelos se encuentran en paro indefinido y estallidos de disgusto han surgido por todo el país. El hartazgo con la maestra es cada día mayor.
Día a día la situación de los derechos humanos se deteriora más y más, según consignan los distintos informes realizados por organismos no gubernamentales internacionales. La tendencia a criminalizar la protesta social se mantiene, como muestra la aberrante sentencia contra Ignacio del Valle, dirigente de los pobladores de Atenco.
La alianza del Partido Acción Nacional (PAN) con el Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), que había permitido gobernar a un debilitado Felipe Calderón, se ha hundido. A su manera, el tricolor le lleva las contras al mandatario con miras a las elecciones federales del año entrante.
La iniciativa presidencial para privatizar Pemex se ha topado con múltiples obstáculos. La convergencia política y social a favor de la soberanía petrolera ganó el debate contra la privatización del sector, sumó a una parte muy importante de la intelectualidad a su causa, y mostró una muy importante capacidad de movilización. El gran negocio del sexenio no avanza. La reforma energética corre el peligro, a los ojos de sus beneficiarios, de convertirse en el parto de los montes.
Importantes aliados del Presidente de la República, los poderes fácticos que lo llevaron a Los Pinos, están molestos con él. Las televisoras siguen disgustadas por la aprobación de una ley que limita sus negocios y les amarra las manos en coyunturas electorales. Con la ratificación de la validez de la legislación que despenaliza el aborto en la ciudad de México por parte de la Suprema Corte de Justicia de la Nación, la alta jerarquía católica respira por la herida.
El desgaste político de Felipe Calderón es notable. El margen de maniobra presidencial es cada día más estrecho. La ingobernabilidad crece de la mano del descontento social. Su pretensión de adquirir legitimidad sobre la base de iniciativas audaces ha fracasado. Su intención de rebasar a López Obrador por la izquierda se ahogó antes de nacer. Su política de combate al narcotráfico, que tantos beneficios mediáticos le atrajo en un primer momento, comienza a revertírsele.
México vive una situación políticamente inédita. Las tres movilizaciones nacionales son expresión de ello. No se vivía una coyuntura tan compleja desde marzo de 1994... Son, sin lugar a dudas, tiempos interesantes.
La Jornada
Tres grandes movilizaciones sociales se efectuaron en tres días seguidos. El sábado 30 de agosto se realizó la manifestación de Iluminemos México contra la inseguridad pública. El domingo 31 se concentró el Movimiento Nacional en Defensa del Petróleo para comenzar la tercera fase de la lucha en contra de la privatización del oro negro. El lunes primero de septiembre tuvo lugar el Paro Cívico Nacional al que convocaron organizaciones obreras, campesinas, populares y magisteriales contra la austeridad y la carestía.
En las tres protestas participaron, por razones diferentes, miles de personas. En cada una se mostró el profundo descontento existente en prácticamente todos los estratos de la sociedad mexicana con la situación actual. Tanto los sectores más ricos del país como los más pobres coincidieron en expresar su enojo. En las tres movilizaciones sopló un fuerte viento contra la política institucional y los políticos profesionales.
La expresión organizada del enfado social se desenvuelve en un clima particularmente adverso para el gobierno federal. La economía mexicana casi no crece, a pesar de los altos precios del petróleo. Según la CEPAL, México fue el país de América Latina con el producto interno bruto (PIB) más bajo. La inflación ha aumentado, al igual que el desempleo. La inversión extranjera directa ha caído dramáticamente, al tiempo que el monto de las remesas de los mexicanos desde Estados Unidos disminuyen. El futuro inmediato será aún peor.
La violencia ha alcanzado niveles inauditos. Los asesinatos y descabezados crecen vertiginosamente por todo el país. La versión oficial de que estas muertes son la respuesta de los narcotraficantes al éxito gubernamental en su combate contra el crimen organizado carece de toda credibilidad. En cambio, las narcomantas acusan al presidente Calderón de ser el responsable de la desestabilización al haberse aliado con el Chapo Guzmán y el Mayo Zambada en contra de los otros cárteles de la droga.
