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Latin American Labor Conference to focus on worker emancipation
La Prensa San Diego is a bilingual, widely distributed weekly in the San Diego area. The current issue includes Rocky Neptun's fine article promoting the Tijuana conference. Thank you, Rocky!
Fri, Oct 28, 2011
Stories
By Rocky NeptunSan Diego Indy Media
From Tehran to Scotland, from Hong Kong to the always fiery, militant
youth of Rome, the Occupy Wall Street movement has spread across the
globe. Tired and angry over decades of corporate owned capitalism, where
wealthy stockholders and huge multi-national corporations set the
agenda for political and economic policy decisions, plunging millions of
middle-class families into poverty, exacerbating the conditions of the
already destitute, and forcing millions of youth into either wage
slavery or no future at all; the world’s 99% have taken to the streets.
Yet, on that vast continent south of the Atrato Swamp, colonized and
exploited for centuries, there were no “occupy” encampments. The people
of South American, with the exception of still Yankee dominated
Colombia, over the last two decades, have, slowly at first, then
rapidly, begun to take back their governments and economies from both
the international corporations and their own local corrupt elites.
There was no sudden revolution —only the memory of Che— no storming of
the Bastille nor Concord Old North Bridge, no shot heard ‘round the
world;’ just the experience of authentic community action and tangible
solidarity. First, the villagers took control of what was closest to
them – their faith. Steeped in the liberation theology of Jesus’ true
ministry, his support of the poor and the disenfranchised, they kicked
out the priests and bishops who pampered and supported the rich. Then
parish by parish, village by township, city by city, they began
organizing, putting forth candidates for local offices; when some of
those were arrested, beaten and sometimes killed, others stepped into
their places. Workers throughout the continent began occupying work
places (a thought for U.S. occupiers, no?) and taking back their unions
from corporate lackeys and power liberals with huge salaries.
The growth and strength of the Latin American labor movement for
participatory democracy and economic fairness will highlight the 8th
Annual Latin American Labor Conference in Tijuana, Mexico. The theme of
the early December international gathering is “Continental Integration
& Working-Class Unity,” and will explore how Latin American
countries have chosen to create alternatives which integrate economies
focused on human needs (health-care, education, housing) and not
corporate profits.”
A vital component of people first economies according to the
conference’s organizers —the U.S. based Labor Exchange— is to build
co-operative, collective and worker-owned systems and structures outside
the corporate and bank controlled neo-liberal model. Participants of
the Trade Union Meeting of Our America movement, who have held meetings
throughout the hemisphere and in Central America and Mexico recently,
will report on their efforts at worker emancipation. Also to be
discussed will be the Bolivarian Alliance’s determination (9 Latin and
Caribbean Nations) to achieve a viable alternative to the greed,
environmental destructiveness and dehumanization of the corporate owned
economic system.
The Conference in Tijuana, December 2-4, at the Hotel Palacio Azteca
will be preceded by a three day “Worker’s School,” November 29, 30 and
Dec. 1, formed by the Federacion Sindical Mundial of Mexico and the
Central Trabajadores de Cuba. The classes, both in Spanish and English,
as is the conference itself, will educate and prepare workers,
employees, the unemployed, underemployed and youth without possibility
of a decent future, for the coming conflagration between the 1% who
hoard the planet’s wealth and all the rest of us.
Speaking at both the worker’s school and the conference will be those
on the frontline of the war for economic democracy: including Juan
Barahona, of the often attacked Honduras Frente Nacional de Resistencia
Popular; Leonardo Batalla, from the PIT CNT of Uruguay, Jacobo Torres de
Leon, representing the Fuerza Socialista Bolivariana de Trabajadores de
Venezuela; Joao Batista Lemos, who is Secretario Adjunto de Relaciones
Internacionales for the Brazilian labor union CTB; and, Humberto Montes
de Oca, from the government mugged Sindicato Mexicano de Electricistas.
There will also be representatives from Ecuador’s Confederacion de
Trabajadores; Bolivia’s Central Obrero Boliviano, Cuba’s Central de
Trabajadores, and the United States’ SEIU local 721.
The Labor Conference registration is $80.00 for the three-day event or
$55.00 for the weekend only. The Worker’s School fee is $60.00 for the
entire three days of classes and discussions. Registration is at laborexchange@gmail.com or calling (313) 355-8566 or online at LaborExchange.blogspot.com. Reservations at the Hotel Placio Azteca can be made at (01) 800-026-6660.
For any local student or unemployed person who wishes to attend, the
Director of the San Diego Renters Union’s lover, a Mexican national, has
made accommodations in his home in Tijuana available free of charge for
the full six days of classes and conference. Also, the San Diego
Renters Union is offering three scholarships for both the school and the
conference. Go to their website,www.SanDiegoRentersUnion or call (619) 450-9804 to apply.
Across the Southern Hemisphere millions of workers and unemployed have
locked arms in solidarity to create space for justice and equality, to
not only occupy their workplaces but to own them; let us not only
support them but learn and “spread the experiences.”
