Monthly Archives: September 2022

Analysis

Poilievre has pushed hard for US-style Right-to-Work laws and defended the temporary foreign worker program as Stephen Harpers jobs minister

by Emily Leedham, Prairies Reporter

September 10, 2022

Newly elected Conservative leader Pierre Poilievres recent rhetoric pandering to workers contradicts his long track record of attacking unions and dividing workers, experts say.

Poilievre has spent much of his leadership campaign paying lip service to Canadian workers and claiming, without evidence, that workers support him.

The working class people are enthusiastic about my campaign, Poilievre tweeted earlier this year.

Poilievre, a career politician, has also responded to criticism that his campaign is promoting conspiracy theories by claiming he is defending the working class against elites, like politicians and bankers.

Workers have every right to demand raises for soaring food, homes & fuel prices, Poilievre tweeted on Labour Day. Lets be a country that gives its workers back control of their lives.

In Canada, workers in unionized workplaces earn more than non-unionized workers on average thanks to collective agreements that force employers to negotiate with workers for wage and benefits.

Unionized workers are also at the forefront of securing significant wage hikes amid soaring inflation. And more young Canadian workers are showing interest in the labour movement, kickstarting union drives at places like Starbucks, Indigo and Sephora.

However, Poilievre aggressively fought card-check legislation that would make it easier for workers to unionize in favour of a two-step process that gives employers more time to interfere in the union drive.

Employers across Canada spend millions on union-busting lawyers, consultants and security firms to ensure union drives are unsuccessful.

Under Stephen Harpers government, Poilievre was one of the loudest supporters of the anti-union Bill C-377, a likely unconstitutional piece of legislation that tried to force Canadian labour unions to disclose all of their internal finances while big corporations would not have been subjected to the same rules.

Poilievre is also a major proponent of bringing US Right-to-Work laws to Canada. Right-to-Work laws weaken the labour movement by making it more difficult for unions to collect membership dues which pay for the collective bargaining process. Wages and benefits are lower on average in states with Right-to-Work laws.

I am the first federal politician to make a dedicated push toward this goal, Poilievre stated in 2013 about bringing right-to-work laws to Canada.

I am going to do my part to see that happens at the federal level and I would encourage provincial governments to do likewise.

In 2012, Poilievre mounted a campaign to allow public sector workers to opt out of paying union dues, a proposal that sought took aim at the Rand Formula a rule stemming from a Supreme Court decision that allows unions to collect dues.

Poilievre represents a blend of right-wing populism, economic nationalism, and libertarianism, and his labour legacy and policies reflect this, Brock University labour studies professor Simon Black told PressProgress,

This is how he can say recognize and reward hard work by making it pay but not mention the primary vehicle by which workers have improved the terms and conditions of work, that is labour unions.

Of course he has a history of supporting anti-union, right-to-work policy, which has racist roots in the Jim Crow South. Black added.

Right-to-Work laws were first championed in the US by a 1930s Texas businessman and white supremacist Vance Muse. Vance argued that Right-to-Work laws provide white workers with a means to opt out of union membership and associating with Black workers.

Martin Luther King Jr. thus recognized right-to-work laws as a threat to the civil rights movement and good jobs in 1964.

In our glorious fight for civil rights, we must guard against being fooled by false slogans such as right to work, Martin Luther King, Jr. said. It is a law to rob us of our civil rights and job rights.

Poilievre also used xenophobic rhetoric arguing that foreign migrant workers were taking Canadian workers jobs and driving down wages.

Poilievre was Stephen Harpers Employment Minister while thousands of migrant workers had their work permits expire in 2015 which forced them to leave the country or remain as undocumented workers.

Thats why theyre called temporary foreign workers, Poilievre said about the looming deportations in 2015.

Migrant rights advocates condemned xenophobic rhetoric which pitted Canadians against migrant workers.

While in the past racist headlines read Immigrants are taking Canadian jobs, now they insist Foreign workers are taking Canadian jobs. Whats the difference? wrote Migrant Workers Alliance for Change organizer Syed Hussan in 2014.

Full immigration status for all, full rights for all workers is the only way forward. Resist attempts to divide unemployed, migrant and poor people.

With limited pathways to permanent residency and work permits tied to employers, migrant workers recently compared the temporary foreign worker program to systemic slavery.

Massive campaigns from migrant rights organizers pressured the current Liberal government to develop a regularization program that could see over half a million migrant and undocumented workers granted permanent residency.

Poilievre defended his management of the temporary foreign worker program and the deportations: Broadly speaking, we made the right decision with the program, and were going to continue.

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Read more from the original source:

Pierre Poilievre Claims He's a Friend of the 'Working Class'. He's Spent Years Attacking Canadian Workers. - PressProgress

Published

2022-09-09 11:39

11:39

September 9, 2022

am

Over Labor Day weekend, President Joe Biden addressed steelworkers at a rally in Milwaukee. He lauded American laborers, including electricians, ironworkers, letter carriers, Teamsters, laborers, brick layers transit workers, plumbers, pipefitters, steelworkers.

Not in the presidents mentions: Americas 2.2 million domestic workers, who include house cleaners, home care workers and nannies, among others. These workers, mostly women, disproportionately immigrants and women of color, have long been left out of conversations about labor and the legal protections afforded to other workers.

Domestic workers and other labor advocates are pushing to change that through a measure known as the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights Act. It would extend protections currently enjoyed by most workers in America, including against workplace sexual harassment, to domestic workers. Their exclusion from these civil rights protections stem from the countrys legacy of racism and the fact that most are in workplaces of one, working independently or through an agency.

Ten states have passed Domestic Workers Bill of Rights legislation, but there is currently no similar legislation at the federal level. The Domestic Workers Bill of Rights Act was first introduced in 2019, but it was never referred to committee. The bill was reintroduced in 2021 by Democrats Rep. Pramila Jayapal in the House. Sens. Kristen Gillibrand and Ben Ray Lujn did the same in their chamber. The House Education and Labor Committee held a hearing about the bill in July, about a year after the bill was introduced.

Ai-jen Poo, president of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, pointed out to The 19th that the American workforce today is different from a century ago. Since Labor Day was established, who we think of as working class and who workers are has really changed. At one point, our image of a working-class hero might have been as a factory worker or a mine worker. But I think in the 21st century, the Labor Day hero is a she-ro in the care sector, Poo said.

The people who do that work also have special concerns because of how their employment is structured, Poo said. Domestic workers are often the only employees in their workplaces, making organizing more difficult. She described the current labor situation for domestic workers as a free-for-all.

You might find a family to work for who respect you and treat you as a professional, give you paid sick days and vacation time. But then theres the other end of the spectrum, where theres cases of human trafficking and sexual assault and harassment. Theres no guidelines, no standards, she told The 19th. Language in the proposed measure would extend protections around issues like wages, being paid in full and on time, and harassment to all workplaces, not just workplaces with at least fifteen employees.

Thats why she and other advocates have pushed for legislative action.

The federal Domestic Workers Bill of Rights would establish fair and equal protections for the domestic workforce and account for the specific challenges workers face, Poo said.

According to Eileen Boris, a historian and professor of feminist studies at University of California Santa Barbara, this change has been a long time coming, and the lag has to do with the origins of how these workers jobs are perceived.

Care workers and other domestic workers had been excluded up until the Obama administration from the Fair Labor Standards Act, Boris said, referring to a 1938 law that she called the gold standard of labor regulation. The law was the first to set a federal minimum wage, among other protections.

The reason for this exclusion, as well as the exclusion from other labor protections, is the legacy of slavery, according to Boris.

The Fair Labor Standards Act was passed as part of the second New Deal. It had major exclusions, as did other New Deal measures. Why? Because the Democratic Party at that time was a coalition that relied on the South. White Southern legislators did not want to pay their maids the same, equal wages as other workers, Boris said.

According to Poo, that legacy has defined the conditions for domestic workers. Its always been treated as less than real work, always excluded from the basic protections that other workers take for granted.

Boris told The 19th that the legacy of slavery also feeds into sexual harassment and domestic workers fight against it. Historically, because of the lack of labor protections, women have fought back by quitting. This was, of course, not an option for enslaved women.

