[Peace-discuss] Fwd: [sftalk] Fw: [Working-Class] The AFL-CIO's
foreign policy program
Morton K. Brussel
brussel4 at insightbb.com
Tue Jan 10 22:53:32 CST 2006
Shenanigans in Haiti by the NED, etc.
Begin forwarded message:
> From: "David Johnson" <unionyes at ameritech.net>
> Date: January 10, 2006 6:07:53 PM CST
> To: <@returns.groups.yahoo.com;>
> Subject: [sftalk] Fw: [Working-Class] The AFL-CIO's foreign policy
> program
> Reply-To: sftalk at yahoogroups.com
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Kim Scipes
> To: Working Class Studies
> Sent: Tuesday, January 10, 2006 8:30 AM
> Subject: [Working-Class] The AFL-CIO's foreign policy program
>
> Dear Folks--
>
> I have long been campaigning against the AFL-CIO's labor
> imperialism. See my listings on my on-line bibliography on
> "Contemporary Labor Issues" under AFL-CIO foreign policy at http://
> faculty.pnc.edu/kscipes/LaborBib.htm .
>
> We know much of what the Solidarity Center did in Venezuela, and
> now, evidence emerges about their operations in Haiti. This needs
> to be distributed widely--and labor progressives need to develop a
> conscious program to break the AFL-CIO's connection with the
> National Endowment for Democracy.
>
> For more information, please contact me at kscipes at pnc.edu .
>
>
> In solidarity--
>
>
> Kim Scipes
> Batay Ouvriye's Smoking Gun:
>
> The $100,000 NED grant
>
>
>
> THIS WEEK IN HAITI
> January 4 - 10, 2006 Vol. 23, No. 43
> byJeb Sprague
>
> (Haïti Progres)Both before and after the Feb. 29, 2004 coup d'État
> in Haiti, Washington infiltrated "democracy promotion" programs
> (also known as "democracy enhancement") into almost every sector of
> Haitian civil society: political parties, media, human rights
> groups, student groups, vote monitoring organizations, business
> associations, and labor organizations.
>
> Recently declassified National Endowment for Democracy (NED)
> documents reveal that a "leftist" workers' organization, Batay
> Ouvriye (BO), which promoted and called for the overthrow of the
> constitutionally elected government of President Jean-Bertrand
> Aristide, was the targeted beneficiary of a US $99,965 NED grant
> routed through the AFL-CIO's American Center for International
> Solidarity (ACILS). Listed in NED's "Summary of Projects Approved
> in FY 2005" for Haiti, the grant states, "ACILS will work with the
> May 1st Union Federation- Batay Ouvriye [ESPM-BO] to train workers
> to organize and educate fellow workers."
>
> The NED, which is funded through the U.S. State Department,
> provided the grant to ACILS, also known as the Solidarity Center.
> The grant money is then to be used by the Solidarity Center to fund
> and aid Batay Ouvriye's labor organizing activities for 2005-2006.
>
> Statements made by both Batay Ouvriye and Solidarity Center
> officials suggest that there is further funding of the former by
> the latter. In a recent telephone interview with Canadian freelance
> journalist Anthony Fenton, a Batay Ouvriye leader Paul Philomé
> admitted that his organization had received US $20,000 from the
> Solidarity Center. A Solidarity Center official also recently said
> at a Dec. 22 public meeting in San Francisco that ACILS provided
> approximately US $13,000 to the Batay Ouvriye this past year. This
> funding appears to be in addition to the NED grant, since
> Solidarity Center officials have stated that the NED grant will not
> be spent until 2006.
>
> Batay Ouvriye has been waging a successful campaign to gain high-
> level support from labor federations like the AFL-CIO, which shuns
> trade unionists who supported Haiti's constitutional democracy and
> are today arrested, persecuted, and harassed. The NED grant
> explains that NGOs and trade unions from the U.S. and Canada will
> meet with Batay Ouvriye to discuss working conditions in Haiti.
