Activist hopes her fame draws attention to Mexico’s missing

Online News EditorApril 27, 2023

 

By Ruth E. Hernandez Beltran

New York, Apr 27 (EFE).- A Mexican woman named by TIME magazine as one of The 100 Most Influential People of 2023 is hopeful that the recognition will raise awareness about the plight of tens of thousands of people who have gone missing in Mexico.

“The first thing that passed through my mind was the possibility to make heard this cry of grief that we are living in Mexico, so cruel that we can call it a crime against humanity,” Maria Herrera Magdaleno told EFE in New York, where she traveled for this week’s Time 100 Summit and Gala.

“That they take your children this way, should not be,” said the 73-year-old mother of eight who has seen four sons “disappeared,” apparently at the hands of organized crime.

In the course of searching for her sons, Doña Maria, as she is known, came into contact with other families and emerged as a leader of the movement demanding action from authorities.

Exasperated by the lack of official support, some of those families have taken it upon themselves to excavate clandestine graves.

On Aug. 28, 2008, Herrero’s sons Jesus and Raul Trujillo left the family’s hometown in the western state of Michoacan with five work colleagues on a business trip to the southern state of Guerrero.

The seven men, ranging in age from 19 to 27, were last seen on the night of Aug. 28 at a bar in Guerrero.

Two years later, Luis Armando and Gustavo Trujillo – against their mother’s wishes – set out for the Gulf coast state of Veracruz to conclude a piece of business to help the family defray the expenses of the search for their brothers.

Luis Armando and Gustavo never reached their destination.

“My first intention was to let myself die, I did not resign myself to living without my four sons. I believe that the strength came from above, from the infinite, from my God, and I decided to go out and keep looking,” Herrera recounted with tears in her eyes.

She joined with other parents to create a network of families of the missing that now includes nearly 200 groups in 26 of Mexico’s 32 states.

The activists want to change society “because what hurts the most is to have to leave this so inhuman, so cruel Mexico to our loved ones that live inside us, to future generations,” Herrera said.

The families are doing the work “that the state should be doing because it is the government that is propitiating that our loved ones are disappeared,” she said.

Herrera blames attempts in 2013 and 2018 to her sons Miguel Angel and Juan Carlos, respectively, on corrupt police who were trying to intimidate her.

“The threats continue. With that they wish to say ‘pipe down already, shut up already,’ but they are not going to accomplish it because every time this happens to me, I shout louder,” she told EFE.

“They are still doing it, and not only with my sons. That’s why I see it’s not organized crime, it’s institutionalized crime and the fact that they have Genaro Garcia Luna here, gives me strength to keep saying that it is the same corrupt state that has us in this situation,” Herrera said.

Garcia Luna, who was Mexico’s public safety secretary from 2006-2012, is awaiting sentencing in the United States after being convicted by a federal court of taking bribes from Mexican drug cartels.

EFE rh/dr

Brazil continues undoing Bolsonaro’s anti-indigenous policies

Online News EditorApril 28, 2023

 

Brasilia, Apr 28 (EFE).- Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva took another step Friday to dismantle the anti-indigenous policies of rightist predecessor Jair Bolsonaro, resuming the recognition of territorial claims after a four-year-long hiatus.

“We are going to legalize the indigenous lands,” Lula said during a visit to the encampment set up this week in Brasilia by some 6,000 indigenous people who came to the capital to denounce the invasion of their reserves by illegal miners and loggers, with disastrous effects on the environment and their lives.

“To achieve zero deforestation in Amazonia by 2030, we are going to need you as guardians of the forests,” the president told the group before signing a decree establishing the boundaries of six new indigenous reserves in the states of Acre, Alagoas, Amazonas, Ceara, Goias, and Rio Grande do Sul, bringing the total to nearly 600.

The largest of the new territories is the Kariri-Xoco reserve in the northeastern state of Alagoas, with 2,300 inhabitants, while the smallest has only nine permanent residents.

The new reserves amount to roughly 560,000 hectares (2,162 sq mi). All told, the indigenous reserves cover 14 percent of Brazil’s land area.

“Before the arrival of the Portuguese, the indigenous occupied 100 percent of the territory,” Lula noted.

Roughly 90 percent of the indigenous territories, with a population of around 500,000, are designated by law as environmentally protected areas, yet the Bolsonaro administration allowed miners, loggers, and ranchers to operate in those areas with impunity.

Sonia Guajajara, Brazil’s first minister of Indigenous Peoples, said that Bolsonaro instituted a “policy totally engaged in the negation of the rights of the indigenous peoples.”

