Hondo breathes easier

In a victory for the Hondo Empowerment Committee, the Hondo City Council voted last night to buy out and retire Pather Hollow grain silos. A long time nuisance to the community, the silos were quietly reopened last summer with no review or update of their air pollution permit and obvious rust, electrical and structural hazards. The silos are located directly adjacent to homes, and chaff from grain loading creates a public nuisance and health hazard to neighbors.

Five days after HEC met with city officials to complain of odors, rats, dust, noise, and the public safety hazard from the silos, a young worker was buried under a mountain of corn and seriously injured when one of the silos collapsed. Just weeks prior, a City inspection had deemed the facility safe to reopen.

Go HEC!

Global Day of Action: in Atlanta

Real Talk: The GDA and the State of the Nation

By Marina Karides
USSF Documentation Committee

The United States is in the midst of a media blitz on the presidential nominees for the two dismal parties. While the possibilities of a woman or an African-American as president offers some hope that change is on its way in the belly of the beast, the real movement for justice taking place in the US was reflected in the Press Conference on the Global Day of Action (GDA) held on January 22 in Atlanta, Georgia. As it was in Press Conferences taking place all over the globe including Zurich, Switzerland; Fortaleza, Brazil; Recife, Brazil; Natal, Brazil; Belem, Brazil; São Paulo Brazil; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Chennai, India; Mumbai, India; Erbil, Iraq; Rome, Italy; Brussels, Belgium; Mexico City, Mexico; La Habana, Cuba; Ramallah, Palestine; Manila, Philippines; Seoul, Korea; Beirut, Lebanon and Barcelona, Spain—all a response to the Global Call to Action made by the WSF.

Alice Lovelace, lead USSF organizer and poet, set the mood claiming that this press conference was a place to talk “to talk about what is happening in the real lives of real people.” The conference set in the Auburn Library of Atlanta, the day after the nation celebrated Martin Luther King Day, brought together movement builders from around the US working on key political issues including immigrant rights, the right to return of Gulf Coast residents, the poverty, violence, and the racist imprisonment of young people, and the loss of political freedoms.

The press conference was highly charged with criticism of the US government’s failure to meet the needs of its population and marked how deeply connected US internal conditions were with the violence it wrought abroad. Sandra Robertson, speaking for Georgia Citizens Coalition on Hunger, described the dwindling of people’s economic resource in Georgia and lack of governmental assistance available to the poor and low income despite the fat wealthfare checks being cut for the corporate elite. The Poor People’s Caravan and Assembly on January 26 in Atlanta will draw strength and participation from the multiple groups participating regionally.

Links were clearly made in speakers’ presentations between the poverty and violence within US borders and outside of them. Monica Garcia, of the Southwest Workers Union, spoke to the immediate violence along the US-Mexican border and the resistance in the region to the vicious construction of a wall that will divide families and communities but porous to corporate greed. Ajamu Baraka, speaking for US Human Rights Network, spelled out US responsibilities abroad:

“ . . . this nation state is deeply implicated in the affairs of countries around the world from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe from Columbia to Haiti to Nepal to Serbia in the systematic and persistent violence of people around the world.” Presenting clear and concrete figures on the expansion of US empire, Allison Budschalow, from American Friends Service Committee, discussed the proliferation of US military bases here and abroad and her organization’s concern with the widening net of the US economic reach through military expansion.

The absence of mainstream press was not lost. After thanking the Independent Media for its presence, Emery Wright from Project South pointed to the absence of corporate media at the event and its lack of focus on “real issues in this country or in the world.” The continued absence of US media at key political moments in US history such as the USSF (despite organizers attempts to cajole them) are expected but always striking as the history of the people, their history, is missing from their daily view of news on their TV screens.

The solidarity of US activists and movement organizations with the rest of the world was a bright light to the grim descriptions of US imperialism. Cindy Wiesner the political coordinator of Grassroots Global Justice, positively remarking on “the advancement of the globe and US social movement acting together in a more coordinated fashion” reminded us of the alliances of justice that the WSF process has helped to foment around the world.