>
> The Solidarity Center-administered NED support for Batay Ouvriye
> fits neatly into the U.S. State Department's "democracy promotion"
> strategy of undermining and destabilizing Haitian self-
> determination. Instead of supporting unions which did not call for
> the overthrow of the elected government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide,
> the AFL-CIO, along with mainstream international labor centers,
> such as the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions
> (ICFTU) and its Latin American regional affiliate the Organización
> Regional Interamericana de Trabajadores (ORIT), has sought to
> strengthen marginal groups like Batay Ouvriye and the Coordination
> Syndicale HaVtienne (CSH), which taxed the Aristide government as
> "anti-worker" and "criminal."
>
> Workers affiliated with public sector unions, often seen as
> supporters of the elected government, have been fired and
> persecuted by the thousands. In a recent radio interview, Isabel
> Macdonald, a Canadian journalist conducting interviews in Port-au-
> Prince, explained that between 2,000 and 3,000 unionized workers of
> the state phone company TELECO have been laid off since the 2004
> coup, with many of those fired placed arbitrarily on the Haitian
> National Police's "Wanted" lists (Listen to the Interview with
> Isabel Macdonald at www.wakeupwithcoop.org).
>
> When questioned why the AFL-CIO was not supporting or funding
> unions whose membership supported the overthrown government, a high
> level Solidarity Center official, in June 2005, referred to pro-
> Lavalas trade unionists as "revolutionary ideologues."
>
> Batay Ouvriye, like other organizations heavily dependent on
> foreign "democracy promotion" funding, has failed to stand up and
> organize against the massacres being carried out by the Haitian
> National Police and the United Nations MINUSTAH force. The Pacifica
> Radio network's Flashpoints News correspondent Kevin Pina writes:
> "Is it not patently obvious that, for Batay [Ouvriye] and their
> supporters, the killing, jailing, and forced exile of thousands
> since Feb. 29, 2004 are not acknowledged nor condemned by them? Can
> their politics be so sectarian and insular as to pretend none of
> this ever happened?... Members of Batay [Ouvriye] are not under
> fire in their communities nor the objects of this campaign of
> repression for the simple reason that they are not seen as a threat
> by the US-installed government."
>
> Pina goes on to write: "We can get trapped into a false dialogue
> with pretty words like bourgeois, proletariat and vanguard, but it
> will never excuse their silence in the wake of this human tragedy."
>
> Pierre Labossiere of the Haiti Action Committee sees the U.S.
> government grants to Batay Ouvriye as a "pay-off for their voicing
> no opposition to the 2004 coup."
>
> Channeling "democracy promotion" funds through labor unions is just
> one of the ways that the U.S. government has sought to subvert
> popular democracy in Haiti. "Democracy promotion" has facilitated,
> what William Robinson, the author of Promoting Polyarchy:
> Globalization, US intervention, and Hegemony, calls a "consensual
> mechanism of transnational social control," by which a small
> minority elite can manipulate civil society and government. Through
> co-opting labor unions, human rights groups and political
> organizations, "democracy promotion" casts a wide net of social and
> political influence.
>
> Recently the Washington, D.C.-based think-tank, the Haiti Democracy
> Project, financed in large part by members of Group 184 and board-
> membered by ex-State Department officials, put up a link on its
> website to Batay Ouvriye's "grassroots" support group.
>
> Batay Ouvriye and its supporters have continually denied that the
> organization has received large-scale funding from the U.S.
> government via the Solidarity Center. Prior to the opening session
> of the International Tribunal on Haiti on Sep. 23, 2005 in
> Washington, DC (see HaVti ProgrPs, Vol. 23, No. 37, 11/23/2005),
> Batay Ouvriye's relationship with the Solidarity Center was not
> public knowledge. Since then, the organization has only admitted
> that it received from the Solidarity Center US $3,500. Batay
> Ouvriye and its supporters have sought to minimize the importance
> of the grant, saying it was a small sum of money. That argument
> will not be possible following these latest revelations.
>
> Here is a summary of some of the defenses that Batay Ouvriye and
> its supporters have offered to revelations about its State
> Department funding:
>
> On December 9, 2005, Mario Pierre, a representative of the Batay
> Ouvriye in New York City, claimed his organization received only
> "$3,500 from the Solidarity Center," while charging that those
> individuals and organizations criticizing his organization for
> accepting U.S. State Department funding were "doing the work of the
> CIA."
