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No More NAFTA's-Rally At Feinsteins's SF Mansion To Protest USMCA-NAFTA 2.0

nafta_no_new.jpg
Date:
Wednesday, January 15, 2020
Time:
4:00 PM - 5:00 PM
Event Type:
Press Conference
Organizer/Author:
UPWA
Location Details:
2460 Lyon St.
San Francisco

1/15/20 No More NAFTA's-Rally At Feinsteins's SF Mansion To Protest USMCA-NAFTA 2.0

SF Press Conference & Rally To Oppose USMCA-NAFTA 2.0
Wednesday, January 15, 2019, 4:00 PM
2460 Lyon St.
San Francisco


Congress recently passed the United States, Mexico Canada treaty USMCA known as NAFTA 2.0. It will allow continued outsourcing, privatization, and deregulation of labor and environmental standards. It will not stop the outsourcing of US jobs to non-union and slave labor conditions at Mexican plants.

Mexico under NAFTA has privatized the ejidos, railroads, telecom, mines, and part of the oil industry. Their agriculture has also been destroyed by the mass importation of US subsidized

corn, corn syrup, and Walmarts which have wiped out large parts of their economy.

The agreement continues to allow US oil and gas companies to continue to drill and take over the resources in Mexican while having no climate protections for Mexico, the US or Canada. It also prohibits Mexico from even labeling agricultural products to protect the health and safety of the Mexican people. It also allows the US to continue to discriminate against Mexican workers in the United States.


USMCA NAFTA 2.0 has been supported by the US Chamber of Commerce, Trump, Nancy Pelosi, most Democrats and AFL-CIO president Trumka. While Trumka is supporting it the IAM Machinists and the United Electrical Workers UE are opposing it.

It is also opposed by the environmental organizations including Earthjustice, Food and Water Action, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, the League of Conservation Voters, the Natural Resources Defense Council, Oil Change International, the Sierra Club and the Sunrise Movement.
"We cannot afford to lock ourselves into a multi-decade deal that ignores climate change and helps corporate polluters,”

Multi-millionaire US Senator Diane Feinstein who is worth more than $94 million and whose husband Richard Blum who is worth over $1 billion has supported agricultural billionaires in
California and wants more “guest workers” H-2A guest-worker program who are indentured workers.

Many workers trying to build independent unions have also been fired in Mexico in Montamoros, Tecate and GM workers in Silao yet the Mexican government refuses to enforce the labor laws they already have passed.

We need to build direct links with US workers and farmers including the Driscoll's farmworkers in Baja who work for $7 a day and are supporting a boycott of Driscoll’s berries.

Feinstein who is supported by the farm owners and industrial agriculture will be voting on this bill early this year in the Senate and we are calling on this anti-labor, corporate trade agreement to be rejected.

Initiated by

United Public Workers For Action http://www.upwa.info
Al Rojas, Co-founder UFWA and VP of LCLAA Sacramento

For more info or to endorse:
info [at] upwa.info

IAM Machinists Union to Congress: Vote ‘No’ on USMCA
https://www.goiam.org/press-releases/machinists-union-to-congress-vote-no-on-usmca/?fbclid=IwAR1iAs2EQilNRCVpefDcs1CVc1lGCzpPlioK1ihMy0cnOVDaES85j-3ESS4

UE Opposes USMCA: We’re still waiting for a trade deal that benefits working people
https://www.ueunion.org/political-action/2019/still-waiting-for-a-trade-deal-that-benefits-working-people

NAFTA Deal Is Unacceptable Template for the Future,
https://www.citizenstrade.org/ctc/blog/2019/12/13/nafta-deal-unacceptable-template-for-future-trade-agreements/?fbclid=IwAR0wIKokykQQx6mvg8si8f3x62kFfhHYa-65ZG1GeMEjgP6k64U91DR5t9o

Green groups urge lawmakers to oppose USMCA
https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/474504-green-groups-urge-lawmakers-to-oppose-usmca