Enslaved women found themselves subjected to sexual coercion. And the labor takes place in the private home, so theres this idea that what happens in the home stays in the home, Boris said.

It is difficult to know how widespread sexual harassment of domestic workers is, as there is no federal recording or registry of official data. A 2021 poll from the National Domestic Workers Alliance found that a quarter of domestic workers reported feeling unsafe in their workplaces.

Right now, federal anti-harassment protections require workplaces to have a certain number of employees to be covered, Poo said. But the majority of domestic workers are in workplaces of one.

[The Domestic Workers Bill of Rights] would change the threshold, so any workplace with one employee or more would be covered by anti-harassment and anti-discrimination protection, Poo said.

That could give greater legal recourse to people like June Barrett, a proud, queer Jamaican immigrant and a domestic worker. They have worked in peoples homes for over two decades, as both a nanny and as a home care worker. They have also been personally impacted by the lack of protections available to domestic workers.

While working as a live-in home care worker for an older man, they were sexually harassed, repeatedly. On the first night working with him, the man asked Barrett to get into bed with him.

He said all of the other girls slept in the bed with him. I couldnt believe it. I told him its not professional, Barrett told The 19th.

Barrett also described multiple situations in which the man grabbed their breasts. Beyond the violation itself, Barrett was frustrated by the seeming lack of concern for their wellbeing and the wellbeing of their colleagues from employers Both agencies and families.

The family knows its happening. The agency knows its happening. They send woman after woman after woman, and nobody gives a damn. They just change out the woman, they told The 19th.

Barrett says disrespect is endemic to the profession.

Im still referred to as the girl. Im almost 60 years old. But I dont get angry or do sloppy care. I still put empathy and compassion in my work. Im a professional, Barrett said.

Barrett described national Domestic Workers Bill of Rights legislation as necessary and long overdue.

We are workers just like anybody else. We should get the same protections. Domestic workers are the fabric, the thread that weaves society together. We do real work, Barrett told The 19th.

Originally posted here:

Domestic workers, long excluded from labor protections, call for codified rights - The 19th*

In his push to embed Tennessees right to work law into the state Constitution, Gov. Bill Lee denies he and former Gov. Bill Haslam violated the Little Hatch Act with a video shot at the State Capitol.

AFL-CIO President Billy Dycus says they clearly broke the law, but hes not planning to request equal time with a big shoot at the Old Supreme Court Chamber.

Asked Thursday to explain how the video shoot is not a Little Hatch Act violation, Lee tells the Tennessee Lookout, I think its appropriate that we do that there and its important for Tennesseans to understand that issue.

But to use state property to push a campaign issue?

I think its a, its a legislative initiative. Its a constitutional issue, Lee says.

Yet Lee is chairman of the Yes On 1 drive, and, incidentally, he is running for re-election.

Tennessee Department of Human Resources policy states that the Little Hatch Act prohibits all state employees from, among several other things, using state-owned property for campaign advertising or activities.

Dycus says he thinks its a violation.

Theres no doubt it is. Theyre on state-owned property advocating for something thats political. Im not a legal expert, but I dont know how it could not be, Dycus says. Its typical. Youve got a billionaire and a millionaire, and its typical for them that they feel like theyre above the law, and they have a vested interest in seeing that this amendment passes.

Lee and Haslam have continually said how important they believe this amendment is for business, and they point toward the states solid economy as an example for why the amendment is needed.

The amendment would make it illegal for anyone to be denied employment because of union membership or refusal to join a union. But its really an anti-union measure.

The labor union president says the issue is as much about enshrining at-will employment in the Constitution as it is about the right to work law.

Dycus notes that Lee and Haslam dont talk about Tennessees poor track record for minimum wage jobs or safety violations in non-union plants vs. union plants.

It doesnt surprise me that theyre willing to do something that would violate a law when they dont have enough respect for working people to really and truly talk open and honestly about its the hard-working people of Tennessee that make this state what it is and not all their government hand-outs, Dycus adds.

Sen. Brian Kelsey, a Germantown Republican indicted for allegedly violating federal campaign finance laws, pushed the measure to the November ballot.

Kelsey, an attorney for a national law firm whose goal is to limit the effectiveness of unions, recently tweeted the Lee/Haslam video to garner

backing for the measure.

Tennessee has had a right to work law for 60 years, but Lee, Haslam and Kelsey want to kill any chance for outsiders to upend it.

Lee has no problem touting the need to insert the measure into the Constitution, all while playing nice with Ford Motor Co. as it builds Blue Oval City at the state-owned Memphis Regional Megasite and with General Motors as it produces the electric Cadillac Lyriq, which he test-drove this year. GM is a union plant, and Blue Oval is expected to be.

Dycus points out the right to work law applies only to people who work in a union shop with a collective bargaining agreement, which is less than 10% of the workforce in the state. People who arent represented by a labor union are at-will employees and can be fired for any reason, except an illegal one, or for no reason without taking on legal liability.

Those two shouldnt be confused.

While workers in organized plants dont have to join the union or pay fees, they benefit from the collective bargaining agreements and representation.

The term right to work is a great term to use if youre trying to hide behind something, but it doesnt apply to anybody unless they have a labor union, Dycus says.

Voters could consider that before they go blindly to the polls in November.

Towns lands Jack Daniels grant

State Rep. Joe Towns has the backing of a big bipartisan group in passing a constitutional amendment designed to remove all vestiges of slavery from the Tennessee Constitution.

Towns, a Memphis Democrat, also has the support of Jack Daniels, which he says is donating $50,000 to spread the word about the Vote Yes on 3 campaign as the November election arrives. Brown-Forman Corp. owns the Lynchburg whiskey maker.

Voters will see four questions on the ballot in November, and Towns initiative asks for support of a constitutional amendment to remove slavery from the Constitution.

The current Constitution says, That slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, are forever prohibited in this State.

Under Towns proposal, it would say, That slavery and involuntary servitude are forever prohibited in the State. Nothing in this section shall prohibit an inmate from working when the inmate has been duly convicted of a crime.

The second sentence was inserted to make sure the bill would pass the Republican-controlled House. Tennessee doesnt have chain gangs anymore, even though some would like to see them revived. But some lawmakers feared that inmates would sit on their collective duffs and refuse to do hard labor.

Towns hit a snag and ran out of time when he tried to pass the measure initially but got everything lined up and pushed it through the General Assembly this year when Sen. Raumesh Akbari sponsored the Senate version of the bill. Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris carried the measure when he served in the Senate.

None of this can be done without support of everybody in the communities. This is the reason we have this bipartisan reach-out to communities, Towns says.

Former U.S. Sen. Bob Corker, Comptroller Jason Mumpower, Nashville Mayor John Cooper, Ripley Mayor and former House Minority Leader Craig Fitzhugh, Shelby Mayor Harris and Knox County Mayor Glenn Jacobs are just a few of those serving on the Yes on 3 Advisory Board.

Still, Towns says he isnt as confident as hed like to be about its passage.

He will be meeting with a coalition of ministers to push the message across the state, and he hopes to hold press conferences with Corker to show the importance of removing legalized slavery from the Constitution. Towns contends it never should have been left in the Constitution, under any circumstance, when the 13th Amendment took effect because its just plain wrong to brand a person as less than human.

Towns became the first Black lawmaker to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot. But thats just a by-product of doing the right thing.

The advisory committee is encouraging voters to click the yes box for question 3 and to cast a vote in the gubernatorial election.

In order to pass, a constitutional amendment must receive more yes than no votes, and the number of yes votes must be a majority of the total votes in the gubernatorial election.

To serve time or not

State leaders expressed their shock this week at the death of Memphis resident Eliza Fletcher, who was abducted and killed while running near the University of Memphis.

But the horrible incident elicited quite different statements from Gov. Lee and Lt. Gov. Randy McNally.

Said McNally, who sponsored a truth-in-sentencing bill that Lee allowed to become law without his signature, The monster that committed this crime was not unknown to the criminal justice system. He had done this type of thing before and now he has done it again and worse. It is simply disgraceful that this individual did not serve his full sentence for his previous crime. If he had, Eliza Fletcher would be alive today.