>
> On November 25, 2005, Charles Arthur, the head organizer of the
> Haiti Support Group in England, wrote, "I think that the fact that
> Batay Ouvriye received US$3,500 from the Solidarity Center to help
> the 350 workers.should not distract anyone from appreciating the
> organization's fantastic work."
>
> On November 28, 2005, Batay Ouvriye supporter Daniel Simidor wrote:
> "All [this author] can 'prove' is that the workers' organization
> accepted a $3,500 contribution to their strike fund from the AFL-
> CIO Solidarity Center in Haiti. Sprague's contention that Batay
> Ouvriye accepted 'monetary aid and oversight' from the US
> government is based not on facts."
>
> On November 29, 2005, Batay Ouvriye supporter Mitchell Cohen of the
> Brooklyn Greens wrote: "Organizations and individuals who are
> spreading this lie need to retract it immediately and apologize for
> their reckless, sectarian behavior. If it turns out that you
> actually document that a particular group, in this case Batay
> Ouvriye, has received funds from the CIA or State Department, then
> I'll listen..Wow, what a smoking gun! (I say sarcastically)."
>
> In late November, 2005, a supporter of Batay Ouvriye, Cort Greene,
> posted on the internet: "Just from looking at documents provided by
> J. Sprague and others, I have not seen any proof that Batay Ouvriye
> is a creation or in the service of U.S. imperialism."
>
> On December 14, 2005, Yanick Etienne, a Batay Ouvriye leader,
> speaking at a New York City gathering, in regards to the criticism
> leveled against her organization, failed to mention the NED's
> $100,000 grant via the AFL-CIO's Solidarity Center.
>
> In December 2005, the Solidarity Center updated its website on
> Haiti (see http://www.solidaritycenter.org/content.asp?
> contentid=531). "With funds provided by the AFL-CIO, the Solidarity
> Center immediately forwarded $3,500 to Ouanaminthe, where ESPM-BO
> and the [subsidiary union] SOKOWA Executive Board distributed these
> funds," the site reports, but once again it does not reveal the
> much larger funding of Batay Ouvriye.
>
> The Solidarity Center continues to refuse to open its books to show
> its full funding relationship with Batay Ouvriye. In September
> 2005, Samantha Tate, a Senior Program Officer for the Americas at
> the Solidarity Center, contacted my academic department chair at
> California State University of Long Beach, attempting to isolate
> and discredit this research.
>
> - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
>
> Jeb Sprague is a researcher, freelance journalist, and a graduate
> student at California State University of Long Beach. To read more
> on the AFL-CIO's support for anti-democracy labor in Haiti, see his
> article Supporting a Leftist Opposition to Lavalas: The AFL-CIO's
> Solidarity Center and Batay Ouvriye both in Haïti Progrés (see Vol.
> 23, No. 37, 11/23/2005) and Monthly Review
> (mrzine.monthlyreview.org/sprague211105.html) Contact him at
> Jebsprague[nospam]@mac.com or visit his blog at http://
> www.freehaiti.net.
>
> THIS WEEK IN HAITI * January 4 - 10, 2006 Vol. 23, No. 43.
> Copyrighted Haïti Progres, Inc. REPRINTS ENCOURAGED. Please credit
> Haiti Progres.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Working-Class-Studies mailing list
> Working-Class-Studies at lists.ysu.edu
> http://lists.ysu.edu/mailman/listinfo.cgi/working-class-studies
>
>
> No virus found in this incoming message.
> Checked by AVG Free Edition.
> Version: 7.1.371 / Virus Database: 267.14.16/225 - Release Date:
> 1/9/06
>
> YAHOO! GROUPS LINKS
>
> Visit your group "sftalk" on the web.
>
> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
> sftalk-unsubscribe at yahoogroups.com
>
> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service.
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.chambana.net/cgi-bin/private/peace-discuss/attachments/20060110/0cd1fe01/attachment.html
More information about the Peace-discuss
mailing list