VOICE OF DETROIT: The city's independent newspaper, unbossed and unbought

Occupy Detroit packs plaza in front of Coleman A. Young Municipal Center Oct. 14

Most diverse crowd of protesters seen in years

 By Diane Bukowski 

October 18, 2011 

DETROIT – Occupy Detroit hit the city like a thunderclap Oct. 14 as hundreds of marchers packed the plaza in front of the Coleman A. Young Municipal Center chanting “The people united will never be defeated,” and “Bail out Detroit, not the banks.”  

Long-time schools activist and former board member Marie Thornton's sign demands moratorium on city's debt to banks

They brandished signs condemning foreclosures, DTE shut-offs, unemployment, public bank debt, corporate greed, U.S. wars, and the entire capitalist system.  Banners sponsored by Moratorium NOW! demanded that President Barack Obama issue executive orders establishing a national jobs program and banning foreclosures. 

“It’s not one thing, it’s everything!” one protester’s huge cardboard sign read. 

Numerous rank and file Detroiters from the Black community joined young white protesters new to the movement, as well as seniors, filling the sidewalks all the way to Grand Circus Park a mile away. There they began an occupation they said will last as long as possible, joining people in 900 cities across the country who have allied themselves with Occupy Wall Street. 

Marie Butler (l) campaigns against DTE shut-offs, street light elimination

“It’s always about the children,” said Marie Butler, a member of the Michigan Welfare Rights Organization. “DTE turns our lights off at home, and they’ve dug up street light poles in Highland Park. We don’t have cars, the buses are late, it gets dark by 4 and 5 p.m. now. The children can be accosted going to school, their parents’ homes can be broken into. DTE could have given Highland Park a waiver with a plan to work out their debt. This is ridiculous.” 

Occupy Detroit wasted no time with plans to target those it says are enemies of the people, marching first on Bank of America Oct. 17 to demand that it declare a moratorium on foreclosures or face a mass demonstration Oct. 21. (See accompanying story.) 

Numerous other targets populate the area around Grand Circus Park, including the DTE headquarters on Bagley, the Detroit Water Board building on Randolph, and various court buildings. U.S. District Judge Sean Cox is poised to sever Detroit’s possession of its primary jewel, the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department, which serves 400 million customers in southeast Michigan, on Nov. 4. 

Marchers take the street; youths are joined by AFSCME Local 207 (Water Department) officer Mike Mulholland (behind man in blue jacket)

Detroit’s casino workers, who were on the verge of a strike over stalled contract negotiations, planned to rally at Campus Martius Oct. 19 at 5 p.m. Across the country, unions have joined Occupy Wall Street protests in a rejuvenation of the earlier mass occupations in the Midwest that they sponsored earlier this year. 

“This is long overdue,” Wallace Hoskins, a slot machine field service technician who works all over the state. “The people have been sleeping a long time, addicted to Facebook and video games, but it’s finally coming to a head. Detroit is the worst hit city in the country. I want to see a future for everyone. Even though I’m working, if I ignore this like nothing’s happening, then I’m a fool, because it’s going to come to my doorstep too.” 

Occupy the Hood leader Ifejohari Uhuru; instead of police (at right) occupying the hood, they want the people in control.

The occupation notably included many people like Hoskins, not the usual dedicated protesters from many organizations who have held the fort in smaller numbers for many years, but fresh new faces. 

Anne Kabel, a Southfield librarian, campaigned to keep libraries open. 

“Everything on both sides of the aisle is wrong,” she said, referring to the Democrats and Republicans. “They need to listen to the people who elected them.” 

Librarian Anne Kabel

As she was speaking, a contingent of Black youths sporting shirts demanding “Good Jobs Now,” and carrying signs declaring “Fight Racism,” positioned themselves in Grand Circus Park and  began a cadence of chants. 

“When I say good jobs, what do you say?” a leader of the group shouted. “Good jobs NOW,” the youths declared in unison, over and over. Many young people from the Black community were present at the protest, a heartening sign in a city that has been devastated by youth unemployment, government-sanctioned drug trafficking, police brutality, and violence triggered by the overwhelming lack of hope many young people experience. 

What do we want? Jobs! Good Jobs NOW!

Ifejohari Uhuru represented “Occupy the Hood,” a national movement that has sprung from Occupy Wall Street. 

“We began three weeks ago in solidarity with the Wall Street occupation,” she said. “We seek to encourage people of color to get involved. We have over 10,000 supporters now and have been joined by people like Cornel West and [U.S. Congresswoman] Maxine Waters.” 

