United Workers

International Worker’s Day is a day for lifting up the voices of workers struggling for dignity and justice at work and in their communities. It is a celebration of unity and solidarity across geography, sectors, race, gender, and all barriers that would divide us. Across the world, marches and actions take place to honor this day. In Baltimore, postal workers, service-sector workers, day laborers, community activists and labor organizers will rally at McKeldin Square at the Inner Harbor. While in Montpelier, our good friends, the Vermont Workers Center are staging their annual May Day march and rally to Put People First.

It is in this spirit of raising our voices that we share this video of United Workers leader, Raquel Rojas, telling her story. She connects the exploitation she experienced working at a marble factory in Mexico to the exploitation she experienced working at the Cheesecake Factory in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. Raquel talks about why she decided to become an organizer, saying that, “the struggle for human rights is one that I believe we all must carry.”

Raquel has become one of many leaders in the fight for Fair Development at the Inner Harbor. On November 18, 2010, she led a delegation of workers and allies to General Growth’s Properties offices at Harborplace to once again call their attention to the rampant human rights violations taking place at their mall, see past web post. Despite these attempts by workers, GGP has continued to turn a blind eye to the exploitation of workers. That is why, as Raquel states, we must all carry the struggle for human rights and why we’re asking for everyone to join the March to Occupy GGP on Saturday, May 19th.

Go here for more information on the March to Occupy GGP. If you have not already told us you’re planning on coming, please email us at occupyggp@unitedworkers.org or call us at 410-230-1998.

Looks like Benton Harbor developers are taking a page out of the Inner Harbor’s poverty-zone manual. Musician, independent journalist, and United Workers ally, Ryan Harvey just recently wrote an article for thruthout.org about Benton Harbor, Michigan, a community that is in a battle against recent legislation that strips communities of democratic decision-making powers. As a part of a recent wave of controversial legislation sweeping the nation’s states, Michigan Governor Rick Snyder passed the Emergency Financial Management bill, giving “Emergency Financial Managers” (EFMs) the ability to suspend entire elected bodies of municipalities they deem to be failing. Benton Harbor has been deemed one of those municipalities. By denying community participation, this legislation facilitates a massive shift of public resources towards the private gain of corporations and developers without ensuring public benefits to all of Benton Harbor residents.

Here’s where the plot thickens. Many Benton Harbor residents see this new law as a way to push through an unfavorable “Harbor Shores” development plan that would turn the communities once public beach into a luxury gulf resort. Despite promises of jobs and economic revitalization, many residents are worried that the jobs created will be poverty wage jobs with little benefits that will exacerbate not alleviate the problem of increasing poverty in Benton Harbor. Harvey makes the connection between the struggle in Benton Harbor to the fight for Fair Development at Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, including an interesting GGP connection. To read the full article, go to http://www.truth-out.org

The company in charge of developing Harbor Shores, Evergreen Development, was formed in 2005 in anticipation of the project. Evergreen’s Chief Financial Officer Jeffery Gilbertson is the former senior director of Financial Operations, International at General Growth Properties (GGP), one of the largest mall owners in the United States.

While Gilbertson was joining up with Evergreen in 2008, his former employer, after amassing $27 billion in debt, was filing what has been called the largest real estate bankruptcy in US history.(20)

Meanwhile, workers at Baltimore’s Inner Harbor were announcing a major campaign against GGP, which parallels the fight in Benton Harbor in many ways. A new report released this week shines light on these issues and perhaps puts the Harbor Shores project in Benton Harbor under a new light.

“The Inner Harbor,” the report reads, “has become a glaring example of poverty zone development, with low-quality jobs and abusive wages and conditions. As in other poverty zone developments, the private developers – General Growth Properties and Cordish Companies – and their investors insisted on secure profits through access to public subsidies and advantageous leases with the vendors who run the businesses in the development.”

That might sound all too familiar to the residents of Benton Harbor.

Join students, faith leaders, artists, media makers, community organizers and United Workers leaders in our next Strategic Dialogue! Last December, the United Workers kicked off a series of Strategic Dialogues to involve allies in high level conversations about the Campaign for Fair Development, to build a broader analysis around the problems that affect us, and discuss how all of us can be effective leaders in the movement to secure economic human rights for all.

