Immigration: Perry likes Arpaio, the Department of Justice doesn't

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It is inconceivable that Texas Gov. Rick Perry would ally himself with Sheriff Arpaio just before a damning report on how Arpaio mistreats his inmates.

Click HERE for the Department of Justice report

HERE for the Department of Justice report in Spanish

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Pattern of civil rights abuses alleged in Sheriff Joe Arpaio's Maricopa County - LA Times

The Justice Department charges that Latinos were illegally arrested and abused in jail repeatedly in the Arizona county and that hundreds of sexual assaults weren't investigated.

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Rick Perry turns to Joe Arpaio on Immigration Issue - LA Times
Texas Gov. Rick Perry had hoped to assuage concerns about his views on illegal immigration by winning the backing of tough-talking Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Ariz.

I'M AN IMMIGRANT TOO!

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On a recent trip to Philadelphia, I had the privilege of visiting four Catholic campuses on immigration issues:  Villanova University, St. Joseph's University, La Salle University, and Cabrini College.  I am both impressed and inspired with the faculty and students as they help educate about our immigrant brothers and sisters, and how they are reaching out to them in the greater Philadelphia area.

At Cabrini College I attended a large gathering to give my power point presentation on immigration issues.  A young lady gave an opening reflection, and I was truly impressed.  With her permission I am reprinting it here for you--it is truly insightful and powerful.


I'm an immigrant but not like you think.  You're one too and I'm about to tell you how.

These are the things people characterize an immigrant as:

     *  how you sound

     *  the language you speak

     *  what you don't know

     *  your mannerisms, and

     *  the questions you may ask.

You're an immigrant too.  Listen close because I'm about to tell you how.

Remember your first day in a new place?

Whether it be college, work or even a new face?

You come to a foreign land, and new country and eventually want to be loved.

Am I wrong?

You expect that over time you will be accepted and that this foreign country won't be one anymore.

That your face won't be a new one but one that's become a part of.

You're an immigrant too, listen close because I already told you.

When you say immigrant it should hit home, no matter where your home lies.

Don't look across the border for someone to sympathize with.

Look in your own eyes and realize you long for that very same prize.

That your face won't be a new one but one that's become a part of.

A part of a melting pot of culture that we all have a piece of in us.

We can't deny someone else our warm embrace only because they have a different face.

Think of immigration as your own immigration.

Jenay M. Smith

Mexico's Labor Law Reform ?

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MEXICO'S LABOR LAW REFORM SPARKS MASSIVE PROTESTS
A plan to gut labor protections has spurred unrest in Mexico's streets.
By David Bacon

Economics students at the National Autonomous University of Mexico march from the Plaza of Three Cultures to the Zocalo to protest a proposed labor law reform and to mark the anniversary of the October 2, 1968 massacre.
     
