building a culture of solidarity

 

BUILDING A CULTURE OF SOLIDARITY By David Bacon Foreign Policy in Focus 10/29/20 https://davidbaconrealitycheck.blogspot.com/2020/10/building-culture-of-solidarity.html TIJUANA, BAJA CALIFORNIA NORTE - 1998 - Police arrive to escort strikebreakers into the struck Han Young maquiladora.  The independent union there had the support of many unions in the U.S. Since the North American Free Trade Agreement has been in effect, the economies of the United States and Mexico have become highly integrated.  Working people on both sides of the Mexico/U.S. border are not only affected by this integration: they are its object. Corporate-controlled integration seeks to maximize profits and push wages and benefits to the bottom, manage the flow of people displaced as a result, roll back rights and social benefits achieved over decades, and weaken working-class movements in both countries. U.S. and Mexican workers are part of a global system of production, distribution, and consumption. It's not just a bilateral relationship. Jobs go from the United States and Canada to Mexico in order to cut labor costs. But from Mexico, those same jobs go China or Bangladesh or dozens of other countries where labor costs are even lower. Multiple production locations undermine unions' bargaining leverage. Grupo Mexico, a giant Mexican mining corporation, can use profits gained in mining operations in Peru to subsidize the costs of breaking a strike in Cananea and then buy the copper mines in Arizona and force U.S. workers out on strike as well. The privatization of electricity in Mexico, which the Mexican Electrical Union (SME) has fought for two decades, does not just affect Mexicans.  When Mexico's laws restricting electricity generation to the government were weakened, a prelude to attacking the union directly, companies like San Diego Gas and Electric set up plants across the border. They produce power for the U.S. grid, at lower wages and with less regulation. Energy maquiladoras, in effect, give utility unions in the United States a reason to help Mexican workers resist privatization. Cooperation, however, requires more than solidarity between unions facing the same employer. It requires solidarity in resisting neoliberal reforms like privatization and supporting the SME when it demands renationalization, as it does today. It's not just production. The United States also exports ideology. Education reform in Mexico comes from the Gates and Broad foundations. They are the same privatizers that attack U.S. teachers. In Mexico they're supported by USAID, and their partner is Mexicanos Primero, which is run by Claudio X. Gonzalez and Claudio Gonzalez Guajardo, one of the wealthiest families in Mexico. Their attacks on teachers set the climate for the disappearance and murder of the 43 students in Ayotzinapa.  In both countries, the main union battles seek to preserve what workers have previously achieved, in a hostile political structure over which we have little control. Mexican unions are trapped in a state labor process, in which the government certifies unions' existence, and to a large degree controls their bargaining. In the United States, labor is endangered by economic crisis, falling density, and a pro-corporate legal and political system. Trump and COVID certainly made this worse, but the crisis existed before they came along. When Vicente Fox and the National Action Party defeated Mexico's ruling party, the Party of the Institutionalized Revolution (PRI), in 2000, it created a new situation in which government-allied unions began to lose their privileged position. Employers and the government became more willing to use force and repression. Contingent employment became legal and widespread, as it has in the United States. Mexican unions today debate whether the situation of unions and workers has changed dramatically with the new administration of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, whom the left supported.  In the United States, labor law reform, national healthcare, and other basic pro-worker reforms have become almost politically impossible, even under Democratic presidents. The U.S. public sector, the most politically powerful section of the U.S. labor movement, has become the target of the U.S. right. As the attacks against unions grow stronger, solidarity is becoming necessary for survival. Unions face a basic question on both sides of the border-can they win the battles they face today, especially political ones, without joining their efforts together?  Fortunately, this is not an abstract question, because important progress has taken place over the last two decades. The Emergence of Trans-Border Solidarity The years after the passage of NAFTA saw a big rise in joint activity by U.S. and Mexican workers. Benedicto Martinez, general secretary of the Authentic Labor Front, described it this way: "NAFTA shocked a lot of U.S. unions out of their inertia-not so much their national leaders, but people in local unions, who began pushing to move on globalization, to form new international relations and look for solidarity. That's what moved their leaders to pay attention to the border." Martinez and grassroots activists from both countries organized during the NAFTA debate to show U.S. workers that Mexican workers were not their enemy. They had to do this bottom-up because the AFL-CIO still supported free trade and had relations only with the most corrupt unions in Mexico, because they were the most anti-Communist. These leftwing activists went from city to city and union hall to union hall to organize the Mexican Network Against Free Trade, which still exists today. In the solidarity upsurge of the late 1990s, many unions found counterparts across the border. The first solidarity network, the Coalition for Justice in the Maquiladoras, was created while NAFTA was still being debated. Most of its efforts were directed to supporting workers trying to organize independent unions on the border, to get out of the sweetheart protection contracts signed by pro-company unions behind their backs. In Tijuana, workers organized an independent union at Plasticos Bajacal in 1992. When the company fired the leaders, union activists in San Diego raised the money to pay them their lost wages so they could keep on organizing. Workers rebelled at the huge Sony plant in Nuevo Laredo and were beaten and attacked with fire hoses when they tried to elect their own leaders. In the late 1990s, workers demanding their own union went on strike twice at Tijuana's Han Young factory, one of the largest, longest, and most important efforts to organize an independent union on the border.