McNally says the case proves that the truth-in-sentencing act was necessary and long overdue.

In contrast, Lee said on Twitter, Maria & I are heartbroken by the tragic death of Eliza Fletcher, a dedicated teacher, wife & mother of two. We lift

the Fletcher family up in prayer during this time of unspeakable grief. I thank law enforcement for their tireless efforts & trust justice will be swift & severe.

Cleotha Abston Henderson is charged with first-degree murder, premeditated murder and first-degree perpetration of kidnapping.

He served 20 years of a 24-year sentence after pleading guilty to abducting a Memphis attorney in 2000.

Four other people also were killed this week in Memphis as part of random attacks. Police arrested 19-year-old Ezekiel Kelly, who served only 11 months of a three-year sentence for aggravated assault, according to reports. He was released in March.

Lee said Thursday he feels the community of Memphis has seen evil as innocent lives were lost to senseless murders.

Those who committed these crimes, these heinous crimes, will be brought to justice and it should be swift and severe, he says.

Lee commended law enforcement for their work on the spate of murders.

Memphis is the soul of the state, and its hurting right now, but we are committed. We are with that community, and we are committed to making certain that we address the issue of crime, he said.

He touted $100 million in state spending for a violent crime intervention grant fund, funding for 100 new state troopers, including 20 for Memphis, and a new law enforcement training center.

But the governor butted heads with McNally and House Speaker Cameron Sexton this year on their truth-in-sentencing, and even after these murders, he refused to bend to their way of thinking. Last spring, they had to fashion a compromise to require those who commit the most violent crimes to serve 100% of their sentences.

Lee continued tiptoeing Thursday around questions about his stance against the truth-in-sentencing bill. The governor only said the state needs to cut crime and stop ex-cons from going back to prison.

We need to be clearly tough on crime. We cannot be soft on crime, he says.

Lee pointed out his criminal justice reform legislation that passed two years ago required supervision for those released from prison. He said that didnt happen with the man charged with killing Eliza Fletcher.

The governors public statements drew scorn this week from Fox News personality Tucker Carlson, who noted Lee ran on a platform of criminal justice reform: That means letting violent criminals out early, Carlson said. It would be interesting to read a list of all the people who were let out early thanks to Bill Lee and guilty liberals like him and have them tell us which ones dont deserve to be in prison.

Rearranging welfare

The Tennessee Department of Human Services announced plans Thursday to allot $25 million each to seven entities in an effort to reshape the way the state deals with recipients of welfare money or Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.

Those on welfare wont get more cash under this program, but the seven groups will be focusing on education, training, child care and better parenting. Essentially, it comes down to helping people figure out how to make more money so they wont need federal welfare.

The groups receiving the grants are Families Matter and University of Memphis in West Tennessee, Family & Childrens Services, Martha OBryan Center and Upper Cumberland Human Resource Agency in Middle Tennessee and First Tennessee Development District Foundation and United Way of Greater Knoxville in East Tennessee.

There are fundamental flaws in the social services safety net that have for too long counted the administration of services as a measure of success, said Human Services Commissioner Clarence Carter. The pilot projects that we celebrate today could demonstrate viable solutions and promising practices that address the flaws and better position those we collectively serve to thrive rather than survive.

The three-year pilot project is part of the states effort to pare down more than $741 million in reserves the Department of Human Services was sitting on two years ago when it was publicly humiliated for not spending federal money on people.

Even after this pilot, though, the departments reserve will remain flush with cash because the federal government sends more every year. A family of three receives about $200 a month, hardly enough to join Belle Meade Country Club. Maybe a little boost while theyre trying to work their way into Tennessees high-paying jobs would help.

Delay and deny

U.S. District Court Judge Eli Richardson approved a request by Cade Cothrens attorney for a weeklong extension of the deadline to seek a more detailed account of the indictment against him. The Tennessee Journal first reported the request.

Former House Speaker Glen Casada and Cothren, his ex-chief of staff, are accused of bribery, fraud and a host of charges as part of a phony campaign vendor scheme to enrich themselves. Cothren used Casada and former Rep. Robin Smith to steer House members taxpayer-funded constituent mailer work to him in return for kickbacks, according to the indictments.

They had to keep the thing secret because Casada got booted from the speakership, mainly because of the dealings of Cothren, whom he fired in 2019 amid a racist and sexist text message scandal.

Trial is set for Oct. 25, which would make for must-see TV during the lull before the November election and legislative session. But does anyone really believe it will take place that soon?

Cothren is already saying the truth will come out. And now his attorney is asking for the first postponement, albeit a short one. Deny and delay, deny and delay.

The waiting is the hardest part.

See the rest here:

Stockard on the Stump: Governor declares he didn't violate the Little Hatch Act Tennessee Lookout - Tennessee Lookout

To me, these recent union wins recall another pivotal period in the U.S. labor movement several decades ago. But that one was led by migrants from Central America.

Ive been researching human rights and immigration from Central America since the 1980s. In todays polarized debates over immigration, the substantial contributions that Central American immigrants have made to U.S. society over the past 30 years rarely come up. One contribution in particular is how Guatemalan and Salvadoran immigrants helped expand the U.S. labor movement in the 1980s, organizing far-reaching workers rights campaigns in immigrant-dominated industries that mainstream unions had thought to be untouchable.

More than 1 million Salvadorans and Guatemalans came to the United States from 1981 to 1990, fleeing army massacres, political persecution, and civil war.

Since the 1980s, I have researched, taught, and written about this wave of migrants. Back then, President Ronald Reagan warned apocryphally that Central America was a threat to the United States, telling Congress in 1983 that El Salvador is nearer to Texas than Texas is to Massachusetts.

Just 2% of Salvadorans and Guatemalans who applied received asylum in the 1980sso few that a 1990 class-action lawsuit alleging discrimination compelled the U.S. government to reopen tens of thousands of cases. In recent years, about 10% to 25% of their asylum petitions were granted.

Then, as now, many undocumented immigrants in the U.S. worked in agriculture or service industries, often under exploitative conditions. Unionization barely touched these sectors in the 1980s.

More broadly, the bargaining power of labor unions was suffering under Reagan, whose presidency started with his firing of 11,000 striking air traffic controllers. Downsizing and outsourcing at American companies in the 1980s also eroded union membership and pushed wages down.

Many Guatemalans and Salvadorans were veteran community organizers. They had faced down government terror to participate in unions, peasant leagues, Catholic social justice campaigns, or Indigenous rights initiativesall currents in 1980s revolutionary Central America.

Drawing on these experiences, many Central American immigrants began to organize in their U.S. workplaces, demanding higher wages and safer conditions.

Salvadoran immigrants in California were pivotal in Justice for Janitors, a pioneering low-paid workers movement that inspired todays $15 minimum wage campaign.

Justice for Janitors began in Los Angeles in 1990. It aimed to reverse the wage drops that janitors suffered over the previous decade.

Rather than do battle with the small subcontractors that hired cleaning crews for big office buildings, Justice for Janitors targeted the corporations that owned those buildings. Led by experienced Salvadoran unionistssome of whom had fled death squad violence back homethe movement used nonviolent civil disobedience and strikes to expose exploitative labor practices.

Speaking out could be dangerous. Police once clubbed participants at a peaceful march through Los Angeless Century City neighborhood on June 15, 1990. Undocumented workers feared deportation.

But it worked. Janitors in Los Angeles won a 22% raise after their 1990 citywide strike, showing mainstream labor unions that even the citys most marginalized workersundocumented Central Americans, many of them womenhad real organizing power.

Over the next decade, some 100,000 janitors nationwide joined the campaign under the banner of the Service Employees Industrial Union. The movement negotiated contracts that increased wages and health benefits for janitors across the U.S.

Hundreds of thousands of people fled Guatemala during the early 1980s, escaping a genocidal army campaign against Indigenous communities that left entire regions of its highlands charred and empty.

Roughly 20,000 of these Guatemalan refugees, many of whom spoke Mayan languages, landed in Florida in 1982, finding work in sweltering tomato farms and citrus groves.