        MEXICO CITY-As the Mexican Senate tried to convene last week, unionists, youth protesters from the #YoSoy132 movement and social activists of every stripe blocked the chamber's doors, trying to prevent legislators from meeting to consider the reforma laboral. On October 2, tens of thousands marched from the Tlatelolco (Plaza of Three Cultures), where hundreds of students were shot down by Mexican Army troops on the same date in 1968, to the Zocalo at the city center. Reverberating chants signaled an equally massive rejection of this deeply unpopular proposal.
   The Mexican Senate has begun its 30-day consideration of a proposed reform of the country's labor laws. Its provisions will have a profound effect on Mexico's workers, changing the way they are hired, their rights at work, and their wages. Benedicto Martinez Orozco, co-president of one of the country's most democratic unions, the Authentic Labor Front (FAT), calls it "a monstrous law."
    The basic thrust of the reforma laboral is greater flexibility for employers. It would replace pay per day with pay by the hour. At Mexico's current minimum wage of about 60 pesos per day, this would produce an hourly wage of 7.5 pesos, less than 60 cents. Employers would gain the legal right to hire workers indirectly through labor contractors. If workers are fired for protesting or organizing against the new regime, or for any other illegitimate reason, employers' liability for back pay would end after a year.
   In the ears of U.S. workers, the wages may sound low, but the kind of flexibility the reform envisions has been the norm in workplaces north of the border for decades. Not so in Mexico, however. In the wake of the Mexican Revolution, and then in the radical upsurge that followed in the '30s and '40s, Mexican workers won a broad set of rights and protections. On paper, the rights of Mexican workers are far more extensive than those of their U.S. counterparts.
  In the Federal Labor Law, which the reform would amend, the workday was officially set at 8 hours, and workers could only be hired by the day, not by the hour. Minimum wages were set as well. Employers had to give workers permanent employment status quickly, and hiring through contractors was prohibited. If workers were fired unjustly, they could collect back pay for the time they were out of work. If they were laid off, their employer had to pay severance based on their length of service. Companies had to declare their profits, and share them according to a set schedule.
      Employers have never liked these laws, but the political offensive to change them grew much stronger as Mexico opened its economy to foreign investors. Over time those rights were eroded in fact, if not yet in law. As the maquiladora factories on the U.S./Mexico border grew to employ 2 million workers (before the current recession), the actual conditions of employment changed, despite what the law said. Workdays extended well past eight hours. Workers were routinely cheated out of profit sharing. When they tried to organize independent unions, their legal right to bargain and strike was violated with impunity by employers, the government and unions connected to Mexico's old ruling party, the PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party).
   Using labor contractors was illegal in theory, but it became the employers' weapon of choice in the fierce labor battles of the past decade. The five-year strike by copper miners in Cananea, just south of the Arizona border, was declared illegal a year ago. Then Grupo, Mexico, the huge corporation that owns mines on both sides of the border, brought in strikebreakers using contractors.
    Humberto Montes de Oca, international secretary of the Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME), notes bitterly that Cananea was the birthplace in Mexico of the fight for the eight-hour day, in the famous uprising of 1906 that heralded the beginning of the Mexican Revolution. "Now if you go to Cananea," he says, "you find subcontracted workers in the mine putting in 12-hour days with no overtime pay. In the heart of the town where the eight-hour-day struggle started, workers now have a 12-hour day."        Montes de Oca's own union suffered a similar fate. In 2009 Mexican President Felipe Calderón dissolved the state-owned Power and Light Company of central Mexico and declared that the union no longer existed. The SME, one of the country's oldest and most democratic unions, has been fighting ever since for the right of workers to return to their jobs, and to regain its legal status.
"Our members were also replaced by subcontracted workers with no union," Montes de Oca says. "These new replacements had no training or experience, and as a result, there were countless accidents. Some of these workers died. This is the employment model promoted by the labor law reform. What happened to us anticipated the changes the reform will bring everywhere."
  Martinez adds, "For workers who don't accept this, and are fired when they try to protest or organize, the employer isn't liable for more than a year of back pay. No one will bring a case against his or her boss because the employer will have such a strong motivation to delay endlessly. Given the Mexican legal system, that will be very easy."
        When the PRI lost the presidency in 2000, proposals for changing labor law were made by the incoming National Action Party. Some, promoted by the World Bank, were so extreme in restricting the rights of workers and unions that even more liberal-minded employers objected. Independent and progressive unions mobilized opposition, defeated them, and then proposed their own alternatives.
       One centered on guaranteeing the right of workers to elect union officials by secret ballot. PRI-affiliated unions have a long history of violence and corruption in the election of their leaders. Another would have ended "protection contracts," the secret agreements signed by corrupt unions to protect employers when workers organize independently. Those proposals had support from Mexico's left-leaning Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), but not from the PRI.
