Brentin Mock's blog

For Young Black Men in American Cities, You’re Either Invisible or Viewed as a Threat

Brentin Mock — Wed, 17 Jul 2013 12:44:19 +0000

, Goldsboro has seen little economic investment like the rest of Sanford. “I don’t see how we as leaders could talk about developing Sanford to its fullest potential if you don’t address the needs in the depressed areas,” Velma Williams, Sanford’s only black commissioner, told Lee.

Despite the neglect, it was people of color in central Florida communities like Goldsboro and cities like Sanford and Osceola who turned out big last November to vote, helping President Obama win Florida and, ultimately, reelection. Afterward, Mitt Romney’s campaign aides ), whom I heard break down the children’s show Sesame Street in ways I never saw as a child. Sesame Street was about community, Sams said, one where all the characters mattered and had a voice, no matter their status as an animal, a monster, weirdo, whatever. Oscar the Grouch was an insufferable prick who lived in a garbage can, yet he was still part of the community.

And then there was the big brown elephant Mr. Snuffleupagus, an invisible character on Sesame Street for the first 17 years of the show. The only one who saw him was Big Bird, who claimed Snuffleupagus was his imaginary friend but blamed him when things went wrong.

You can see the same characterization for so many Trayvon Martins in so many streets and communities across America. We don’t see them, until we need to pin a problem on them.

Had Martin walked the streets of Any City, Fla. 60 or 70 years ago, white citizens most certainly would have seen him. But he would have dared not see them back. The wrong return glance in those streets, in those days, could have meant his life — especially had he stared a second too long at a white woman.

Today, these streets are public spaces where, finally, black people can look white people in the eye and not get lynched for it. But it’s also now a place where I won’t stare too long at three black teenagers parked in a car, or where I’ll ignore black kids raising money for their football team.

Zimmerman shot and killed the younger, darker Martin, and he deserves whatever justice comes his way, whether from courts or elsewhere. But I’ve been having a hard time mentally arresting him for profiling Martin when I’ve done similar. I have to face myself about that, as does every person — white and black – who has encountered young black men in the streets through the lens of terror.

As William Jelani Cobb

Tags:

criminal justice system

gender and sexuality

race and racial justice

Trayvon Martin

violence

Can Keystone XL Pipeline Activists Also Fight Stand Your Ground and Prison Pipelines?

Brentin Mock — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 19:29:37 +0000

On November 27, news broke about a black teenager in Jacksonville named Jordan Davis who was shot and killed by 45-year-old Michael David Dunn apparently after an argument between the two over loud music. On November 28, news broke about U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, the frontrunner to replace Hillary Clinton for Secretary of State, who has financial holdings in a number of companies that could benefit from the building of the destructive Keystone XL project.

Each of these incidents involve two major advocacy campaigns: The Davis killing re-igniting the anti-Stand Your Ground laws movement that started with Trayvon Martin's murder, and the latter re-igniting environmentalists’ anti-Keystone XL fight that burrowed from national attention for a moment while Obama fought for re-election (though local fights to stop the pipeline, such as the blockade in Texas [linked above] have remained strong). Both movements largely supported Obama, mainly because his administration is more sympathetic to their causes than Romney’s promised to be, given that his campaign was endorsed by the National Rifle Association and American Enterprise Institute.

The national Keystone XL struggle, however, illuminates shy truths about how disconnected the environment movement can be from other social justice movements. Environmentalists have attempted to recruit people of color to the Keystone XL struggle, But rarely have they involved themselves in non-environmental campaigns that impact people of color. In fact, environmentalists have made statements and executed campaigns that have antagonized people of color, mainly due to their ignorance of what people of color are most concerned about in their communities.

Taking the Susan Rice issue, after a flurry of often racist and sexist attacks were belted out by conservative Republicans about the possibility of her replacing Hillary Clinton for Secretary of State, environmentalists added to those attacks when her financial holdings in Transcanada similar to comments made by Sen. John McCain, Sen. Jim Inhofe, Sen. Lindsay Graham and Sarah Palin, who’ve all used terms like “unqualified” or “incompetent” to describe Rice. Meanwhile, neither Scott Dodd, who penned the One Earth blog, Kleeb, nor Bill McKibben, who’s also voiced opposition to Rice, have taken the time to acknowledge the racist and sexist attacks on Rice in the weeks previous. Whatever financial holdings Rice has can be divested; having them in the first place does not make her unqualified. If anything it makes her more qualified because she may have insight into Transcanada operations that would put her in a better position to hold them accountable.