Youth Rock National Immigration Conference

Carlos Guerra: Youthful wave of Latino activists tackling both past, present issues

Web Posted: 01/21/2008 11:03 PM CST

Carlos Guerra, San Antonio Express-News

HOUSTON — Times have changed since the late 1960s, when civil rights struggles raged in America, and I was among the students demanding solutions to civil rights issues, many of which still bedevil us.

This came to mind when I attended the National Conference on Immigration and Refugee Rights and saw how many attendees were young people ready to take on the world.

In the late 1960s, my generation also was facing a worsening war, and America was learning that having both guns and butter was easier said than done. And seething were racial and economic inequities that were tolerated, if not openly accepted.

In South Texas, Mexican American baby boomers had not inherited the patience of their antecedents. So, in the barrios and hamlets amid Texas' farms and huge ranches, young activists organized to demand more and better schooling and economic opportunities.

But most of all, they demanded dignity and respect of their worth as human beings.

The Latino baby boomers' movimiento focused on civil rights, and it spread through the Southwest where Latinos were most concentrated, and later, through the small Latino settlements that dotted virtually every state.

The popular uprising transformed many things in our nation, which finally — if begrudgingly — started giving Latinos some of the respect and visibility they had been denied.

School funding eventually was made more adequate — if not much more equitably distributed — and the doors to colleges and universities and better jobs were cracked just a bit wider.

But as more of the young activists advanced — and aged and became parents — their assertiveness diminished.

Today, many of the old issues remain, at best, only partially remedied. But a growing litany of new issues has arisen to revive a youthful activism among the progeny of warriors of the 1970s — and the many others who now have become part of the fabric of a new America.

In the 1960s, María Jiménez worked for the United Farm Workers. She now works for the Central American Resource Center. Asked if activism among youth was on the rise, she answered, "Definitely!" as did others, like Monica García, youth coordinator for San Antonio's Southwest Workers Union.

"Some of the issues go back to the '60s and the Chicano Movement," García said, "but the (immigration) raids, the separation of families are very strong issues with youth because they're happening to their families."

"They are dealing with problems with schools and access to universities," Jiménez said, "but young people are responding to their communities being denied rights in different ways, from attitudes about immigrants to many other issues.

"Many of the (young activists) are U.S. citizens, but a parent or a brother or sister may not be," Jiménez added, "so they are defending themselves, their families and their communities."

Just as in the 1970s, the new activism among Latino youth is spreading nationally. But given that Latinos are no longer heavily concentrated only in the Southwest, the emerging movement has a more national face.

And how the youth are organizing has changed dramatically.

"The activism manifests itself in very different ways these days," says Felipe Vargas, a St. Mary's grad now on the Indiana University faculty who brought a dozen students to the confab.

"We were used to seeing kids on the streets," he said. "But given that so many of these kids are challenged with their document status, they have to express themselves in different forms, in other media.

"They do this by organizing online, text messaging, MySpace, Facebook, electronic media, doing videos," he added.

"Their purpose is not so much to bring down some multinational corporation but to influence their friends," Vargas said. "They're being educated by the media, not necessarily by the schools, so they're creating new media to counter what is being said about them."

Equal Voices in the Valle

Organizers say San Juan Equal Voice event saw launch of national movement
21 January 2008
Steve Taylor and Joey Gomez, Rio Grande Guardian

Marguerite Casey Foundation President and CEO Luz Vega-Marquis speaks at the Equal Voices town hall meeting in San Juan on Saturday.

SAN JUAN, January 21 - Coordinators of the Equal Voice for America’s Families campaign believe the 400 Rio Grande Valley residents who attended a town hall meeting on Saturday may have just sparked a national movement.

“With the weather being so bitterly cold, we were not sure we were going to hit our 300 target figure. We ended up with about 400 people and no spare chairs,” said a delighted Armando Garza, South Texas regional coordinator for the Equal Voice campaign.

“I also saw folks that have never been involved in civic participation before get excited. This campaign is about movement building and I think we started building a national movement here in San Juan, Texas.”

The $5 million Equal Voice campaign is being funded by the Marguerite Casey Foundation and facilitated by the 200 non-profit groups the Foundation supports.

