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DALLAS -- Wal-Mart workers across the country are organizing themselves into unions with the United Food and Commercial Workers, even in Texas! The inside organizing committee held a press conference outside a Wal-Mart at the extreme southern end of Dallas on June 1. It was one of 20 held nationwide as lead-up to Wal-Marts shareholders' meeting on June 5 in Arkansas. North Texas Jobs with Justice backed them up, as did students from Denton, Texas, and civil rights leader Reverend L. Charles Stovall. The coordinating union leader was from the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), but the workers are apparently joining UFCW. Both are members of the Change to Win Federation.
The SEIU organizer and two of the internal organizing committee members appeared on the "Workers Beat" radio program on KNON radio on June 3. They reported that Wal-Mart has a special anti-union team that shows up wherever organizing is mentioned. Carefully skirting the law, management begins holding "voluntary" anti-union meetings with prepared videos, then they pressure every reluctant "associate" to attend.
"It would be good for America to organize Wal-Mart," said organizer Sarah Solis, "because they are the main anti-union force in America." She also brought the Employee Free Choice Act into the discussion several times. If Americans enjoyed the same freedom to organize as other industrialized countries, Wal-Mart would already be union.
It is fitting that Dallas should get one of the organizing drives now underway. UFCW Local 540 from Dallas organized a meat cutters' unit in Jacksonville, Texas, nine years ago. Despite the company's world's worst stalling, the union stayed by the workers there and is currently negotiating their benefits. Although Wal-Mart is organized in other countries, including China, Local 540's accomplishment was the breakthrough in the United States.
Twenty million Texans breathed a sigh of relief on June 2, when the state legislature ended its five-month session. It was probably the least shameful of their biannual meetings in more than a decade!
They even accomplished a few things:
* They refused to confirm the Governor’s proposed Chairman of the State Board of Education. He doesn’t believe in the science of evolution.
* Improved compensation for the many innocents now being released from Texas prisons on DNA evidence
* For a change, they didn’t pass every right-wing crazy notion proposed, including pre-abortion sonograms, more guns on campus, more guns at work, and
"Choose Life" state vanity auto license plates
* The anti-democratic forces fixated on limiting voting rights with a “Voter ID” bill lost out, although they tried. Lord knows they tried. The Governor may still call a special session for it
* They gave every Texas teacher a one-time bonus, minimum $800
* They didn’t re-elect the former all-powerful iron-fisted dictatorial Speaker of the House, Tom Craddick
* To a limited extent, they let some Texas schoolchildren escape the deathly grasp of compulsory standardized testing
* They limited the ability of private businesses to exploit prison labor
On the other hand:
* They gave a green light to the insurance companies raping the population with the highest rates in the United States
* They refused to improve the state’s disastrous workers’ comp laws
* In the face of the economic crisis and overwhelming budget deficits, they issued a tax cut to certain businesses, and specifically to the Chambers of Commerce
* They refused to expand the Children’s Health Insurance Program to tens of thousands of Texas children. The Governor was threatening to veto it anyway.
* They failed to adjust the state’s extremely backward unemployment compensation rules in order to get $555 in federal stimulus money. The fund is going broke.
In general, the State Legislature majority wasted its time trying to force the “Voter ID” bill, which would deter seniors and disabled Texans from voting, past a growing minority of Democrats. The Governor and others are setting the stage for next year’s tiny Republican primary, because they anticipate an election in which only the craziest, most backward, and most anti-worker candidates can win.