These are regrettable oversights from the environmentalists in question, who I’m sure would correct themselves if given the chance. But the larger injustice is their initial lack of awareness that would lead to making reckless statements like that, especially at a time when they need to be building coalitions. It’s not the first time anti-Keystone XL advocates handled their issue carelessly with regards to people of color. Kari Fulton of the Environmental Justice Climate and Change Initiative reported last year how environmentalists failed to take into account the mock.brentin@gmail.com

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Voting Rights Haven’t Gotten Such Attention Since 1965. What Did We Learn?

Brentin Mock — Mon, 19 Nov 2012 16:07:48 +0000

, saying, “The national conversation around voting rights was amplified like we haven’t seen since 1965.”

This year, more Americans arguably learned more about the voting process than any year in recent memory. Civil rights and election protection campaigns made people aware of things like the difference between a poll watcher and a poll observer; how people use data to purge voters; and what voters’ general rights are while standing in poll lines. On a more nuanced level, the discussion around voter ID laws gave Americans a greater understanding of not only how many people don’t have government-issued ID, but also the reasons why.

Probably most importantly, though, many Americans learned—or at least were reminded—about the history of our democracy, of how civil rights heroes helped the nation realize that democracy, by forcing an expansion of the electorate, which at core is an expansion of citizenship. “Americans began to recognize that democracy was under assault,” ” campaigns, by shuttling and busing people straight from church services to voting booths. These campaigns, which were enormously successful in 2008 as well, told Colorlines that most of the voters they made contact with were not people circulating in voter databanks. Rather, they reached “voters in low-income and communities of color that would not have been contacted otherwise.” In Tampa, I spent time doing “Knock n’ Grabs”—going door-to-door asking people if they’ve voted, and if not, taking them to the polls—with NAACP organizers. They ended up shedding their canvassing lists and instead cruising the streets literally picking up voters off of stoops, porches and corners because they knew the people on the data sheets likely weren’t home.

2. Voters of color were invisible, to their advantage.

In some ways, the fact that voters of color weren’t turning up in databases was a good thing. It kept people who may not have had their best interests in mind from targeting them, while throwing off Republican pollsters who thought they had the election in the bag. Campaign aides to Mitt Romney have said their calculations about possibly winning Florida : “Nobody in town knew them.”

3. The need for early voting was evident.

Among the 2012 election’s legacies will be photos of long lines at polling locations across the nation, like a reprised version of “Eyes on the Prize.” It

4. Right wing poll watchers played themselves.

Our Voting Rights Watch project sounded the alarm early on about the plans of poll-watching groups like to marshal a massive poll watcher showing. But most of these efforts were deflated, mainly because media outlets and voting rights advocates reporting “high concentrations of people of color” in a voting location, as if that was against the law. In Ohio, poll watchers from True the Vote were that their non-partisan claims were rendered pure folly. Meanwhile, poll watcher manuals from both True the Vote and the Republican Party showed , or fended it off when it appeared. I personally saw Election Protection lawyers intervene when poll watchers got rambunctious, while also helping older people get through long lines and mitigate voter confusion, which was prevalent. Our community journalist Hillary Abe just to vote in the guy known for deporting the most immigrants or failing to make a dent in black unemployment. There was a deeper dedication at play. Our community journalist Noni Grant said that wrote about this problem are wondering where their registration, or their vote went. In Philadelphia, it’s the same deal. Philadelphia City Paper has , was able to get communities in Louisiana not only educated about the redistricting process, but also taught them how to get involved in it. Says Bonner: “No one really understands what redistricting is, and how when gerrymandering occurs you see how the Southern Manifesto and those types of ideologies progress from that. So for us, we learned the process of redistricting and then also how to draw districts ourselves. We then bought the software used by legislators to do redistricting, and taught residents how to do it too. What all communities need to fully understand is how our rights are protected by learning and engaging in the census and redistricting process.”

formerly incarcerated people

election 2012

BP Agrees to Pay $4 Billion Settlement for Gulf Coast Disaster

Brentin Mock — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 01:26:56 +0000

Tags:

Social and Economic Justice

department of justice

Gulf Watch: Immigrant Workers Make Walmart Kneel and The RESTORE Act Passes Finally