Tax the Rich MORE

By Any Means Necessary (BAMN), a national organization largely composed of  Black students, has fought school closures, privatization, and state takeovers of Detroit Public Schools for years. They recently won a court victory against Michigan’s anti-affirmative action Proposal 2 and plan to rally at the University of Michigan Nov. 16 to oppose the state of Michigan’s appeal of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals decision.

Tabrion Joe was there with BAMN

They were present as well to welcome the addition of many other Black youths to the movement. 

Tabrion Joe, who has grown up with BAMN,  said he wished the marchers had taken Woodward as well as the sidewalks and Grand Circus Park. 

At one point, chanting, “Whose streets, our streets,” they began to do so, but were reined in both by Occupy Detroit marshals and Detroit police. Students who occupied Catherine Ferguson Academy in February took Woodward in during a march to Detroit Public Schools headquarters at the Fisher Building in April. 

A contingent of marchers carried signs opposing Proposal C, the city charter revision on Detroit’s ballot this November. 

Part of Vote NO on C contingent

“This represents a corporate takeover of the city of Detroit,” said Dempsey Addison, president of the Association of Professional and Technical Employees, representing city workers. “They are using the charter to take over and retrofit the city for their profits.”

A man who did not give his name but said he was born in India carried a sign decrying the fact that only 18,000 students graduated from medical schools in the U.S. last year. He blamed the American Medical Association, which he said deliberately limits the number of physicians in the country, despite the crying need in cities like Detroit for health care.

Occupy Detroit is online at Occupy Detroit: http://twitter.com/#/OccupyDetMI

Occupy the Hood: http://twitter.com/#OccupyTheHood

 Website: http://occupy.detroit.us  (in solidarity with http://www.occupytogether.org) 

Monetary donations to be sent to: https://www.wepay.com/donate/17751

 Physical donations to be sent to:

Workers World Party

5920 Second Ave.

Detroit, Michigan 48202 

Link for protesters rights from Detroit NLG  (which will be present for legal defense):

http://bit.ly/NLGdet

National Lawyers Guild – Detroit and Michigan Chapter

450 W. Fort St. Detroit, MI 48226

MORATORIUM NOW!

US Major General David Hogg inspects Ugandan troops/ Photo: 1st Lt. Ryan Sutherland

Nobel Peace Prize-President quietly opens 8th US battlefront

By Tony Cartalucci  www.mathaba.net/news/?x=629005

October 16, 2011

While America occupies Iraq and Afghanistan, wages covert war on Pakistan, conducts drone attacks on Yemen and Somalia, bombards Libya, and positions for a wider confrontation with Iran and Syria, Nobel Peace Prize Laurette President Obama has now quietly, without much fanfare, sent 100 US troops to help Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni crush rebels threatening his 25 year dictatorship. 

In what is essentially a “reverse-Libyan-style” intervention, the US is sending troops to crush, not assist rebels rising up against their despotic ruler. Ironically, just as with Libya’s rebels, Uganda’s rebels are also listed as a foreign terrorist organization by the US State Department. Instead of the corporate-financier contrived International Criminal Court issuing fictitious warrants for Uganda’s head of state, as was done with Qaddafi in Libya, it is the Ugandan rebel leader, Joseph Kony, who is being targeted. 

Both the Ugandan government (with US assistance) and the rebels, known as the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), are accused of perpetrating heinous atrocities against their enemies and civilian populations in their decades long conflict. In particular, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has just recently presided over the mass murdering and displacement of 20,000 of his own people on behalf of British corporations who sought to construct tree plantations on their land. US and British military assistance and business deals with the Ugandan government have been a ubiquitous feature throughout Museveni’s perpetual, unending term as president. 

While mutilated victims of the LRA are just now being paraded in front of the public to frame the recent US troop deployment as another “humanitarian intervention,” it is more than likely that geopolitical aspirations, not humanitarian concerns, are driving this agenda. This is especially so considering just how equally abhorrent the Ugandan government’s human rights record is. 

First Natural Fire 10 flights arrive in Uganda – US Army Africa – 091011 from US Army Africa on Vimeo.

The LRA has often been harbored by the Sudanese government (now the South Sudanese government). Sudan has served as a proxy battlefield between the West and China for control over of its vast oil holdings and ultimately as part of a greater battle to control Africa’s resources. Sudan appears to have used the LRA as a sort of armed buffer between them and their neighbors, in particular, Uganda, ruled by an eager servant of the Anglo-American agenda. 