How America Is Causing Global Obesity, China, Mexico & USMCS/NAFTA with Hasan Minhaj
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmo6lZcdkO0
Added to the calendar on Fri, Dec 27, 2019 10:51AM
sm_mexico_san_quintin_worker_boycott_driscoll_s.jpg
USMCA like NAFTA allows the continued exploitation and slave labor conditions for Mexico farm workers including Driscoll's workers in Baja, California. Farm bosses like USMCA NAFTA 2.0 because it allows continued privatization and lack of protections for consumers of agricultural and food products from Mexico. Mexico uses chemicals and pesticides that are not allowed in the US. These chemicals end up in the foods and poison unsuspected consumers in Mexico, Canada, and the US.

The Battle of Mexican Farmworkers At Driscolls in San Quintín Baja California

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5L3ZbQN3Iog&t=17s
Al Rojas, one of the founders of the United Farmworkers of America and Carmen Mata of National Democratic Independent Union of Agricultural Workers (SINDJA) Alliance of National, State and Municipal Organizations for Social Justice (AONEMJS) talk about the struggle of 80,000 mostly indigenous farm workers and their families at San Quintín Baja on the border of California to get decent wages and working conditions along with the recognition of their union.

As a result of NAFTA which privatized the communal ejidos lands of the indigenous farm workers, tens of thousands were forced off their land into factory farms for Driscolls and other multi-national agricultural corporations.
These presentations were made at the founding conference of the Workers Solidarity Action Network which was held on October 7, 2017 at UAW 551 in Chicago, Illinois.

Additional media:
San Quintín: The daily labor of an agricultural worker in the red
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsNUEMLcmIE&feature=share

Visit To Pete’s Fresh Produce: Chicago Workers & UAW 551 Join Mexico San Quintin Farmworker Carmen Marta To Support Driscolls Boycott
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCKZWssS4Zk

San Francisco Labor Council Resolution On Driscolls & NAFTA
http://sflaborcouncil.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/08-14-17Resolution-to-Cancel-NAFTA.pdf

The Fight For San Quintin Farm Workers & Driscoll's with Al Rojas At ILWU Local 10
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzrSngfXiiA

US-Mexico Border Worker Solidarity March/Action Against NAFTA & For Driscolls Agricultural Workers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASv_gHyOnzk

Mexico Tijuana Conferencia Internacional del Trabajo discute TLCAN, Privatización y Económica
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2--kLD8tBQQ

Mexico Oaxaca Teacher Murders Protested In SF "Massacre Made In USA”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RrK-S3Q9qs

For more information
https://www.facebook.com/lclaasacramento/?fref=ts
https://elenemigocomun.net/2016/09/driscolls-boycott-full-force/
Workers Solidarity Action Network
https://www.facebook.com/events/371406356586798/

Production of Labor Video Project
http://www.laborvideo.org
§Fired Mexico GM Silao Fired Workers
by UPWA
sm_mexico_gm_7_fired_workers.jpg
GM fired Mexico Sila GM assembly plant workers who took action in solidarity with US GM strikers. They also opposed outsourcing at their plant. GM and VW have hundreds of thousands of outsourced workers at their plants who work at even lower wages with no protections with slave labor conditions. USMCA does not change these union-busting slave labor conditions.

We, the group of fired workers at General Motors Silao Complex who joined hand in hand and strongly supported our fellow workers in the strike at General Motors in the United States, are continuing our struggle against the employer and our union leaders, resisting their pacts and alliance with the authorities. Our struggle is not over, and we are not willing to take a step back, which is why we are requesting your solidarity and your support for our defense fund. The economic situation is hitting us hard, and the main purpose we are asking for your help is to keep going, fighting for our reinstatement and for a democratic movement of workers at GM Silao.
The labor authorities in Mexico have not shown any willingness to address the lawsuits we have filed against the transnational corporation General Motors at the Silao Complex. Those same authorities have deals with the conciliation and arbitration boards to obstruct our lawsuits and close our path. That is why we request your support for our workers’ movement and our fight for the livelihood of those workers fired at General Motors Silao Complex.
In advance, we thank you for your solidarity and understanding.
We are still fighting!
For the international unity of workers at GM!
Not one step back!
Signed,
Dolores Israel Cervantes Córdova
Pilar de la Luz Torres Rosales
Ramón Rodríguez Gutiérrez
Arturo Martínez Fernández
Javier Martínez Mosqueda
Mauricio Negrete Pérez
María Guadalupe Ibarra Ramírez
Generating Movement