Among the Valley grassroots groups participating are La Unión del Pueblo Entero (LUPE), ARISE, AVANCE, the Azteca Community Loan Fund, the Brownsville Community Health Center, the Community Action Council of South Texas, Colonias Unidas, Proyecto Azteca, Proyecto Digna, Proyecto Libertad, SCAN (Serving Children and Adolescents in Need), the South West Workers Union, Su Casa de Esperanza, and Texas RioGrande Legal Aid.

The Equal Voice campaign starts off with the premise that no American family should live in poverty. Through the development of a national platform of issues of concern to families, Equal Voice wants to spark a national dialogue, preferably including the 2008 presidential candidates, about the policies and attitudes that negatively impact families.

The campaign wants to ensure that the working poor are part of that national discussion, build a movement of families to sustain long-term change, and increase civic engagement among families.

Saturday’s town hall meeting, held inside a big tent on LUPE’s grounds in San Juan, was the first of 40 to be held across the country this year. Two similar events are planned for Brownsville and Rio Grande City later, with a special gathering for the region’s youth at South Texas College’s campuses in McAllen, Weslaco, and Rio Grande City.

Once the 40 town hall meetings have been held, the campaign moves to the national stage, by bringing together approximately 10,000 families in a multi-city convention of families on Sept. 6 in Los Angeles, Chicago, and Birmingham, AL. The platform approved at the national town hall meetings will then be presented to the presidential candidates in October.

Luz Vega-Marquis, president and CEO of the Marguerite Casey Foundation, was present to see the launch of Equal Voice campaign in San Juan. She said the enthusiasm of the participants and the organizational skills of the grassroots groups that hosted the San Juan event have set the bar high for the town hall meetings to follow.

“I’m thrilled. I’m very touched by the level of participation, by the preparation, by the groups in the Valley,” Vega-Marquis said. “The training of leaders and bringing families out and the families realize the importance of their voices being heard. I am elated.”

Saturday’s town hall meeting was conducted entirely in Spanish. Participants were asked to list the issues that matter to their families. Gathered around tables, they were then encouraged to discuss those issues with those they were sitting next to. At the end of the discussions, priority lists were drawn up.

Garza said it was empowering just to watch the dialogue emerge.

“Participation is the way to affect change and I saw a group people who had frustration on their faces. They wanted to verbalize those frustrations, write them down on paper, and then share them with the person next to them, who they may or may not have known. It was, hey, we can do this together. I think it was this shared experience that was so empowering,” Garza said.

Lorena Rodriguez, a young mother from San Juan, listed immigration reform as a top priority. Rodriguez and her family live in a colonia with no electricity. Her three-year-old son Daniel has a heart condition and the family cannot afford health insurance.

“Living in house with no electricity makes it hard. I want the politicians to know that we have arms, we have legs; we can work like anybody else. But they do not take us into consideration. Give us the right to be here legally and we can change our situation,” Rodriguez said.

Alamo resident Elsa Rangel said education and immigration reform were key concerns. Her daughter Adaida is a student at South Texas College hoping to become a registered nurse. “We do not qualify for financial aid and we cannot afford the textbooks my daughter needs,” Rangel said.

City of San Antonio Doesn't Like Free Speech

love a charade
Area groups wrestle with Free Speech crackdowns as MLK celebrations return to SA

File photo

Mayor Phil Hardberger, Representative Ruth Jones McClendon, City Manager Sheryl Sculley, and Police Chief William McManus lock arms for the 2007 MLK March.

By Greg Harman, San Antonio Current

Martin was a quiet boy who grew into one hell of a man, placing himself again and again in the often bloody breach between attack dogs, boots, and batons of Jim Crow’s South on one side and the world he preached about – a world of racial harmony he radically conspired to help create – on the other.

This man who spent his adult life marching for justice and equality has in recent decades rightly been enshrined in American culture as one of many courageous voices that challenged the legacy of slavery and refused to allow government-sanctioned discrimination to continue unchallenged.