U.S. First Lady Michelle Obama, daughters, on safari in Africa: hunting for new resources for faltering U.S. economy?

Surely, as Africa, a forsaken continent, is already written off in the minds of many Americans, little concern and few eyebrows will be lifted as their Nobel Peace Prize-wearing president sends yet more troops off to war there, in a global military expansion quickly and alarmingly approaching the scale and scope of Adolf Hitler’s expansion across Europe and Northern Africa during World War II. 

This is difficult to deny when the final tally is done – the United States is conducting either covert or overt military operations in at least 8 nations – Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, Iran, Libya, Pakistan, and now Uganda – and has 820 military installations in at least 135 countries. As Wall Street and London seek global hegemony, the price Americans pay as this tally grows will only increase. However far flung Uganda may seem, every inch of expansion by the globalists is one inch less for free humanity. 

Identify the corporate-financier interests engineering and driving this agenda, boycott and replace them. 

 

Why U.S. military in Uganda? Soros fingerprints all over it! Obama’s billionaire friend has interests in African country’s oil

Posted on October 15, 2011 at 1:50 PM EST

By Aaron Klein http://kleinonline.wnd.com/2011/10/15/212-4/

TEL AVIV — An influential “crisis management organization” that boasts billionaire George Soros as a member of its executive board recently recommended the U.S. deploy a special advisory military team to Uganda to help with operations and run an intelligence platform.

The president-emeritus of that organization, the International Crisis Group, is the principal author of Responsibility to Protect, the military doctrine used by Obama to justify the U.S.-led NATO campaign in Libya.

Soros’ own Open Society Institute is one of only three nongovernmental funders of the Global Centre for Responsibility to Protect, a doctrine that has been cited many times by activists urging intervention in Uganda.

Authors and advisers of the Responsibility to Protect doctrine, including a center founded and led by Samantha Power, the National Security Council special adviser to Obama on human rights, also helped to found the International Criminal Court. Continue reading →

Greek strikers march

Protesters walking off the job cause chaos days before key vote

Derek Gatopoulos/ Associated Press

Last Updated: October 18. 2011 1:00AM

Athens, Greece— Strikes halted ferries to the Greek islands Monday and left rotting trash piling up in Athens for the 16th straight day, as unions fought back against more austerity measures at the start of a crucial week for both Greece and the 17-nation eurozone.

The unions orchestrated a barrage of strikes, protests and sit-ins. Tax collectors and customs officers walked off the job, several hundred firefighters and police officers staged a central Athens protest in uniform, and protesting civil servants occupied the finance and labor ministry buildings in the Greek capital.

Greece faces a key vote on the new austerity measures Thursday, and other eurozone countries are rushing to find a comprehensive solution to Europe’s escalating debt crisis in time for a Sunday summit in Brussels by European leaders.

Both the Greek vote and the debt plan are needed so Europe can avoid a loss of confidence in global markets that some fear would plunge the world economy back into a recession.

Parliament’s finance committee on Monday approved the new austerity measures, which include pension cuts and across-the-board tax hikes, as well as pay and staff cuts in the civil service.

“The latest measures are the deathblow for our income, “the civil servants’ union ADEDY said. “The government is destroying its central administration and cutting away the safety net for our citizens, while dramatic cuts in pay are driving workers into poverty and deprivation.”

Public workers on strike; garbage piles up in streeets.

But Prime Minister George Papandreou said he was determined to see the latest reforms through because it would prove to international creditors that Greece was “seeking to make major changes.” Greece has been kept solvent since May 2010 only with international bailout loans.

“This is the most critical week for Europe, and of course for Greece, with decisions that will determine the fate of the eurozone,” he said at an emergency meeting with President Karolos Papoulias. “It will mean we can go to the (debt) negotiations … with our heads held high and with a stronger negotiating position.”

The Socialist government is facing mounting party dissent over a vote in parliament Thursday to pass a new punishing round of tax hikes and pay cuts agreed upon in exchange for international bailout loans.

One Socialist lawmaker, 50-year-old Thomas Robopoulos, resigned his seat in parliament Monday, calling the new round of austerity measures “unfair and anti-labor.”

His resignation does not affect the government’s four-seat majority in parliament as lawmakers there are replaced by party list and not by-elections.