La ola de secuestros crece en toda la república. Los funcionarios responsables de combatirlos se pelean entre sí. El “si no pueden, renuncien”, enarbolado por el movimiento contra la inseguridad pública, dirigido a los políticos de todos los partidos, ha calado hondo en el conjunto de la población.
A la inconformidad magisterial contra la Ley del ISSSTE se ha sumado ahora el enojo con la Alianza por la Educación y la decisión de Elba Esther Gordillo de acabar con el normalismo. Los maestros de Morelos se encuentran en paro indefinido y estallidos de disgusto han surgido por todo el país. El hartazgo con la maestra es cada día mayor.
Día a día la situación de los derechos humanos se deteriora más y más, según consignan los distintos informes realizados por organismos no gubernamentales internacionales. La tendencia a criminalizar la protesta social se mantiene, como muestra la aberrante sentencia contra Ignacio del Valle, dirigente de los pobladores de Atenco.
La alianza del Partido Acción Nacional (PAN) con el Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), que había permitido gobernar a un debilitado Felipe Calderón, se ha hundido. A su manera, el tricolor le lleva las contras al mandatario con miras a las elecciones federales del año entrante.
La iniciativa presidencial para privatizar Pemex se ha topado con múltiples obstáculos. La convergencia política y social a favor de la soberanía petrolera ganó el debate contra la privatización del sector, sumó a una parte muy importante de la intelectualidad a su causa, y mostró una muy importante capacidad de movilización. El gran negocio del sexenio no avanza. La reforma energética corre el peligro, a los ojos de sus beneficiarios, de convertirse en el parto de los montes.
Importantes aliados del Presidente de la República, los poderes fácticos que lo llevaron a Los Pinos, están molestos con él. Las televisoras siguen disgustadas por la aprobación de una ley que limita sus negocios y les amarra las manos en coyunturas electorales. Con la ratificación de la validez de la legislación que despenaliza el aborto en la ciudad de México por parte de la Suprema Corte de Justicia de la Nación, la alta jerarquía católica respira por la herida.
El desgaste político de Felipe Calderón es notable. El margen de maniobra presidencial es cada día más estrecho. La ingobernabilidad crece de la mano del descontento social. Su pretensión de adquirir legitimidad sobre la base de iniciativas audaces ha fracasado. Su intención de rebasar a López Obrador por la izquierda se ahogó antes de nacer. Su política de combate al narcotráfico, que tantos beneficios mediáticos le atrajo en un primer momento, comienza a revertírsele.
México vive una situación políticamente inédita. Las tres movilizaciones nacionales son expresión de ello. No se vivía una coyuntura tan compleja desde marzo de 1994... Son, sin lugar a dudas, tiempos interesantes.
Movimiento en Defensa del Petróleo se declara en “estado de alerta”
Pulsar
El Movimiento Nacional en Defensa del Petróleo de México declaró este lunes el “estado de alerta” ante el inicio del trabajo en el Congreso. La organización afirma que las bancadas mayoritarias podrían aprobar la privatización de Petróleos Mexicanos.
La declaración se produjo durante la masiva manifestación que encabezó en el Monumento a la Revolución en México DF el "presidente legítimo", Andrés Manuel López Obrador, principal político opositor.
Durante el acto, López Obrador también anunció el inicio de una nueva etapa de resistencia al proyecto oficial de autorizar la participación privada en Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex).
El Movimiento en Defensa del Petróleo teme que la mayoría parlamentaria del Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) y el Partido Acción Nacional (PAN) apruebe la iniciativa oficial en los próximos días.
Además, se informó las propuestas que el Frente Amplio Progresista (FAP) presentó la semana pasada al Senado. Crear un instituto nacional de energía renovable, anular la división de Pemex, y hacer una nueva ley orgánica de la paraestatal petrolera.