Up to 90% of the fresh tomatoes in U.S. supermarkets come from Florida.

Working conditions in the states tomato fields were dismal in the 1980s. Migrants earned just 40 cents per 32-pound bucket of tomatoes picked. Some were forced by armed guards to work against their will, as a 1997 court case about the use of slave labor in Floridas tomato fields exposed.

In 1993, Guatemalan immigrants joined with Floridas Haitian and Mexican farmworkers to form the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, a community worker alliance that began in the basement of a local church in Immokalee, Florida. It used strategies common to Latin American protest movements, including street theater and socially conscious radio broadcasts, to unite Floridas agricultural workers.

After five years of work stoppages, hunger strikes, and marches, Floridas tomato pickers won wage increases of up to 25%. A multiyear nationwide boycott of Taco Bell convinced the fast-food chain in 2005 to increase the earnings of the farmworkers who supply its ingredients. Other fast-food giants followed suit.

In 2015, the Immokalee coalition launched the Fair Food Program, an industrywide agreement with Florida tomato growers to promote strict health and safety standards and allow outside monitors to oversee working conditions. That same year, President Barack Obama gave the Coalition of Immokalee Workers the Presidential Award for Extraordinary Efforts in Combating Modern Day Slavery.

As Guatemalan migrants spread across the South during the late 1980s, recruited by labor contractors in other states, they soon became a powerful organizing force in North Carolina, too.

Case Farms, a poultry company that supplies KFC, Taco Bell, Boars Head, and the federal school lunch program, was a notoriously dangerous place to work. Safety regulations were routinely ignored to increase output, and workers suffered serious injuriesincluding losing limbs to cutting machines.

In 1990, the Guatemalan immigrants at Case Farmss plant in Morganton, North Carolina, organized a union drive.

As labor historian Leon Fink describes in his book The Maya of Morganton: Work and Community in the Nuevo New South, Guatemalan poultry workers drew on prior organizing experiences back homeincluding coffee plantation strikes and Mayan pride movementsto organize workers.

After five years of walkouts, marches, and hunger strikes, the Case Farm workers voted in 1995 to join the Laborers International Union of North America. The company refused to negotiate, however, and the union pulled out of contract talks after six years.

In 2017, Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio challenged Case Farms to explain its alleged violations of U.S. law, after a New York Times and ProPublica investigation exposed ongoing abusive labor practices there.

These unionization stories show Central American migrants in a new lightnot as criminals or victims, but as people who have helped make the U.S. a safer place for workers.

This is an updated version of an article originally published on January 18, 2019.

See the article here:

How Central American immigrants played a vital role in the U.S. labor - Fast Company

Members of the Communist Party USA and Young Communist League proceed along Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington during the Poor People's Campaign's Moral March, June 18, 2022. | Jose Luis Magana / AP

The call for unity resonates across a wide swath of todays democratic and social movements. Attend any demonstration and youre likely to hear marchers rhythmically shouting in Spanish and English, El pueblo unido jams ser vencido (The people united will never be defeated), a chant born and made famous around the world by Salvador Allendes fight for popular unity in Chile.

In the U.S. today, the country faces a growing fascist menace not unlike what the Chilean people faced during the Pinochet dictatorship. The challenge is to go beyond slogans and find a strategy that will build the unity needed: That strategy is creating, from the ground up, a broad anti-fascist alliance. Fortunately, theres a lot to build on.

Indeed, unity concepts and slogans abound in U.S. history and culture. One of its first expressions came from Abraham Lincoln, who, in an 1858 convention speech on the eve of the Civil War, warned that slavery threatened to tear the nation asunder. A house divided against itself cannot stand, the then GOP candidate for the U.S. Senate famously declared, arguing that the country could not survive, half slave and half free.

An injury to one is an injury to all is another popular slogan that came straight out of the labor movement at the dawn of the last century. The IWWs Big Bill Haywood attributed the saying to David C. Coates, a socialist labor leader and former lieutenant governor of Colorado.

A few decades later, Black and white, unite and fight was the clarion call of communist organizers in the CIO as they led the fight to organize workers in the steel, auto, and electric industries in the 1930s. Today, Black, brown, Asian, and white, unite and fight more accurately reflects the increasingly diverse composition of the U.S. working class.

Fighting for unity, while not always successful, is a veritable way of life for U.S. communists, and many of the Communist Partys strategic concepts revolve around it. Left-center unity, that is, the imperative of developing strong ties between left and moderate forces in the trade union movement, has long been a mainstay of CPUSAs labor policy and remains so today.

An all-peoples unity strategy (which basically means unity of the entire people) was advanced by the leadership team of Gus Hall and Henry Winston in the 1980s, after the Republican National Committee (RNC), at the behest of the Chamber of Commerce and the big banks, shifted far to the right.

In light of the countrys deepening political crisis, this strategy retains all of its potential force. In fact, Trumps threat to run for a second term makes it even more relevant. All-peoples unity is the current application of what the communist movement once called the popular front strategy, that is, the creation of a broad coalition of the American people to oppose the MAGA movement and the threat of a fascist dictatorship.

In its day-to-day work, particularly at the local level, the CPUSA strives to put a working-class stamp on this front by centering its election activity where possible with trade unions, community groups, and other movements who operate independent of official Democratic Party campaigns. Taking initiative on the key issues is vital, including fighting for the passage of abortion rights, the PRO Act, voting rights, climate change, and other legislation.

Of course, its one thing to call for unity and quite another to achieve it. Alliance-building can be halting and, at times, even tortuous. Differing agendas, egos, and experiences can impact the ability to forge viable coalitions. The multi-racial, multi-gendered, and cross-generational diversity of the U.S. working class often requires taking special measures to respond to the challenges faced by different sections of the class.

Building unity between the trade union movement and the young generation (what the CP terms labor/youth unity) illustrates this need. For example, during the auto workers strike in 2019, the industrys two-tier wage systemwhere new young hires are paid substantially less than older workerswas a major sticking point. And while progress was made to reduce the wage differential during negotiations,it was not done away with.

The recentUAW conventionpledged to take up the issue in a major way in future contract talks. One resolution, according to Peoples World, instructed the unions executive board to reject management proposals which seek to divide the membership through tiered wages, benefits, or post-employment income and benefits. Thus, unity between older and younger workers required confronting the companys tactic of dividing by pay scale. In other words, a united front on the picket line meant the union had to address younger workers special demands for equal paya refusal to do so could have meant the defeat of the strike.

Another key issue is fully appreciating the nature and strength of ones class opponents. Speaking to this challenge, Henry Winston, the partys late national chairman, once placed the issue this way when addressing building labor-community coalitions in response to the collapse of the steel industry: Why is such unity necessary? he asked. Because victory in the battle against monopoly is impossible without itthe ruling class in this country is too strong. The working class, the CP chairman argued, cannot win this fight alone.

In a similar vein, African American, Latino, womens, and LGBTQ movements can ill afford go-it-alone approaches. And while Winston stressed that confronting the most powerful ruling class in history required focusing on common demands, he also hastened to place in the foreground special compensatory measures like affirmative action as necessary for binding alliances with those experiencing historic discrimination, a point that some continue to dismiss as concessions to identity politics.

The working class learned the lesson of building unity of action the hard way. Strikes were lost, campaigns for elected office defeated, attempts at social revolution vanquished at almost incalculable costs. Recall that the Paris Commune was drowned in the blood of 35,000 communards after 30 days of wielding power.

Set back after these terrible events, but undaunted, burgeoning movements had to consider things afresh, discard strategies that proved infeasible, tinker with others that showed greater promise, and adopt whole new methods as conditions changed. As the bourgeois democratic revolutions against monarchies gained momentum in the 19th century in countries like Germany, France, and England, narrow approaches had to be rejected. New avenues for struggle had to be sought based on the institutions that emerged as people began to organize themselves according to faith, occupation, and interest.

The notion, for example, that small, highly committed groups could successfully contend for political power was frontally challenged by Frederick Engels: The time is past forrevolutions carried through by small minoritiesat the head of unconscious masses, he wrote in his 1895 introduction to Marxs Civil War in France. Engels continued, When it gets to be a matter of the complete transformation of the social organization, the masses themselves must participate, must understand what is at stake and why they are to act.