Still, with its slim majority, the government is facing the prospect of an embarrassing defeat over a central part of the new legislation — its plans to strip Greek workers of decades-old labor rights.

The government, meanwhile, was considering using the army to help clear the mounds trash in Athens. Worse labor unrest was ahead: a 48-hour general strike looms for Wednesday and Thursday that will ground flights for two days, cripple public and many private services, even shut down essential services like gas stations and bakeries

Saudi Ambassador to the U.S. Abdel al-Jubeir

By Alistair Lyon

LONDON | Wed Oct 12, 2011 2:31pm EDT

(Reuters) – You couldn’t make it up — or could you?

U.S. allegations that an Iranian spy outfit attempted to kill the Saudi ambassador in Washington in a convoluted plot involving a U.S. informant posing as a member of a Mexican drug cartel seem bizarre to say the least.

Still, Washington says the drama justifies new international sanctions against Iran and Saudi Arabia’s former intelligence chief insists that “somebody in Iran” must pay the price.
“The burden of proof and the amount of evidence in the case is overwhelming and clearly shows official Iranian responsibility for this,” Saudi Prince Turki al-Faisal said.

Manssor Arbabsiar is shown in this 1996 Nueces County, Texas, Sheriff's Office photograph released to Reuters on October 12, 2011. Arbabsiar, 56, who is a naturalized U.S. citizen and holds an Iranian passport, was arrested at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York on Sept. 29. The United States accused Iran on Tuesday of backing a plot to kill the Saudi ambassador to Washington, escalating tensions with Tehran and stirring up a hornet's nest in the Gulf, where Saudi Arabia and Iran have long jostled for power. Iran denied the charges and expressed outrage at the accusations. REUTERS/Nueces County Sheriff's Office/Handout

The potential consequences are dire in a tense region where the United States and Israel reserve the right to attack Iran to stop it acquiring a nuclear bomb, a goal Tehran disavows.

For starters, the row could throttle any slim chance of resuming negotiations to settle the nuclear dispute.

Saudi-Iranian acrimony has ratcheted up this year, especially since Saudi troops intervened to help Bahrain’s Sunni rulers crush protests led by the island’s Shi’ite majority and fomented, according to Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, by Iran.

From across the Middle East’s Arab-Persian and Sunni-Shi’ite faultlines, Riyadh also accuses Tehran of inciting unrest among minority Shi’ites in its own oil-rich Eastern Province, and has often urged the United States in the past to attack Iran, according to diplomatic cables published by WikiLeaks.

The plot suspects are Iranian-American Manssor Arbabsiar, 56, arrested on September 29 in New York, and Gholam Shakuri, said to be a member of Quds Force, the covert, operational arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. He is thought to be in Iran.
U.S. evidence rests mainly on Arbabsiar’s alleged confession that he had acted for men he thought were top Quds officials.

MOTIVE AND MEANS

Yet questions abound over the putative plot, not least the classic ones of motive and means. Many analysts are skeptical.

What could Iran hope to gain from an assassination that would have brought fierce retribution? Why try to recruit a hitman from a Mexican drug cartel instead of using its own? Continue reading →

The video above shows what organizers called the beginning of “Occupy Detroit” outside Cadillac Place, where Gov. Snyder’s Detroit office is, and where protesters have been fighting the cruel cut-offs of 50,000 (and counting) people including children and babies from public assistance every Thursday at noon.

By Diane Bukowski 

October 11, 2011 

Hazen Pingree: Beware the power of the private corporations

DETROIT – People of all ages, sexes and races poured into the City of Hope Church near Grand River and Trumbull Oct. 11 to bring Detroit into the occupation movement that has spread like wildfire across the country, beginning Sept. 17 with Occupy Wall Street. 

The Detroit assemply decided by consensus that the occupation of Detroit would begin Friday, Oct. 14 at 4 p.m. outside the Coleman A. Young Municipal Center on Woodward at the foot of Jefferson. Participants will then march at 6 p.m. to set up their base in Grand Circus Park.

The park is presided over by a statue of 19^th century Detroit Mayor Hazen Pingree, “the first to warn the people of the power of the private corporations,” according to an inscription on its base.

“This is the first time in years where we have had an opportunity for class unity, the first time we should be able to join together to stop the welfare cut-offs and the Wall Street bail-outs,” Maureen Taylor, president of the Michigan Welfare Rights Association, cried out during the assembly.