In San Antonio, Martin Luther King is remembered this month in weeks of City-sponsored events and a three-mile march from the MLK Freedom Bridge on SA’s East Side to Pittman-Sullivan Park. Organizers expect more than 100,000 to caravan down Martin Luther King Drive on Tuesday.

But with numerous social-justice groups locked in a lawsuit with the City of San Antonio over what they see as discriminatory policies dictating how much groups are charged to march on San Antonio streets, you can expect to see more confrontational signs than you have at past marches. [See “The Say-town Lowdown,” page 10.]

The city’s parade-rule rewrite has also generated its share of inevitable misgivings.

“I’ll march all day for MLK and I’ll march all day for Cesar Chavez,” says Genevieve Rodriguez, member of the planning committee for the annual International Woman’s Day March and Rally. “I also want to be able to march all day for Emma Tenayuca, Angela Davis, I mean I want to be able to march all day for women like that as well.”

We’re upstairs at the Esperanza Peace & Justice Center on San Pedro at an organizational meeting of the Woman’s Day March. Spread out on the floor are myriad statistics showing that victimization and discrimination against women is alive and well. If anything, the struggle for gender equality is not just ongoing but deteriorating on several fronts.

While the City offered to upgrade the Woman’s Day March to free City-sanctioned status along with the likes of City-sponsored MLK and Chavez parades, the group refused, instead joining the Free Speech Coalition lawsuit against the City along with 13 other social-justice organizations.

Had Woman’s Day agreed, “In essense it would be doing the same thing,” Rodriguez says. “It would be like, ‘What about the other groups that didn’t make it in with us?’”

Frank Valdez, co-chair of San Antonio Healthcare-Now Coalition, will be adding free speech to his usual objection to a broken healthcare system when he lines up for the MLK march.

“I have several axes to grind, right now healthcare and free speech — and the war — are my main concerns,” Valdez said. But the City’s actions don’t come as a surprise, he added.

“Across the nation we’re observing attempts to either water down or delete rights under the Constitution of the United States, and this is not only coming from the City Council but as high up as the President and even the Supreme Court … There is a nationwide movement to set us back and it’s up to us to address that.”

For the City’s part, the redefining of its parade ordinance came after two unexpected expenses hit in 2006 as the nation was caught in a furor over immigration reform.

Some of those who marched through downtown San Antonio on April 10, 2006, claim as many as 40,000 gathered to reject federal measures being debated in Congress that would transform undocumented immigrants in the U.S. into felons.

While Bush gravitated toward amnesty citizenship reforms, conservative lawmakers countered with plans for a massive border wall. Others sought to compel authorities to prosecute those who offered food or medical care to undocumented residents.

With vigilante Minutemen prowling the U.S.-Mexico border, and increasingly operating in U.S. cities, it was hard not to see an immigration war brewing.

Congress was at a stalemate, said Jaime Martinez, national treasurer for the League of United Latin American Citizens, and the time felt right to “reform broken immigration policies.”

The response to Washington’s gridlock was a tidal surge of protest across the country — hundreds of thousands marching in as many as 130 cities and towns, all chanting, “Sí, se puede.” Half a million marched on the Capitol alone, according to organizers there.

At San Antonio schools there were walkouts. The numbers filling Milam Park continued to climb into the afternoon before an early evening march sliced the city in two as chanting, flag-waving crowds surged up Nueva Street on the way to Hemisfair Park and the Federal Building.

Though they placed participation numbers at less than half of organizer Martinez, San Antonio’s police department assigned 116 officers to traffic and crowd control.

San Antonio’s Bugarin family remembers one officer in particular, according to their attorney Louis Correa. It was the officer who allegedly yanked a young man crossing Durango off his feet as the crowds were dispersing and threw him to the ground. While SAPD and the DA’s office have refused to comment on the matter, Correa offers a startling version of what followed.

At the corner, dozens of witnesses were aghast at the cop’s behavior. Felipe Bugarin shouted for the officer to stop as the young man shook himself free. Then the badge challenged Felipe, pushing him into the crowd.

When he got ahold of Felipe, it was this yet-unnamed officer who then called for backup, resulting in a fist-swinging dogpile atop the young man and the arrests of three other members of his family in a cloud of pepper spray: his 63-year-old father, Andres; his brother, Jesus; and his teenage sister, Monica.

Charges of disorderly conduct against Felipe were dismissed, but he still faces a charge of resisting arrest. The others await judgment on charges of interfering with the duties of a law officer.

Last week, a scheduled hearing regarding their case was delayed another three months, meaning the San Antonio family will have waited more than two years for a shot at justice. County Judge Sarah H. Garrahan-Moulder refused a motion to dismiss the case for lack of a speedy trial, according to Correa.

But the immigration march had other unforeseen consequences. Unlike the City-sponsored Martin Luther King March taking place next week, the eruption of political opinion in 2006 came with an unanticipated pricetag.

According to former District Five Councilmember Patti Radle, march organizer Martinez, at least briefly, was believed to owe the city $70,000 for costs incurred policing the event.

“I brought it to the City Manager’s attention and her response was kind of shocked, like, ‘What are we billing someone that much money for a march for?’” Radle recalls. “And so she was going to look into it. It certainly went beyond anyone’s anticipation.”

Martinez insists all he was ever billed for the march was the $250 for reserving Milam Park and turning on the electricity.

“No, they never wanted to charge me $70,000. I don’t know who got that figure,” he said. “I would have flipped over if they had charged me $70,000.”

Ultimately, Radle says she believes the city just absorbed the costs, but it also formed a committee to study its parade ordinance soon after the marches.

“I have always marched in San Antonio, and never paid, through my life of demonstrating, using First Amendment, Fourth Amendment… If we paid $1,000 in expenses, it’s too much,” Martinez said.

While Martinez may have marched free of fees, others learned the hard way that going without a permit may be the only way to exercise free speech in San Antonio.

Jill Johnston, program coordinator for the Southwest Workers Union, went to the city in the summer of 2004 to secure a permit to allow the group to march from Dwight Middle School to the main entrance of Kelly Air Force Base.

Despite an infusion of $5,000 through Radle’s office for the permit-application fee, there were other costs, Johnston was told.

“Not only was it going to be over $25,000 to pay for police and orange barrels, but I’d have to get signed permission from all the churches and businesses we passed that they would be closed that day for the march,” Johnston wrote the Current in an email.

On top of that, there was a request for proof of $1 million in insurance coverage. Needless to say, the march happened permit-free.

It was “very clear that they did not want this community event to happen and were going to create as many obstacles as necessary to deny us access to permits,” Johnston said.

It was an instructive moment for SWU. The organization hasn’t sought a City permit since, despite their now-annual march on Kelly and a yearly march in support of a living wage for workers, as well as innumerable other political actions.

Groups who try to abide by the City’s standards typically end up not marching, thus the Free Speech Coalition’s lawsuit.

The city says it is merely trying to recoup the costs of traffic control and police protection, but Amy Kastely, attorney for the Free Speech Coalition, claims that the double-standards are intended to silence dissent in the city.

“This is the problem with the City’s interpretation of its prior ordinance and this new one in that it’s totally discretionary. Jaime [Martinez] enjoys a lot of influence with City Hall so they waive [the fee] for him,” Kastely said.

Anti-war Texans for Peace came to San Antonio hoping to march in October. The route would have run reverse of the April ’06 march: from Hemisfair to Milam Park. They were told it would cost between $12,000 and $15,000, Kastely said, and they decided they couldn’t afford the City’s protest price.

“They’re just discouraged from doing it, so they don’t do it,” Kastely said.

While none of the groups interviewed for this article disputed the relevance of MLK to the world today, their common message was: The work is not finished.

While MLK Commission Chair Gloria Ray could not be reached by press deadline Tuesday, it’s likely that if Martin were alive today he would rail against recent Air Force flyovers in his “honor,” perhaps freshening up an earlier proclamation that “A nation spending more money on military defense than social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.”