Por último, López Obrador adelantó una denuncia penal por el manejo fraudulento de dinero en la compra de un buque petrolero durante la presidencia de Vicente Fóx, cuando su secretario de energía era el actual mandatario, Felipe Calderón.
El Movimiento Nacional en Defensa del Petróleo de México declaró este lunes el “estado de alerta” ante el inicio del trabajo en el Congreso. La organización afirma que las bancadas mayoritarias podrían aprobar la privatización de Petróleos Mexicanos.
La declaración se produjo durante la masiva manifestación que encabezó en el Monumento a la Revolución en México DF el "presidente legítimo", Andrés Manuel López Obrador, principal político opositor.
Durante el acto, López Obrador también anunció el inicio de una nueva etapa de resistencia al proyecto oficial de autorizar la participación privada en Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex).
El Movimiento en Defensa del Petróleo teme que la mayoría parlamentaria del Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) y el Partido Acción Nacional (PAN) apruebe la iniciativa oficial en los próximos días.
Además, se informó las propuestas que el Frente Amplio Progresista (FAP) presentó la semana pasada al Senado. Crear un instituto nacional de energía renovable, anular la división de Pemex, y hacer una nueva ley orgánica de la paraestatal petrolera.
Por último, López Obrador adelantó una denuncia penal por el manejo fraudulento de dinero en la compra de un buque petrolero durante la presidencia de Vicente Fóx, cuando su secretario de energía era el actual mandatario, Felipe Calderón.
Militarized health care for Native Americans
by Jessica Yee
One of the best-kept secrets in American health administration is the existence of Indian Health Service (IHS).
Unbeknownst to many outside the Native community, in the United States our health care is actually delivered by the military.
Oh sure, they call themselves the “Public Health Service Commissioned Corps” which is just a nice way of saying they don’t carry guns, but you can bet that you will more than likely receive care from someone dressed in full-out camouflage gear who indeed works for the U.S. Uniformed Services.
How did this all get started? Well for lands seized (read: stolen) the government has a federal responsibility to provide health care to Native Americans. After assimilating us and annihilating our culture, the War Department had this duty in 1849, which was then overseen by the Bureau of Indian Affairs who was responsible for the many abuses and mistreatments that occurred under their umbrella until 1955, when the government thought it would then be a good idea to turn it over to the Department of Health and Human Services.
I don’t know about you, but I’m not really comfortable going to see a doctor wearing army boots in a non-war torn country. Last time I checked, they haven’t exactly been our best friends in the Native community (forcible removal to attend Residential Schools, reproductive trauma from military testing anyone?) I’m also less than pleased being the only race whose health care comes like this.
Among the numerous other problems that you can already think of that exist with this kind of oppressive set-up, IHS lacks several necessary services and policies that exist in other clinics and hospitals because, as sovereign peoples, we aren’t subject to receive the same things as everyone else.
Sovereignty is supposed to mean governing our own people, on our own land, the way we want to, but in reality it means doing what the United States allows us to do, when they want to. I saw a really good example of this recently in Oneida, Wisconsin when I was reading a posted U.S. government bulletin on minimum wage that basically read, “as a federally recognized Indian tribe we don’t have to make sure you get equal pay since you are a separate entity.”
Oh, but how dare we ever try to assert our sovereignty and take care of our own people according to our own ancestral traditions!
Missing links at IHS include sexual assault procedures and some 50 per cent of clinics that lack the trained personnel to administer rape kits, which is so very interesting when you consider our people have one of the highest rates of sexual abuse in the country.
This was all detailed in the latest Glamour article by journalist Marianne Pearl entitled “The Land Where Rapists Walk Free.” (I’d also like to add to that article that the Yankton Sioux reservation where the story takes place had their IHS emergency room shut down earlier this year).
