Wade Rathke: Chief Organizer Blog » International

Blowing the Students’ Keg: California, Quebec, and Chile

Mariehurt — Sun, 06 May 2012 16:26:09 +0000

Student Strike in Montreal March 2012

New Orleans This fall will undoubtedly see a huge number of students mobilized by the November election, but I’m starting to believe that the student army that is going to be activated this fall is going to be marching to a different tune for a change: their own self-interest. The evidence may be isolated, but once one begins looking, it is not hard to see signs of stirring that could interject student issues around education, opportunity, jobs, costs, and debt into the middle of political debate.

This is not merely a question of the tactical maneuvering between American political parties and Congress around student loans and debt, because the outcome being debated largely postpones the problem rather than looking at the core issues. In student strikes in Northridge, California, Quebec, and Chile triggered by rising costs we are starting to see the core issues confronted, and students are not stepping down or wearing out.

A piece written by Martin Luckas in The Guardian on the “Maple Spring” in the streets of Montreal expresses the issues at stake eloquently as a fundamental challenge to the increasingly entrenched policies of neo-liberalism:

The fault-lines of the struggle over education – dividing those who preach it must be a commodity purchased by “consumers” for self-advancement, and those who would protect it as a right funded by the state for the collective good – has thus sparked a fundamental debate about the entire society’s future.

Luckas’ point is well taken. The students in California engaging in a hunger strike now are partially incensed that administration is getting raises, including a 25% hike to $400,000 per year for the new Northbridge president, even while classes are being cut, fees increased, and teachers ghettoized as adjuncts without benefits. How is this fight different than reading about the complaints of shareholders to a $15 million package for the head of Citibank, when everything about the bank is on life support? One of the major themes of neo-liberalism is essentially “corporatizing” all debate about all public policy.

Student self-interest where debt is competing with ambition and opportunity and jobs are still in scant supply could be the match that lights a much better fire!

Students for Quality Education in California Strike against Fee Hikes

Is Hillary Clinton Heading to Kolkata for Walmart or the USA?

Mariehurt — Sat, 05 May 2012 17:36:01 +0000

Mamata 'Didi' Banerjee

New Orleans Secretary of State Hilary after her controversial, chaotic visit to China is stopping by India for 3 days on the way back to the United States. For undisclosed reasons she is going to visit Kolkata on Monday and its new Chief Minister in West Bengal Didi Banjeree, who displaced the Communist government after almost 30 years of successful elections and control of government.

Banjeree has a well known reputation as being pro-poor and populist though obviously her party was not affiliated with the CPM (Communist Party) in West Bengal. She has been an ally of ACORN’s affiliate the India FDI Watch Campaign which has helped coordinate the opposition to opening India up to multi-brand retail without controls and protections. FDI modifications in this sector, if allowed, would open the floodgates to Walmart, Carrefor, Metro, Tesco, and other huge multi-nationals and could adversely impact the 20,000,000 jobs held in this sector by hawkers, traders, and birani shops and others. In the fights thus far Banjeree has stood with us.

Dharmendra Kumar, India FDI Watch Campaign director, alerted me to the Clinton visit because of widespread speculation that her real purpose is not to welcome a woman into power, which is one spin, or make an anti-Communist Cold War point, which is another spin, but to get involved in hard bargaining that Prime Minister Singh has been incapable of doing to muscle up on Banjeree to drop her opposition to the modification proposals. The business press has been full of such speculation:

Hillary may hardsell supermarket entry to Mamata

Please agree to FDI in retail, Hillary may tell Mamata

Frankly with concern that Walmart executives led by current CEO Michael T. Duke may have been involved in extensive bribery in India and China along the lines of the $24 million corruption scandal in Mexico, it would seem the last thing that a US-government official should be doing is carrying water for Walmart. The fact that Hillary spent time in Arkansas and was a former member of the Board of Directors of Walmart should be even more reasons for her to keep Walmart’s mess far away from her mouth, and keep on the subject of welcoming another woman to power. Hilary doesn’t need to be helping Walmart take the livelihood for poor India workers anymore than blessing their efforts to grease palms around the world for their own purposes.

India FDI Watch in Action

Who Wants to Bet that Walmart’s Bribery Policy Was Not in Play in India and China?