She said that illegal mining in Amazonia has polluted rivers and jeopardized the food supply of the indigenous inhabitants, as exemplified by the “tragedy” of the Yanomami people of Brazil’s far north.

In January, in the weeks following Lula’s inauguration, stories emerged from the Yanomami reserve – a territory twice the size of Switzerland – about hundreds of people suffering from severe malnutrition.

Also speaking during the event at the encampment was Raoni, a 93-year-old Kayapo chieftain with decades spent advocating for the defense of Amazonia.

Noting that some 800 additional indigenous territories are awaiting recognition, he asked Lula to oppose an attempt by the Brazilian right to limit recognition to territories that were occupied by the original peoples when the current constitution took effect in 1988,

“We existed hundreds of years before the constitution,” Raoni said. EFE ed/dr

Tunisia’s powerful UGTT urges release of jailed union officials

Online News EditorMay 1, 2023

 

Tunis, May 1 (EFE).- Tunisia’s influential General Labour Union (UGTT) demanded on Labor Day on Monday the release of senior union officials arrested in recent months.

The union said that the growing government crackdown would not stop them from defending workers’ rights.

“We will not keep quiet in the face of threats and catastrophes awaiting the country,” UGTT head Noureddine Taboubi during a Labor Day speech.

Taboubi accused the Tunisian authorities of “tarnishing the country’s image” after preventing a delegation from the International Trade Union Confederation from entering the country in March and expelling its general secretary, Esther Lynch, after taking part in a union demonstration.

The UGTT, which claims to have a million members and played a key role in the 2011 uprising that ousted dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, backed president Kais Saied’s parliament suspension in 2021.

However, the union has distanced itself from Saied’s policies after he approved a new constitution after a referendum in July despite a 70% abstention. EFE

nrm/smq/ch

Latinos stage May Day march in New York City

Online News EditorMay 1, 2023

 

New York, May 1 (EFE).- Hundreds of workers, a large number of them Latino immigrants, on Monday commemorated International Workers Day in New York City with a march through the streets of Lower Manhattan during which they demanded better working conditions and pay, giving undocumented migrants the right to work, the legalization of sexual work and for greater respect for their labor.

Slogans such as “Workers united will never be defeated” and “Yes, you can” – first articulated by agricultural workers’ rights activist Cesar Chavez (1927-1993) – were loudly chanted as the marchers and members of nine organizations from different sectors, including immigrants’ and prisoners’ defense organizations, unions and legal services, moved through the Big Apple,

Street vendors, domestic workers, restaurant and cleaning workers, porters, construction workers in their hardhats, members of the LGBT community and transgender sex workers, among many others, gathered Monday morning on Washington Square, near New York University, where amid a festive atmosphere with Latino music and assorted signs they made their demands and concerns known.

One of those demands is for the City Council to approve a bill that would prevent unjustified firings and would obligate bosses to provide an explanation for terminating an employee.

In addition, the demonstrators want the state government to give the green light to a program to create the “Unemployment Bridge Program” so that workers without work permits, domestic workers and independent workers can receive an income if they lose their jobs, a situation that affected many thousands of people during the coronavirus pandemic.

This, in particular, was the main concern of Carmen Canela, who works in the restaurant sector, a single mother with three kids. “I don’t have unemployment insurance and I’m not the only one. We (came here) seeking a better future and we’re finding an uncertain future,” she said amid the cheers of other workers carrying signs – some of them in Spanish – saying things like “The workers’ struggle has no borders,” “Support immigrant workers,” “Excluded no more” and “Without essential workers, the US is nothing.”

The construction workers made their voices heard over the issue of workplace safety and demanded minimum pay of $40 per hour in the kind of job that has cost many workers – many of them Latinos – their lives.

This year, among the demonstrators were transgender sex workers who are seeking legalization for their activity.

Sex worker Nathan Brown said the marchers wanted to make clear that “sex work is work” and that sex workers are demanding rights and protections, adding that she has been discriminated against for being a transgender woman, a situation that others have also experienced and are thus unable to find employment.

She said she’d been to different places to ask for work but the bosses look her up and down and tell her they’ll call her but never do. Because of that, she added, many transgender women stop working in the sex industry so that they can get other employment to be able to send money to their families, pay their debts and “put food on the table.”

She said that “it’s time” for the state legislature to decriminalize “the buying and selling of sex among adults.”

The workers set out from Washington Square to the sound of drums and other instruments, surprising many passersby, many of whom took photos or videotaped the colorful and peaceful protest.