    In last July's national election, however, the PRI regained the presidency. Then in September a reforma laboral proposal passed through the Chamber of Deputies at breakneck speed, pushed by an alliance between the PAN and the PRI. The Senate, which must ratify it, has yet to take a vote. But it's likely that the PAN/PRI alliance will pass it there too. Calderón would presumably sign it before he leaves office.
   Using the same arguments heard from employers and Republicans in the U.S. presidential campaign, reform supporters argue that removing restrictions on employers will encourage them to hire more workers, producing more jobs. Rosalinda Vélez Juárez, Secretary of Labor and Social Welfare, asserted that the reforms constituted "a watershed" that would generate an additional 400,000 jobs per year. "Even the opposition will eventually see the benefit," she declared.
        Critics point out, however, that 900,000 young people enter the Mexican job market every year. Since the Calderón administration took office in 2006, however, only 1.54 million people have gained formal employment, according to the Social Security Institute-about  250,000 per year, or less than a third of those needing work. That is just one element of the economic pressure producing waves of migration to the United States. Evaluating the reforma laboral, the UN's Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean found that it would not create any new jobs, but merely encourage contractors to hire workers already in the informal sector. "We may see an increase in jobs, but they will be very precarious ones at very low pay," Montes de Oca argues.
       What the reform will also do, however, according to unions and other critics, is increase the productivity of the workforce by making workers more vulnerable to pressure by employers. A rise in productivity actually diminishes the need for new workers.
    "The ultimate effect will be to impoverish workers even further," says Martinez. "On the one hand, it makes it much easier to fire workers. On the other, the ability to subcontract workers paid by the hour gives employers a reason to fire permanent employees. This opens the doors of paradise for them." Unions will certainly find it more difficult to organize workers who increasingly need better wages and conditions, but are even more frightened of losing the precarious jobs they have.        In response to the unions' earlier proposals, one provision added to the reform as it was debated would have given workers the right to elect the officers of their unions in direct, secret-ballot elections. That provision, however, was removed by those deputies who are also leaders of unions affiliated to the PRI or to minor parties backing the reform. One deputy, Lucila Garfias Gutiérrez, speaking for the conservative leadership of the Mexican Teachers Union, asserted, "We say yes to union democracy, but also to respecting the principle of autonomy Å  only the workers should have the right to decide how to organize [the internal election process in their own unions.]"
    She was challenged, however, by the progressive Coordinadora movement in her own union. Francisco Bravo Herrerra, leader of Mexico City's Seccion Local 9, told the Mexican daily La Jornada that support for the reform was a criminal act-"the biggest blow against workers of the past hundred years."
       Once the provision was removed, the PRI deputies who are union leaders voted for the reforma laboral. "The supposed worker representatives in the Chamber of Deputies who approved this law betrayed their principles and their own members, and the whole Mexican people," Martinez fumed. "They handed workers over to the bosses on a silver platter."
       Both Martinez and Montes de Oca predict that the fight against the reform won't end even if the Senate approves it. In just one indication of the depth of that resistance, workers from the huge Nissan auto plant in Morelos stopped work and blocked the main highway from Mexico City to the coast, to demand rejection of the reforma laboral. Orozco and others believe that the reform is unconstitutional, and plan to challenge it legally.
    On October 11 a huge rally of unions outside the Senate brought together both independent unions like the FAT and the SME, and even sections of the PRI unions, to protest the reforms.  Fissures are appearing inside the PRI itself, and one PRI senator, Armando Neyra Chavez, who also heads the old-guard union, the Confederation of Mexican Workers in Mexico state, called on the newly elected PRI administration to restore the jobs and legal status of the fired electrical workers, instead of passing the reform bill.
    The cost of the reforma laboral will be felt, however, not just in Mexico, but also in the United States. The purpose of increased flexibility is to encourage investment, including from U.S. corporations like Ford, Walmart, Kimberly Clark and others, who already play a central role in the Mexican economy. More U.S. investment also means, though, that more jobs move south. The movement of production facilitated by the North American Free Trade Agreement has already cost at least 800,000 U.S. jobs, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
       Further job outsourcing to Mexico, spurred by lowered wages, subcontracted work and diminished rights for workers, will create more unemployment and displacement of workers north of the border. But the cost of low wages and increasingly precarious work is displacement in Mexico too. Workers who can't live on 7.5 pesos an hour, or find permanent work in a new world of labor contractors, will have little alternative to migration across that border.