From the point of view of those who have watched the disaster of Texas politics since George W. Bush was first elected governor, the 2009 session could be characterized as “less unbearable!” --Jim Lane
By James Thompson I went to see the new film, "Goodbye Solo," with three of my movie buddies. Director Ramin Bahrani has scored a major hit in dramatizing the misery and struggles which working people endure in our culture today. Its realism propels it into the realm of great art. The movie displays dialectics in the gripping reality of the drama depicted. A Senegalese taxi driver in Winston-Salem, North Carolina picks up a passenger who contracts with him to take him to a cliff presumably to end his life. The taxi driver, Solo, attempts to befriend the isolated William, who resists his exuberant efforts to rescue him. William is an elderly white biker and motorcycle mechanic from the South. Dialectics abound in the movie to include black/white, death/life, old/young, hope/despair, community/isolation, self-destruction/progress, immigrant/citizen and failure/success. William is masterfully portrayed by an Anglo actor who epitomizes the corrupt, self-destructive, thrill-seeking but isolated and alienated white community. Solo is captivating as the Senegalese immigrant taxi driver married to a “Mexican” woman with a brilliant young daughter, Alex. Solo is symbolic of the vibrant, robust, positive energy and hope inherent in the African American and immigrant community today with the election of a new President in this country. Solo talks of the importance of community and people loving and caring for one another. William does not even know his own son. William is symbolic of the decay and self-destructive, thrill-seeking, individualistic, isolated and alienated nature of the dominant culture in this country in recent history. Solo’s and William’s faces dramatize and depict the pain and joy which accompany the struggle for survival among working people. The friction of this struggle occasionally erupts into physical confrontation which is tolerated by Solo with Zen-like acceptance and understanding. Solo’s and Alex’s attempts to lift William out of his self-destructive plans are symbolic of the potential of the African American and Latino people to move predominantly Anglo culture forward out of negativity and self-destruction. William’s humanity is not overlooked by this very progressive movie and his attempts to reciprocate Solo’s help are clear. In the end, Solo and Alex pay respect to William and allow him to make his own decision even if they disagree. The ending is left ambiguous for us to figure out. When art mirrors reality we have the possibility of great art. Goodbye Solo is great art. -- PHill1917@comcast.net
Across America, Jobs with Justice activists are hitting local Chambers of Commerce on a national program designed to take support away from the anti-worker drive being coordinated by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. In Dallas on May 29, about six unions were represented, along with students and religious leaders, on a picket line outside the offices of one of the Chamber offices in the area. Coincidentally, they happened to be housed within the Bank of America building. BOA also has a reputation for working against workers' rights. "Chamber of Commerce, no more lies," they yelled, "Workers have to organize!" The press packet explained that National Jobs with Justice charges the U.S. Chamber of Commerce with misrepresenting the truth about the Employee Free Choice Act. They are pushing the idea that it would "take away the workers' right to a secret ballot." As if the big corporations were suddenly worried about workers' rights! The truth is that the Employee Free Choice Act would not cancel the old law, which does include a secret ballot election, as part of a process that can be dragged out for yearrs while the bosses intimidate and/or fire the union activists! The new Act would allow the workers to choose between the old law and the newer, faster "card check" method, which would organize unions quickly and without painful delays. Card check is available now, but is the bosses' choice, not the workers'. Dallas City Councilwoman Pauline Medrano came to say some encouraging words to the picketers. She signed a petition card for the Employee Free Choice Act. Communications Workers (CWA) union members presented her with two books containing tens of thousands of petitions for decent contract negotiations with AT&T. CWA organizers talked to activists about their union's "adopt an overpass" program. In it, union activists display Employee Free Choice Banners from highway overpasses.
 Johnny Wolf, Hadi Jawad, and Valley Reed stand vigil at the Dallas Federal CourthouseBy Jim Lane With the selection of Sonia Sotomayor for Supreme Court Justice, Americans are hoping that the Obama era will put an end to the drift toward judicial tyranny here in the “land of the free.” Those hopes were shaken when a Dallas judge pronounced harsh sentences on five leaders of the Holy Land Foundation on May 27. If the 15 to 65 year sentences are carried out, some of the five defendants (Ghassan Elashi, Shukri Abu-Baker, Mufid Abdulqader, Abdulrahaman Odeh and Mohammad El-Mezain) will never draw a free breath again. The government’s argument, agreed to enthusiastically by editors of the Dallas paper (“Defendants got the sentences they deserved”) was that the Holy Land Foundation raised and sent money to Palestine via the Hamas organization, which they declared a terrorist organization in 1995. Defendants argued that their efforts went to ease the suffering of Palestinian children. Faithful Muslims are required to make charitable donations, and the pain of the beleaguered Palestinians is a worldwide scandal. The first trial ended in a hung jury in October, 2007. During all phases of the legal battles, North Texas Muslims mobilized large demonstrations. A pro-Israel group also organized a big public event. The Dallas Peace Center made a strong commitment to defend the Holy Land Five. Activists stood at vigils at the Dallas Federal Courthouse day after day. They believe that the government’s pro-Israel vendetta was clear since 2001, when the U.S. Justice Department closed the foundation’s offices and froze their assets. Unrelated charges were brought against Ghassan Elashi concerning his export business. Apparently, his company had sold a few used computers to a business in Syria, and Elashi was sent to jail. A heroine of the movement emerged as Elashi’s daughter, Noor, took up the cause in public and on the internet. Her comments are at http://www.freedomtogive.com/?q=node/186 and http://www.h4jusa.com/. She says, “But with an appeal already underway, the defendants and their families know the legal fight is not over. Truth and justice will emerge triumphantly from this gloomy low point in American history.” Those who believe in civil rights and justice and America are looking toward the Supreme Court.
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