Brentin Mock — Wed, 04 Jul 2012 02:06:54 +0000

As we approach the 4th of July, the ground is finally breaking for coastal restoration and immigrant workers’ rights in the Gulf Coast region. Two reasons to laugh a little harder, and have an extra beer or two in actual celebration as opposed to laughing and drinking to keep from crying: Congress finally passed The RESTORE Act, which will send 80% of BP fines from the oil disaster to the Gulf Coast; and, immigrant forced labor is finally taken seriously by mainstream media and corporations. While progress is fueled up on both fronts, neither represent clean rides to victories. Let’s look at both:

1. The RESTORE Act for too long resembled a deadbeat dad who promised repeatedly to show up for Christmas bearing gifts, only to disappoint at every turn. The RESTORE Act had come up for multiple votes, and frequently passed one congressional chamber or the other, though never officially crossing the finish line, its fate always tied to some other stinky bill. Even now, after finally approved by Congress, riding on a transportation bill clunker, there’s still a lurking suspicion of last-second sabotage even as President Obama is assured of signing it into law. But truly this is probably one of the few, if not the only, pieces of legislation that had a commanding consensus among advocates, scientists, Democratic legislators, Republican legislators and, most importantly, residents, probably since 9/11. The support behind The RESTORE Act feels less like bipartisanship, which is just agreement between two political parties, and more like true patriotism, if not true democracy. Of course there’s a flipside. RESTORE’s passage comes at the expense of reduced funding for many public transit needs. For a great explainer of the many downsides to the transportation bill, please read Ben Adler’s post at Next American City. Meanwhile GNO Inc. reports that RESTORE could generate 57,697 jobs within its first 10 years. In Mississippi, the state has prioritized local residents for many of those jobs. The Gulf Coast has had more than its fair share of disasters -- disasters that led to an imposition of new agendas, business plans and policies foisted upon Gulf Coast communities with little consideration for the wishes of its residents, nor much of a benefit to them, especially the most vulnerable. This could perhaps be one instance where a Gulf-Coast generated “best practice” model could be exported for application to other parts of the nation as opposed to the other way around.

Watch these videos featuring Gulf Coast residents who’ve been impacted by the BP oil disaster and who have struggled for coastal restoration:

A discussion with Mississippi coastal restoration advocate Sharon Hanshaw on organizing women to restore the Gulf Coast.
A discussion with documentarian Monique Verdin about the painful recovery of her own Louisiana Gulf community through multiple disasters.
A discussion with Thao Chi Nguyen on creating alternatives for Asian-American Fishers in Mississippi after the BP disaster.

2. There’s been an awakening in the Gulf Coast among immigrant workers and guestworkers who are forcefully saying for themselves what many watchdog organizations, labor unions, social justice advocates and independent journalists have been reporting for years: That manufacturing businesses up and down the supply chain -- from Gulf seafood processing plants to multinational corporations like Wal-Mart -- have been profiting at the expense of overworked and abused workers who are made especially vulnerable due to their non-native status in the country. The National Guestworkers Alliance and Congress of Day Laborers have organized a number of public demonstrations and campaigns to raise more awareness about this. I don’t know how it’s escaped the mainstream media’s attention that the workers have been gaining significant ground against their corporate targets in the struggle for worker rights. Here are three things you need to know about where the current campaigns stands:

After H-2B guestworkers investigation turned up nothing, they said, though the NGA said they failed to talk with any of the guestworkers who actually filed complaints. Weeks later, after demonstrations in both Louisiana and New York, Walmart has launched another investigation, this time deciding to suspend their contract with C. J.’s Seafood until it is completed. That suspension likely had more to do with the investigation from NGA, which uncovered 644 federal labor violations at 12 other Walmart stores that uses guestworkers -- 201 of which happened in the last five years. The Worker Rights Consortium said, after investigating C. J.’s that, it “is one of the most egregious workplaces we’ve examined, whether here or overseas.”
Despite these investigations and infractions, Walmart still won’t meet with the workers represented by the National Guestworkers Alliance. This past weekend, the guestworkers went on a 24-hour hunger strike to get Walmart’s attention. NGA executive director Saket Soni released the following statement: “Walmart’s suspension of its supplier C.J.’s Seafood is an important admission by the world’s largest retailer that its house is not in order. … Still, Walmart refuses to meet with the workers to discuss how to end forced labor on its supply chain. That’s why the workers are conducting a 24-hour fast today. They’re joined in their fast by 20 family members in Mexico, as well as more than 500 Americans who are conducting solidarity fasts of their own. The National Guestworker Alliance will continue to press Walmart to live up to its promises to workers in its own Standards for Suppliers, and to adopt more meaningful civil and labor rights standards.”
In a separate, though not entirely unrelated campaign, the “Southern 32” continue to speak out against harassment from ICE and local law authorities. After the Supreme Court’s decision striking down most of the provisions of Arizona’s SB 1070 bill, but preserving the right for police to ask anyone they suspect might be undocumented immigrants for proof of citizenship, the “Southern 32” immigrant workers held a rally in New Orleans Central Business District demanding that the Obama administration finally cease all deportations. A new ICE policy was supposed to relax enforcement of deportation proceedings for immigrants who hadn’t broken any laws, who were working and who were advocating for civil rights protections. Apparently, though, local ICE officials have afforded local immigrant workers no such guarantees on that order, and so the “Southern 32” has been protesting not from the shadows but on Main Street demanding their right to pursue economic opportunities.