Reformto what end?

The struggle for democracy in combination with the class struggle began to take center stage. Socialist parties now had to take into account building alliances as the franchise became a major factor in the exercise of political power. In several countries, Marxist parties were able to build mass electoral coalitions and win office.

Had new, peaceful paths to power been discovered? At first blush it appeared so, and even Engels, the veteran of many a class battle, seemed quite taken with the social democratic movements late 19th-century electoral successes. Still, the old revolutionary took pains to point out that these victories in no way meant renouncing the goal of revolution. Engels warned: Of course, our comrades abroad have not abandoned the right to revolution. The right to revolution is, in the last analysis, the only real historic right upon which all modern states rest without exception.

Some, however, appeared not to have listened to Marxs old friends advice. Even Marxs sage instruction whencritiquingthe Germany Social Democratic Partys Gotha Program was ignored. Marx had urged comrades to enter into compromises necessary to achieve practical aims but to never make theoretical concessions.

Instead, theoretical concessions were made by those adopting Eduard Bernsteins the movement is everything, the goal, nothing update of Marx. Under Bernsteins advocacy, reforms became the be-all and end-all of everything: Reforms would gradually evolve themselves into socialism. The goal of working-class power was lost.

What went wrong? Varying explanations have been offered: the buying-off a section of the trade union leadership and the emergence of a labor aristocracy, an undue domination of the labor movement by middle-class elements; the offering of a psychological wage to white workers to promote a feeling of racial superiority (an explanation posited by W. E. B. Du Bois inBlack Reconstruction).

Or could the problem lie in another direction, perhaps in the coalition strategy itself? Its a matter of historical record that radical reforms advocated by the socialist parties got watered down as their electoral successes increased. The closer some came to power, the greater was the temptation to concede this or that plank of their program in order to win sections of the vote.

At the turn of the 20th century, echoes of these debates entered the Russian Social Democratic movement, albeit in quite different circumstances. Russia remained largely trapped in feudal-like conditions and was still ruled by a hereditary monarchy. The socialist movement had to find a path to defeat the czar and also design tactics that would address the growing capitalist class in a huge country with an extremely diverse population and a political culture steeped in backwardness. Who could the workers unite with? Whither lay the promised land, and with whom could the oppressed masses get there?

In these circumstances, a fierce argument broke out. All the Marxists agreed the country needed to pass through capitalismat least in some formbut there were sharp differences about what that entailed. A revolution was required to get rid of czarismon this there was consensus. What kind of alliances were needed and which class forces would lead them was another matter entirely. A section of the party favored confining the coalition to the working class and peasants alone. Others supported including capitalists in the mix. The former group were called Mensheviks. They opposed allying with Russias nascent merchants and industrialists for fear of being dissolved in a growing sea of bourgeois democracy.

The Bolsheviks, led by Lenin, conversely, favored including the capitalists. The issue in the Bolshevik leaders view wasnt whether to support a cross-class alliancethe challenge was how to do it. In Lenins view, the point was to fight for working-class leadership of this alliance, to place a proletarian stamp on the democratic revolution. Doing so would preserve the working classs independent role and reduce the risk of its objectives being subsumed. How? By fighting for consistent democracy, in other words, by carrying to completion the democratic fight for voting, representative government (a constituent assembly), land reform, the eight-hour day, and a government capable of inflicting a decisive defeat of reaction. In this manner, Lenin argued, the working class would stand the best chance of positioning itself within the emerging capitalist order.

The united front

These arguments are pointedly made in LeninsTwo Tactics, where, in embryonic form, and yet unnamed, what became known as the united front concept is first introduced. They guided Bolshevik domestic policy through 1917.

The united front tactic was formally adopted by the world movement at the 4th Congress of the Communist International in 1922. What is the united front? Simply put, it is a politically diverse coalition of working people who come together to address a specific set of issues. Ideological differences, for the moment, are set aside in pursuit of common goals.

What goals? In the first place, to resolve the bread-and-butter issues confronting the working class at any given point in time. In a 1922 speech, Grigory Zinoviev, one of the leaders of the Comintern, put it this way: We are in such a phase of the struggle of the world proletariat that we should unite in the struggle for the eight-hour day, aid for the unemployed, and in the fight against the offensive of capital.

The adoption of the united front was a major part of Lenins polemic against left-wing communism, the knee-jerk responses of the newly-formed parties that had split from the Second International, many of whom rejected electoral work, shunned compromises, and, heady with the success of the October Revolution, believed themselves to be on the verge of world revolution. Under the influence of strategies like Bla Kuns theory of offensive and Leon Trotskys permanent revolution, failed attempts at state power occurred in Hungary, Germany, and other countries with disastrous results.

Lenin, on the other hand, well understood that, after the initial success of October 1917, the revolutionary moment had passed and with it the chance for a European continent-wide social revolution. A protracted era of class and democratic battles instead were at hand, requiring long and patient preparatory work. In these circumstances, he offered the parties of the Third International a three-fold plan: Adopt the united front strategy and tailor it to fit each country; win over the majority of the working class in the process; and build mass communist parties, all necessary if the socialist revolution would have any real chance for success.

After the Soviet leaders untimely death, however, and in the face of stiff resistance from potential social democratic allies (the main objects of the united front efforts), the Comintern moved sharply in the opposite direction as the movements stubborn affair with leftism returned with a vengeance. Confronted with attacks on communist insurgents by social democratic governments, the parties of the Second International were labeled social fascists, and, with this branding, hopes for a united working-class front ended as fascist regimes won power first in Italy, then Germany and other countries.

The popular front

It was in these circumstances that the 7th World Congress of the Communist International took place in 1935. The meetings main report was delivered by Georgi Dimitrov, a Bulgarian communist who, a few years earlier, had been accused of setting fire to the German Parliament, a Nazi provocation designed as an excuse for seizing power. In his famous United Front against Fascism speech, Dimitrov reversed course and re-embraced Lenins united front strategy.

Describing fascism as the open terroristic dictatorship of the most reactionary sections of finance capital, Dimitrov offered an olive branch to the Third Internationals erstwhile Social Democratic allies: Communists, he said, place no conditions for unity of action except one . . . that the unity of action be directed against fascism, against the offensive of capital, against the threat of war, against the class enemy. This is our condition.

Precisely what would this unity consist of? The defense of the immediate economic and political interests of the working class, argued the general-secretary of the Comintern. Dimitrov suggested a threefold approach: fighting to shift the burden of the crisis onto the rich, resisting all attempts to restrict democratic rights, and combating the war danger.

It is important to point out here that the offer for united action was largely, but not exclusively, aimed at the social democratic parties and trade unions in Europe, as they represented working-class majorities in several countries. The absence of a large social democratic movement in the United States, however, required an adaptation of the tactic to fit American conditions. The U.S. working class was and remains ideologically diverse, harbored in unions, churches, synagogues, and campuses along with various associations and groups, to say nothing of the two main capitalist political parties. What was required on U.S. soil was not a united front of the left but a coalition of the class as a whole. This remains true today.

A brilliant application of this strategy to U.S. conditions in the 1930s was theAmerican Youth Congress (AYC).Initiated by the Young Communist League and its principal organizers, Henry Winston and Gil Green, the AYC included the YWCA, the YMCA, the National Students Union, along with scores of other union, religious, community, civil rights, and youth groups. It met yearly and at its height boasted over 500 organizations. The AYC promoted a youth bill of rights and succeeded in presenting legislation calling for its enactment in Congress. Eleanor Roosevelt lent it important support.

With the creation of the AYC, the Communist Party recognized the need for an even broader response as the fascist threat grew in the U.S. The working class needed allies, a militant multi-class coalition of youth, a popular front of the young generation as a whole that could be mobilized in the righteous battles of the times.