Comments (Hide Comments)
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Mexico’s Uprising Against Education ‘Reform’
https://progressive.org/magazine/mexico’s-uprising-against-education-‘reform’/

This conflict now involves the founders of the Knowledge Is Power Program, or KIPP, a U.S.-based charter school network.
The teachers of Mexico, who have been involved in a long, often violent struggle to defend public education, are up against
the same school-privatization forces as teachers’ unions and public school advocates in the United States.

by Jeff Abbott
January 26, 2017
48

Print
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IMG_6193.jpgJeff Abbott.
A papier-mâché statue of a woman holding a dead body sits in the middle of the main tourist corridor of Oaxaca City
Entering the state of Oaxaca has become a trying process, ever since the Mexican Federal Police massacred, according to human rights reports, at least eight supporters of Mexico’s protesting teachers in Nochixtlán on June 19, 2016. More than 170 people were injured during the incident in the community of Nochixtlán, Oaxaca.

At first, police responding to the protests fired tear gas and rubber bullets. Then they began using live ammunition. Authorities claim police opened fire after being shot at by radical groups that had infiltrated the protest, but others dispute this. Following this incident and the investigation of a different confrontation that resulted in the death of forty-two civilians, the chief of the federal police force, Enrique Galindo, was removed from his position. But no one has been charged in these killings and the investigation is ongoing.

After the killings, teachers and their supporters erected statewide roadblocks. Overnight, Oaxaca became the epicenter of the latest conflict between President Enrique Peña Nieto’s education “reforms” and the people who are determined to resist them. Cars and trucks burned across the state, protesters destroyed toll booths, and military helicopters hovered overhead in a scene reminiscent of a war zone.

Mexico is undergoing a historic revolt against the privatization of public services, including education. At stake are two competing ideas of what education should be. On one side are the unionized teachers, who have maintained protests and blockades against the education changes passed in February 2013; on the other side are corporate leaders and their political allies, who seek to dismantle the teachers’ unions, and open up education to private investment.

This conflict now involves the founders of the Knowledge Is Power Program, or KIPP, a U.S.-based charter school network. The teachers of Mexico, who have been involved in a long, often violent struggle to defend public education, are up against the same school-privatization forces as teachers’ unions and public school advocates in the United States.

A week after the massacre in Oaxaca, I traveled to Oaxaca City from San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas. In the past, this journey was a thirteen-hour direct bus ride, but now the conflict made things more difficult. After taking five buses, enduring twenty hours of travel, and navigating numerous roadblocks, I arrived at the latest battleground against privatization in Mexico. Along the way, we passed the burnt skeletons of trucks and cars, a reminder of the outrage that followed the massacre.

At one roadblock, I met Jesús Santiago Montes, a fifty-eight-year-old primary school teacher with thirty-eight years of experience working in Mexico’s poor southern state of Oaxaca. We sat and spoke by the side of the highway about teachers’ frustration and the reasons for the protests. Santiago Montes and many others were using their summer vacation to maintain that roadblock in protest at Mexico’s education changes. All the teachers were members of Section 22 of the National Coordinator of Education Workers, a branch of the Mexican teachers’ union, the National Union of Education Workers.

Santiago Montes took part in the 2006 uprising against then-Oaxaca Governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz. Since 2013, he has participated in the massive mobilizations of Mexican teachers opposing the education policies of Peña Nieto.