Tags:

immigrant rights

restore act

national guestworker alliance

The 'Southern 32' Take Stand Against SCOTUS Ruling On Racial Profiling

Brentin Mock — Fri, 29 Jun 2012 05:39:02 +0000

Neither a US Supreme Court ruling, nor the DREAMy concession from President Obama on easing immigration laws provided the protection needed for 32 immigrant workers in Louisiana who are at risk of being deported and separated from their families after speaking out about worker abuse. Just days after SCOTUS struck down most elements of Arizona's SB 1070 bill, but leaving the "show your papers" racial profiling component in tact, Delmy Dinora Palencia Gonzales grabbed a microphone with one hand, her toddler staring up from a stroller she steadied with her other hand, and announced to a small gathering in front of the Hale Boggs Federal Building in New Orleans' Central Business District that she was not afraid to stand up for her family and her rights.

"I will not remain silent, I will no longer be afraid," said Delmy Palencia.

Under a baking afternoon sun, Wednesday, June 26, Delmy Palencia stood with her fellow members of the "

Delmy Palencia is a member of the Congress of Day Laborers, the immigrant workers rights group that organized the demonstration. She's at risk of being deported domestic incident led to her being imprisoned for over a month, and then detained again, after her charges were dropped, for over 48 hours at ICE's request, which is unlawful. You can read more about Delmy Palencia's story in Katy Reckdahl's Times-Picayune news story

Ever since Katrina, when the Bush administration relaxed worker and immigration regulations with the stated goal of easing the recovery, Latino workers have moved to the region for construction and agricultural jobs. The immigrant workers have been pitted against black workers by businesses and law enforcement, which has led to depressed wages and uneasy tensions between some black and brown communities. But Alfred Marshall, an organizer with STAND with Dignity (an affiliate of the Congress of Day Laborers) said at the demonstration that black and Latino workers face similar vulnerabilities in Gulf Coast region workplaces, and that both are

A June 26 ruling by the Supreme Court that invalidated most of Arizona's immigration law, but allowed Arizona police officers to demand the immigration papers of anyone they stop, arrest, or detain. A similar, harsher law was in effect in

The Department of Homeland Security announced it was so that certain local law enforcment can continue immigration actions for jailed suspected immigrants. Homeland Security pulled a similar switcheroo when ICE announced in 2011 that it would only focus on deporting convicted criminal immigrants, allowing discretion for considerations of deportation of immigrants who committed no crimes and who were pursuing civil rights complaints.

The Southern 32 have been speaking out about workers rights, civil rights and human rights, yet they still

Tags:

New Orleans Workers Center for Racial Justice

immigrant rights

Southern 32

Gulf Watch: Shrinking the Times-Pic and the Digital Divide, H2B Guestworker Struggles Continue and the Fate of RESTORE Act

Brentin Mock — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 20:40:00 +0000

It seems like the deeper we get into the 2012 Presidential election campaign, the less attention the media pays to Gulf Coast issues. Since most of the Gulf states are red (Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas) the Obama campaign is mostly ignoring problems endemic to the Gulf. However, President Obama’s announcement that the nation would no longer deport children of immigrants certainly will have net positive impacts in the Gulf, especially in Alabama where the rabidly nativist no commitment to protect immigrants and has yet to mention anything significant about the Gulf Coast. There are three huge Gulf stories, though, that the nation should be paying attention to:

1. The Creative Destruction of the New Orleans Times-Picayune: The way the Times-Picayune newspaper owners just laid-off almost a third of their staff would probably make Mitt Romney and his Bain Capital colleagues proud. Since it was announced that the T-P would be re-scheduling their print daily distribution from seven days to three, while focusing more on digital content, and depleting their staff, New Orleans has been up in arms (the same thing is happening in Alabama where TP publisher Ricky Matthews also runs the Birmingham and Mobile dailies and will be taking the same cost-cutting measures.) The way dozens of journalists learned about their fate was from other media outlets, which is disgusting to say the least. The mass firings seem to hearken other disastrously handled New Orleans remakes, such as the razing of public housing and the non-renewal of the Orleans Parish public schools teachers union contract. Former TP columnist and current Treme TV show writer appeals and commentary as well. What’s missing from the conversation, though, is an honest discussion about the lack of digital access for low-income communities in the city, which presumably would prevent them from benefitting from the online conversion of the newspaper. Most commentators have used the “digital divide” problem to argue for preservation of the print daily (not to mention, few people cared about the digital divide until it could be used conveniently to support appeals to save the TP). But hardly anyone has made an appeal for investing funds and resources into low-income communities that are on the losing end of the digital divide so that they have more access to high-speed broadband internet services. Since Bridge the Gulf started two years ago, as an online source for citizen journalism and Gulf resident storytelling, it has worked with Gulf Coast communities to build their technological and digital capacities. Just last week, Bridge the Gulf . With the assistance of the National Guestworker’s Alliance, seven guestworkers called for Wal-Mart and the Department of Labor to investigate their worker abuse claims. Walmart announced they’d investigate, but a few days later concluded their investigation claiming they right now making their case before and raising more awareness about the exploitation they say they’ve endured and witnessed in Louisiana. Bad enough that the media has chosen to ignore the workers’ claims, choosing instead to defend business interests, but state legislators are running a full assault on guestworkers rights and protections. Rep. Shelby in Alabama and Sen. Mary Landrieu in Louisiana have both signed onto to hear from the guestworkers themselves about their experiences laboring in Louisiana.

3. No Resting Place for the RESTORE Act -- The RESTORE Act is a pure political paradox. It is one of the few pieces of legislation in existence right now that enjoys true bipartisan support. But it , which has been strung along for months now and has no sign of resolution anytime soon. One of the main reasons for that is that House Republicans want to add in funds for the Keystone XL pipeline, even though Democrats in both chambers oppose it. It’s left Gulf Coast folks in a thorny position: Advocate for a bad transportation bill that includes passage of RESTORE but also authorizes the Keystone XL dirty tar sands project, or don’t support the transportation bill because of the nasty Keystone XL tie-in, but lose RESTORE funds. Some legislators are trying to dis-attach RESTORE from the transportation bill, but right now there is no pending legislation that isn’t caught in a political leg-lock -- it would make sense to add it to Obama’s jobs bill, but that bill is going nowhere.

Gulf Watch: Louisiana Government and Media Defend Immigrant Guestworker Exploitation and Abuse

Brentin Mock — Sat, 09 Jun 2012 04:39:26 +0000

Scott Walker’s recall election survival in Wisconsin this week was tough to swallow mainly because of his stance against workers rights. Hopefully it’s not a sign of things to come for workers rights, especially in the Deep South where organized labor has rarely ever been welcome, leaving the door wide open for exploitation, especially for immigrants seeking opportunity in the U.S.

We saw an unfortunate example of that near New Orleans this week, where eight seafood processors, working under H-2B guestworker permits, went on strike against alleged brutal, “slave”-like conditions imposed upon them by their employer C.J.'s Seafood. The workers were a fraction of some 40 workers working under similar oppressive conditions, legal complaint the workers have filed with the Department of Labor. At a protest in front of Sam’s Club, the bulk retail store that buys most of the seafood that guestworkers process, the workers testified that they had been abused long enough. (Read the full legal complaint here.)

Bridge the Gulf staff were there and reported that the workers complained of having to work 24-hour shifts with no overtime pay, having their wages stolen, suffering un-air conditioned living quarters with rats, enduring badgering if they attempted to leave their squalid housing area for leisure, and being threatened with violence or deportation if they complained or spoke up for their rights. And yes these immigrants have rights, and not only because they’re here on a federal work permit. Employers who’ve recruited massive immigrant labor dating back to Katrina have worked actively, though, to ensure that these workers have no rights that any company should respect.

Following a pattern of complaints from immigrant workers about being exploited and threatened with violence, arrest or deportation (or all three), the US Department of Labor instituted new guestworker program rules and regulations that protect immigrants from the kind of abuse testified about C. J.'s Seafood. You’d think that people who were devastated by hurricanes and failed levees, whose homes and businesses were built back in large part thanks to immigrant labor, would support rules that protect these workers. That’s not been the case, though.