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WORK AND SOCIAL JUSTICE: The David Bacon Archive exhibition at Stanford Libraries On exhibit through May 9, 2021 in the Cecil H. Green Library at Stanford. Access to campus libraries is currently limited to Stanford ID cardholders due to COVID-19; however, the online exhibition (https://exhibits.stanford.edu/bacon), which includes additional content not included in the physical show, is accessible to everyone, and is part of an accessible digital spotlight collection that includes significant images from this body of work. For a catalog: (https://web.stanford.edu/dept/spec_coll/NonVendorPubOrderform2017.pdf)   LABOR MARCH PROTESTS THE POLICE MURDER OF GEORGE FLOYD BERKELEY, CA - 13JUNE20 - Hundreds of union members and outraged people march through the streets of Berkeley to protest the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, and other African American and people of color killed by police.  The march was organized by the labor councils of Alameda, San Francisco, Contra Costa and San Mateo Counties, and Service Employees International Union Local 1021. To see a full set of photos, click here:  https://www.flickr.com/photos/56646659@N05/albums/72157714734338062 STUDENTS MARCH TO PROTEST THE POLICE MURDER OF GEORGE FLOYD BERKELEY, CA - 09JUNE20 - Hundreds of students, teachers and outraged people march through the streets of Berkeley to protest the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, and other African Americian and other people of color killed by police.  To see a full set of photos, click here:  https://www.flickr.com/photos/56646659@N05/albums/72157714656895057 HUGE CAR CARAVAN PROTESTS THE POLICE MURDER OF GEORGE FLOYD OAKLAND, CA - 31MAY20 - Thousands of people participate in a caravan of over 2000 cars from the Port of Oakland, to protest the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, and African American and people of color killed by police. To see a full set of photos, click here:  https://www.flickr.com/photos/56646659@N05/albums/72157714533842187   IN THE FIELDS OF THE NORTH Online Exhibit, May 29 to August 2, 2020 Los Altos History Museum https://www.losaltoshistory.org/exhibits/in-the-fields-of-the-north/   TAKE A VIRTUAL TOUR OF THE EXHIBITION - IN THE FIELDS OF THE NORTH at the History Museum of Tijuana HAGA UN RECORRIDO VIRTUAL DE LA EXPOSICIÓN - EN LOS CAMPOS DEL NORTE en el Museo de Historia de Tijuana https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=659536991515786   TARTINE HARDSHIP FUND Newly organized Tartine Bakery workers in the Bay Area need your help and assistance!  This fund, supported by the International Longhsore and Warehouse Union, will help hose workers unable to collect unemployment insurance. https://www.gofundme.com/f/tartine-union-hardship-fund?utm_source=customer&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=p_cp+share-sheet   The exhibitions in the following list were scheduled before the current COVID-19 crisis.  