Wade Rathke: Chief Organizer Blog » mexico

Ripping off Mexican & Caribbean Migrant Workers in Canada

dine — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 14:48:16 +0000

Buenos Aires One of the flash points in the USA immigration reform debate continues to be over the demand from farmers for help in their fields from migrant agricultural workers. Recently they left the Republican (and Obama Administration) consensus in droves as US-farmer organizations and Congresspeople bridled at the fact that employers, i.e. farmers, would have to pay steep fines for hiring undocumented workers. The so-called bracero program has long been out of business in the US, which used to bring up seasonal workers from Mexico into the fields of California, Texas, and Arizona, and from the Caribbean to help in tobacco, cranberry, and other harvests in the Northeastern states.

ACORN International crack researchers led by Carleton University (Ottawa) volunteer, Amanda Sullivan, and ramroded by ACORN International and Edinburgh University (Scotland) super-summer intern, Melanie Craxton, stumbled onto a huge program though in Canada while researching remittance ripoffs as part of ACORN International and its federated partners on-going Remittance Justice Campaign (www.remittancejustice.org). The Canadian SAWP is not an armed strike team, but 20,000 migrant workers from Mexico and the Caribbean Islands who are recruited through bi-national agreements and shipped up to the fields of Canada, largely in British Columbia and southern Ontario, as part of the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program. Needless to say conditions are regularly reported as substandard and exploitive by our long-time partners, the UFCW and its agricultural workers organizing program which has been in the fields for years with these workers.

In fact the Canadian government extracts a 25% of wages share for taxes and the like which will never benefit these workers who will return home after a maximum of eight (8) months in the field. Neither does the Canadian government seem to care much about how much money they actually go home with even though ostensibly that is one of the goals of this cooperative labor exchange. The workers are in fact even chosen according to the SAWP criteria because they have stable families, and that means invariably they send significant remittances (about 50% of wages while in Canada) back home to their families.

The money transfer organizations of choice according to our researchers interviews are Western Union and a smaller, somewhat cheaper company called Vigo. Either way a huge chunk of their checks are extracted by these MTOs, way over the 5% maximum demand that ACORN International has made as part of the Remittance Justice Campaign and that Canada as part of the G-8 has claimed to adopt as a world standard.

Talking to SAWP representatives though was like visiting Mars. Yes, Canada collected its taxes. Yes, the migrant workers made remittances home. No, the governmental representatives had no idea how much was extracted by the MTOs of the checks, despite these bi-national agreements with Mexico and Caribbean countries. It is impossible to escape the core immorality, even venality, of this predatory governmental operation. The Canadian government gets migrant help for its agricultural enterprises, profits from taxes that can’t benefit the workers, and then turns a blind eye as predatory fees are extracted from the laborers before they return home with what little is left.

ACORN International and its federated partners like ACORN Canada, ACORN Mexico, and ACORN Dominican Republic, have stumbled onto a scandal and are busily preparing demands to force immediate change in these practices along the lines we have continued to make in recent months for cost caps and desperately needed regulations. Without a doubt this is an outrage that demands the authorities finally listen and act!

Releasing Carlos Slim’s Stranglehold on Mexico

dine — Mon, 09 May 2011 15:30:25 +0000

New Orleans Spending any day in Mexico City with Suyapa Amador, head organizer of ACORN Mexico, involves at least one and sometimes two and three stops at local stores to buy minutes for her cell phone. Thanks to the virtual monopoly that Telcel, a subsidiary of America Movil owned by gazillionaire Carlos Slim Helu, not only is there never a way to get around this problem, but the time is expensive as well especially compared to other emerging markets like India and Kenya. There is no question that Carlos Slim has found the way to huge personal riches, but he has done so at the expense of the people of Mexico especially the poorer families.

There may finally be hope for all of us, though it could still take years to arrive. The Mexican Congress finally has passed an anti-monopoly bill. There have been some favorable Mexican Supreme Court decisions where they actually ruled against the mega-monopolist. The anti-trust folks with the Federal Competition Commission in Mexico actually assessed a $1 billion dollar fine against his companies, though it is being appealed of course. All progress!

Statistics reported in the New York Times (where Carlos Slim is the #2 largest shareholder!) are hard to ignore:

Mexico telephone service almost the most expensive compared to 34 countries in the O.C.E.D.
Slim’s stranglehold in broadband means that Mexican connectivity is at the bottom of the list and falling even farther behind similarly sized economies like Argentina and Brazil.

In an great example of the “more things change, the more they stay the same,” Slim’s rationalization for his monopoly pricing is exactly the same that AT&T and the Bell System argued before their breakup in the USA: they are forced to subsidize rural service which they contend is a money loser. Of course the additional irony is that even though Slim’s outfits may be spending money on hanging line and digging cable in the countryside most folks can’t afford to do much more than yell to their neighbors out there, since they can’t afford the phone or the call.

Let’s hope the clock is finally ticking for Carlos Slim and his Mexico telephone monopoly. As the world’s richest person with $74 Billon in wealth, putting an end to this will still leave him rich as Croesus, so no tears need be shed even on Wall Street.

Green Grows in Mexico City

jstuart — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 15:34:03 +0000

Mexico City Walking from a meeting at the Universidad Obrera de Mexico (UOM), passing by the Zocalo at the center of the city with the Cathedral on my right, I did a double take at the long green line of fancy pedi-cabs lined up along street. Drivers stood wiping off the dust on their green machines as if they were…yeah, taxis.

Later along Avenida Independencia almost in front of the Chinatwon arch hardly a block over from the Alameda Central I almost stumbled on a line of a dozen bicycles in racks and ready to ride. There was a fancy obelisk with a map that must have shown 20 locations around the historico central where it appeared that you could pick up or drop off the bikes. The payment system was credit or debit card only from what I could tell, so the failsafe system would be tracking down the miscreant who tried to rip the ride from their card. This was not a working woman’s service, but something for folks ready to go green and ride on the wild side in Mexico City traffic, or more likely on the sidewalks as many of the regulars already do, sending pedestrians spinning and swirling.

Unfortunately, I saw no passengers pulling our in the pedicabs nor did many of the EcoBic bikes seem to have been rented or on the roadways from what I could tell, but here in the heart of one of the world’s great pollution inversions in one of the world’s largest cities, I have to salute anything green growing in Mexico City!

Power of Deep Engagement: Familia Anclada, Wards, & Committees

dine — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 14:57:09 +0000

When Obama was working at the neighborhood level

New Orleans According to a fascinating article by Damien Cave in the New York Times the families that have hunkered down and stayed in the Ciudad Juarez warzone in Mexico directly across the Rio from El Paso in Texas are frequently headed by generations of women and their children, welded to jobs and livelihood, they are now called familia anclada – a family anchored to the city. Despite losing more than 200,000 people or 20% of its population to a Katrina- like tsunami of crime, such families have seemingly stabilized Juarez at over 800,000 as part of the linked metropolitan complex we so often ignore with El Paso which has a population of around 650,000, the 21^st largest city in the United States. This is all fairly amazing in many ways and speaks of the tremendous resilience of families in the face of adversity often ignored.

In the celebration of the “power of weak links” which undergirds the fascination and impact of social networking tools like Facebook and Twitter to link people who kinda, sorta, maybe know or want to know each other and create somewhat of a personal “affinity” group, something like the familia anclada should once again remind us of the stronger values found in the power of strong links and deep engagements between people. Maria del Socorro Velaquez Vargas, a sociologist quoted in the same article speaks plainly saying, “People don’t have faith in government. They have faith in their neighbors.” In some ways that’s a pretty fair definition for the root strength of community organizing methodology and practice over the last 50 odd years.

In the celebration of the new and the justifiable excitement over the prospects of new tools found in technology, communication, and activism, something like the daily swelling numbers in Tahrir Square in Cairo should be a stark reminder of the power of people, the force of action on the street, the passion that defines youth, and the anger that triggers liberation. The combustion of these elements is not some electric flash from a computer screen or a beep from a mobile phone but the connections made in the streets of Egypt, in the neighborhoods in Juarez, and in communities big and small where organizing is going on every day around the world.

It is probably important to remember that this has always been so. I might even argue that this very strength of community engagement is perhaps what has been the most radical and unique of all American political contributions. We certainly did not invent representative government or democracy, but we did seem to have modeled how to build the power at the grassroots level, whether we are talking about the Populists or the Tea Party people. Community organizers were somewhere between smart, shrewd, or dumb lucky enough to understand that the community and constituency level is where change has to be constructed in order to win and be sustainable.