What is more, if you live in a major urban centre, or even away from your home territory, good luck trying to find an IHS you can go to. In California, Native Americans account for the largest “ethnic” poverty group, while there are virtually no IHS clinics in existence to service the more than 70 per cent of people who live off reservation.
I was actually at a conference once where IHS personnel were wondering why some Native youth didn’t want to come in to get tested for sexually transmitted infections to which I grabbed the mic and yelled, “Maybe it’s because we can’t trust you!” I mean, are we really supposed to have confidence in the same system that is still colonizing us, more than a hundred years later?
But don’t worry: if you belong to a tribe and work for IHS, you don’t have to wear the military garb.
They’ll just separate the “savages” from the “civilized”.
This article originally appeared in Racialicious.
Jessica Yee is a youth activist, facilitator and community organizer who contributes a regular column to rabble.ca. She resides in Toronto.
One of the best-kept secrets in American health administration is the existence of Indian Health Service (IHS).
Unbeknownst to many outside the Native community, in the United States our health care is actually delivered by the military.
Oh sure, they call themselves the “Public Health Service Commissioned Corps” which is just a nice way of saying they don’t carry guns, but you can bet that you will more than likely receive care from someone dressed in full-out camouflage gear who indeed works for the U.S. Uniformed Services.
How did this all get started? Well for lands seized (read: stolen) the government has a federal responsibility to provide health care to Native Americans. After assimilating us and annihilating our culture, the War Department had this duty in 1849, which was then overseen by the Bureau of Indian Affairs who was responsible for the many abuses and mistreatments that occurred under their umbrella until 1955, when the government thought it would then be a good idea to turn it over to the Department of Health and Human Services.
I don’t know about you, but I’m not really comfortable going to see a doctor wearing army boots in a non-war torn country. Last time I checked, they haven’t exactly been our best friends in the Native community (forcible removal to attend Residential Schools, reproductive trauma from military testing anyone?) I’m also less than pleased being the only race whose health care comes like this.
Among the numerous other problems that you can already think of that exist with this kind of oppressive set-up, IHS lacks several necessary services and policies that exist in other clinics and hospitals because, as sovereign peoples, we aren’t subject to receive the same things as everyone else.
Sovereignty is supposed to mean governing our own people, on our own land, the way we want to, but in reality it means doing what the United States allows us to do, when they want to. I saw a really good example of this recently in Oneida, Wisconsin when I was reading a posted U.S. government bulletin on minimum wage that basically read, “as a federally recognized Indian tribe we don’t have to make sure you get equal pay since you are a separate entity.”
Oh, but how dare we ever try to assert our sovereignty and take care of our own people according to our own ancestral traditions!
Missing links at IHS include sexual assault procedures and some 50 per cent of clinics that lack the trained personnel to administer rape kits, which is so very interesting when you consider our people have one of the highest rates of sexual abuse in the country.
This was all detailed in the latest Glamour article by journalist Marianne Pearl entitled “The Land Where Rapists Walk Free.” (I’d also like to add to that article that the Yankton Sioux reservation where the story takes place had their IHS emergency room shut down earlier this year).
What is more, if you live in a major urban centre, or even away from your home territory, good luck trying to find an IHS you can go to. In California, Native Americans account for the largest “ethnic” poverty group, while there are virtually no IHS clinics in existence to service the more than 70 per cent of people who live off reservation.
I was actually at a conference once where IHS personnel were wondering why some Native youth didn’t want to come in to get tested for sexually transmitted infections to which I grabbed the mic and yelled, “Maybe it’s because we can’t trust you!” I mean, are we really supposed to have confidence in the same system that is still colonizing us, more than a hundred years later?
But don’t worry: if you belong to a tribe and work for IHS, you don’t have to wear the military garb.
They’ll just separate the “savages” from the “civilized”.
This article originally appeared in Racialicious.
Jessica Yee is a youth activist, facilitator and community organizer who contributes a regular column to rabble.ca. She resides in Toronto.
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