Pres. Obama greets South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak at the White House Oct. 12

U.S. President Barack Obama is scheduled to be in the Detroit area the same day, visiting the Ford Wixom plant with South Korean President Lee Myung-bak. South Korean trade unionists have struck and held mass rallies to protest their government’s anti-labor policies. 

Occupy Detroit has now been endorsed by the Metro Detroit AFL-CIO, a hopeful indication that the labor movement will come out in force to support it. Currently, Ford rank-and-file workers are fighting a proposed contract. (See article below.) 

The excitement in the air was palpable. Organizers estimated the turn-out for Occupy Detroit’s first general assembly at 1,000 people, so large they re-directed participants outside to the park/playground area behind the church. 

Abayomi Azikiwe

Long-time Detroit activist Abiyomi Azikiwe opened the rally in the church, noting it was taking place on Columbus Day. 

“This is a day that we pay tribute to the indigenous people of America, and to our ancestors who were brought here in slaveships,” Azikiwe said. “Detroit was the first city to be hit by the economic crisis, and hit the hardest. The rest of the country and the world is now catching up. It is time to reclaim what is ours. We are the 99 percent, the masses who should be in control. We must retake the banks and the multinational corporations and run society on a humane truly democratic level.

Below, Danny Glover addresses Occupy L.A., raising the importance of supporting the hunger strike of 12,000 prisoners in California.

Other speakers acknowledged that members of the oppressed communities should be at the forefront of the occupation, including people of color, women, and  the LGBT communities. Detroit’s population is at least 86 percent Black, and many said the success of the occupation will depend on the inclusion of rank-and-file Detroiters, particularly the youth. 

Maryanne Godboldo, who stood off police in March to defend her daughter from CPS

“They are illegally stealing our children, and we need a committee to address that,” one woman cried out during the assembly. She referred the the thousands of families in Detroit and Michigan who have had their children kidnapped by Child Protective Services using an assembly-line court system absent any judicial oversight. 

This was a concrete example of the need to address the specific problems of the people of Detroit if Occupy Detroit is to succeed. 

The assembly included a large number of young white people, some who came directly from New York as representatives of the Occupy Wall Street movement. They brought with them the tools developed there, including consensus voting, hand signals, and “the people’s mike” (when mechanical mikes don’t work or the police ban bullhorns, the crowd as a whole shouts back what a apeaker either from the stage or from the audience is saying). 

Section of crowd at Oct. 10 assembly/WSWS photo

They also brought copies of the “Occupied Wall Street Journal” put out by the thousands of anti-corporate activists in New York, and a lot of desperately needed energy and enthusiasm. 

Many of the city’s long-time activist groups were also present, hopeful that Occupy Detroit would spark a long-awaited rising up of the people in this long down-trodden, depressed city.   

They included the Michigan Emergency Committee Against War and Injustice, the Moratorium NOW! Coalition against Foreclosures, Evictions and Utility Shut-offs, and the Socialist Equality Party, which has led protests against DTE shut-offs that cost the lives of dozens of Detroiters, including toddlers, over the last year. 

Travion, Selena and Fantasia Young, killed in a fire caused by 2009 DTE shut-off

A member of that group called on the assembly to be as inclusive as possible, allowing broad debate from all political perspectives. Recently, many leaders of the Democratic Party have sought to piggyback on the Occupy Wall Street movement, he said, and they should not be allowed to co-opt it. 

A consensus vote was taken to select Grand Circus Park as the initial base for the occupation. The Park in located in central downtown, next to Comerica Park and Ford Field, which are expected to be packed with people attending the Tigers and Lions games. 

Grand Circus Park is also close to the financial district full of the banks that have created the worldwide economic meltdown being taken out on the backs of poor and working people. Not to mention that it is only a few blocks from DTE headquarters on Bagley, which recently announced rate increases and cutbacks in assistance for the poor in paying their bills.

 Twelve initial committees were set up, including Outreach, Comfort, Food, Education, Information, Media, Sensitivity and Racial Inclusion, Finance, Direct Action, Name (there is a debate about other names besides Occupy Detroit), Facilitation, Child Care, Medical, Security and Legal. 