Using house meetings, organizing committees, and the constant connections of the community all came to mind thinking about the most exciting part of T. H. Breen’s writing on the role of “committees” in building deep engagement of the base in his recent book, American Insurgents, American Patriots. He painstakingly details the way “faith in neighbors” replaced “faith in government” in 1774 and 1775 even before the outbreak of full on armed struggle against the British. The organization of hundreds, if not thousands, of locally based committees of safety and whatever operating in plain sight to force the most direct accountability at the community level welding ties between “Americans” more deeply and isolating sympathizers with the Crown essentially outside of the community norms, uprooted the British at ground level rendering their attempt to govern a dead letter even before troops were massing across the land. These very local committees dealing with local people and local issues were the practicing crucible of real government based on the Articles of Correspondence way before there was a Declaration of Independence or thoughts of a Constitution. Those flowery documents were constructed on what was built by arguably the most successful community organizing we have ever seen in this country.

Hannah Arendt, the conservative political philosopher, argued that the single most important contribution of the American Revolution was found in the decades following independence in the construction of the “ward” as the basic unit of government. For modern Americans the notion of the ward and ward government as revolutionary must seem like heresy and certainly there could be some conservative headaches trying to assemble rationalizations here, but Arendt’s point that constructing government on the most basic building block that allows maximum participation by people in the most connected and engaged community at the most local level possible through wards is in fact very radical, and therefore, American in the truest sense.

Community organizations operating at the very level of participation and engagement that governments have mostly abandoned have created the bonds of steel that allow families to (for example) rebuild after Katrina or remain anchored in Juarez or fuel change all over the world, which proves daily that the excitement over weak links should never let us forget the power of deep engagement and strong ties in creating both change and the possibility of full democratic participation by all people.

Remittance Rip-offs

dine — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 15:59:29 +0000

New Orleans Remittances are a huge part of the Gross National Product (GNP) of many countries around the developing world. In fact some countries like Mexico, the Philippines, and others seem to be surviving largely because they are exporting workers who are sending back money to support families. Remittances are the life blood and often the life line for migrant workers and immigrant families when globalism is often characterized by economic refugees.

Remittances are also a free fire zone for predatory pricing and practices.

ACORN International is in the last stages of pulling together a dynamite report on remittances between the developed world and the countries where we work thanks to our ace Toronto based intern army and voluntary researchers in Baltimore, Little Rock, and the countries where we organize. Seeing the pieces come together what is amazing is the size of the total pie and the huge slice that sticks to the financiers!

Even in the recession the numbers are huge. The World Bank estimates that the total level of remittances between countries is around $443 Billion USD, which is a breathtaking amount of money, and likely understated because it may not reflect fully the level of informal transfers and gifts between families. The World Bank also estimates that the “average” cost of remittances – stay tuned for our report in the next two weeks on this! – is about 10%. The math is easy to follow and it puts the transaction cost for remittances to the bankers and transfer companies like MoneyGram and Western Union at over $44 Billion USD!

This is obviously a blatant teaser for the upcoming ACORN International report and its release before Christmas when remittances spike upwards, but mentally start making a list of the differences 30 or 40 billion USD might make in poverty reduction and community development for lower income families if they were allowed to see more of the money in their hands as opposed to fleeced along the way.

It ought to be a crime! We will look as well at why it’s not only not a crime but instead such predation is allowed to be practiced with impunity in an anarchy of no regulation or questionable regulation and ignorance in many countries.

Think about it.

Puppy Love for the Big Dawg, Clinton

dine — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 14:42:35 +0000

Bill Clinton Urged Florida Democrat to Quit Bid

Phoenix I’m pretty sure either Mexico billionaire Carlos Slim didn’t make his contribution this year to the Clinton Foundation Global Initiative and decided to take it out in trade, or the New York Times is so desperate to find something upbeat for the Demos about the midterm elections that they had to come up with somebody, but whatever the reason we are being treated to the equivalent of a sudden outpouring of media puppy love for the old big dawg, former President Bill Clinton.

Suddenly, he’s just where he wants to be again: everywhere! And, better than ever before, he’s unleashed and unaccountable to anybody or anything.

We get treated to a story about how he makes and breaks restaurants around the world by stopping by and chowing down whether hot dog stands in Iceland or pricey digs in 5 star Indian hotels. We also learn that he is both a vegan, and someone who orders the biggest steak in – where was that – Spain? Germany? No matter, like I said, a meat-eating vegan: accountable to no one!