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For more articles and images, see  http://dbacon.igc.org

Chicana/o Studies

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 Mass EducationBy  Rodolfo F. Acuña
Ed. note; all that is said below also applies directly to the elimination of Bilingual/Multicultural Education at Sac State in Spring 2012. A lot more thought has to be paid to the question, “why Chicana/o Studies?”  CHS are not the whim; they are not a fad. They are part of the historical reasons for the struggle of the Mexican American community to obtain equal protection.  If we forget these reasons, CHS will be minimized -- reduced to whims and fads, obfuscating why institutions of higher learning continue to exclude Latinos.
The failure to ask “why” perpetuates the myth that higher education is dedicated to a search for the Truth and open equally to all Americans. The truth be told, Chicana/o Studies is only tolerated because it is politically expedient. CHS are tolerated in many institutions because they placate Mexican American students.   
It follows a pattern: the administration concedes students one Chicana/o studies class in history – and call it Chicana/o Studies. If the academy feels generous, it gives the students an office, which they share with a faculty member. Often instructors are not specialists in Chicana/o Studies, and they are often not Mexican American – any name that ends in a vowel suffices.
Campuses have not taken CHS seriously; the academe is intellectually lazy, and has not questioned why the disparate departments have failed to integrate this important fund of knowledge.

The justifications for CHS are clear. The nation’s Mexican population is approaching 40 million; the Latino population exceeds 56 million. You would think that most professionals would want know more about this group for professional reasons.
However, after 43 years – a period that has seen the Mexican American population grow from five million -- from a regional minority to a national minority – the mindset of academe remains in the dark ages. To my knowledge very few academieians have bothered to examine their curriculum in light of these changes. Indeed, the numbers of programs in CHS have actually declined over the past 40 years.
At California State University Northridge although it has the largest CHS department in the nation with over 67 professors, offering 166 sections per semester, a campus wide curricular discussion has not taken place. The most that has happened is a review of General Education and a recertification of classes that ignore the changes in population.
In 1970 the Mexican/Latino student population in the mammoth Los Angeles Unified School District was 22 percent; today it exceeds 75 percent. In the City of Los Angeles the Latino population has zoomed from about 15 percent to just over 50 percent. Still CSUN is stuck “Anything But Mexican” mindset.
The record speaks louder than words. Seventy-five percent of the CSUN academic departments have not hired a single Mexican American professor – let alone a specialist – and close to 100 percent of the departments do not offer a single course on the Mexican American/Latino experience.
Yet CSUN has made more progress than most institutions. It will tell you that it is a Hispanic Serving Institution, which it boldly lists it on all grant applications. But, does the administration and do our colleagues respect us?
I am not going to go into a discourse on race. Academe is a reflection of society, and the pace of change resembles the Republican Party. Just look at cameos of Republican Presidential Conventions, and look at the delegates who remain mostly white and old. Indeed, ideas of the GOP and the academy remain stuck in the pre-sixties era.
It is easy for Chicana/o professors and other Latinos to get lost in this quagmire. They go along with the agenda because they want a job or because they really don’t know history. Most CHS professors today were born in the 1980s – a scary proposition – they were brought up on Charlie Brown and Mr. Rogers – a few were rescued by Calvin and Hobbes.  
It does not occur to them to ask, “why Chicana/o studies?”, and why is there so much resistance to it in academe?
Babies constantly ask why? However, the schools and other institutions suppress the notion of “why.” Even historians who are supposed to be skeptical generally go along with the program.
I did not come to CHS because I had an epiphany. I came to it because my life determined my choices. The first time I got married I was 19/20; my ex-wife was 16. With a child on the way, I shelved my ambitions, and I went to Los Angeles State College. It cost less than $10 a year. I changed my major to social studies because teaching was the quickest way to get a full time job. Having to work 40/60 hours a week and carry 16 units, I did not have too much time for sleep or study.
By the time I graduated, I was working forty hours a week as a janitor in the schools.  I earned my General Secondary Teaching Credential partially by student teaching and partially by teaching grades K-12 in a Yeshiva. 
I was relieved when I got a job at San Fernando Junior High. The experience turned job into a vocation because of what I saw and what I heard from the other teachers. The principal referred to me as her “Mexican teacher,” and I thought if they look at me in this manner, what do they think of the Mexican students? I often heard them referred to as the little bastards.
I went on to teach in a high school, earn a MA and then a PhD, while also volunteering in an organization called the Latin American Civic Association. Dialogues with likeminded people expanded my world view as did my readings. 1963 was a very important year. I read C. Wright Mills but also read Ruben Salazar’s Los Angeles Times articles on the state of Mexican American education in LA.
I was personally moved by an essay written by a 13-year old Tucson student in a National Education Association study, The Invisible Minority (1966).
It started:MeTo begin with, I am a Mexican. That sentence has a scent of bitterness as it is written. I feel if it weren’t for my nationality I would accomplish more. My being a Mexican has brought about my lack of initiative. No matter what I attempt to do, my dark skin always makes me feel that I will fail. Another thing that “gripes” me is that I am such a coward. I absolutely will not fight for something even if I know I’m right.  I do not have the vocabulary that it would take to express myself strongly enough…
In reading and listening to educators such as George I. Sánchez, my generation of Mexican American scholars became convinced that identity was essential to motivating Mexican American students who had become disaffected with the schools. Sánchez exposed many of us to bilingual/bicultural studies. In a 1959, Sánchez included a section in his bibliography called a “Course of Study.” Because of my background in education, it was not a quantum leap to later view CHS as pedagogy.
Sixty percent of Mexican Americans were dropping out of school, which we saw as a crisis. When students demanded Mexican American Studies, we supported them. The plan was to make students participants in history and culture. It was part of pedagogy to motivate them to acquire skills that were not being taught in the public schools.
This was the state of things when students demonstrated, walked out of high schools, and pressed institutions of higher learning to recruit Mexican American students and begin courses in the study of Mexican Americans. Chicano students were no doubt influenced by the Black Studies movement.
My first priority was not to reach the upper third of the student community who had the necessary skills to succeed. They just need the opportunity to get ahead or, for that matter, fail. It was the middle-lower thirds that needed motivation and skill development.
Today under the guise of fiscal savings the lower two-thirds are being denied access by rising tuition costs. The ploy is that these sectors are not being excluded because they can always go to community colleges. The American Dream is alive; forget that community colleges are severely overcrowded.
This will slowly erode one of the goals for CHS – that of mass education. This is a goal that progressive educators have had from the beginning. It included the crusade for compulsory school attendance and the formation of labor and ethnic schools.  Progressive educators from John Dewey to the present day reformers have espoused mass education as the lynchpin of a democratic society. It was part of the 1960 California Master Plan for Higher Education before it was scrapped.
As the commitment to mass education is abandoned, an underclass will grow in America, and class differences will proliferate within the Mexican American and Latino communities.  Ironically, society will claim that there is equal opportunity for Mexican Americans because it is open to the upper third of the community.
Along these lines, in the eighties I had a spirited exchange with Harvard historian Nathan Huggins. I asked him if he minority communities – Mexican Americans in particular– could afford an intellectual class. Huggins responded with a question, could we afford not to have one?
Just over twenty years later as the Chicana/o stairway to the middle-class heaven is being dismantled, I would still ask, can we afford an intellectual elite? My own view is that it is difficult to justify it when the house is burning.