Mariehurt — Fri, 04 May 2012 15:24:26 +0000

New Orleans It still doesn’t mean that Walmart won’t walk away scot-free from its $24 million Mexican bribery scandal (and who knows how much more might have been spent in other countries like India?), but at least some directors may lose their soft perches and have their hands pried loose from the rubberstamps they have been holding for CEOs and others gone wild and rogue, given news that the California State Teachers’ Retirement System has sued in behalf of the company itself against the directors. CalSTRS is one of the USA’s largest pension funds and owns a whooping $313 million in Walmart shares, which is nothing to sniff about.

These so-called “derivative” suits are often dog piles with other folks, big and small jumping in. Hopefully, this means CalPERS, the other gargantuan state workers pension fund will be close behind along with other state funds that have large stakes in Walmart. The business press has noted how rare it is for funds this size not to simply negotiate directly, and argue they must be mad as wet hens. Damn, I hope so, because I certainly am.

The corporate culture over there has been bad, and now we are finding out how evil they really rolled. We still have no indication that the “investigation” of their business practices goes past Mexico, but it needs to be company-wide. At the same time Lee Scott was presiding over the company and allowing Eduardo Castro-Wright to run a criminal enterprise in Latin America, Michael Duke, the current CEO, was heading the whole international operations and flying in and out of India and China on a regular and routine basis in 2005 trying to break the opposition to modifying foreign direct investment in India and expand radically in China.

We now know that corruption at top government levels in both countries was epidemic. Bribes of almost a billion dollars were paid to get cheap access to telecom licenses in India. China is now in the middle of a huge political struggle that revolves around financial corruption and self-enrichment of top party and governmental officials and their families which is shaking the very foundations of the government.

Walmart’s communication spin since the Mexican bribes were surfaced by the Times has been essentially, “that’s the way they do business there.” Someone please convince me that they are not laying the groundwork for the same “defense” in India and China, where, truth to tell, bribery and corruption are not also commonplace, as they are in much of the world. To me this proves the corporate culture and expansion program is founded on bribery and corruption. It is not other countries that are corrupting Walmart, but Walmart that is embracing the worst and most destructive practices if finds there. Where a sewer runs, Walmart swims in splashing!

I’m taking bets that Walmart is as dirty, if not dirtier, in India and China. Government officials in both countries need to start looking hard there. ACORN International’s India FDI Watch Campaign will be calling on our parliamentary allies in India to launch such investigations there. Shareholders, pension funds, and reporters here in the USA need to also join the call for more intensive, outside investigations of Walmart’s corrupt corporate culture and international operations immediately.

Pension Funds Demanding Walmart Board Step Down over Mexican Bribery

Mariehurt — Tue, 01 May 2012 15:44:08 +0000

Walmart Protest in New York City

New Orleans Walmart annual board meetings are legendary dog-and-pony shows with literally thousands traipsing to Bentonville for a Roman circus of entertainment and company spectacle. This meeting next month may have a sharper edge that not even a packed room of handpicked “associates” can stifle. It will be impossible for the board to ignore shareholders questions about how they could have not known about the corporate corruption and bribery, involving $24 million in Mexico and known and covered up by all of the top executives.

Someone else besides me is upset that Walmart was hiding its hands behind rock in 2005 when many of us were organizing aggressively in an attempt to win real corporate accountability from the company on community and labor standards. John Liu, New York City controller and sometime candidate for mayor, was involved in pushing for an outside investigation of Walmart’s labor standards in China and other source countries through a shareholder resolution then, which was pushed aside despite a direct meeting with the board. Now, the New York City pension funds have pledged 4.7 million votes according to a story by Gretchen Morgenson of the New York Times to unseat the Walmart directors facing re-election.

Too bad for Walmart that too many of us that were straight armed with constant denials and obfuscation then are still around and asking the same questions and now knowing that the answers are different than the board and top executives claimed at the time. New York City funds may be out in front but from Morgenson’s reporting it seems clear that Illinois Retirement funds and F&C Management, which she describes as a $150 billion asset manager, are also on the record still smarting from the slap down in 2005 and laying in the gap in 2012 still looking for satisfaction.