Teachers say these policies do little to address the real problems they face. Schoolteachers across Mexico serve as important organizers for many rural communities, a good deal of which lack basic resources. Among the problems teachers see on a regular basis are malnutrition and a lack of running water and electricity.

Mexico’s education “reforms,” which require teachers to take tests in order to remain in their jobs, among other burdens, look to Santiago Montes like a direct attack on unions, as well as a way of undermining rural teachers-as-community-organizers who are a thorn in the side of the national government.

“This is not an educational reform as it is stated, this is a labor reform because it restricts and annuls the labor rights of education workers,” Santiago Montes told me as we sat on a cement wall along the highway.

The changes emphasize standardized testing for students, as well as a biannual test for teachers. Proponents claim that this testing will lead to improved education and help root out unqualified teachers. Veteran teachers, including Santiago Montes, see it as a threat to their job security and pay. Their employment, compensation, and bonuses will now be tied to student scores on standardized tests.

But for Santiago Montes, and many other teachers, the protests are not just about the destruction of their union, but rather what teachers fear will be the destruction of public education as they know it.

“The reform also targets Article 3 of the constitution that protects the rights of citizens to a public and free education,“ Santiago Montes noted. And the teachers’ concerns about privatization are well founded. As U.S. charter school companies have looked to expand their projects south, Mexico’s business leaders have taken an interest in the U.S.-inspired charter school model.

Mexican magnate Eduardo Tricio, whose interests include the airline Aeromexico and the milk product company Grupo Lala, got into the education sector in 2010 when he brought KIPP-inspired charter schools to his country. The first school served thirty students.

KIPP is the largest charter chain in the United States, with schools in twenty states and Washington, D.C. While the nonprofit spends about a half million dollars per year on advertising to tout high graduation rates and excellent academic outcomes for its mostly low-income students, the Center for Media and Democracy has reported on how KIPP hides basic information about high dropout rates and startling executive salaries and perks. And public school advocate Diane Ravitch has criticized the company for being secretive and draining resources from public schools.

But KIPP has friends in high places. Tricio persuaded the charter school company’s founders Mike Feinberg and Aaron Brenner to come to Mexico and help him open a KIPP-inspired school. The three men also launched a new organization, 1 World Network of Schools, which aims to train principals, open more KIPP-inspired schools, and promote education changes.

By the end of 2016, there were seven KIPP-inspired schools in northern Mexico. KIPP’s Mexican offshoot received a grant from the United States-Mexico Foundation to help back the new charter schools.

“Mexico, with support and investment from the [United States], will be able to make serious inroads in its ability to reform its education,” the foundation declared in awarding the grant. “The future of education reform in Mexico will be guided by this initial work.”

The Progressive reached out to KIPP for a statement on the collaboration with Tricio in Mexico, but the charter school operator declined to respond.

Expand
Screen Shot 2017-01-12 at 5.54.26 PM.pngPhotos by Jeff Abbott
(Left) The remains of a bus that was burned following the massacre in Nochixtlan, Oaxaca, is draped in a banner accusing the Mexican government of assassinating the people. (Right) A teacher from the Section 22 union rests in a hammock while reading a book in the encampment in the center of Oaxaca City.
Back at the roadblock, Santiago Montes challenged the claim that teachers have no ideas to counter the corporate education “innovators.” Teachers in the forgotten rural communities of Oaxaca have plenty to say about how they could better serve kids, he said. Rank-and-file teachers have written a proposal called the Plan for the Transformation of Education in Oaxaca.

“It is a proposal that is 100 percent humanist,” Santiago Montes said. “It is important to us that the student thinks, reflects, and analyzes, and where the student is not educated to be a slave or submissive. We want the students to resolve their own problems.”

The teachers’ plan seeks to include the rural indigenous communities and to open space for teaching Oaxaca’s various indigenous languages. Its emphasis on indigenous communities is a result of community meetings that were an intentional part of the design process.