He’s supposedly a big draw out on the hustings and going where President Obama supposedly can’t go or isn’t welcome or thought to be a liability. Clinton’s popularity is way up, while Obama’s is way down.

Unleashed is a tricky place for big Bill.

Certainly he was all over the line in the primary fight for Senator Blanche Lincoln, but I guess the general readership could look the other way at his blatant union bashing and say, “well, it’s Arkansas, it’s the home state, what can you do?”

Today the story is everywhere, released by Clinton’s people, but without a doubt cleared by Obama’s political folks, as he throws Congressman Kendrick Meeks (Democrat – Florida) under the bus with a tale that he had “almost” convinced him to withdraw from the race for the Senate and support the more moderate, Governor Charlie Crist, a Republican running as an independent, against the Tea Party swoon, Mark Rubio. I’m having trouble remembering a time where it was clearer that a candidate was knifed in the back, Brutus-and-Caesar-in-Rome-style in front of God, TV, and the full on print media, in hopes of turning the tide for the candidate that Clinton and Obama have decided they want. Did I have to say that Meek is African-American or that he had won the primary in Florida? No, I didn’t think so. So, Clinton suddenly in the warm glow collects a big chit for Obama by tossing an African-American under the bus so that Obama doesn’t have to take this heat to his own base, and Clinton can still posture that folks will be ok, because, hey, remember, he was the “first black president.”

Here the dog barked for the master, but given the buildup of the “new” Bill, it could all still look like more of the “no boundaries, do my own thing” Bill of recent years.

The next move in this sweet dance between two lively Presidents is going to be very interesting with the good ol’ boy from Arkansas goes to collect on these big time favors.

Meanwhile the press will keep fawning as if they are still at the McDonald’s line on Broadway in Little Rock in the ‘90’s, and miss the story even as it unfurls in front of their own eyes, lost in the warm glow of puppy love for the big dawg.

Arf-arf!

Mexican Remittances And Wal-Mart’s Shadow

jstuart — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 13:11:23 +0000

Mexico City We met early in the morning with the director of research for the Universidad Obrera de Mexico (Workers University of Mexico)’s direction of investigations, Laura Sanchez. We had already read some of her articles in the bi-monthly magazine, trabajadores, about the way that Wal-Mart was reducing wages in agriculture in Mexico, which had riveted my attention.

The Universidad Obrera is a small, public college that has existed since about the Mexican Revolution more than 70 years ago. Currently they are having some difficulty funding issues that revolve around former leadership of the school, but meant that as we met with Sr. Sanchez, she and the other professors and researchers here were unpaid, computers were gone, internet connections had been shut off, and they were managing on shoe strings, literally.

To the point though the additional thoughts she shared on the Wal-Mart impact on agriculture and particularly its propensity to import goods and take advantage of tax codes, was of interest to our our India FDI Watch coalition which is right now contending with governmental efforts to once again reform foreign investment rules at the peril of workers in the cities and farmers in India. Ironically, the biggest claim the multi-nationals make in India is that modern agriculture and distribution impacts on the supply chain will increase the wages of ag workers. Sr. Sanchez says the research in Mexico is finding the opposite with Wal-Mart. And, this doesn’t even factor in the number of informal workers that Wal-Mart uses in Mexico, which Sr. Sanchez and others believe is illegal under Mexican law.

Additionally we talked about the impact of remittances and how to lower these costs which has been an issue for ACORN International. Their research argues that remittances, even today in the depressed economy, are the #1 economic engine in Mexico, as opposed to the government’s arguments that natural resource extraction (oil) and tourism come ahead on the list. We talked at length about the varying bank charges on both sides of the border. We are hopeful that once this current crisis works its way out which seems soon, that a partnership between Universidad Obrera and ACORN International can finally put together the research we need to push banks around the world to finally do the right thing with governments finally providing the regulations that bring them in line.

Arizona had to be on the agenda of course. The news of a DOJ lawsuit hardly seemed to move anyone we spoke with in Mexico. The lines are simple. They see the story much differently and find mainly hate in the eyes of the argument. There’s a lot more to be said about this in coming days.