At this next Strategic Dialogue, we’ll examine the exciting uprisings and protests in Tunisia, Egypt, and Wisconsin, draw the connections to our struggles, and discuss what these examples can teach us about what it is going to take to build a movement to end poverty. We’ll also break-out into groups to begin laying the groundwork for working committees around Media & Culture, Faith, and Leadership Development. These committees are an opportunity for allies to work closely with the United Workers in the fight for Fair Development. All are invited and encouraged to participate in this initial conversation regardless of their participation in the committee. So come be a part of yet another critical and engaging dialogue about how together we can make human rights history!

What: Strategic Dialogue #3
When: Saturday, April 16th, 10:30 AM-2:30 PM
Where: 2640 St. Paul St., Baltimore, MD 21218
*Lite breakfast and lunch provided

To RSVP, call 410-230-1998 or email ashley@unitedworkers.org

Last Thursday, February 3rd, Gimmie Shelter presented the United Worker with a gift. It was a gift of labor, love and solidarity. Gimmie Shelter threw a “Conscious Party,” an incredible benefit show for the United Workers at 2640. Over twenty artists, poets, and musicians performed in order to raise money for our New Organizers Program, a university level paid training program for members to study, reflect, and develop community organizing skills. As a part of the New Organizers Sustainers Fund, allies have been hosting house parties and organizing events to both sustain this program and move the United Workers towards greater freedom from foundations. The Conscious Party was a creative twist on this model of community-driven fundraising, fusing art & culture with fundraising.

With our deepest appreciation, we thank Ron Williams, Marcus Colasurdo, Alan Barysh, and everyone with Gimmie Shelter for organizing this amazing event and for their commitment to grassroots movement building. We’d also like to thank the incredible artists that performed: 901 Arts Drum Line, the Barrage Band Orchestra, Mark Sanders, Christina Van Norman, Sam Schmidt, Virginia Crawford, Marcus Colasurdo, In the Clear, Maximum Rain, Michael Monroe, Woody Lissauer, Alan Barysh, RAM, Dick Ochs, Katie Lautar, and Tom Swiss. We were touched by this expression of solidarity and look forward to continuing to work together towards a world in which all of our human potential can be realized and celebrated. Thanks.

Check out these videos from the “Conscious Party” shot by independent videographer, Maurice Morales. To watch more of Morales’s videos of many of the performances and speeches, go to http://www.youtube.com/user/maurice11

Gimmie Shelter founder, Marcus Colasurdo, speaks to the power of art and movement building and why Gimmie Shelter organized a benefit for the United Workers.

Whether marching alongside us through the harbor on Our Harbor Day or raising the roof at 2640, the Barage Band is always down for a good struggle.

The United Workers along with twenty eight organizations from the US gathered at Union Theological Seminary in New York City to participate in the Poverty Initiative’s 7th Poverty Scholars Strategic Dialogue. From West Virginia to South Africa, the Poverty Scholars Strategic Dialogues have become a space for organizations across the country and even the world to come together to learn, share, and inspire each other towards “Reigniting the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s Poor People’s Campaign.”

For four days, we met in sessions to study and discuss the impact of the economic crisis on our communities and our organizing, the lessons learned from past movements, and how we can develop a unified strategy towards building a social movement to end poverty. We shared lessons from our local work and heard from the NEPA Organizing Center, Media Mobilizing Project, and the Vermont Worker’s Center. On the third day, S’bu Zikode, President of the Shackdwellers’ Movement in South Africa, spoke to us about their leadership development processes that have led to a growing movement of poor people in South Africa demanding their human right to housing and freedom from poverty. Chris Nizza and Dara Kell from Sleeping Giant screened a sneak peek of “Dear Mandela,” a soon to be released documentary about the Shackdwellers Movement.

But the Poverty Scholars Dialogue was not all talk, we demonstrated our unity and celebrated our victories. On Saturday, we picketed at Mario Batali’s exclusive restaurant Del Posto where workers are organizing with ROC-NY for work with dignity. We sang freedom songs, passed out fliers, and chanted in the multiple languages spoken in New York restaurants. After the picket, we went to the Domestic Workers United Gala to celebrate their 10 year anniversary and their recent historic victory of a Domestic Workers Bill of Rights in New York state. Domestic workers and their allies exemplified the change that can be made when people act on their values and demand justice, just as we had done earlier at Del Posto. For years, DWU organized, protested, and met with legislators to make the all too often invisible exploitation of domestic workers visible. This commitment paid off and the Gala was a moment for all of us to celebrate this shared victory in the fight for human rights for everyone everywhere.