Shareholder “democracy” is largely a joke, but my bet is that win, lose, or draw, opposition to the board will be broad and significant and this time, if these folks survive the test, they will only do so by finally giving the right answers, which will mean giving in and establishing real and objective external accountability measures for a corporate culture now proven corrupt to the core.

Side bet: when are we going to start looking at how they greased palms in India? How about now!

Petitioning Can Be Dangerous

Mariehurt — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 15:15:50 +0000

Lin Ping

Reprint of New York Times article

March 19, 2012

Activist Said to Be Missing in

China

By DIDI KIRSTEN TATLOW

BEIJING —Liu Ping, a rights activist who has angered officials in China with her advocacy of free elections and support of labor and women’s rights issues, has been missing since early this month after she was detained in Beijing by security personnel from her hometown, according to an advocacy group.

Wang Songlian, a researcher at Chinese Human Rights Defenders, said Monday that Ms. Liu’s disappearance was most likely part of a wave of detentions tied to the meetings of China’s handpicked legislature, the National People’s Congress, and an advisory body, the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference. The meetings typically lead to detentions of people whom the authorities consider troublesome, in an attempt to stop those people from petitioning the government, the group said. The meetings ended last week.

Although the crackdown is an annual event, “in general the feeling is that this year is more serious than previous years,” with China facing its biggest leadership transition in a decade later this year, Ms. Wang said.

Ms. Liu, 47, who is from the city of Xinyu in the southern province of Jiangxi, sent two text messages to Chinese Human Rights Defenders on March 6, saying that she had been intercepted at a Beijing train station by a group of people working for her former employer, the state-owned Xinyu Iron and Steel Company, Ms. Wang said. Ms. Liu’s cellphone has been off since then, Ms. Wang said.

“I didn’t come to Beijing to petition, I came to find work!” one of the messages read, according to Chinese Human Rights Defenders. “They are ruthless, they are shutting me down economically! I have to put my daughter through university!”

Ms. Liu has petitioned the government in the past and she has been detained before, she said in interviews last month.

She campaigned last year as an independent candidate for a seat on Xinyu’s local congress but did not win. Her high-profile campaign helped inspire other independent candidacies around China, nearly all of which failed.

A man who answered the telephone Monday at Xinyu Steel’s Beijing offices, when asked about Ms. Liu’s disappearance, said there was “no such thing.” Pressed, he said a caller had dialed the wrong number and hung up. People who answered the phones at the Xinyu Public Security Bureau and the city’s detention center said they could not help with inquiries into Ms. Liu’s whereabouts.

A Window into the Reality of Organizing in Nairobi’s Korogocho

Mariehurt — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 15:57:39 +0000

Korogocho slum in Nairobi

New Orleans Often it’s hard to describe what ACORN International’s organizing is really like in mega-slums around the world and the very different challenges our organizers face in building effective and potentially powerful membership run and funded community organizations.

Last week ACORN Kenya had scheduled a large rally in Korogocho, the 2^nd largest mega-slum of Nairobi, around our educational campaign. Previously we had won real victories in opening up the bursary system to make sure Korogocho residents received the financial support to go to secondary schools, rather than seeing the money siphoned off to others not eligible. I had talked to Sammy Ndirangu and David Musungu, our organizers there, on Skype the day before the rally and had asked them to let me know how it had worked out.

Here is Sammy’s report after the rally:

Hi Wade

I hope that all is well with you.

We started the day well and people had started coming in big numbers at St. Johns Catholic field by 9.00am.

The puppet team also set themselves for the procession and the ceremony started at 9.45am with a word of prayer from Fr. John who also flagged off the participants. However everything turned chaotic in the mid of our procession by a big multitude of youths with bonda bonda (motorbikes) who were trucking a motorbike that was stolen on Tuesday and the owner murdered.

Things got worse when they caught him and brought him near the Chief’s camp with intention to kill him but only before he identify where the motorbike was hidden. By then he had bad injuries and the Administration police were out of control of the entire scenario. Reinforcement was called and more police were brought and there was a strong running battle between the police and the community people who were crying for his blood.

Most of our invited guests had arrived but nothing could continue by then coz it was all tension in the whole slum.