The icon of civil rights grew increasingly vocal against the Vietnam War and the ravages of militarism, reminding followers in 1967 that they were “bound by allegiances and loyalties which are broader and deeper than nationalism…”

We suspect those loyalties, despite all the legitimacy his work commands today, would command Dr. King to march with us still. And should he visit San Antonio, he’d likely be hunkering down with the Free Speech Coalition and refusing, once more, to be moved. •

New study links TCE with Parkinson's

Chemical linked to Parkinson's disease
by Sarah Voss, Lexington Herald-Leader

In the late 1970s, Eddie Abney cleaned grease from metal gauges at a Berea factory using a chemical solvent called trichloroethylene, or TCE. The chemical, which is still used today as an industrial degreaser, soaked through his cotton gloves and into his skin. It splattered on his clothes. He breathed in its vapors.

At night, when he came home, he would tell his wife that the smell was killing him.

It may have been.

Researchers at the University of Kentucky have linked industrial use of TCE to Parkinson's disease, which Abney has. It was Abney, 51, who pointed researchers to a possible connection, leading to a study that was published last month in the online version of Annals of Neurology, a journal of the American Neurological Association.

The study shows a clear link between an environmental contaminant and Parkinson's, said Don Gash, the lead researcher.

TCE has been suspected before as a cause of Parkinson's, but the UK study shows a "clear-cut link" from exposure to the chemical to the disease's development, Gash said. "We've connected the dots."

The study found that three people who directly handled TCE at the factory where Abney worked developed Parkinson's disease. An additional 14, who breathed in its vapors, had early symptoms of Parkinson's, but not the disease itself. And 13 more, who were also exposed to vapors, didn't show signs of parkinsonism but had slower fine motor skills than others their age.
As part of the study, researchers gave rats TCE. All of them showed brain damage to the same cells as Parkinson's patients, damage done through the same cellular pathway, the mitochondria. Gash thinks the mitochondria might be the key to finding an effective treatment for Parkinson's.
"We're now focusing our attention on mitochondrial dysfunctions, looking at ways to intervene and promote recovery of mitochondrial functions," Gash said.
The Berea factory where Abney worked is no longer open. It was owned by Dresser Industries, which was sold to Halliburton in 1998. In 2001, Halliburton spun off parts of Dresser Industries, including the Berea factory, into Dresser Inc., a Dallas-based company.
Linda Rutherford, general counsel for Dresser Inc., declined to comment on the UK study, because she had not seen it. She noted that the Berea factory had not used TCE since 2001, when Dresser Inc., took it over.

TCE is a clear liquid, most often used to clean grease from metal. It is found in adhesives, paint removers, typewriter correction fluids and spot removers, according to the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

TCE does not occur naturally but it is a common contaminant of water, air and soil near factories, military installations and hundreds of waste sites around the country, according to the National Academy of Sciences.

When Abney was diagnosed with Parkinson's in 2001, he and his wife, Susan, wondered whether TCE could have been the cause. Sometimes Parkinson's has a genetic tie, but Eddie Abney didn't have family history of Parkinson's. Environmental factors had been linked to the disease: exposure to certain pesticides or recreational use of MTPT, known commonly as synthetic heroin.

But Abney wondered whether, in his case, it was TCE. He remembered the strong smell of the chemical he had worked with for more than two decades with little protection.
"I had gloves on, but they were just white cotton gloves," Abney said. "If they got wet, they got saturated."

A year after his diagnosis, Abney participated in a clinical drug trial for Parkinson's disease at UK. When he told a researcher his medical history, he mentioned the exposure to TCE, and the fact that others from the factory had Parkinson's. The researcher, Kathyrn Rutland, thought it sounded like a cluster of cases.

"We felt like there was enough there to really get started," said Gash, the lead researcher.
Eddie Abney stopped working in 2001. Parkinson's had made it impossible for him to do his job safely.

These days, he has trouble walking. He can move from room to room with a cane or a walker, but longer distances require a motorized wheel chair. He has trouble talking, and his words slur into one another. He can't swallow well, and his body is stiff.

Susan Abney says she and her husband are glad to know that they weren't wrong, that their hunch about TCE was right. But the knowledge doesn't soothe what has happened to her husband.

"His life is completely different because of this chemical," Susan Abney said. "Nobody told him how dangerous it was. He didn't have the tools or the gloves or the whatever to keep him from getting sick."