Bancos de los Trabajadores

jstuart — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 13:00:14 +0000

Tegucigalpa and Mexico City Early on Sunday morning walking through the centro in Tegucigalpa I noticed a branch of the Bancos de los Trabajadores, the Bank of the Workers. I had heard about them repeatedly the day before while meeting with the women in the colonias Ramon Amalia Amador, and we found ourselves discussing them at length in the morning before I left for Mexico. The Banco de los Trabajodores was until recently what the name implies, a Bank of the Workers, had had financed many of the home improvements and loans in the colonias when it was a public entity. Ten percent of the families now were behind on their payments and having difficulty with the bank, and like so many questions about Honduran institutions, the answer was now todos privado or all private.

It was a little more complicated than that from what I could tell. The bank had been swept up in a public/private takeover which was going to require ACORN International to do a fair amount of research and figure out, but especially since the golpe de estadio, it was no longer a worker and poor family friendly institution. Even with the political turmoil which only exacerbated the worldwide Great Recession, the bank had now become unwilling to meet and was maintaining interest rates that were way out of whack in these times.

What about the unions? Had they moved their money out of the bank and stopped endorsing the bank once the private interests took over? The answer according to the organizers seemed to be “No.” How could they not be ashamed of what was being done with their money now? They would be according to the people I talked to but no one had looked hard enough at their practices yet.

This might be some leverage in moving forward to improve living conditions in the colonias with an active campaign and care to avoid the political repression that seemed to weigh so heavily on every sentence and each part of every conversation. Yes, the organizers were saying, it could be done, si se puede, but we would have to be very, very careful. People could be killed.

This is not the normal nature of an organizing and campaign conversation obviously!

Walking around the colonias, the huge towers for TIGO, the telecommunications giant were everywhere in the middle of the barrio? What were they doing?

Looking at the waste water runoff, I found myself looking down the mountain at a runway of the international airport. I talked to the organizers about a giant banner that we could put up and take down and spread around to sent our message clearly and carefully: Beinvenidos Turistas! You are drinking our shit! In Spanish of course, but powerfully making the point that without potable water or any sewerage facility, the runoff from the colonias was going right down to the airport grounds.

Even with the government paralyzed, the Banco de Los Trabajadores could put up the loans for housing improvements needed in the colonias and TIGO and the Airport, managed by the Swiss incidentally, could guarantee them.

It would take careful planning, lots of work, and great care, but there were many ways to skin this cat! And, that’s what community organizing is all about!

Mexico to Boycott Arizona

jstuart — Sat, 08 May 2010 19:16:01 +0000

Phoenix At one o’clock Friday afternoon news stations in Phoenix seemed to be responding to a three alarm fire. Arpaio was ranting about his latest raid at a press conference. More groups were announcing a boycott of the Arizona Diamondbacks baseball team, and word was everywhere that the Mexican government had closed the border to Arizona in protest of the new law. I was sitting in a planning meeting around foreclosure resistance and there was animated conversation about where people would drive to cross the border if they found themselves visiting relatives and blocked from coming back home. No one was questioning that the story was undoubtedly true and appropriate, and everyone but me had family and friends south of the border.

As it turned out, I cannot find any evidence that there was a border closing into Arizona on Friday, but count on the fact that it is coming and is inevitable as long as the viciously anti-Mexican, anti-immigrant, and racist apartheid law is on the books in Arizona.

The President of Mexico, Felipe Calderon, said as much almost two weeks ago. He was quoted in the UK Guardian in strong terms on April 27^th.

The law, which gives the police the right to stop anyone they suspect is an illegal immigrant, “opens the door to intolerance, hate, discrimination and abuse in law enforcement”, Calderón said last night. Trade and political ties with Arizona would be “seriously affected”, he warned.

“Nobody can sit around with their arms crossed in the face of decisions that so clearly affect our countrymen,” Calderón said in a speech at the Institute for Mexicans Abroad.

Talking to activists organizing the Arizona-based movement in Phoenix to oppose the implementation of SB1070 and force its repeal, it was common knowledge that the Mexican Ambassador to the United States had not only visited Arizona to warn of the consequences, but had also made himself available to meet with the organizers and was very frank in his private assessments that it was almost inevitable that Mexico would move to not only join but lead a boycott of Arizona from the south, because the domestic politics within the country “would force us to act.” In so many words he was saying that President Calderon would be beating the drums over the 90-day period before the bill goes into effect, but the united opposition and outrage in Mexico to this bigoted act of racial profiling and Mexican-bashing would inevitably lead to Mexico boycotting Arizona.

