The Dominion - Carole Ferrari

Throwing Tomatoes

Thu, 30 Mar 2006 23:06:00 +0000

Field workers in Florida target McDonalds buying policies

Field workers are paid pennies a pound for tomatoes picked. photo: CIW

After winning a four year long boycott against Taco Bell for better wages and an enforceable code of conduct, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), a community of tomato pickers in Immokalee, Florida, is now targeting McDonald's.

The CIW and its allies are campaigning for McDonald's to negotiate socially responsible working conditions directly with them-- the people who are directly affected by the McDonald's buying policies-- as Taco Bell agreed to do.

The deal made with Taco Bell requires the company pay one cent more per pound for the tomatoes bought from Florida growers. This increases the workers' wage by almost double, to about 2.3 cents per pound. The agreement also includes a tracking and enforcement process, along with consequences for growers who do not comply with the new policy.

McDonald's refuses to negotiate with the CIW, however, and instead, has signed onto Socially Accountable Farm Employers (SAFE).

SAFE is a grower lead certification body made up of the member growers of the Florida Fruit and Vegetable Association and the Redlands Christian Migrants Association, the latter a childcare and education provider for migrant families. Growers that are SAFE-certified are required to abide by general labour standards. These standards are basically the standards already required by law.

SAFE is a very new organization that was created soon after the Taco Bell boycott ended. It did not include the CIW or any other labour organization when it formulated its standards.

"As it stands today, we believe SAFE cannot sincerely be said to hold any real promise for the expansion and protection of workers' rights," states the CIW. Rather, the CIW expresses concern that "SAFE stands as the primary barrier today to hopes for the continued expansion and protection of workers' rights created by the settlement of the Taco Bell boycott."

SAFE did not come from a concern for labour conditions on the field. According to Ray Gilmer, spokesperson for SAFE, it came from a concern for the reputation of Florida growers. "There was a realization that corporate grower responsibility was extending all the way down to the farm and companies like McDonald's would be asking for an assurance that workplace conditions are meeting certain standards."

Consumer awareness of the working conditions of tomato pickers has increased as a result of the CIW campaign, but the reputation of many Florida growers had been tarnished before the campaign.

Ag-Mart, a tomato operation with fields in Immokalee, is one such grower. According to Source Watch, a project of the Center for Media and Democracy, