EXPO Let Our People Go WOA

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Covid-19: Southern workers fightback and organize for safety!

Southern Workers Assembly‎

An international network that includes the People’s Human Rights Observatory (international coalition), the Comité Cerezo (Mexico), Somos Abya Yala-Somos una America (continental), the Permant Committee for Human Rights (Colombia), and Fundación Lazos de Dignidad (Links of Dignity Foundation – Colombia), Festivales Solidarios (Guatemala), Movimiento Victoriano Lorenzo (Panama),SOA Watch (U.S), and the Alliance for Global Justice (U.S), invites you and your organization to endorse this letter. The letter will be sent to the UN Human Rights Commission, the United Nations Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice, and other international bodies, and to governments and prison systems around the world that are connected to U.S. Prison Imperialism programs. It will be an educational and organizing tool for ongoing mobilizations to win our demands

Open Letter: Mass Incarceration and Coronavirus 

We, the undersigned, denounce the fact that in the emergency provoked by the COVID 19/Coronavirus, the overcrowding of large number of prisoners in different jails around the world constitutes a grave danger for the propagation of the virus that is threatening humanity: the walls of the prison serve for nothing in the containment of Coronavirus. In the current context, the prisons constitute a breeding ground for the coronavirus that affects the inmates, the workers, and their families and the communities where these institutions are located.

As internationalists, we make three demands to the nations of the world, and one in particular to the United States:

1. Freedom for each inmate of an advanced age and for all those persons incarcerated for nonviolent crimes.
2. That they guarantee that the prison population and whoever works there have the tools and the conditions necessary to prevent exposure to the coronavirus.
3. That they maintain the medical personnel with the tools and access to clinics to permit them to confront this pandemic.
4. That the United States abandon the model of mass incarceration and its expansion to other countries. We also demand that the countries involved in Prison Imperialism abandon this model.

Prison Imperialism refers to the efforts of the U.S. government to export its model of mass incarceration around the world, a process that began 20 years ago on March 31, 2000. Through this process, the U.S. government finances, manages, and designs prisons with the goal of restructuring the penal systems of different countries, especially in the global South. Today, the U.S. is directly involved in penitentiary systems in at least 40 countries. Prison Imperialism creates a world dependency on the U.S. and its politics of repression, and guarantees that the world will be turned into one great prison that seeks to divide the people from the rich and powerful in order to maintain their privileges and decadent luxury.

Today, the U.S. model of mass incarceration represents a threat for the life and liberty of every one of us. The U.S. has five percent of the world’s population, but 25% of the global prison population, with the highest rate of incarceration in the world. Presently, more than 2.3 million persons in the U.S. live locked down in a system characterized by violence, overcrowding, and precarious health conditions. Given the news that the U.S. heads the list of coronavirus cases globally, and given its principle responsibility for Prison Imperialism, the U.S. government has the obligation to fulfill our demands and stop the exportation of its penitentiary model.

With the 20^th anniversary of Prison Imperialism, the crisis occasioned by the coronavirus and global capitalism takes on greater meaning. On March 31, 2000, the governments of the United States and Colombia signed the Program for the Improvement of the Colombian Penitentiary system. A short time later, La Tramacúa penitentiary became the first international prison to be built with US financing and designs. This accord with Colombia marked the path leading to the construction of the notorious prison in Guantanamo, Cuba, and the infamous prisons of Abu Ghraib and Bagram, in Iraq and Afghanistan, respectively. The influence of the U.S. penitentiary system on the Colombian system has resulted in the increase to more than 54% of the rate of overcrowding—the highest in its history, and an increase in reports of violations of human rights and the use of torture. The provision of food is insufficient, and many times contaminated. and the lack of access to water is widespread and even used as a form of punishment for inmates. Different Colombian courts, including the Constitutional Court, have ordered the closure of La Tramacúa because of its inhumane conditions, and have also declared that the overcrowding and the system of health care in Colombian prisons are in violation of the constitution. This is the power of the U.S. influence in the Colombian prison system.

Today, as an accomplice in Prison Imperialism, Colombia is charged with the training of penitentiary personnel principally in Mexico and Central America. Two decades after the beginning of Prison Imperialism and investments in the Colombian system, the U.S. has additionally spent at least $22 million on international prison management programs. Most of those funds have been destined for Central America and especially Honduras.

In Honduras, the change in the prison system is directly connected with the politics of security that have surged as a result of the coup financed and supported by the U.S. in 2009. After the coup, the maximum security prisons of El Pozo, La Tamara, and La Tolva were constructed without this diminishing the violence and corruption of the country. Instead, since the coup, the country finds itself in a humanitarian crisis in which the new penitentiaries are used to lock up the opposition to the regime of Juan Orlando Hernández. Just at the end of 2019, two massacres in two Honduran maximum-security prisons left 37 persons dead in two days.