Would that really mean closing the border from Mexico to the USA?

What the haters refuse to grip is the constant traffic between the two countries not only for business and commerce, but everyday tasks of workers going back and forth for jobs and shopping, and US citizens living in Mexico particularly in twin cities like Douglas, AZ and Nogales, Mexico. People living along the border still shudder at the post 9/11 delays that would mean 3 and 4 hour waits to cross from Tijuana into San Diego for example. No country can easily do this on a permanent basis, but tactically, it is easy to imagine slowdowns and day-to-day shutdowns to send the message to the country state of Arizona, that Mexico will not tolerate apartheid for its countrymen or those with roots across the border.

Mexico is an ace in the deck for organizers. No one can control what their next steps are, but the movement will be poised to take advantage of the anger in Mexico and continue to fuel it. Organizers are also supremely confident that whatever Mexico does will help their movement and put pressure not only on the state government, but also directly on President Obama and Secretary of State Hilary Clinton.

Tim Costello: Labor Activist Extraordinaire!

jstuart — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 16:02:32 +0000

New Orleans A week ago I was in Boston. Knowing I would be in Cambridge at the Harvard Coop, I sent an email to my friend and colleague, Tim Costello, suggesting he come over if he had a minute and visit and pick up a book. The weather was miserably cold and wet, so I figured he had stayed home wisely and thought no more of it. I had visited with Tim at some length in February of this year. He had met me at Tufts after a meeting, we had lunch and he had to drop off a lunch his youngest daughter had forgotten.

We talked about a way that we could do some joint work with our research team in Florida, our organizers in India, and all of the good relationships Tim felt had been made in China with Global Strategies. Money was an issue. Money always seems to be an issue, but Tim and his partners were undaunted and committed to their vision, and in Tim’s case, endlessly enthusiastic and optimistic about the impact of the work.

Tim was old school, and it was not old school meaning a couple of three or four decades ago. Tim harkened back to the times more than 100 years ago when there were shop floor and rank-and-file intellectuals who lived and breathed as labor activists and self-made labor intellectuals. Tim’s story was an old story of driving trucks in and around Boston as a Teamster. The values didn’t change. He talked about the times in between the projects, contracts, and grants when some of the team would paint houses and others would work as fishermen or pick up lobsters. He talked about how hard it was getting, but there were no regrets. This was the price of being both a working stiff and a totally committed activist to a vision of what lay ahead and needed to happen next. There was no whine in the man. His spirit was always infectious.

I had first gotten to really know Tim during the period when he was helping build an alliance dealing with contingent labor. I can remember us eating rice and beans and getting to know each other better at an Enlace meeting in Torreon, Mexico. A couple of years after that, I remember walking him towards the Zocalo in Mexico City and past the Alameda because I knew that city better than he did. He always talked about organizing a meeting in Paris or Italy and that I would be on the list. I would kid him when I would see him about the fact that I was still waiting for the call!

Good man. Good times.

My biggest disappointment now is that we never really figured out a way to make more happen. And, more happen together!

I got my internet feed from Global Labor Strategies and opened it this afternoon because it said something about Tim. To my shock it was a memorial notice that he had died last Friday at his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts of pancreatic cancer. I can only assume it came suddenly and felled him quickly. I know he was good health in February except for the usual aches and pains, because we discussed it explicitly. His family must have been devastated. I heard him talk about them all the time. He had told many stories of working in Denmark, his wife’s country. He doted on his youngest daughter.

The notice included a brief obit from the Boston Globe that he was a labor activist and author of many books and articles. All true, but none of this was the full measure of the man. No one or two inches in the back pages can capture the rare sense that this man and the kinds of things he thought, stood for, and did were at the very heart of the most traditional and best parts of the labor movement. What was good for workers at home and internationally was part of his blood and DNA. There simply aren’t many Tim Costello’s anymore, and there need to be hundreds and thousands of them. His passing may not be much noticed by many and his legacy may not be as lengthy as some, but there will always be huge debts to pay to Tim Costello and the best of the tradition of labor activism and intellectuality that he represented quietly, faithfully, and truly for all of his years.

Damn, I’ll miss the guy! There are no replacements on the bench for Tim.