We ended the the four day Strategic Dialogue with a conversation about the upcoming Leadership School and how it can serve to further build a broad based movement. We cried about the hard road ahead, we reminded ourselves of our victories, we spoke of the important family bonds we’ve created, and recommitted ourselves to being leaders in a movement to end poverty.

To learn more about the Poverty Initiative and the Poverty Scholars Program, visit http://www.povertyinitiative.org/

This Saturday, November 6, el Centro de Trabajadores Unidos en Lucha (CTUL), a Minneapolis based worker-led organization, will be revealing the first target in their recently launched Retail Cleaning Campaign. Through this human rights campaign, low-wage retail cleaners who work at such places as Target, Supervalu, and Lunds & Byerly’s are demanding fair wages, fair working conditions and a voice on the job.

When we hear stories of poverty wages, lack of healthcare, intrusion into family time, and disrespect told by Minneapolis retail cleaners, we are reminded of our own stories of human rights abuses at the Inner Harbor. When Inner Harbor workers launched the Campaign for Fair Development and decided to move our demands to the developers that control the Inner Harbor, we looked to CIW’s successful strategy of focusing on the top of the profit chain. Now, retail cleaners with CTUL are also employing this same lesson by going after these corporate big-box stores that profit off the exploitation of workers, while trying to wash their hands of any responsibility through an extended labor supply chain. From farmworkers in the fields of Florida, to restaurant and retail workers in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, to retail cleaners in Minneapolis, some of the least protected workers are developing a worker-driven corporate accountability model to address the human rights abuses they experience.

Looking across this country, we see more and more people whose basic needs to housing, healthcare, work with dignity, and education being denied. We are inspired to see people strategizing, organizing, and acting on their values. So with the deepest solidarity, we are excited to join CTUL as they embark on their first human rights campaign. We look forward to day when our victories will converge to create a more just world.

To learn more about this exciting campaign, go to http://ctul.net/

The United Nations human rights monitoring mechanism, the Universal Periodic Review (UPR), will hold their first ever examination of the U.S. human rights record on November 5 in Geneva, Switzerland. In advance of this historic event, the National Economic and Social Rights Initiative (NESRI) has released a report calling attention to the ways in which the U.S. government has failed to ensure human rights like housing, healthcare, and education in this country. Together with seven collaborators, including the United Workers, and over forty endorsing groups, NESRI has submitted a report to the UN on the persistent denial of economic and social human rights in the United States.

To read the report: “Toward Economic and Social Rights in the United States: From Market Competition to Public Goods”

The report offers four case studies of groups fighting for human rights in their local communities:

• Families and Friends of Louisiana’s Incarcerated Children fighting for the human right to education in New Orleans,
• The Vermont Workers’ Center’s statewide fight for the human right to health care,
• The Campaign to Restore National Housing Rights and the Chicago Anti-Eviction Campaign fighting for the human right to housing, and
• Baltimore’s United Workers’ fight for the human right to work with dignity.

From Work with Dignity Section:

Government policies actively distribute public resources to the corporations they largely fail to regulate and monitor. Numerous tax incentives and direct public subsidies are given to the corporate sector, including the high-violation agricultural, retail, and service industries. Federal, state, and local subsidies, as well as development rights on public lands are provided in addition to the tax benefits corporations already enjoy. Yet no human rights conditions are tied to the receipt of subsidies, nor is corporate compliance with existing laws adequately monitored. Consequently, public resources are used to secure the revenues of corporations rather than the needs and rights of workers, thereby serving private interests rather than the common good.

To learn more about NESRI, visit their website http://www.nesri.org/

What a week to kick-off the summer solidarity actions! Emanuel McCray, an ESPN Zone worker, spoke in front of the now closed ESPN Zone about the experience of learning through the news that he would be out of a job in less than a week as curious tourist and consumers walked passed. Allies came out to show their solidarity and reach out to consumers to educate them about the human rights abuses at the harbor and this most recent example of worker disregard. Many consumers were shocked to hear that Disney-owned ESPN Zone would treat their workers with such lack of respect. Connecting workers with consumers is critical to putting the pressure on Inner Harbor developers, GGP and Cordish, to ensure basic human rights standards for workers. This is just the beginning, so if you missed this action, be sure to sign-on to our e-alerts to learn about upcoming solidarity actions!