By 1.00pm we called off the campaign. we have some few pictures of the event and we will [send] them latter.

I would also suggest that we do the Skyping on Monday next week other than tomorrow to give ourselves time to analyze the situation on the ground.

Thanks

Sammy

Welcome to our world!

Microfinance Company’s Own Investigation Proves SKS Provoked Suicides

Mariehurt — Sun, 04 Mar 2012 21:19:46 +0000

Mother holds one child which the other plays with a photograph of her debt-ridden husband Hari Prasad, who consumed fertilizer chemical to kill himself on Aug. 1, 2010, in the village of Kadiri near Bangalore, India

New Orleans Working with ACORN International, Melanie Craxton from the University of Edinburgh and I produced a hard hitting report, Mega Troubles for Microfinance, calling into question the claims that microfinance reduces poverty and the entire model of unsustainable practices, collection methods, and the resource bubble fueling their growth. Sadly, a story written by the AP’s Ericka Kinitz largely focused on the Indian company SKS, formerly one of the largest players, once non-profit and now owned by investors, including Boston-based Sandstone Capital, now SKS’ s largest investor, and U.S. private equity firm Sequoia Capital eviscerates the industry once more.

Kinitz was able to obtain internal company documents, verify with outside investors, and conduct interviews with ex-employees and others familiar with the suicides and SKS. She found:

An independent investigation commissioned by the company linked SKS employees to at least seven of the deaths. A second investigation commissioned by an industry umbrella group that probed the role of many microfinance companies did not draw conclusions but pointed to SKS involvement in two more cases that ended in suicide. Neither study has been made public.

Both reports said SKS employees had verbally harassed over-indebted borrowers, forced them to pawn valuable items, incited other borrowers to humiliate them and orchestrated sit-ins outside their homes to publicly shame them. In some cases, the SKS staff physically harassed defaulters, according to the report commissioned by the company. Only in death would the debts be forgiven.

The story is shocking even if not surprising. The company continues to try and deny responsibility and even the existence of an internal investigation. The families are now worse than destitute. The uproar caused by various states banning such collection practices and Indian politicians in some cases calling for borrowers to cease payments seems more responsible than some of the strong arm tactics of SKS and other microlenders.

The AP piece is a long and painful read, but if you ever thought you were helping someone in the developing world by putting your own dollars in an MFI or thinking this might work, please read every word!

Father hold a picture of his 18 year old daughter who pressured until she handed over her last 150 rupees ($3) drank pesticide while leaving a suicide note reading: "Work hard and earn money. Do not take loans."

How Can Kamal Abbas be Sentenced to Jail Now in Egypt?

Mariehurt — Sun, 04 Mar 2012 00:50:53 +0000

Here is a picture of Kamal Abbas that I took at his office in Cairo

New Orleans When the Organizers’ Forum visited Cairo in the fall of 2011 one of the most impressive people we met was Kamal Abbas, the long time director of the Center for Trade Union and Worker Services (CTUWS), based in Cairo. We visited him in his offices and were intrigued and inspired by the accounts of the struggle, hardship, and constant pressure that he and other advocates of an independent, non-state controlled labor movement shared with us.

In the aftermath of what so many of us continue to hope still promises a future of revolutionary change I couldn’t believe when I received a message yesterday from Constanza La Mantia, one of our delegation from Palermo, Italy, forwarding to me the fact that Eric Lee and Labour Start in the United Kingdom are preparing to launch a petition drive in protest of Abbas being sentenced to 6 months in jail. Her message this morning and a check on the Internet confirmed that even in the post-Mubarak period the effort to silence genuine voices of dissent and independence continues.

One of the clearest lessons we learned in Egypt was that this was not a Facebook revolution, but was a social upheaval triggered in no small part by workers desperate for change and living wages and initiating waves of strikes that the military could not quell. This kind of repression helps underscore that point.

To sign the petition click here and then spread the word.

More of the story follows below:

Kamal Abbas

A “misdemeanour court” in Helwan, near Cairo, has sentenced Kamal Abbas, general coordinator of the Centre for Trade Union and Workers’ Services (CTUWS), to six months in prison for “insulting a public officer”.