Public gatherings are not now taking place and these exhibitions have now been postponed or rescheduled. Stay healthy! IN THE FIELDS OF THE NORTH / EN LOS CAMPOS DEL NORTE March 21, 2021 - May 23, 2021 Carnegie Arts Center, Turlock MORE THAN A WALL - THE SOCIAL MOVEMENTS OF THE BORDER Spring, 2021 San Francisco Public Library DEPORTATIONS Rescheduled for a date when the gallery reopens Uri-Eichen Gallery, Chicago   In the Fields of the North / En los Campos del Norte Photographs and text by David Bacon University of California Press / Colegio de la Frontera Norte 302 photographs, 450pp, 9”x9” paperback, $34.95 (in the U.S.) order the book on the UC Press website: ucpress.edu/9780520296077 use source code  16M4197  at checkout, receive a 30% discount En Mexico se puede pedir el libro en el sitio de COLEF: https://www.colef.mx Los Angeles Times reviews In the Fields of the North / En los Campos del Norte - click here    "The Criminalization of Migration: A Socialist Perspective" with David Bacon and Rafael Pizarro. http://ouleft.org/wp-content/uploads/David-Bacon-The-Criminalization-of-migration.mp4  A video about the Social Justice Photography of David Bacon: https://drive.google.com/file/d/14TvAj5nS08ENzWhw3Oxra4LMNKJCLF4z/view   En los campos del Norte documenta la vida de trabajadores agrícolas en Estados Unidos - Entrevista con el Instituto Nacional de la Antropologia y Historia http://www.inah.gob.mx/es/boletines/6863-en-los-campos-del-norte-documenta-la-vida-de-trabajadores-agricolas-en-estados-unidos Entrevista en la television de UNAM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdSaBKZ_k0o David Bacon comparte su mirada del trabajo agrícola de migrantes mexicanos en el Museo Archivo de la Fotografia http://www.cultura.cdmx.gob.mx/comunicacion/nota/0038-18 Trabajo agrícola, migración y resistencia cultural: el mosaico de los “Campos del Norte” Entrevista de David Bacon por Iván Gutiérrez / A los 4 Vientos http://www.4vientos.net/2017/10/04/trabajo-agricola-migracion-y-resistencia-cultural-el-mosaico-de-los-campos-del-norte/ "Los fotógrafos tomamos partido" Entrevista por Melina Balcázar Moreno - Milenio.com Laberinto http://www.milenio.com/cultura/laberinto/david_baconm-fotografia-melina_balcazar-laberinto-milenio_0_959904035.html Die Apfel-Pflücker aus dem Yakima-Tal http://www.nrhz.de/flyer/beitrag.php?id=23990 EN LOS CAMPOS DEL NORTE:  Farm worker photographs on the U.S./Mexico border wall http://us7.campaign-archive2.com/?u=fc67a76dbb9c31aaee896aff7&id=0644c65ae5&e=dde0321ee7 Entrevista sobre la exhibicion con Alfonso Caraveo (Español) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJeE1NO4c_M&feature=youtu.be   THE REALITY CHECK - David Bacon blog http://davidbaconrealitycheck.blogspot.com Books by David Bacon The Right to Stay Home:  How US Policy Drives Mexican Migration  (Beacon Press, 2013) http://www.beacon.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=2328 Illegal People -- How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants  (Beacon Press, 2008) Recipient: C.L.R. James Award, best book of 2007-2008 http://www.beacon.org/Illegal-People-P780.aspx Communities Without Borders (Cornell University/ILR Press, 2006) http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?GCOI=80140100558350 The Children of NAFTA, Labor Wars on the U.S./Mexico Border (University of California, 2004) http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520244726 En Español:   EL DERECHO A QUEDARSE EN CASA  (Critica - Planeta de Libros) http://www.planetadelibros.com.mx/el-derecho-a-quedarse-en-casa-libro-205607.html HIJOS DE LIBRE COMERCIA (El Viejo Topo) http://www.tienda.elviejotopo.com/prestashop/capitalismo/1080-hijos-del-libre-comercio-deslocalizaciones-y-precariedad-9788496356368.html?search_query=david+bacon&results=1 For more articles and images, see  http://dbacon.igc.org and http://davidbaconrealitycheck.blogspot.com and https://www.flickr.com/photos/56646659@N05/albums

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