Ed. for information on the elimination of Bilingual Multicultural Education at Sacramento State see the Chicano/Mexican American Digital History project at https://sites.google.com/site/democracyandeducationorg/chicano-mexican-american-digital-history-project/history-of-bilingual-education-dept-at-sac-state

Depositions begin this week in the case against HB 2281. You can donate by clicking on to http://saveethnicstudies.org/  . We are run entirely by volunteers; however, depositions are expensive. Please donate at least $5 a month.
Depositions have started in the case against Sean Arce and José González. Four hours of depositions were taken of both Arce and Gonzalez. Our side deposed Ward this past week. Please donate: https://www.wepay.com/donations/144408 

Immigrants and Unions Work together to oust Joe Arpaio.

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Jenny Brown  Labor Notes
October 19, 2012
http://labornotes.org/2012/10/immigrants-and-unions-work-oust-notorious-arizona-sheriff

Latino workers in the Phoenix area are fighting back
against the bullying sheriff of Maricopa County, Joe
Arpaio. They've registered over 34,000 new voters for
the November election.

The "Adiós Arpaio" campaign is part of a strategy by the
hotel union UNITE HERE to turn around Arizona's anti-
worker policies, in a right-to-work state where Latino
workers have only recently begun to flex their political
muscles. Maricopa County contains 60 percent of
Arizona's population

Organizers say they feel a seismic shift in the
political landscape. "I've never been part of something
historic before," said Lucia Vergara Aguirre, president
of UNITE HERE Local 631. The union has been growing,
representing workers at the Phoenix airport complex and
at several downtown hotels, and has other organizing
drives underway.

The campaign could have national importance in drawing
the line against politicians who use anti-immigrant
rhetoric to gain office. UNITE HERE members have been
taking time off to work on the voter registration
campaign. Fifty volunteers from the Los Angeles County
Federation of Labor, along with labor activists from
Texas and New Mexico, traveled to Phoenix to bolster the
effort.

But a phalanx of Phoenix high school students has formed
the backbone of the campaign. They've been coming into
the union office after school and working four shifts a
day on weekends, heading out to register people in
grocery stores and on doorsteps, making inroads in a
Latino community that has not traditionally registered
to vote in high proportions.