EFE –/bp

 

Brazil’s Lula pledges to combat gender pay gap in May Day speech

Online News EditorMay 1, 2023

 

Sao Paulo, May 1 (EFE).- Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva pledged during an International Workers’ Day event here Monday to fight to achieve equal pay for women, further raise the minimum wage and create high-quality jobs.

Lula, who governed from 2003 to 2010 and took office for a third term on Jan. 1, leveled more criticism at the Central Bank for keeping its benchmark interest rate at 13.75 percent, saying tight monetary policy was crimping growth and job creation in South America’s largest nation.

“We can’t live in a country where the interest rate doesn’t control inflation. In fact, it controls unemployment in this country because it’s partly responsible for the situation we’re in today,” the center-left head of state said at the Vale do Anhangabau park in downtown Sao Paulo.

Lula, a former lathe operator who began his political career as a union leader during the 1964-1985 dictatorship, thanked workers for giving him “four more years (to) fix” Brazil.

“We’re going to change this country because the economy is going to grow again and create jobs,” he promised.

The 77-year-old head of state devoted a significant portion of his remarks to praising women, lamenting that they continue to be treated “as if they were inferior” and stressing the need to “be tougher against harassment” in the workplace.

“The lack of respect for women at work is a shame … We all know women aren’t weak and that in many activities they’re braver than men,” Lula said.

In that regard, he recalled that his government has introduced a bill to guarantee “for the first time, without commas or periods, that women will earn the same salary as men” for doing the same work.

Lula also referred to two bills unveiled on Sunday – one that would guarantee the minimum wage is adjusted annually at a rate higher than inflation and another that would extend the income tax exemption to workers who earn up to 2,640 reais ($530) per month.

The president said a higher minimum wage even helps the wealthiest Brazilians by increasing the purchasing power of the working class.

He added that he intends to create quality jobs through a broad-based infrastructure plan, noting that to that end he sought to attract foreign investment during recent visits to China, the United Arab Emirates, Portugal and Spain.

Brazil’s unemployment rate currently stands at 8.8 percent, having risen in the first quarter of 2023 due to a slowdown in economic activity that was triggered by an elevated inflation rate and high interest rates.

Despite the current scenario, Lula vowed to achieve even more in his third term than he did between 2003 and 2010, when he left office with sky-high approval ratings.

“I want to prove that over the next four years I’m going to do much more than in my first eight years in office,” he said. EFE

cms/mc

SIR KEIR RED TORY

Tuition fees: How the left has responded to Keir Starmer’s U-turn

Chris Jarvis Today

The Labour leader has said the party will 'move on' from a commitment to abolish tuition fees

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After the Times reported that the Labour Party’s policy on higher education was set to change, the party’s leader Keir Starmer confirmed that would Labour is ‘likely to move on’ from a commitment he previously made to abolish university tuition fees. He made the pledge during his campaign to become leader of the Labour Party.

But now Starmer says that while “the current system is unfair” and “doesn’t really work for students”, because the UK is in a “different financial situation” than three years ago, Labour will be looking at other options for university funding.

The reported shift on tuition fees has been welcomed by some Labour members. Former Labour MP Mike Gapes, who defected to Change UK in 2019 before rejoining Labour in 2023, said: “The Corbynite policy of scrapping all tuition fees is regressive giving a huge subsidy to those from wealthier families. Better to spend the money on restoring Sure Start, primary schools and more help for Further Education students. Starmer is right.”

However, the change in policy has been criticised by others within the Labour Party.

Left wing faction Momentum compared Starmer’s shifting position to that of Nick Clegg, who famously went into the 2010 general election pledging to abolish tuition fees only to triple them when in government. A spokesperson for Momentum said: “This move wouldn’t just fly in the face of party democracy and the wishes of Labour Students. It would be a betrayal of millions of young people in desperate need of hope. The Labour leadership should learn from Nick Clegg’s failure, not repeat it.”

The former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn made similar comments. He tweeted: “Young people should not be saddled with a lifetime of debt just because they want to get an education. Abolish tuition fees, restore maintenance grants and deliver free education for all.”

Trade unions and other political parties have also criticised the shift in Labour’s position. Jo Grady, general secretary of the University and College Union (UCU) said: “Keir Starmer repeatedly pledged to abolish the toxic system of tuition fees and in doing so was elected leader of the Labour party. It is deeply disappointing for him to now be reneging on that promise, a move which would condemn millions of future students to a life of debt. What we really need is a positive vision for higher education that puts staff and students first”

And Green Party of England and Wales co-leader Adrian Ramsay said: “This is the latest U-turn from Keir Starmer’s Labour and this time it’s students who are paying a heavy price. The Green Party believes tuition fees should be scrapped and grants restored.