Leblanc himself is suing the Department of Labor over the rule changes. Apparently a status quo of exploitation is good for the bottomline, especially at a company that brings in upwards of $20 million annually and has Walmart as its primary client. He’s just part of a small army of businesses, though, that are fighting DOL in court over the new worker protection regs, including the . But it’s no surprise that business is trying to protect dollars at the expense of human lives. What is surprising is that government officials and the media are protecting business interests.

In a Gambit Weekly column from Jeremy Alford, employers like Leblanc were defended while DOL was blamed for putting small businesses out of business. Louisiana agricultural commissioner Mike Strain is quoted by Alford saying the new rules “will probably put Louisiana's last few remaining crawfish tail meat processors out of business." A bunch of other “small business” owners like Elmer Candy Corp. -- the second largest candy company in North America -- boohooed about the regulations while Rep. Charles Boustany shed additional tears for them saying, "One way to avoid significant expenses to our region's small businesses is for [the Labor Department] to withdraw these ill-advised rules."

The “ill-advised rules” targeted in the Gambit column are two that affect guestworkers’ wages and hours. In the past, employers along the Gulf Coast could bring in hundreds of immigrant workers under the H-2B program, even if their operation only needed a fraction of that many workers. This way, they could avoid paying overtime, and if they ever needed to get rid of a worker -- because she or he was “subordinate” or complained -- they would have another worker already on the premises to take their place, rendering immigrant workers perpetually disposable. Employers would also charge immigrant workers thousands of dollars in “recruitment fees,” withholding wages while driving workers to labor obscene hours until the debt was paid off. Once the debt was paid, maybe employers kept the immigrants on the force, maybe they didn’t -- either way, the company benefitted from free labor.

Under DOL’s new H-2B rules, immigrant guestworkers must be paid a prevailing wage using a formula that increases their hourly pay from what employers were used to getting away with. Alford said in his column that the new rules “guarantee guest workers will be paid 75 percent of their wages, even if they work less than three-quarters of a week,” and would be compensated as such even in the event a hurricane shut the business down. Neither of these assertions are correct unfortunately. The new rules state that an employer must guarantee employment for a “total number of work hours equal to at least 75% of the workdays in each 12-week period” and if an early termination is warranted because of “fire, weather, other Act of God,” then the employer is only on the hook for three-fourths of the hours “to the time of termination.” Alford also wrote that the new wage rules could raise guestworker wages as much as 100%, (which is also wrong.)

In the case of the C. J.'s Seafood guestworkers, the the strikers said they were paid not by the hour, but by the pound. Meaning, as crawfish plant workers, they were tasked with de-shelling and cleaning the small shellfish, and were each paid $2 for every pound of crawfish completed. Many of them would work 12- to 15-hour shifts, averaging maybe $6 an hour. For workers who cut and trim fish and meat for a living in the New Orleans-Metarie area, the : mandating that employers pay for guestworkers’ equipment, tools and safety gear; requiring that both employers AND their contractors abide by H2B rules; mandating that workers be paid at least biweekly; prohibiting employers from docking workers’ pay for frivolous reasons; requiring employers to keep record of the number of hours guestworkers work and how much they are paid, and providing the workers with earning statements.

Think about that. It’s 2012 and we had a federal government worker program that didn’t even require employers to keep accounting of their workers labor and wages, and that made workers pay for their own protective gear. It must take tremendous courage for foreign-born workers to speak out against abuse, especially when they feel physically threatened. I was reminded by an expert on immigrant worker law that an employer’s participation in the federal H2B program is a privilege, not a right. Companies are not entitled to immigrant labor. So paying workers what they weigh and making sure they are protected are small prices to pay for the opportunity to have one’s business prosper thanks to the guestworkers.

The whole point of the H2B program is to help businesses stay afloat by supplying them with temporary labor when they can’t find US native workers who’ll do dirty work like peel crawfish. There is a cap on the number of guestworkers the nation can recruit because there still needs to be jobs available for US-born workers. We can't have a system where immigrant workers are pit against US-born workers. We also can't have a system that decreases wages and protections for both. In fact, one condition of entering the H-2B program is that employers must prove that hiring these guestworkers "will not adversely affect the wages and working conditions of similarly employed US workers."

If Leblanc's lawsuit prevails, employers could bring as many South Americans in to work as they want, pay them nickles on the hour and threaten their lives if they complain. A culture of immigrant labor abuse has been in effect from Katrina through the BP oil disaster. This can't become normal.