And righteous battles they were. Coming out of the Great Depression, the Communist Party and YCL plunged headfirst into organizing the mass production industries, the fight to save the lives of the Scottsboro defendants, and the effort to break the back of segregation. These were the circumstances out of which Lenins idea of a working class-led, cross-class coalition, though born of different conditions, in a faraway land, took root and blossomed. Indeed, the popular front proved more than a notion: It had been given life and organizational form, and it became a material force helping set the course of the entire nation.

Dimitrovs report described the popular front this way:

The formation of awide anti-fascist Peoples Front . . . is closely bound up with the establishment of a fighting alliance between the proletariat, on the one hand, and the laboring peasantry and basic mass of the urban petty bourgeoisie who together form the majority of the population even in industrially developed countries.

With World War II engulfing much of the planet and the USSR bearing the brunt of the battle, this grand coalition grew to include not only sections of the capitalist class but also entire countriesin fact, whole groups of countries, as the Allies engaged the Axis powers in this gigantic civilizational battle.

Were there grave dangers of getting dissolved in the sea of bourgeois democracy associated with this enterprise? Of course there were: The dissolution of the Communist Party and YCL as World War II drew to a close is a case in point. What began as novel approaches to united front mass work initiated under Earl Browder grew one-sided and detached, drifting far to the right.

Under Browders influence, the anti-fascist wartime emphasis on national interests tended to replace class interests. Class cooperation, in order to defeat fascism, always a slippery slope, morphed into class collaboration. Illusions began to set in, one of the consequences of which was that the domestic expression of Browders dream of a new era of post-war cooperation saw no need for a party of militant class struggle. The CPUSA was dissolved, and an association working within the Democratic Party was created in its stead. The YCL was replaced by an advocacy group and renamed the American Youth for Democracy. Tragically, Browders daydream of class peace fell victim to the American nightmare of McCarthyism after Winston Churchills Iron Curtain speech in Fulton, Missouri, in 1946. Censorship, jail, mass firings, and war bothhot and coldwere the high price paid.

With the end of the war, the emergence of a socialist community of nations, and the defeat of colonial rule in Africa and Asia, the need for a peoples front internationally began to fade. Events back home, however, were another story. McCarthyism was unleashed in full force. Smith Act and McCarran Actdriven prosecutions intensified, aided by the Truman administration and GOP majorities in Congress. Backed against a wall and incorrectly seeing fascism on the immediate horizon, the CP leadership fled underground, increasing its isolation from domestic currents and limiting its ability to fight back.

In time, the Cold War began to thaw, at least domestically after the growth of the Civil Rights and free speech movements in the late 1950s. Upon the release of its leadership from prison, party activity resumed. By then, an updated strategic and tactical framework was required as Communist activists undertook the long and difficult task of rebuilding relations in workplaces, communities, and campuses. The policy of left-center unity by means of building of rank-and-file caucuses helped free the labor movement from the grip of pro-employer, business union leaders who embraced anti-working-class policies that were pro-war, anti-affirmative action, anti-immigrant, and anti-international solidarity.

Importantly, the Party also resumed fielding candidates for local, state, and national office, in an effort to increase visibility and influence the national debate. United front work began in earnest as the Civil Rights revolution unfolded, along with the movement to end the Vietnam War. Solidarity with African liberation, particularly South Africa, became a major site of struggle.

The all-peoples front

In the mid-1980s, a major rightward swing by big business took place. The decades-long impact of Richard Nixons Southern Strategy, the Iran/Contra scandal during Ronald Reagans tenure, and the RNCs Moral Majority venture combined to produce a new and dangerous quality, a whiff of fascism, as Gus Hall termed it. At stake was how to tactically adjust, and the question sparked a major debate in the CPUSA leadership.

Vic Perlo, then the partys leading economist, had been warning of these trends in National Board discussions. Over time, Hall not only became convinced but alarmed and argued that the right danger had become so grave it was necessary to elect all Democrats and defeat all Republicans.

A shift in gears was proposed: The party would temporarily suspend fielding candidates for office. Thus began the conversation that would later lead to the CPs call for the creation of an all-peoples front.

Hall was nearly alone in the ensuing debate that ranged from mild questioning, to hemming and hawing, to outright opposition. After a long discussion, the proposal was tabled. In his summary of the first NB debate, the longtime chairman complained, You comrades dont realize what youre up against because youve never been hit. His proposal, however, won the day at a subsequent meeting.

Hall, of course, was himself no stranger to the need for unity. In the days followingNixons resignation, he had called for peoples unity to turn the country around. Nixons leaving office could result in a new beginning if it results in a new unitya unity of all democratic forces, a unity of all working-class forces, a unity of the racially oppressed, a unity of peace forces, and a unity of the younger generation.

That united new beginning, however, has been long in coming. Soon after the aforementioned debate, the CP National Committee adopted an all-peoples front strategy, a policy that, notwithstanding problems of implementation, has stood it in good stead. The election of an extreme right GOP majority in the 1994 midterm elections, led by Newt Gingrich, followed by the two Bush presidencies, the emergence of the Tea Party, and now the growth of a fascist mass movement led by Donald Trump, underscored the partys farsightedness.

During these years, the CP declined to field presidential candidates, but continued to run for office in much reduced numbers at the local and state level. More recently, the party, while retaining its all-peoples front policy, has pledged to encourage communist candidacies and run for office where possible.

Present in all the developments is an ongoing tension between maintaining Marxisms basic principles and applying them in ever changing conditions. How do you decide between whats a primary question around which there can be no compromise and whats secondary one open to negotiation?

Admittedly, its no easy question, as time and again theoretical foundation stones get traded away for seeming advantage. To gain votes, 19th-century socialists gave up key planks in their program. A few decades later, again currying favor, many of the same parties voted to support their governments war efforts. World War II found the CPUSAs leadership so taken with the task of building anti-fascist national unity that they traded away class independence for it.

This problem arises again and again: in Eurocommunism, in Gorbachevs perestroika reforms, and post-Cold War, in the CPs efforts to break out of narrow strictures and find relevance amidst calls to rethink its communist outlook, change its name, and even dissolve the organization.

But these pressures are unavoidable. Indeed, they are part of the living fabric of Marxism itself, a doctrine whose views are continually tested, changed, and retested. Clearly, care has to be taken in the course of these social tests that the very door that opens to new insights does not lead to the window through which basic principles are lost.

Concepts like the united front and the all-peoples front remain a living, breathing force in American politics. They have repeatedly come together in real life in the wake of Trumps election: in the womens marches, in the anti-police murder uprisings, in the sojourns from the uprisings to ballot boxes. The concept is not static: The all-peoples front is not an event, a meeting, a conference, but rather a series of meetings, events, conferences, demonstrations, marches, and occupations, over an entire period. It is the living, breathing mass movement of the people.

Drawing the lessons of its history and creatively applying them with flexibility while avoiding conceding working-class principles is key.

United and popular front forms will vary according to time, place, and circumstance: a housing coalition in one city, an alliance to prevent plant closings in another, a movement for reproductive rights in a third, an anti-war coalition to end the Russian invasion of Ukraine in a fourth. The Communist Party should never be afraid to participate in, enter, or initiate coalitions. Indeed, it should be afraid not to. What it should really fear, however, is failing to stress the necessity of working-class leadership of these coalitions.

As Gus Hall used to say: Keep your eyes on the working class. Youll make mistakes, sure, but you wont make the big ones.

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The unity imperative: Lessons for building the anti-fascist alliance - People's World

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Its a sunny Wednesday afternoon at FrontLine Farmings Majestic View Farm in Arvada, and the weekly team lunch is winding down. Staff members, farmers, and apprentices sit quietly in the shade, listening to a presentation on chokecherries, a native Colorado fruit that grows wild nearby. The presenter, Gabriela Galindo, passes around a branch of dark purple berries and describes how Indigenous communities processed the tannic fruits into nutritious, long-lasting foods like pemmican, a mix of dried berries, meat, and fat.

Galindo, who identifies as Indigenous, is a member of this years FrontLine Farmings BIPOC Apprenticeship Program, a six-month, hands-on course for Black, Indigenous, and POC students to learn about farming, sustainable growing practices, food systems, and food sovereignty. The Wednesday presentations are a chance for team membersapprentices, farmers, and staffto take turns diving deeply into topics that interest them and share what they learn with the rest of the team. Galindo, who has a degree in human nutrition from MSU Denver, had seen chokecherries used in Indigenous ceremonies, so the fruits nutritional and spiritual importance interested her.