“Higher education is a public good and should therefore be properly funded by Government. Students in England pay some of the highest fees in the world, while in Scotland, Germany and Sweden university education is free. This shows that the whopping £9000 charge for students, introduced by the coalition government and now backed by Labour, is a political choice. Publicly funded higher education is not only possible but essential to a society committed to equality and social mobility.”

Chris Jarvis is head of strategy and development at Left Foot Forward

Image credit: Socialist Appeal – Creative Commons

Sunak told to ‘stop hiding’ and resolve NHS strikes

Unite pledges to escalate walkouts across England to save the austerity-hit health service from destruction

NHS workers take part in a march from St Thomas' Hospital to Trafalgar Square, London, as members of the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) and the Unite union continue their strike action in a dispute over pay, Monday May 1, 2023

TORY Prime Minister Rishi Sunak “needs to stop hiding and step in” to resolve NHS strikes, Unite demanded today as the union pledged to escalate its walkouts across England and save the austerity-hit health service from destruction.

A majority of unions representing more than one million staff on NHS “agenda for change” contracts, which cover all health service workers apart from doctors, dentists and senior managers, officially endorsed the government’s latest pay offer.

Health Secretary Steve Barclay promised to implement the below-inflation deal — a one-off payment for 2022-23 and 5 per cent this year — after Unison, GMB, the British Dietetic Association and unions representing midwives and physiotherapists voted for it a meeting of the NHS Staff Council today.

But the world’s biggest nursing union, the Royal College of Nursing (RCN), secure psychiatric workers union the POA and the Society of Radiographers joined Unite in rejecting it after being instructed to do so by their members in recent ballots, meaning the dispute is far from over.

RCN head Pat Cullen said her union, which held another 28-hour strike from Sunday evening, still planned to reballot its members for a further six-month industrial action mandate as required by Tory anti-worker legislation.

In a letter to Mr Barclay, Ms Cullen said that while she “entirely respected” the choice of other unions, she would continue to fight for her members, who rejected her call to back the offer by voting to reject it last month.

“Nursing is the largest part of the NHS workforce and they require an offer that matches their true value,” she stressed.

Unite committed to more action across ambulance services and hospitals and called for negotiations to be reopened.

General secretary Sharon Graham said: “Unite’s NHS members have spoken — we will be escalating strike action.

“The staff council vote is not binding on individual unions and therefore it will not stop Unite representing the best interests of our members.

“The current offer will not solve the huge issues surrounding understaffing that are destroying the NHS and Unite’s members have their union’s absolute backing in fighting against it.

“It now time for the government to reopen negotiations. The Prime Minister needs to stop hiding, step in and solve this dispute.”

NHS Confederation boss Matthew Taylor said the “worrying prospect of further industrial action remains,” warning that today’s development is “not the line in the sand [with] the underlying issues affecting the NHS that led to this activity being felt as necessary in the first place.”

Action is needed to address the demands of the four unions still in dispute and to stop intermittent junior doctors strikes by the British Medical Association, he said.

Sara Gorton, head of health at Unison and chairwoman of the union group on the staff council, noted that six months of intermittent walkouts “shouldn’t have needed to happen in the first place.

“Proper pay talks last autumn could have stopped health workers missing out on money they could ill-afford to lose, and the NHS and patients would also have been spared months of disruption.”

She demanded the wage increase be included in next month’s pay packets to help key workers hit by 40-year-high double-digit inflation.

Further walkouts in Scotland and Wales have so far been avoided following much improved offers from devolved SNP and Labour ministers respectively.

MORNINGSTAR GBCP

Comedian skewers CNN CEO over exorbitant compensation as writers strike

Brandon Gage, Alternet
May 2, 2023

Comedian Adam Conover appeared on CNN on Tuesday and tore into its Chief Executive Officer David Zaslav over his astronomical compensation as members of the Writers Guild of America go on strike.

"What do you say to those that run this industry that say, 'Look, times are changing. We are not making as much money as we once did. This is not the golden era of television' — although some of this would argue the shows are great — what do you say to them?" anchor Sara Snider asked.

"So I point out the fact that David Zaslav, the CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery, which is the parent company of the network I'm talking to you on right now, was paid $250 million last year. A quarter of a billion dollars!” Conover exclaimed.

"That's about the same level as what ten thousand writers are asking him to pay all of us collectively, alright? So I would say if you’re being paid $250 million — Ted Sarandos made about $50 million last year — these companies are making enormous amounts of money. Their profits are going up. It's ridiculous for them to plead poverty when the writers who are making their shows, some of them are not able to pay their rent or their mortgages," Conover continued. "I literally know writers who have had to go on assistance because they have not been able to make their year. If you look at these companies, they’re making more money than ever. It's the people who make the shows for them that are making less."

The conversation ended there.

"Adam Conover, thank you so much for coming on because you ruined everything," Snider joked. "You may have just ruined my career, but I don't mind. Appreciate you coming on."

 

Chile faces new constituent assembly vote 4 years after massive social unrest

Online News EditorMay 2, 2023

 3 minutes read

By Maria M.Mur

Santiago, May 2 (EFE).- Chile’s search for a new societal model following a massive 2019 uprising against socioeconomic inequality hit a major roadblock last year when voters overwhelmingly rejected a proposed constitution to replace their dictatorship-era charter.

But a new major milestone comes Sunday when Chileans head to the polls to elect the 50 members of a new Constitutional Convention.

Momentum was clearly on the side of the progressive left when in an October 2020 plebiscite nearly 80 percent of voters opted to replace the constitution inherited from the 1973-1990 right-wing military regime.

Subsequently, a Constitutional Convention vote was held in May 2021, leading to the election of a majority of independent and progressive candidates.

Gabriel Boric, Chile’s most leftist president since Salvador Allende (overthrown via coup in 1973 by military rebel forces led by Gen. Augusto Pinochet), was then elected in November 2021.

But public opinion later turned against the assembly and its draft constitution, which would have characterized Chile as a plurinational state, established autonomous indigenous territories and provided full gender parity at all public institutions and companies.

That text was rejected by 62 percent of voters in a referendum in September of last year, prompting Chile’s political class to set another constituent assembly process in motion, albeit one with very different characteristics.

“We’d become accustomed to a lot of stability in Chile, but the long road to a new constitution has defied that image,” Benjamin Gedan, director of the Washington DC-based Wilson Center think tank’s Latin America Program, told Efe.

Nevertheless, Chile “has shown itself to be a country that can channel social unrest through democratic processes.”

Estefania Andahur, a member of Chile’s Network of Political Scientists, told Efe that there is now much less enthusiasm surrounding the drafting of a new constitution than before.

She said that whereas four years ago there was an “eagerness to organize,” people are now much more concerned about problems such as inflation and violent crime.

Cristian Ovando of Chile’s University of Tarapaca, for his part, said “fatigue” has set in due to a number of factors, citing the “psychosocial cost of the unrest and the pandemic” and the failure of the first constituent process.

A key difference in the new process will be the role played by a committee of 24 congressionally designated experts who are tasked with preparing a preliminary draft of the new constitution.

The 50 members of the Constitutional Convention who are elected on Sunday will then have five months to make modifications to that text before citizens eventually vote on the final proposed constitutional draft in a Dec. 17 referendum.

Critics say the Convention members will have too little room to maneuver because they will have to stay within the limits of 12 constitutional bases that were laid out in a cross-party accord known as the “Agreement for Chile.”

Those principles include the declaration of Chile as a “social and democratic state governed by the rule of law,” the recognition of indigenous peoples as part of the “Chilean nation” and affirmation that the legislative branch has two chambers: a Senate and a Chamber of Deputies.

“There’s very little interest, and that will be reflected in the turnout. It will be lower than in the September plebiscite, which was historically high, only comparable to the 1988 vote against Pinochet,” Rene Jara of the University of Santiago told Efe.

Most polls point to Chile’s right wing being the big winner of Sunday’s Constitutional Convention elections, although it remains to be seen how many seats will be won by the right-wing populist Republican Party, which had no representation in the previous constituent assembly and supports the current constitution that favors the privatization of basic services.

According to the University of Chile’s Octavio Avendaño, the delay in resolving the country’s constitutional problem can be traced to a fundamental misreading of the 2019 protests as an anti-free market and leftist movement, “when in reality that’s not what it was.”

 

History of Indigenous boarding schools in U.S. Northwest

Hendrik Sybrandy

@hsybrandy

History of Indigenous boarding schools in U.S. Northwest

Published May 2, 2023 at 3:57 PM

For 75 years, the Tulalip Indian Boarding School was a mainstay in the Pacific Northwest region of the U.S.

And according to the U.S. Interior Department, it was also one of hundreds of boarding schools that often subjected Native American children to abusive conditions.

The department is conducting a year-long tour to fill in the gaps about what’s known about those facilities.

It held a hearing in Washington state this past weekend.