There’s some hope for the guestworkers at C. J.’s Seafood. As a result of their Sam’s Club protest, Walmart announced that they would investigate the worker abuse complaints. "We take reports like this very seriously and we will take appropriate actions based on the findings from our investigation, " said Walmart’s corporate affairs manager Megan Murphy to the International Business Times.

Please read about the C. J. Seafood Eight who are striking and have called for an investigation into guestworker exploitation and abuse with the help of the National Guestworkers Alliance

Tags:

New Orleans Workers Center for Racial Justice

immigrant rights

Gulf Watch: Cover-Ups! GCCF Broken Promises, Alabama's New Immigration Law and More Gulf Pollution

Brentin Mock — Mon, 21 May 2012 16:22:51 +0000

As the BP oil disaster claims process leaves the hands of the Gulf Coast Claims Facility and goes under court supervision, there's unfinished business, or rather an unfulfilled promise that it looks like Kenneth Feinberg's old outfit may be trying to cover up. Meanwhile, Alabama covers up its ugly immigration law with an even uglier one. Finally, in Alabama, a ship captain gets caught dumping plastic bottles that once contained insecticide into the Gulf, and then yup, tried to cover it up.

Last week, Gulf resident Kent Haughton wrote in Bridge the Gulf about how he still
So, this one isn't really a cover up, in the sense that someone is trying to throw the rug over a mess they made. But suffice it to say that Alabama's original immigration bill HB 56 was pretty messy, with so many racial profiling allowances in it that it scared immigrant workers away from their jobs, and their kids away from their schools, dismantling families and the state's economy in the process. Now, Alabama has laid an even messier immigration bill -- HB 658 -- over that one, and it has even thornier restrictions, including a "Scarlet Letter" provision that publishes the names of immigrants who've had court matters. Gov. Robert Brentley head-faked a possible veto, but eventually signed the bill, setting back civil rights in the state notorious for its history of blocking civil rights. Back in March, we spoke with immigrant rights advocate Orlando Rosa, producer for the radio show La Jefa, who's been organizing against Alabama's nativist agenda. He told us then, "We want the state to make a big change and become 'Alabama the beautiful' as it is so-called, you know? But, if [HB 56] and what's going on in Montgomery keeps on, it's going to be really hard to see something positive." Read more about the fight against Alabama's anti-immigrant laws from advocate Ingrid Chapman of Catalyst Project that once held insecticides into the Gulf of Mexico and then failing to log it in the ship's garbage records. It's against the law, specifically the International Convention to Prevent Pollution from Ships law, to discharge plastic in the sea. The captain, Prastana Taohim, pulled into a Mobile, Ala. port to have his ship inspected and gave the Coast Guard his garbage logs, but didn't tell them about the hundreds of insecticide bottles he tossed out. Insecticides are loaded with nitrogen compounds that contribute to hypoxia, the "dead zone" condition that has been slowly killing off aquatic life in the Gulf of Mexico. The Gulf already suffers from a continuous stream of insecticides and pesticides delivered from the Mississippi River. Taohim was convicted of two counts of obstruction of justice including "covering up the pollution by creating a false and fictitious garbage log."

One thing we're not trying to cover up is Bridge the Gulf's new New Orleans-based journalist Brentin Mock is Web Editor at Bridge The Gulf. He joins us after working with a number of Gulf Coast-based organizations including The Lens and Ocean Conservancy, and has reported extensively on the Gulf Coast for numerous outlets including Colorlines, The Daily Beast, Newsweek, The American Prospect, Essence, and The Root.

Tags:

Alabama

Im/migration

gulf coast claims facility

pollution

Gulf Watch: BP Settlement Finalization, Jobs, and Protecting Immigrants Under VAWA

Brentin Mock — Mon, 07 May 2012 15:52:07 +0000

Roughly two weeks after the second year memorial of the BP oil disaster, a few moving parts are looking like they're coming to closure, even if not on completely amenable terms. The federal judge overseeing the trial against BP has approved settlement terms. And Mississippi passed a law to encourage local hiring in the wake of disasters. Meanwhile, national policymaking and politics that affect the Gulf Coast continue. On the immigration front, congressional changes to the Violence Against Women Act may lead to immigrant workers left even more vulnerable to nativist threats than they currently are.