For Galindo, 33, the program has been an important step in deepening her understanding of nutrition and health, reconnecting with her familys agricultural roots in Mexico, and sharing what shes learned with her neighbors and the Native communities she is a part of, which include people who identify as Lakota, Din, Mexica, Apache and more. Ive been sharing a lot about what weve been learning about water rights and equity and soil health, she says. But this knowledge isnt mine. This is ancestral knowledge; this is all of our knowledge.

Sharing knowledge and skills through this apprenticeship program is one way FrontLine Farminga nonprofit farm led by women and people of coloris implementing its strategy for building a more equitable Front Range food system. At the center of its strategy is the acknowledgement of our food systems troubled treatment of people of color, both past and present, but also an understanding that building a relationship with plants, soil, and farming can be a source of healing for the generational trauma experienced by BIPOC community members.

FrontLine Farmings approach has three focus areas: food security, food justice, and food sovereignty. Food security, or ensuring all people have access to nutritious, culturally appropriate food, has been a highly visible need throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, but addressing this important priority through efforts like donating produce and rescuing food is only the beginning, says JaSon Auguste, one of FrontLine Farmings three co-founders and director of marketing, media, and technology. We know serving that immediate need isnt going to fix all the problems within the food system, he says.

To address those bigger needs, the organizations food justice work includes public mobilization, advocacy, and testimony in support of policy that corrects historical injustices in the food system, such as Colorados SB21-087, the Agricultural Workers Rights bill. Signed by Governor Polis last year, the bill secures labor rights for farm workers, such as the right to the state minimum wage and overtime pay, protections from overwork, injury, heat stress, and more.

But it is the call for food sovereignty that thrums like a heartbeat beneath FrontLine Farmings work. It is one of the reasons why the organization was founded in the first place. Alongside the desire to provide food for people who need it and better the working conditions for farmworkers, Auguste and the organizations other co-founders, Fatuma Emmad and Damien Thompson, had a straightforward goal: We wanted to be able to grow food and do it under our own autonomy, Auguste says.

In the four years since it began, Frontline Farming has been able to do so on five acres of leased land in three locations in and around Denver: Majestic View Farm in Arvada, Sister Gardens in North Denver, and Celebration Garden in South Denver. Now the organization is ready to set down more permanent roots through its Liberation by Land campaign, a fundraiser with the goal of purchasing a 10- to 30-acre plot of land within 20 miles of Denver, which will be used by FrontLine Farming, but also open to collective use by local BIPOC community members.

This goal acknowledges the often painful history of land ownership and loss for communities of color in the United States, particularly Black and Indigenous communities. After decades of discriminatory treatment by creditors and the USDA, legal exploitation of heir-inherited property ownership, and even outright violence and theft, in 2017 Black farmers owned just 0.5 percent of the countrys farmland, or 4.7 million acres, down from a peak of 16 million acres in 1910.

That history, as well as the legacy of slavery, the forced migration and dispossession of Indigenous tribes from their ancestral lands, and the grueling and undervalued farm work currently done by mostly people of color, can create a feeling of disconnection from the land and farming for some BIPOC individuals. Theres so much trauma and pain around the land for a lot of people, Auguste says. But when the land calls you back to heal, it lifts you up. It kind of centers you, and it provides that healing. So many people come back to the land.

For current farm apprentice Moses Smith, coming back to the land was a choice that has changed his life. Despite a successful career as a software quality assurance engineer, he was in a period of transition when he applied for the BIPOC Farm Apprenticeship Program on a whim. While he had no personal history with agriculture, his maternal grandfather had a farm in Los Angeles, and his mother had memories of the vegetables they grew. But like many Black-owned farms, the land was lost, parceled into shrinking pieces, and eventually sold to sustain the familys survival. And then basically the family just disintegrated, and everyone went in their own direction, Smith says. Everything just turned to dust.

Smith says his life felt like a similarly barren landscape after decades spent dedicated to a career that was financially stable but personally unfulfillinga realization he came to after beginning the apprenticeship. Spending so much time caring for plants, weeding them, and watching them flourish, he thought about how his own life had been taken over by the weeds of other peoples priorities and a feeling of disconnection from himself and others. Working the land has reconnected him to life. Its like someone has just pulled all of the weeds off of me, and Im standing here exposed to sunlight for the first time, Smith says. And I credit this program with giving me the opportunity to spend enough time baking in the sun, caring about these plants, to realize what a plant I am.

FrontLine Farming hosts weekly volunteer hours and monthly community World Heritage Potluck Dinners during their growing season, as well as a variety of educational workshops throughout the year. All are welcome. Check out their Events page for details and to register.

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How FrontLine Farming Is Using Land to Grow Food and Heal Generational Trauma - 5280 | The Denver Magazine

Queen Elizabeth II

Queen Elizabeth II died Thursday after a 70 year reign as the monarch of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. She was 96. She succeeded her father, George VI at the age of 25. Her son, Charles is now King Charles III. Unlike his mother, who became queen at a very young age, Charles is 73.

It is unlikely that Charles III will make the top-ten list, or that any king or queen will ever reign as long as Elizabeth II at least any time soon. Prince William is already 40 years old (born 1 year and 1 day after me, in fact).

Here is a list of the United Kingdoms longest-reigning monarchs, beginning with Elizabeth II.

Queen Elizabeth II wearing the Vladimir Tiara, the Queen Victoria Jubilee Necklace, the blue Garter ... [+] Riband, Badge and Garter Star and the Royal Family Orders of King George V and King George VI

Age Of Ascension: 25 years, 291 days.

Seventy years on the throne is a long time, and Elizabeth II oversaw a time of great social and technological change. The rapid expansion of globalization, the personal computer and internet. The world of 2022 barely resembles the world of 1952.

15 separate Prime Ministers served under Elizabeth II, starting with Winston Churchill in his last term (who said of the young lady All the film people in the world, if they had scoured the globe, could not have found anyone so suited to the part) and ending with newly-elected Liz Truss, who Elizabeth formally appointed just two days before her death.

In Cape Town, on her 21st birthday, Elizabeth pledged: My whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service. Suffice to say, it was a long life of service.

What To Watch: The Crown (Netflix NFLX TV series) The Queen (2006)

Franz Xaver Winterhalter's painting of Queen Victoria

Age Of Ascension: 18 years, 27 days.

Victoria was even younger than Elizabeth II when she donned the crown, though old enough to deftly rule her subjects. The history of the English monarchy is littered with child kings who, unfortunately, always came with a power vacuum in toe.

Victoria reigned for over 63 years, long enough to have an entire era named after her. The Victorian Era calls to mind all sorts of things, including classic romance novels, buttoned up dress codes, and a pre-modernity just on the cusp of the world we know.

Victoria oversaw a time of change on par with Elizabeth IIs reigna time of industrialization and social change that ended just before the two bloody Great Wars that defined the first half of the 20th century.

Queen Victoria was 81 when she died in Osborne House on the Isle of Wight.

What To Watch: Mrs. Brown (1997)

Allan Ramsay's painting of King George III

Age Of Ascension: 22 years, 143 days.

King George III reigned almost as long as Victoria, ruling over Great Britain and Ireland for 59 years. He was king in 1801 when Ireland became a part of the United Kingdom.

Like Victoria, George III ruled across centuries, spanning the second half of the 18th century and the opening decades of the 19th. At the time of his death in 1820, he was the longest-reigning monarch in English history.

Georges reign was marked by numerous wars across the globe. Under George III the American colonies won their independence in the Revolutionary War, though unlike the revolutionaries, George was an abolitionist who abhorred slavery in any form. His armies later defeated the would-be emperor Napoleon Bonaparte in the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, after decades of war.

George III and his wife Charlotte had fifteen childrennine sons and six daughtersand the king never took a mistress. The devoted father and husband suffered from mental illness and acute mania beginning in the 1780s that would recur throughout the rest of his life.

