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Hi, Alex: That kind of race bating make it very difficult for
Occupy San Jose to build a relationship with local Latino groups. I
think we've gotten past that because of some hard work by Pablo
Ghenis and many others, but it does make things difficult. Some of
that may come from plants -- agent provocateurs -- who want to
destroy the movement. Others, I think, don't think deeply enough to
realize that they can accomplish more by building alliances than
divisions. (We catch more flies with honey than vinegar.) Thanks
for your comments. Spencer Graves<br>
<br>
<br>
On 11/15/2011 11:06 PM, <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated"
href="mailto:alexcathy@aol.com">alexcathy@aol.com</a> wrote:
<blockquote
cite="mid:8CE724559D0BB92-1B60-99094@webmail-d132.sysops.aol.com"
type="cite"><font color="black" face="arial" size="2"><font
color="black" face="arial" size="2"><font face="Arial,
Helvetica, sans-serif">Dear Green Friends, <br>
<br>
I know some of my "Lefty" friends think I'm a little crazy
with my emphatic rejection of our idiotic "race" politics.
Some Greens have recently been scolded here as "racist" in
some over-the-top E-mails being circulated for "politically
incorrectness" regarding the Mexican American Legal Defense
and Educational Fund. But thanks to my personal experience
with similar African-American groups, I'm not surprised by
Harold Meyerson's commentary below. <br>
<br>
This is the same MALDEF that has posted slanderous stuff on
its web site denouncing the Green Party for "racially
motivated" attacks. I guess if you are the 1% like the Big
Boys at Wal-Mart, then you are free to be as much of a
union-busting, polluting, sweat-shop operating, sexist, and
racist scoundrel as you want to be. Dear friends, I've seen
this kind of double-dealing crap from African-American
groups like the NAACP, SCLC, and even Jesse Jackson's
Rainbow/PUSH for twenty years. That's a big reason why this
is one African-American "Lefty" who detests "race"
politics. <br>
<br>
Alex Walker<br>
<br>
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
= = = <br>
<b>Published by The Los Angeles Times, November 15, 2011<br>
<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-meyerson-maldef-20111115,0,7508035.story%20">MALDEF's
misstep</a><br>
By Harold Meyerson<br>
</b><br>
On Tuesday, the Mexican American Legal Defense and
Educational Fund, or MALDEF, will hold its annual awards
gala and fundraiser in downtown Los Angeles. The awardees
include such indisputable worthies as Linda Ronstadt and
former MALDEF leader Antonia Hernandez. The real awardee,
though, should be MALDEF itself, whose decades of civil
rights litigation have yielded significant gains for
Latinos. I haven't always agreed with all of its actions,
but I generally find myself cheering it on (as I do its
current campaign to create a second Latino-majority district
on the L.A. County Board of Supervisors).<br>
<br>
There's just one problem with this gala. Front and center on
the invitation are the words: "Gala Chair: Wal-Mart."<br>
<br>
Wal-Mart may be giving money to MALDEF, but it isn't a
friend to Latinos, and most definitely not here in Southern
California. In weighing the advisability of MALDEF's taking
Wal-Mart's money and granting the corporation Latino street
cred (or if not that, suite cred) in return, consider what
happened on Oct. 12 in Riverside County, about an hour east
of Tuesday night's dinner.<br>
<br>
On that day, inspectors from California's Division of Labor
Standards Enforcement paid an unannounced visit to one of
the mega-warehouses in Riverside County to which trucks
bring a huge amount of Asian (chiefly Chinese) imports from
the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports. None of these
warehouses has any signage, but each does the work of a
specific retail chain, and the one that the state inspectors
checked out was one of many in the area that is a Wal-Mart
warehouse.<br>
<br>
Not that Wal-Mart directly owns or runs its Inland Empire
warehouses. They're all run by logistics companies with
which Wal-Mart contracts to move its stuff, which also
allows Wal-Mart to avoid any responsibility for what
actually goes on inside.<br>
<br>
Here's what the inspectors found: The logistics company
(Impact) and the employment agencies from which it hired the
workers in its warehouse failed to document the hours and
wages of its workers. The workers are paid "piece rate"
based on the number of containers they load and unload, but
the pay rates remain a mystery to them, as they are not
spelled out on their paychecks. The company apparently had
no records of its own either.<br>
<br>
The inspectors fined Impact $499,000 for violations of wage
and hour laws. The following week, six of the warehouse
workers filed a suit in federal court for back pay and
additional remedies, and U.S. District Court Judge Christina
Snyder on Oct. 31 issued a preliminary injunction compelling
the temp agencies to alter the way they paid workers to end
the immediate harm that the existing pay system was causing
them.<br>
<br>
The men and women who work in these warehouses — they number
roughly 100,000 in the Inland Empire — are overwhelmingly
Latino. An official of Warehouse Workers United, an
organization of those workers, told me that he's "never seen
a non-Latino worker at the warehouse, other than managers."
All these Latino workers are at the very bottom of a labor
system that Wal-Mart has erected — a system that keeps the
wages of the workers in its supply chain at rock bottom, and
also keeps any responsibility for those workers'
mistreatment as distanced as possible from Wal-Mart
itself....<br>
<br>
<br>
Read the Original Text of the Full Article at:<br>
</font></font><font color="black" face="arial" size="2"><font
face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><a
class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-meyerson-maldef-20111115,0,7508035.story">http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-meyerson-maldef-20111115,0,7508035.story</a></font></font><font
size="2"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> </font></font><br>
<font color="black" face="arial" size="2"><font face="Arial,
Helvetica, sans-serif"><br>
</font><br>
</font></font> <br>
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<br>
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</blockquote>
<br>
<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Spencer Graves, PE, PhD
President and Chief Technology Officer
Structure Inspection and Monitoring, Inc.
751 Emerson Ct.
San José, CA 95126
ph: 408-655-4567
web: <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.structuremonitoring.com">www.structuremonitoring.com</a>
</pre>
<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Spencer Graves, PE, PhD
President and Chief Technology Officer
Structure Inspection and Monitoring, Inc.
751 Emerson Ct.
San José, CA 95126
ph: 408-655-4567
web: <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.structuremonitoring.com">www.structuremonitoring.com</a>
</pre>
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