"All these students committed because they have the same
issue inside, that they can't stand discrimination
against Latinos," said Carmen Robles, a Tempe High
School student who, at 15, leads one of a dozen student
voter registration teams. Hers is jokingly called the T
Party, for Tempe.

In October, students led a march to Arpaio's office,
bringing moving boxes to suggest he should get busy
packing up. The action was courageous because some
students have had direct experience with the Maricopa
County sheriff's office. "One of my friends got her dad
taken away," said Robles, who said her mother is
undocumented.

"Some people want to join us but still have that fear,
that Arpaio is going to mess with us," she said. "Our
determination is bigger than Arpaio."

Robles easily made the connection between worker rights
and the immigration crackdown, explaining that her
mother's job options are limited because of her status-
she works at a car wash where she is paid for only a
portion of the time she's at work.

JOE'S GOTTA GO

"Sheriff Joe" made a name for himself by confining
prisoners in tents in the desert heat, cutting them back
to two meals a day, and declaring himself "America's
Toughest Sheriff."

But Arpaio's star may be fading. He has been the target
of many investigations, including one where the U.S.
Justice Department concluded his office had "a pervasive
culture of discriminatory bias against Latinos" directed
from the highest levels of the agency.

Always a self-promoter, Arpaio surfaced on the national
radar as America's most anti-immigrant sheriff in 2007,
riding a wave of prejudice that crested with Arizona's
hated SB 1070. Signed into law by Republican Governor
Jan Brewer in 2010, SB 1070 transforms local police and
sheriffs into immigration officers and virtually
guarantees racial profiling.

Vergara Aguirre said her members are afraid they'll be
detained simply because they fit the profile of Mexicans
or because their English is accented. Some are even
afraid to leave work to go home. The visibility of the
movement against Arpaio is reducing that fear, she said.

Still, "the level of fear is extraordinary," said Daria
Ovide of the Campaign for Arizona's Future, a union-
funded political action committee working against
Arpaio. "You can be detained even if you're documented
because you're assumed to be undocumented." And
detention means confinement in one of Arpaio's tents, in
all weather.

Arpaio's constitutional violations were so blatant that
in 2011 the federal Department of Homeland Security
stripped the sheriff's office of its authority to
identify and detain people simply because they have no
papers. It's unclear that Arpaio's agency has changed
much, though.

LEARNING ABOUT THE UNION

Some unions have stayed out of the Adiós Arpaio
campaign, though the Food and Commercial Workers are on
board. "Immigration is still a very divisive issue among
unions," said Ovide.

She thinks that's wrongheaded, since Latinos of any
economic status vote better on working people's issues
than even union members who are white do. So it benefits
workers of all races to increase Latino voter turnout,
she said.

Meanwhile, the high school student volunteers are
learning about the union. Vergara Aguirre has found
herself explaining to fascinated 17-year-olds how the
union works, how she got involved, and what a union
contract is. They talk to her about the humiliating,
low-paid jobs their parents have, and ask if a union
could change that.

"These kids are going to be part of our union," she
predicted.

The sheriff's race is likely to be close. Anti-Arpaio
voters outnumber supporters in the polls, but it's a
three-way race, with a Libertarian candidate in distant
third place drawing some votes away from the Democratic
challenger.

Arpaio has a formidable campaign budget, since he
garners donations from all over the country for his
inflammatory actions-he even launched an investigation
of President Obama's birth certificate. And he has
support from Phoenix's suburbs, a largely retired,
largely white population.

Vergara Aguirre sees the effort as a long-term strategy.
Increased Latino voter turnout can help the union secure
better conditions at the city-owned airport, by electing
more sympathetic city council members. Looking to the
future, Arizona campaigners hope to emulate the
mobilization in California that changed the state's
political climate in reaction to the 1994 anti-immigrant
Proposition 187.

"If we take Arpaio out of office, that will be a
celebration for everyone," she said, "but if not, next
time.

"The next one will be Jan Brewer," Vergara Aguirre
added. "That lady has to go, too."

Re posted from Portside. __________

Labor asks for a No vote on Prop. 32.

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By Duane CampbellMany in labor believe that California Proposition 32 would be a near fatal blow to the California labor movement.On the grounds that "special interests have too much power over government,"  conservative attorneys  wrote   California Proposition 32 to   ban direct contributions to California candidates by corporations and labor unions. It prohibits the collection of "political funds" from corporate employees and union members via payroll deduction, even if the employee or member voluntarily approves. Political funds include money spent for or against a candidate or ballot measure or for a party or political action committee, or PAC.The proposition prohibits corporations and unions from using payroll deductions for political purposes, but of course corporations don’t use payroll deductions; they use their profits.  So, corporate donations would not be banned. Only unions would be affected by this ban.  It is a political bait and switch.  The proposition pretends to ban political contributions from both corporations and labor, and then they exempted the corporations.If Proposition 32 passes, unions would lose much of their ability to organize and to fight back in politics. Learn more at www.stopspecialexemptions.org
 Steve Smith of state AFL-CIO claims that  dark money groups including the Koch brothers and Karl Rove have donated millions to pass Proposition 32.  The American Future Fund (AFF), a front group for corporate special interests that’s linked to the Kochs, dropped $4 million to the effort to pass Prop 32. American Future Fund is an Iowa-based “advocacy organization” backed primarily by oil interests and directly linked to billionaire oil tycoons Charles and David Koch. As a 501(c)(4) organization, AFF does not disclose its donors and can receive unlimited contributions.Like the battle for Wisconsin last year, Prop.32 in California is a part of a sustained anti union effort on the part of right wing extremist forces well funded by U.S. billionaires.  Bill Fletcher in his fine book, “They’re Bankrupting Us” and 20 other Myths about Unions, (2012) traces this major assault on unions back to the 1980’s and the Ronald Reagan presidency.  It is worth noting that Ronald Reagan was governor of California from 1968-1976,  Reagan crafted and fashioned his assault on labor through his campaign against the United Farm Workers  and in favor of the  grape growers.  The tools of the assault, and the ideological battles were developed and tested against the UFW before Reagan became a viable candidate for the Presidency.   Now, with Proposition 32 we are back to California to further decimate labor’s political participation.http://www.sacbee.com/2012/10/18/4920421/campaign-watchdogs-say-arizona.htmlMystery Arizona group sends $11 million to fight unions,
reposted from www.TalkingUnion.wordpress.com 

Yes on 30 ; No on 32

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Rodolfo F. Acuña
I had a heated discussion with a friend this weekend on California Propositions 30 and 32, the draconian measures that will impact Latino and working people nationally. It surprised me that he was going to vote just the opposite of how most progressives are voting. I thought that “Yes on 30” and “No on 32” were no brainers and that he would agree.
My friend has always prided himself in being ideologically consistent and voting for the interests of the community. This consistency among progressives is fairly broad and, although we may disagree on priorities, there are certain core values common to individuals who claim to be progressive.
This is especially true of those of us in the social sciences where your writings define your consistency. It is also true in the field of law where it is possible to plot the behavior of justices. For example, you can determine the political preferences of the justices on the U.S. Supreme Court. It would have really been out of character, for example, for Justice Ruth Ginsburg to have voted for Citizens’ United (2010) or in the future vote to repeal Roe v. Wade (1973).