Federal judge Carl Barbeir has granted preliminary approval of the settlement waged in March to compensate those who suffered economic damages and health problems stemming from the oil disaster. Barbier said that he considered the objections to the settlement, including those from shrimpers who dislike the 2009 baseline for post-spill losses, shrimp processors, and vessel owners who need compensation for economic losses on top of the compensation they received for using their boats for disaster response. All objectors will be able to get a fair hearing, said Barbier, under this settlment, which allows them to file objections by August 31 or opt out of the settlement by October 1. There are many groups not covered by the settlement, though, including those who catch or process menhaden fish, people who don't live directly in Gulf coastal zones, and those who worked at least five years in the Gulf in jobs that would have exposed them to petrochemicals before the oil spill. The last group is a tough one given so many in the Gulf have made their living off of or near petrochemical facilities, because it's such a dominant industry on the Gulf. This is why it's important to emphasize the mostly forgotten recommendations of the Gulf Coast Ecosystem Restoration Task Force, which was created to address the legacy problems existing in the Gulf before the BP oil disaster.
One issue that Gulf coast citizens have been pushing for is the prioritization of local residents to be hired for restoration jobs horizoning as part of BP penalties. Burned in previous years after disasters like Katrina, where rebuilding jobs went to out-of-state companies and workers, Gulf residents vowed to never let that happen again. It's been Mississippi that has stepped up to the plate, by signing into law the Mississippi Jobs First bill, which gives the state's residents first dibs on jobs from federally funded public works projects. This is especially good news under a less-than-stellar employment report from April, where only 115,000 jobs were added last month, far below the 250,000-300,000 needed for a substantial economic recovery. As Sue Sturgis at Facing South reported using Bureau of Labor Statistics figures, Mississippi has one of the highest unemployment rates in the nation -- only six states, including D.C. have higher jobless rates. The industries that have added jobs are in high-skill or super low-wage skills, leaving fears that the middle-class is being left from the economic recovery. Ensuring that jobs from Gulf Coastal restoration -- jobs which likely will span all skills -- go to Gulf residents is one sure way to shore up all classes along the Gulf shore (sorry for over-shoring).
Last but certainly not least, typically the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) is a non-contentious event in Congress. But of course, this isn't a typical year. VAWA reauthorization is currently being held up in Congress by Republicans who were concerned that undocumented immigrants were granted a bit too many human rights under the act. As reported by Ryan Grim and Elise Foley at Huffington Post, VAWA orginally protected immigrants who were victims of spousal abuse by allowing them to confidentially apply for citizenship if they needed to get out of an abusive relationship where the abusing spouse was using the victim's citizenship status as a form of furthur abuse. Republicans now want to strip that confidentiality out of it, allowing the abusive partner to be notified of a victim applying for citizenship. Republicans allege that immigrants have been trying to game the system by falsely reporting abuse from their partners so that they can pursue citizenship on their own rather than through a citizen spouse. It's yet another attempt by Republicans to claim fraud as a way to wage war on immigrants and women.
I personally recall a case where a South American woman was held hostage by her spouse who forced her to do dehumanizing things under threat of him reporting her for deportation, and under a false promise of marrying her, which would make her a citizen. Tragically, the man doing this was a "civil rights" lawyer, or at least worked for a civil rights law firm. She was ultimatey rescued from the abusive relationship and allowed to pursue citizenship on her own, without the dark cloud of her abusive partner hanging over her. Under the new Republican adjustment to VAWA, this abusive partner would be notified of her every move in terms of immigraton status, which would keep her in an unsafe space. The new reauthorization would also restrict immigrants' opportunities to apply for citizenship while assisting law enforcement officials with investigating crimes. Immigrants have played a crucial role in rebuilding the Gulf Coast from Katrina to the BP oil disaster. Reports of domestic violence and other crimes have intensified since the BP disaster, and often times it is immigrants who are the victims in those cases. South American immigrants and African Americans fought hard to make sure Arizona/Alabama-like nativist bills would not be passed in Mississippi, as reported by to protect immigrants and their advocates from being arrested and deported, as reported by Bridge the Gulf's Ada McMahon. The federal government should complement this work by expanding protections of immigrants, not making them more vulnerable to attacks.

Photo: Delmy Palencia speaks out about being targeted by Immigration authorities after a domestic dispute, at the 2012 May Day march in New Orleans.

New Orleans-based journalist Brentin Mock is Web Editor at Bridge The Gulf. He joins us after working with a number of Gulf Coast-based organizations including The Lens and Ocean Conservancy, and has reported extensively on the Gulf Coast for numerous outlets including Colorlines, The Daily Beast, Newsweek, The American Prospect, Essence, and The Root.

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