What To Watch: The Madness Of King George (1994)

James I

Age Of Ascension: 1 year, 35 days.

James Charles Stuart was King of Scotland while still a baby, and remained King of Scotland until March 24th, 1603 when the crowns of Scotland and Englandwhile still sovereign nationswere joined.

The son of Mary, Queen of Scots, James was also the grandson of King Henry VII who ruled over England and Ireland, making him a potential heir to all three kingdoms.

He succeeded Elizabeth I and the Golden Age of the Elizabethan Era continued under his reign, though James was met with political strife in England, including an assassination attempt in 1605 known as the Gunpowder Plot, led by radical Catholics who sought to restore Catholicism to the English monarchy. The conspirators, led by Robert Catesby, intended to install Jamess nine-year-old daughter, Elizabeth, on the throne and end persecution of Catholics.

The authorities were tipped off ahead of time and found the now-infamous Guy Fawkes guarding 36 barrels of gunpowder intended to blow up the House of Lords. Some of the conspirators fled England; others were shot and killed or arrested and sentenced to death. They were hanged, drawn and quartered.

What To Watch: Gunpowder (HBO mini-series)

The coffin of Henry III, photographed by Valerie McGlinchey

Age Of Ascension: 9 years, 27 days

King Henry IIIs reign was one of the more conflicted in English history. A Plantagenet monarch who inherited the throne as a child from the widely disliked King John (memorialized as the evil Prince John in Robin Hood fables), Henry began his rule without the experience necessary to handle the radical changes taking place in English society, including the rise of a parliamentary system.

Henry III was the longest-reigning monarch of Medieval England, a record that would not be broken by an English king until the reign of King George III (discounting James VI who was Scottish).

The Magna Carta, which introduced a form of democracy to the land for the first time in European history, was signed in 1215 and fundamentally altered the relationship of the nobles and the king. Henry faced plenty of struggles during his long reign, including a second Barons rebellion and conflict with the Catholic church and Rome, confused policies over the status of the Jews in England and various other controversies. He was a deeply pious man who practically worshipped Edward the Confessor. In fact, he was so obsessed with religion that his journeys were often delayed because of his desire to partake in mass several times a day. On a journey to the French court, King Louis IX banned priests from Henrys route in order to speed his arrival. Despite his religious fervor, Henrys reign is often described as the Plantagenet's bloodiest.

He married Louis IXs sister, Eleanor of Provence (not to be confused with Henry IIs wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine) who bore him five children.

What To Watch: Henry III - Englands Most Pious King (YouTube Documentary)

An illuminated manuscript miniature by William Bruges of King Edward III.

Age Of Ascension: 14 years, 73 days

The son of the royal failure Edward II, Edward III is credited as restoring royal authority to the English crown and a series of military victories that expanded English lands on the continent.

Edward was crowned at 14 after his father was deposed by his mother, Isabella of France, and her lover, Roger Mortimer. Mortimer became the de facto ruler of England until, at age 17, Edward led a successful coup d'tat and gained control of the government. This was just the first of many military victories for the young king.

In 1337, Edward III declared himself the rightful heir to the French throne as well, sparking what would come to be known as The Hundred Years War.

Edward ingratiated himself with the nobles, creating the new title of Duke and fostering a greater sense of camaraderie between lords and the crown. He revivedand appropriatedthe Welsh myths of Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, though ultimately he founded the Order of the Garter rather than an actual Round Table.

Much of Edwards reign can be seen as a time of renewed national identity, with some moves away from French as the official language of state, including an order that English be used in courts of law. In 1363, Parliament was opened in English for the first time.

What To Watch: Henry V (1989) its not about Edward but it is about the war he started, and a damn fine Shakespeare film.

Portrait of William I

Age Of Ascension: circa 24 years

William I was not a king of England, but ruled over Scotland for 48 years, and a thorn in the side of Englands King Henry II.

In the Battle of Alnwick, following a treaty between Scotland and France, William charged the English troops himself, hollering "Now we shall see which of us are good knights!" before being unhorsed and captured, dragged away in chains to Newcastle before being shipped off to Normandy, leading to the occupation of Scotland by English troops.

Eventually he was returned to Scotland and swore fealty to Henry II in 1175. The Treaty of Falaise also gave Henry II the right to choose Williams bride. He married Emengarde de Beaumont, great-granddaughter to Henry I. It was not a happy or fruitful marriage, and William sired many bastards, mostly with Isabel dAvenel.

What To Watch: Braveheart (1995) Not a movie about William I but I dont think there are any, so watch one about William Wallace instead!

Llywelyn the Great

Age Of Ascension: circa 22 years

Similar to William I, Llywelyn the Great (as he was known) was not a king of England, but rather Wales.

It was not an easy path to power for the young king, who had to wrest the crown from his unclesillegitimate children of his grandfather, Owain Gwynedd, who died in 1170. Since his father was the only legitimate son of Owain, and had died when Llywelyn was an infant, he was the rightful heir. But by 1175, when Llywelyn was but a wee lad still, his uncles had divided the land between them.

He defeated his uncle Dafydd at the Battle of Aberconwy in 1194. His uncle Rhodri died the following year. Gwynedd was ruled by both Llywelyn and his cousin Gruffudd ap Cynan, who paid homage to King John. He was given the title the Great by English chronicler, Matthew Paris. Historian J.E. Lloyd explains: Among the chieftains who battled against the Anglo-Norman power his place will always be high, if not indeed the highest of all, for no man ever made better or more judicious use of the native force of the Welsh people for adequate national ends; his patriotic statesmanship will always entitle him to wear the proud style of Llywelyn the Great.

Suffice to say, Welsh politics were complicated, with many rival chieftains vying for power over largely autonomous regions. Its a bloody tale also. While Llywelyn died from old age and succeeded by his son, Dafydd, his granson Llywelyn the Last was not so lucky. After a long campaign against the Welsh by Edward I (known as The Longshanks) the prince was killed in battle, though by all accounts he was tricked and deceived by his enemies who then cleaved his head from his body and sent it to London. Wales was conquered by the English and its people refused to recognize any new Prince of Wales, referring to Llywelyn as The Last.

What To Watch: The Last Prince Of Wales (YouTube documentary) even though its about Llywelyn the Last rather than the Great.

Queen Elizabeth I

Age of Ascension: 25 years, 71 days

The first Elizabeth remains one of the greatest English monarchs of all time, ruling over England during the Golden Age where writers like Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe. Like Victoria, she gets an entire Era named after her: The Elizabethan Era.

She was the last of the five Tudor monarchs, the daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleynthough she succeeded her Catholic sister Mary I when she died childless.

Elizabeth ruled for 44 years and never married, leading to comparisons with the Virgin Mary. Indeed, Elizabeth played up her status as a virgin (though its not clear she was one, she was never pregnant).

Elizabeths reign was long and covered an enormous amount of societal change. She signed the charter for the East India Company and oversaw the first English settlement in Americathe Roanoke Colony that mysteriously vanished.

With no heirs, Elizabeth I left the question of succession up to her advisors rather than name a successor. As we know, the throne passed to James VI of Scotland who would rule even longer than Elizabeth, though never gain her fame or cult of personality.

What To Watch: Elizabeth (1998)

David II

Age Of Ascension: 5 years, 94 days

David II was King of Scots until his death in 1371. He fought against King Edward III in the Second War of Scottish Independence. After losing the Battle of Halidon Hill in 1333, he fled to France for nearly a decade before returning to Scotland in 1341.

That was not the end of his warring with England, however, as he supported France in the Hundred Years War and continued to wage a war for Scottish independence until 1357 and the Treaty of Berwick. At this point, David II had been in English prison for eleven years, but was freed for a 100,000 merk ransom.

Despite a tumultuous reign, David II left the Scottish monarchy in a stronger position than when he took the throne. He died childless, the last male of the House of Bruce, and was succeeded by his nephew Robert II.

What To Play: Crusader Kings II, a strategy game in which David II is the monarch of Scotland.

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Queen Elizabeth II Reigned For 70 Years: Here Are The 10 Longest-Reigning Kings And Queens Of The UK - Forbes