That would be bad enough. But the public officer in question is one of the leaders of Egypt’s pre-revolutionary, government-controlled “unions!”

At a session of the International Labour Organization last June, representatives of the CTUWS and the new independent unions clashed with representatives of the state-run “Egyptian Trade Union Federation.” Abbas is supposed to have “insulted” the ETUF’s acting president Ismail Ibrahim Fahmy, because he criticised the role of the ETUF and rejected the idea it represents or can represent Egyptian workers. (See here for the CTUWS’s report.)

My Bet: Apple Makes China’s Foxconn Blink

Mariehurt — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 18:21:59 +0000

New Orleans Foxconn, the huge Chinese manufacturing operation that provides the sweat and often the blood and tears that go into making all of the fancy and expensive Apple products, announced huge wage increases of more than 25% (bringing workers up to $400 per month!) and reductions of overtime in plants where workers sometimes work 7-day, 14 hour days. The spinning business press wonders whether or not consumers will accept the small price changes and “blames” them for all of the widely reported Dickensian and deplorable conditions at Foxconn plants.

What balderdash!

We are now supposed to believe, according to a professor quoted by the Times that “this is the way capitalism is supposed to work….”

Well, not sure about all of that, but the way 21^st century capitalism really works, Apple has certainly never stinted on putting fat juicy prices on its consumer products and sweating out the rest of the sub-contracts. The new myth that the late Jobs and some of his fan-boys in the press are trying to promote is that Apple had to go to China because it was only there that the Foxconns’ of the world could scratch an Apple itch for a small change and mobilize 10,000 or more workers in the dead of night to work 24/7 to make it happen. Believe me, Apple consumers paid for that without thinking – or knowing! But, the real reason in 21^st century capitalism was not the speed in China but the absurdly low wages, which is certainly a part of every century’s capitalism, and the benefits of state financed industrial infrastructure, which deserves pride of place here as well.

There cannot be any real doubt though the press releases from California and China will not say this, that the changes now being announced are the clear signs that Apple and others are finally realizing that the Fair Labor Association and other fig leafs covering their manufacturing mess are not working. There can’t be anyone that doesn’t believe that Apple and Foxconn are not talking about this hour-by-hour, and both realize that their “slave” ship is going down and the only way to deal with the heat is to finally make real and substantive changes since the fabrications and so-called investigations are fooling no one.

I knew it was over flying back from Atlanta last week when the stylist young, biomedical resident sitting next to me starting ranting about Apple and its practices. Out of nowhere! When you start to lose that demographic, the phone lines of 21^st century capitalism start burning even as far as China.

Van Heerden Must Resign, Apple Must Replace Fair Labor Association

Mariehurt — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 17:23:48 +0000

New Orleans In the space of days the attempt by the giant Apple Computer company, that, let’s be honest, knows better, to scam consumers by foisting off a so-called monitoring outfit that it has bought and paid for, has gone from being controversial to being simply pathetic. The news today has the Fair Labor Association’s president, Auret van Heerden, over in China auditioning for a role as “little Miss Mary Sunshine,” rather than even acting as if he is the head of monitoring combine that would know anything about workers’ industrial conditions and standards, much less care. Two days into the job and weeks before the so-called report by FLA would be written he was spouting off to National Public Radio according to all reports essentially that the giant Apple supplier, Foxconn, was simply the bomb, declaring that Foxconn’s facilities are first-class” and that “Foxconn is really not a sweatshop.”

Van Heerden is clearly not simply a puppet, but a clown, and he must go. Immediately! Steven Greenhouse from the Times, caught his #2 Jorge Perez-Lopes for some comments, and the old #2, and future #1, pulled the rug out from under Van Heerden without hesitation saying, “The work we’re doing at Foxconn is not about first impressions…” and further, “the proof will be in the pie…when the report comes out.”

It will not be enough to simply pull Van Heerden’s foot out of his mouth and switch him for Perez-Lopez. If there had been any question remaining anywhere about the ability of the Fair Labor Association to be anything other than a corporate shill, that is now laughably history.

Other monitoring outfits, Verite, and the Workers Rights Consortium, couldn’t restrain from putting a stake through the heart of FLA and this entire pretend investigation.

Apple is not stupid. They must know that any attempt to hide behind an FLA “investigation” is now over and the whole show is now nothing more than farce.

As Van Heerden resigns from FLA, as surely he must, it will not be enough to change horses in the middle of this stream, FLA has to either be fired and removed by Apple, or they need to withdraw so that some outfit that actually knows how to monitor global suppliers and cares about workers and the conditions in which they labor, gets this job. As it is now, anything that FLA touches won’t even provide the fig leaf that Apple needs to pretend that its products don’t have anything other than sweat and blood all over them, no matter how pretty they might look to teenagers and others.

Apple Scamming Consumers on Sourcing and Worker Conditions

Mariehurt — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 18:10:32 +0000

Tim Cook CEO of Apple and Workers at Foxconn Plants in China

New Orleans Steven Greenhouse reported in the Times that Apple was claiming it was finally going to “come clean” on the real conditions of the work and workplaces of its largely Chinese subcontractors. The reaction from those who understand the real issues and the nature of reviewing compliance with any kind of decent global standards for workers was immediate and critical, largely because once again Apple was trying to scam its consumers and the general public by covering up its naked disregard on these issues with a fig leaf. The name of the fig leaf in question was the Fair Labor Association.

Within days of Apple’s announcement the CEO of FLA is already whitewashing Apple suppliers, when any real review or update would have been impossible.

Greenhouse quoted Jeff Ballinger head of Press for Change and a long time organizer, activist, and critic of some of these inspections. Jeff is also a former staffer of the AFL-CIO’s Solidarity Center in Indonesia where he was expelled for assisting in organizing unions and raising these same issues in the mid-1990s. Jeff and I are often in touch, and he forwarded me some comments he made as part of a Q&A on this Apple scam, and I thought I would share. Among many other things, note that in making the “claim” of union involvement, FLA “forgot” to mention that all of the union had withdrawn because of the weaknesses of their inspections and standards. http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000073151

Question Assessments by the fair labor association began yesterday and will last for more than two weeks. Let’s bring in the director of labor rights organization, Press for Change. Jeff great to speak with you. The fair labor association you think it’s sort of the fox guarding the hen house. This is all “for show” here?

Well, they have a poor, 12-year track record. Nike – that i follow most assiduously – not a lot has changed after the FLA started to inspect these factories. In fact we have numerous instances where workers have fought for restitution from factory owners things that the FLA didn’t uncover or wasn’t concerned about.

Question What i thought was curious was that Apple was the first tech company to join the FLA, Fair Labor Association. Does, in your view, does that make the Fair Labor Association biased in any way because some of its members are the companies who are contracting these companies that are being audited?

I think it’s been biased from the get-go and the “spin” has already started. The head of the FLA gave an interview where he said unions had been at the founding of the FLA, which is kind of “technically” true. When unions left that was one thing he didn’t mention. Unions got out of the FLA when they saw what the inspection regime was like and there wasn’t any enforcement power and from Apple’s side, Apple says that they were admitted to the FLA, as if it was some kind of an honor but, you know, you pay your money and you’re a member.

Question So, in terms of who should then do the auditing of Foxconn, who would issue the most fair and objective report?

Well, you know, all this auditing can’t take the place of worker self-organization and you can’t do that in china.

Question They should be unionized? Given that can you not form a union in China –

I understand, but there are ways – workers find ways. In Indonesia, between ’90 and ’95 through a combination of international solidarity and worker protest, workers raised their minimum wage 300%. There are things workers can do. But it takes the global attention. It takes solidarity with some international labor rights organizations to keep the focus on and that’s what I’m hopeful for in this Foxconn case that unlike the suicide flap — that I thought would result in a real lasting kind of pressure campaign — it disappeared, and you know, I think in this case because the FLA has this track record (of failure?), we can get some Chinese groups based in Hong Kong to look over their shoulder as they are doing these audits and really hold their feet to the fire.

Question Don’t you inevitably – on these supply chains – once a union is unionized – wouldn’t the supply chain be switched somewhere else. It would go to Latin America?