In El Salvador, second only to the United States worldwide in the percentage of the population currently incarcerated, the U.S. has invested significant financial and political resources in maintaining and expanding a prison system characterized by systematic human rights violations.  President Bukele is flagrantly ignoring a Supreme Court ruling prohibiting arrests and detention by military and police for violations of a national quarantine.

In Mexico, an accord signed by the U.S. in 2018 called the Correctional Reform will seek to supervise, revise, and administer the penal system. The American Correctional Association has suggested recommendations approved for the same guidelines for Mexico, Afghanistan, and some countries in Africa. The result of this accord has been an increase in the number of cases of human rights violations, torture, and murders in the Mexican penal system, emulating the experiences observed in Colombia and Honduras.

The Israeli government is a participant in Prison Imperialism. It has shared information and technology with Colombian authorities. The U.S. Security Coordinator for Israel and the Palestinian Authority, established in 2005, helps fund and advise prisons in Palestine. During the coronavirus pandemic, arrests and incarceration of Palestinians, frequently held without charges, have gone on unabated while availability of health care and personal sanitation supplies has decreased, and access to legal defense has been severely limited.

Around the world, women, especially mothers, are in prison mostly as a result of poverty, and are often survivors of rape and domestic violence who have been denied justice.

In the detention center for migrants and refugees in the U.S., the denunciations of constant violations of human rights are nothing new. The overcrowding, the lack of hygiene, and the poor food provisions put the most vulnerable at risk. In only one week in March, three children locked in a detention center were diagnosed with coronavirus. Despite that the children were freed, many more that were exposed to the virus risk falling sick without the conditions for adequate treatment. Before this situation, the response of the U.S. government has been the deportation of these person to the countries of their origin, exposing new communities to the pandemic and violating the right of these persons to seek asylum to in order to save their lives. From Colombia to Iraq, from Saudi Arabia to Haiti, the U.S. is responsible for the construction of a prison model that augments the lethality of the coronavirus and puts the health of the world at risk.

The massacre at La Modelo prison on March 21, 2020 was a brutal lesson in the consequences of Prison Imperialism: 23 inmates were killed and 83 more were wounded by agents of the Colombian Armed Forces seeking to repress inmates that were demanding the release of elderly and nonviolent prisoners in order to protect them from the pandemic. The La Modelo protest was not unique. Around the world, from France to the U.S., Palestine to Peru, prisoners are rebelling against all the conditions that are exposing them to the coronavirus: every protest is motivated by the fear of inmates who want to protect their lives. The inmates do not protest for themselves alone, but also for the protection of prison personnel with whom they interact daily. The jails are a time bomb of infection constituting a threat to world health.

For the above reasons, we raise this humanitarian petition with the final goal of saving the lives of those who find themselves most vulnerable before the world pandemic.

People’s Human Rights Observatory

Alliance for Global Justice

SOA Watch

Comité Cerezo

Fundación Lazos de Dignidad

Somos Abya Yala-Somos Una América

Comité Permanente por los Derechos Humanos

Movimiento Victoriana Lorenzo

Festivales Solidarios

ARTIIS Paz Artística

Camino Comun Solidarity International

To see an updated list of endorsers, click here…

Patrick Cudahy/Smithfield Protest

Traducción en Español está abajo

Anonymous employee whistleblowers made national headlines this week with claims Smithfield is neglecting basic employee health precautions, — including prohibiting the use of PPE — even as Smithfield continues to shutter plants across the country due to widespread COVID-19 outbreaks and even deaths among employees.

The investigation prompted plans for our protest Wednesday. Smithfield employees will team up with concerned local residents, including activists with the animal rights network Direct Action Everywhere (DxE).

In consideration of the COVID-19 outbreak, demonstrators will follow six-foot social distancing guidelines, and are asked to bring your own protective masks and gloves (a bandana or t-shirt as a mask is ok). We will use CAUTION tape and “CANCEL ANIMAL AG” signage to visualize our message, and deliver speeches about the destructiveness of animal agriculture.

DxE activists have made disturbing findings inside Smithfield factory farms in California, Utah and North Carolina, including rampant antibiotic drug use and antibiotic-resistant disease, and mother pigs living in gestation crates just larger than their bodies, surrounded by their own dead and dying babies. Adding insult to injury, the whistleblowers exposing that misconduct have been hit with felony charges and now face years behind bars.

We will not remain silent. We will stand together to oppose the injustice that is animal agriculture.

Empleados de Smithfield llegaron a los titulares nacionales esta semana con afirmaciones de que la empresa está descuidando las precauciones básicas de la salud de los empleados. Incluyendo prohibir el uso de equipo de protección personal. Todo esto aun sigue sucediendo mientras Smithfield continúa cerrando plantas en todo el país debido a brotes generalizados por el Coronavirus, e incluso mientras mueren aun mas trabajadores de Smithfield.

La investigación provocó planes para nuestra protesta mañana Miércoles, 22 de Abril. Los empleados de Smithfield se reunirán con ciudadanos locales interesados en ayudarnos. Incluyendo activistas de la red de derechos de los animales, Direct Action Everywhere (DxE).

Debido a la delicadeza de la situación por el brote del Coronavirus, los manifestantes seguirán las normas preventivas para no arriesgar contagiarse. Se usara la distancia social preventiva de seis pies y se les pide que por favor traigan sus propias máscaras y guantes protectores(un pañuelo en la boca, una bufanda como máscarilla está bien también). Usaremos cinta amarilla de PRECAUCIÓN y letreros de “CANCELAR ANIMAL AG” para visualizar nuestro mensaje y se darán discursos sobre la destructividad que ocasiona la agricultura animal.

Activistas encubiertos de DxE han hecho hallazgos inquietantes dentro de las granjas industriales de Smithfield en California, Utah y Carolina del Norte. Incluyendo el uso desenfrenado de antibióticos y de drogas antibióticas-resistentes a enfermedades. Las cerdas madres que viven en las jaulas de gestación, sus cuerpos son mas grandes que las mismísimas jaulas. Mientras las rodean los cuerpos de sus bebés muertos y moribundos. Agregando insulto a su lesión. Los activistas encubiertos que revelaron el maltrato a los animales, han sido acusados ​​de delitos graves y ahora enfrentan años tras las rejas.

No nos quedaremos en silencio. Nos mantendremos unidos para oponernos a la injusticia que es la agricultura animal.

Rent Strike 2020 Wisconsin: #CantPayWontPay Organizing Meeting

Are you a renter in Wisconsin? Did you struggle to pay rent on April 1 or will you struggle on May 1? Join us on Tuesday, April 21st for a virtual zoom meeting to discuss how renters in Wisconsin can fight to stay in our homes, defeat evictions, and avoid going into debt from missed payments.

On April 1, almost 1/3 of all apartment renters weren’t able to pay rent as millions face layoffs or hour reductions under the coronavirus crisis and economic meltdown. Instead of massive bailouts to billion-dollar corporations, we need real protections for working people.

Locally, tenants have been fighting for rent reductions and rent suspensions using a number of tactics, including threatening rent strikes. Organizing with our neighbors and people renting from the same agencies is the BEST way we can protect ourselves. Connecting with other renters across the city and country through the Rent Strike 2020 movement can help us fight for a suspension of all rent, mortgage, and utility payments, with no accumulated debt.

JOIN US to talk about the rent crisis, meet your neighbors, and discuss concrete organizing tactics. #CancelRent!!

Zoom link: https://zoom.us/j/93495337997?pwd=Qm4ybVBoUWIwdG1id2orc3NzWDdTUT09

https://fighting-words.net/2020/04/20/coronavirus-workers-and-oppressed-face-monster-wave-of-evictions-and-foreclosures/

By Jerry Goldberg

In the midst of the Covid-19 crisis, housing activists have shown tremendous initiative in raising demands for moratoriums on eviction and rental payments during the emergency and in the months to come. Organizations like the Right to the City Alliance, Moratorium Now Coalition, Detroit Eviction Defense, Michigan Environmental Justice Coalition and others have called for canceling rent, mortgage and utility payments during the emergency and in the months that follow after it is lifted.

24 states have suspended evictions for at least some time during the emergency. However, in most cases there has been no canceling of rent payments, meaning that when the moratorium is lifted millions will face imminent removals from their homes. Out of work and with no income coming in, 31% of renters failed to pay their April rent, and the numbers are certain to go up in coming months.

The Covid-19 crisis appears to be leading to a housing crisis every bit as large as the subprime mortgage crisis of approximately 2005-2013.  This crisis will offer openings for housing activists to intervene boldly to assert that affordable housing is a human right that must be guaranteed for all. But to be effective, we must learn from the lessons of the subprime disaster. Today, much of the rental market is now controlled by the same kind of Wall Street institutions that brought on the collapse of the mortgage industry, and who will surely be in line for a massive bailout at the expense of renters and their families if we do not intervene….

Goldberg is a Co-Founder of the Moratorium Now Coalition in Detroit

Crusaders Of Justicia

We are here to support our community. Together we created a stronger Wisconsin. We are located at 1523 Washington st Manitowoc. #togetherjuntos