Whether you agree with former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, she is politically consistent. She is a hardliner on Iran, her anti-abortion beliefs and her mantra to cut income tax are  all predictable. Because of this consistency, coupled with her economic and political interests, we could predict her stances on Proposition 30, which proposes to raise sales and income taxes and Proposition 32 that purports to be a payroll protection measure but that is aimed at labor unions. It will have the same effect as Citizens’ United, allowing special interests to control state politics.  
The purpose of ideology is not confined to interpreting the world, but more important it is to change it to your world view. However, money in the United States has allowed special interests to buy air time and to buy people to create fictions and illusions, to the point that we lose reality itself; my friend used to call this a “false consciousness,” which blurs reality to the point that it creates a fiction of reality. Thus, the outcome is we lose consistency.
California’s tax policies have been proposed and passed with the financing of corporations and special interests within and outside the state. The so-called tax reformers who are behind Proposition 30 have formed a community of interests that has been forged over time.
When I was a kid I always remember relatives saying that you always knew when you drove into California. We had what were arguably the best roads in the United States.  Now they are among the worse in the nation.                                    In the 1950s, California’s public schools and colleges were the envy of the world. Since then there has been a steady decline from when Ronald Reagan (1967–75) was governor of California. Reagan along with the business community led an unsuccessful assault on the public colleges and universities under the guise of making students more socially responsible. At one point, he said that if they were paying for their education they would not be out protesting.
Reagan planted the seed for the destruction of California public education. Reagan conducted a relentless campaign to shift the cost of social production to the working and middle classes of the state. At the time, these classes were clearly defined as lower, lower-middle, middle and upper middle-classes. Today, it has become so confused that a family earning just above the poverty level and one earning over a million dollars a year are all lumped into the middle-class. This obfuscates class interests creating the illusion that we are all the same.
In 1960, California's public school system was the envy of the nation; students scored above the national median in math and reading.  It remained so under Gov. Pat Brown, declining with the advent of Reagan and the “job creators;” by 1970 California was 25^th in the nation in per capita spending per pupil. The downward decline was a fact by 1978 with “mission accomplished” with the passage of Proposition 13.The Proposition shifted the costs of education from the wealthy homeowner to the state. Landlords of commercial real estate paid the same rates as homeowners and in time paid fewer taxes than those buying homes after 1978. Commercial property owners and those owning homes in Beverly Hills paid fewer taxes than someone buying a home in South Central in 1990.  
Proposition 13 also shifted the cost of public education from property taxes to the state’s General Fund that was already strapped for cash.  This accelerated inequality among the schools that were polarized into richer and poorer. 
“As a result, 2010-11 estimated General Fund spending was lower as a share of the state’s economy than in 35 of the prior 40 years.” Consequently, the General Fund in 2010-11 was spending a lower share of the state’s economy than in 35 of the prior 40 years. California ranked 46th among the 50 states in K-12 spending per student in 2010-11; it rivaled Mississippi and Arizona in the race to the bottom.
Without dwelling on it, the Reagan agenda was accomplished. California had to abandon its touted Master Plan for Higher Education (1960). In 1958 the state paid 100 percent of the cost student instruction; today students pay over 75 percent of the instructional costs. Tuition has risen from under $10 a semester and is approaching $10,000 annually.
Who benefits? The California corporate community does.  Meanwhile, students incur debts of $25,000 to $100,000 without prospects of well-paying jobs because they are being outsourced by the “job creators.”
Proposition 30 cannot be separated from Proposition 32. They share the same “tangled web of supporters.” Many are the same people behind SB 1070 and HB 2281 in Arizona. Familiar names such as the Koch Brothers lead petroleum and real estate interests. They are central players in this war. In Los Angeles there is also the familiar face of former Mayor Richard Riordan who made hundreds of millions of dollars from what amounts to inside trading, buying and selling LA County and City properties. Riordan led the battle to privatize Olvera Street, and as mayor, he proposed privatizing the historic L.A. City Central Library.  
Riordan spreads his money around and more than a dozen L.A. politicos, Latinos included, are beholding to Riordan.
Charles Munger and his wife Molly have spent over 20 million presenting an “alternative” to Proposition 30, posing as friends of educational reform. Both are major supporters of privatizing public education.  In order to accomplish their mission, supporters of 30 and 32 have muddled reality. My friend joined Democrats for Education Reform – a group that is openly advocating “union busting as a key to bring about corporate education reform in California.”
In doing so, my friend and others have joined the same forces that are waging an open war on immigrants and Mexican American Studies in Arizona. 
Why are unions important?  Why should they be protected with a vote against the draconian 32?
To quote former L.A. City Councilman Art Snyder, “I hate hypocrisy! I hate it!”
It is one thing if you believe in something and another thing if you are doing it for self-interest.  For the life of me I cannot see how killing the only counter force to the Koch Brothers and the privatizers of this world will protect the rights of Latinos and other working class people in California. These are the same interests that supported propositions such as California Proposition 187.  These are the same forces that have opposed every progressive piece of legislation introduced in the state.
I have my share of gripes against the union leadership, some related to the political hacks that it endorses and some related to not representing the interests of their rank and file more militantly. However, I see no alternative but to support them. If passed this proposition would complete the Reagan Mission to shift the cost of social production from the corporations to the backs of workers. It will finish what Proposition 13 started in 1978 and decimate public education.
Labor unions for better or for worse are the only countervailing force to the Kochs, Riordans and their ilk. They are a source of capital for the protection of the foreign born and the poor. Without labor’s contributions the Kochs and the rest of the Robber Barons would have an open field. 
If Propositions 30 and 32 were not important, the super-rich would not be spending millions of dollars in obfuscating reality. Like Deep Throat said, “follow the money.