For more information, according to a flier distributed Oct. 10:

 Occupy Detroit: http://twitter.com/#/OccupyDetMI

Occupy the Hood: http://twitter.com/#OccupyTheHood

 Website: http://occupy.detroit.us  (in solidarity with http://www.occupytogether.org) 

Monetary donations to be sent to: https://www.wepay.com/donate/17751

 Physical donations to be sent to:

Workers World Party

5920 Second Ave.

Detroit, Michigan 48202 

Link for protesters rights from Detroit NLG  (which will be present for legal defense):

http://bit.ly/NLGdet

National Lawyers Guild – Detroit and Michigan Chapter

450 W. Fort St. Detroit, MI 48226

(313) 963-0843

FinalCall.com News

By Askia Muhammad -Senior Correspondent-
Updated Oct 5, 2011 – 1:21:36 PM

WASHINGTON (FinalCall.com) – It was one of the most bizarre incidents during the NATO-supported uprising in Libya. The Rev. Walter Fauntroy, a retired member of the Congressional Black Caucus went missing in Tripoli for several weeks during a self-sanctioned mission to that war zone, as rebel forces advanced toward the capital and their eventual overthrow of Col. Muammar Gadhafi , who led the North African country for nearly 41 years.

Rumors spread that the former senior aide to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had been killed. Then, on Aug. 24, the office of the Rev. Fauntroy’s successor in Congress— D.C. Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton—announced that she had “been in touch with authorities who have spoken with” Mr. Fauntroy. “Authorities have confirmed for Norton that (the) Reverend Fauntroy is safely in the care of the International Committee of the Red Cross and is expected to leave Libya soon.”

One day later Mrs. Norton issued another statement indicating that she “spoke with Ms. Dorothy Fauntroy, wife of former D.C. Congressman Walter Fauntroy. Ms. Fauntroy told Norton that the family spoke to (the) Reverend Fauntroy around 3:00 a.m. EDT and that he said he is in a safe place in Libya and expects to return to D.C. later this week. … Ms. Fauntroy did not know the circumstances of (the) Reverend Fauntroy’s visit to Libya. He told her of the trip only shortly before his departure in order to prevent her from worrying,” the statement concluded.

“And I went” to Libya, Mr. Fauntroy told The Final Call, after several days of thinking about whether or not to grant an interview. “And God knows, did I get in trouble. When I got there I found myself in the secure hotel that had been, by international law reserved for news media so they could go out and cover the war and come back and report it to the world in safety. I was there.

“But I found myself there among 37 so-called newsmen, and myself, all of whom were threatened, first by ones within the group. There were Gadhafi reporters who were so angry with the lies the reporters were saying that they were going to kill them, and told them they were going to kill them. And chop their heads off, and cut their right arm and left leg off and take a picture of it and send it to their friends. And they were scared to death, because they knew if we walked out of that place, they could do it.” Continue reading →

By Jane Slaughter

Oct. 11, 2011

Jane Slaughter’s blog

Early results of voting on the new Ford-United Auto Workers contract are nearly break-even, according to Detroit newspapers. Reformers in the union are organizing to get the 41,000 Ford workers to once again vote “no” on their national contract, as they did in October 2009.

Wisconsin: Now is the time to escalate the struggle for labor and a just economy/ Photo Mark Brennan Labor Notes

UAW reformers point out that the contract would freeze wages and substitute bonuses—which wouldn’t recover the losses from years of concessions—and it would permanently institutionalizes the two-tier wage system. Despite raises for the lower tier, it provides no bridge to higher wages.

With 7.3 percent of votes reported, production workers have voted “yes” by 50.1 percent and skilled trades “no” by 54.8 percent. Local 900, covering a Focus assembly plant west of Detroit where the shop chair opposed the agreement because of onerous “alternative work schedules,” voted “no” by 56 votes.

The Autoworkers Caravan group is circulating a leaflet asking workers to vote no. It says, “Ford is rolling in profits and Wall Street is tickled to see this contract.”

Labor Notes Conference 2008

Local 900 member Dave Dogonski described himself as a fence-sitter who had voted yes. “I would like to have voted no in order to make a political statement,” he said. “How can the union in one breath support things like Occupy Wall Street but at the same time let the corporations take windfall profits and not get us a raise?”

Ford is currently the richest of the Detroit 3, and the only company where workers have the right to strike. UAW President Bob King negotiated a package that is richer monetarily than the one ratified by GM workers last month. They will receive signing bonuses of $6,000 rather than $5,000 and annual bonuses of $1,500 rather than $1,000.