“The plan is something that has risen from the teachers themselves, and the knowledge and understanding from the communities,” George Salinas, the representative of a delegation of Oaxaca’s Section 22 of the teachers’ union, told me at the roadblock. “This is an alternative education project that reflects the needs of the communities.”

According to Salinas, teachers have already been enacting part of the plan in various communities in Oaxaca, with positive results.

In the months since my visit, teachers have continued their protests in spite of the continued threat of violence. The union maintains its demand for educational changes that benefit Mexican communities, not transnational companies. The teachers I met in Oaxaca were ready for a long fight against charter schools and other companies that threatened their public education. As they see it, education is the foundation of empowered youth and young engaged citizens who will demand a better Mexico.

“We want a reform, but one that is in accordance with the Mexican reality,” Santiago Montes told me. He said exams should be for improving education, “not canceling out labor rights.”

Expand
Screen Shot 2017-01-18 at 10.22.12 AM.pngPhotos by Jeff Abbott
(Left) Coffins sit below the flag of the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca outside the municipal building of Oaxaca City in protest of the massacre on June 19, 2016. (Right) Graffiti on the walls around the municipal building of San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, expressed solidarity with the teachers in Oaxaca.
In Oaxaca City, the bustling capital of the state of Oaxaca where Section 22 is headquartered, the tension is palpable, but life continues. Businesses are open, and foreign tourists stroll through the city center. It’s partly an illusion. At the end of 2015, city officials and the Oaxacan business community took steps to erase all signs of social conflict in the popular tourist destination. Political graffiti and murals were painted over, and attempts were made to limit the presence of Section 22 in a large encampment in the central square.

The day I arrived in Oaxaca, just after the massacre, artists had constructed a papier-mâché statue in one of the major walkways of a woman holding a lifeless body. Tourists stopped and took photos. Two days later, nothing remained of the art piece. Along the walls now are new murals depicting a little girl holding a machete, and an image of a fallen teacher.

At the southern end of the walkway is the Zócalo, or central square. Among the benches, trees, and taco stands, teachers have constructed a small city of weathered tents and plastic tarps. Since May 2016, the teachers have occupied the Zócalo to protest the changes. Even weeks after the initial violence, it is a hive of activity, complete with a makeshift food distribution system, medical services, and much lively chatter.

There is a historic memory in these streets, where, in 2006, thousands marched in protest of then-Governor Ruiz Ortiz. The protests began with a strike by Section 22, and escalated into a social uprising after the governor sent police into the city center to evict the teachers from the central park. Federal police were sent in to put down the uprising.

“These demands are old,” Gilberto Hernandez, a lawyer with the National Association of Democratic Lawyers, which supports Oaxaca’s teachers, told me.“The [teachers’] union and the communities have struggled for years for these issues. In 2006, the government responded by providing millions and millions of pesos for these poor zones [of Oaxaca]. But sadly, due to corruption, these funds never arrived to these communities. Ten years later, the same problems exist. Today it isn’t just a problem of the union or the community, but rather a social and political problem.”

And the threat of violent repression lingers.

Rumors are flying around the park. One night, a hotel owner warned me not to go near the central park as the police and military were supposedly going to enter and force the eviction of the teachers’ encampment. Journalists on the scene added to the tension by visibly protecting themselves with bulletproof vests and gas masks. But the crackdown never materialized. Through all the uncertainty, the teachers and their supporters across the state stood ready to guarantee that the police would not enter to evict the teachers.

“These [changes] are meant more for cutting costs than for the improvement of education,” Javita Hernandez, a supporter of the teachers, told me in the encampment in Oaxaca’s Zócalo. As we spoke, teachers gathered within their delegations for their daily meeting.

The struggle continues.

Jeff Abbott is an independent journalist currently based out of Guatemala. He has covered human rights and social movements in Central America and Mexico. His work has appeared at VICE News, Truthout, the North American Congress on Latin America, and Upside Down World. Follow him on

Twitter @palabrasdeabajo.
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Sen. Feinstein/Billionaires, Union Busters Slave Traders
No NAFTA 2.0 USMCA
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