Something interesting in Indonesia, as the wage was rising 300%, foreign direct investment increased over that period. I can show you a study by Berkeley economist that was published in the American Economic Review that documents that. So, I don’t think that this “race to the bottom” is an iron-clad kind of deal. China works very well for the tech industry and I don’t think they are going to pick up stakes if you double or triple the wage.

Question Actually, Jeff, I just wonder. We were talking about this issue that for any other company would be, I think, a little jarring, they are under a lot of public pressure. Bad publicity you could argue. [But] the stock is up today at $503 a share. Is that dispiriting to those of you trying to change things?

Not at all. There is a disconnect. It’s a very successful company. I might point out that when Nike was in the cross-hairs, their sales in the U.S. fell ’96, ’97, ’98 and ’99 because of the controversy. I wouldn’t expect, in this case, consumers would turn away from Apple but - with the addition of social media – we’ll find different strategies to put pressure on this company.

Question Do you see in any way the work you do returning jobs in America longer term?

No. Not in any great sense. But I am encouraged that some employers like New Balance in the shoe industry, for example, found a way to get the China labor cost differential between Massachusetts and China down to $2.50 a pair by using team assembly. So I think there are things that smart companies can do to have some manufacturing base here and i think it would, it would apply to the tech industry as well.

Logo is a part of United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS) Campaigns

USA Voter System a Black Mark for Global Democracy

Mariehurt — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 18:41:49 +0000

Atlanta In Rome I was talking in the halls of the Italian Parliament to policy makers and others about Democracy in the XXI Century, where we had an engaging conversation about the role of community organizations at the grassroots level increasing democracy and the disturbing trends in the United States through various repressive voter regulations, especially new voter identifications, to suppress the vote of lower income and minority citizens. Italians had trouble getting their minds wrapped around this problem because voting is mandatory there and the government provides identification for all citizens, so this is an easy system.

It turns out I was sugar-coating the problem. Picking up a copy of the Times in the Atlanta airport as I changed planes for home, I was alerted to the new Pew Research Center study on the voter registration system in the United States. What a mess and a scandal for any pretense we might claim for democratic practice, rather than theory!

Right from the beginning it is clear we need a federal, universal registration system. The Pew results indicated that 12.5% of active registrations are invalid, while over 51 million people adding up to 25% of the potential electorate are simply not registered at all. And that’s just an introduction to the mess since they also found that 1.8 million dead people are still registered as active and another million more than that are registered in more than one state. Another 12 million are in such disarray that mailing to these potential voters to correct the problems would be unlikely to find them without a local post-person breaking a hard sweat in the struggle.

For the Republican-haters, Tea-people, and Fox-fiends-and-friends that constantly try to get lathered up about ACORN’s old voter registration efforts, this should be an indelible and unavoidable lesson. The real problem is that the whole system simply doesn’t work! This is not local control, but anarchy!

The Times quote a law professor at Yale saying, “Everyone else in a modern democracy does it [voter registration] better….” The list of countries that maintain national programs and registries that tower over the US-mess includes of course some European countries like Sweden, Belgium, and Germany but of course the first country to allow women to vote, Australia, which also has mandatory voting, is on the list along with Peru and Argentina, where ACORN International organizes, and which might not be seen as models for democratic practice by some Americans. I dare say that Italy would also have bragging rights here as well.

The coup de grace for the right and the generally partisan mess both parties have made of this in the USA, has to be the data that Pew reported on the cost of the system to taxpayers with some states like Oregon costing more than $4 per voter in maintenance costs for their system. Canada, where ACORN International also works, registers everyone at 35 cents per voter and has a 93% success rate in pulling in eligible voters. Want to save some taxpayers money, right-wing comrades? Then join with me in making the case everywhere we can for a automatic national registration system (the US certainly knew how to make it work during the draft!) and lower the obstacles to voting including considering realistically the need to join other democracies in mandatory voting.

Meanwhile in the US the identification program being pushed into law in a number of states stands to reduce the rolls by over 2 million voters who will simply not have any identification so will be turned away at the polls. Fox News is interviewing me about all of this at the end of February, and it’s hard not to conclude that everything about registration seems polarized with the Right trying to prevent voting aggressively and the Left not doing nearly enough to offset the problem or make this the cause it needs to be.

The results are clear. The United States likes to talk about democracy, just not have to practice it!