Judy Wraight, an instrument repairperson at Ford’s ancient Rouge complex near Detroit, pointed out that $1,500 is the monetary equivalent of just three of the concessions workers made in 2009 (one holiday, less daily break time, and a Christmas bonus). Two other concessions—a wage freeze in place since 2005 and the 99 cents-per-hour wage cut workers took when they gave up the cost-of-living allowance—were not addressed.

Auto company execs are clear that they want to shift workers to half wages—permanently.

GM CEO Dan Akerson and UAW President Bob King

GM CEO Dan Akerson said recently that although “we don’t need to get there tomorrow,” his aim is to replace higher-paid workers with those now starting at $15.78, partly through buyouts of senior workers and skilled trades.

But the contracts contain no pension increases, for the first time, and they take away the small Christmas bonus most retirees had received.

The UAW says that Ford will invest to create new jobs, but the reformers counter: “What does the record tell us about promises like that? Ford will invest in what it thinks is profitable. Every contract for decades has been presented as a ‘job security contract,’ but UAW-Ford has lost half its membership since 1999.”

For more rank-and-file leaflets about the Ford and GM contracts, see Soldiers of Solidarity and Factory Rat.

http://labornotes.org/blogs/2011/10/uaw-ford-workers-organizing-no-vote

From Ron Lare

One independent brother is making vote count reports like this one for today, starting with Local 900:
http://www.xpdnc.com/files/relatednewsandreports11/UAWFord2011-LocalVote-October11.pdf
His general contract information site is:
http://www.xpdnc.com/files/relatednewsandreports11/

Latest Local 600 version of Autoworker Caravan leaflet is below this message–names have been added.

4. Another Autoworker Caravan leaflet is at:
http://www.autoworkercaravan.org/Pdf/AWC_Ford_Lowlights_v2.pdf

Our web site is at:
http://www.600alert.org/index.php

Judy Wraight, Ron Lare, 313-492-7657

Do they think we forgot why we voted NO in 2009?

Vote NO! 

Ford is rolling in profits and Wall Street is tickled to see this contract.  But we don’t even get the concessions back–from COLA, to Annual Improvement Factor, to Easter Monday. Retirees lose the Christmas bonus and the legal services plan is being phased out—read on and find out more. We voted NO in 2009 to preserve the right to strike, but you wouldn’t know it from this contract. 

COLA is gone forever if we can’t restore it now, when Ford is making big profits.  Bloomberg News quotes Bob King:  “Would [the members] like fixed rate increases? Sure they would.  I’d like to give it to them, but they know the competitive structure as well as I do.” 

UAW and Ford at the bargaining table

A lump sum is not a Cost of Living Allowance keyed to inflation. King’s words ”fixed rate increases” mean increases in the base hourly rate, like the 3% Annual Improvement Factor and COLA that we lost. Scott Houldieson of Chicago Assembly has a good comeback for President King: “Frozen COLA and second tier wage increased to full wage combined would have reduced profits for 2010 to a mere $6.41 billion dollars! How is a company to survive on that?!”  A 4% wage increase for the first year of the contract would amount to $95.5 million–less than the stock awarded to Mulally and Bill Ford in 2011. What a time to eliminate Equity of Sacrifice from the “Unpublished Letters”! 

 Second tier comes up only to average NON-union industrial pay. Ford needed this anyway to get workforce stability. If we sell out our children, they won’t defend our pensions. They only get 13 weeks SUB.  UNITY = Equal Pay for Equal Work, not second class citizenship. Brother Houldieson also wrote: “Forget all the happy talk about the FTPM Morale Matrix. The company knows it has a better chance of controlling us if they can keep us divided.”  Gary Walkowicz of  Dearborn Truck wrote:  “The biggest concession is that 2-tier will continue.”  Do you believe any 2^nd tier will become 1^st  tier with this contract? 

If Ford hires permanent 2nd tier workers, the contract contains loopholes that let them hire way more than the so-called 20% cap–including some whole plants that are 2nd-tier only. Either way, everyone is undermined by non-equal pay for equal work. Will Ford even hire true 2^nd tier? Last time we checked, all but 100 nation-wide were LTSs, not permanent 2^nd tier. We have a three tier membership. Why is insourced work not counted toward the 20% cap on entry level numbers? 

Pensions: New low for the UAW:  No increase. Retirees lost their Christmas bonus.  

•  VEBA:  Health care is still inadequately funded.  New VEBA funds come only from the profit-sharing gamble.  30 & Out means little–if you’re afraid to retire before Medicare!  

  “Manufacturing Work Groups” combine production and skilled trades. This undermines trades classifications and undermines production workers’ chances of real advancement through apprenticeships. 

• Overtime:  Time and a half after 8 hours is not restored.  Increasing Alternative Work Schedules are designed to eliminate overtime pay as much as possible. We should make enough to not need overtime.  

• Without real barriers to outsourcing, the outsourcing will continue and increase. “Sourcing moratorium remains intact,” say the Highlights. But we see outsourcing all the time. 

 Working conditions:  Lost break time is not restored. Alternative Work Schedules undermine working lives and family lives.  

The 2011 UAW Bargaining Convention endorsed domestic partner same-sex bereavement pay, but it’s not in this contract.  

We need a contract that helps organize the unorganized at Toyota, VW, Honda, Mercedes. Non-union workers need to see us as a fighting union. There has been no national Ford strike since 1976! 

ACH workers should simply be made full Ford workers now—rather than waiting for openings.  

What’s the alternative to voting Yes?   Vote No–send them back to the table to get what we deserve. And show Ford some real strike preparation.  

“Creating” and “saving” jobs??  What does the record tell us about promises like that?  Ford will invest in what it thinks is profitable. The contract will not force Ford to add jobs if business conditions are not good and we don’t have a fighting union. Every contract for decades has been presented as a “job security contract,” but UAW-Ford has lost half its membership since 1999. Now Twin Cities MN and Walton Hills OH plants will close. And as the Autoworker Caravan wrote about the GM contract: “Shifting work from one plant to another isn’t ‘new’ work. Laying off autoworkers in Mexico is not ‘creating jobs’. Talk about new work, why didn’t the Union challenge the corporations to make fuel-efficient buses that every U.S. city could purchase?”

See more Vote No leaflets and analysis at:

www.autoworkercaravan.org, www.soldiersofsolidarity.com, www.factoryrat.com

Contact Autoworker Caravan:  autoworkercaravan@gmail.com.  IN LOCAL 600 contact:

Gary Walkowicz, 313-737-3166, gwalk32@att.net;  Judy Wraight, 313-272-0307, jswraight@aol.com; TO ADD YOUR NAME TO NEXT EDITION OF THIS LEAFLET, WRITE OR CALL:

Ron Lare, 600 ret., ronlare@sbcglobal.net, 313-492-7657

 Gary Walkowicz          Judy Wraight               Ron Lare, ret.               Keith Hall

Shontelle Paul              Thelma Phillips             Michelle Robinson       Jim Herbst

Ron Matley, ret.           Doug Kowalske, ret.      Eric Truss                    Steve Longstreet

United States Supreme Court Rejects Philadelphia DA’s Appeal

Black List Pub  SendMeYourNews

October 11, 2011

Today the United States Supreme Court rejected a request from the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office to overturn the most recent federal appeals court decision declaring Mumia Abu-Jamal’s death sentence unconstitutional.  The Court’s decision brings to an end nearly thirty years of litigation over the fairness of the sentencing hearing that resulted in Mr. Abu-Jamal’s being condemned to death.  Mr. Abu-Jamal will be automatically sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole unless the District Attorney elects to seek another death sentence from a new jury. 

The NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF) and Professor Judith Ritter of Widener Law School represent Mr. Abu-Jamal in the appeal of his conviction and death sentence for the 1981 murder of a police officer in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  The Supreme Court’s decision marks the fourth time that the federal courts have found that Mr. Abu-Jamal’s sentencing jury was misled about the constitutionally mandated process for considering evidence supporting a life sentence.  

“At long last, the profoundly troubling prospect of Mr. Abu-Jamal facing an execution that was produced by an unfair and unreliable penalty phase has been eliminated,” said John Payton, President and Director-Counsel of LDF.  “Like all Americans, Mr. Abu-Jamal was entitled to a proper proceeding that takes into account the many substantial reasons why death was an inappropriate sentence.”  Professor Ritter stated, “Our system should never condone an execution that stems from a trial in which the jury was improperly instructed on the law.” 

Mr. Abu-Jamal’s case will now return to the Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas for final sentencing.

IN THIS VIDEO, MINISTER JR SPEAKS ABOUT INTERVIEWING MERTILLA JONES, GRANDMOTHER OF AIYANA JONES, AMONG MANY OTHER NOTED INDIVIDUALS AND FIGHTERS FOR THE PEOPLE. To hear interview, click on http://www.blockreportradio.com/radio-mainmenu-27/1094-mertilla-jones-.html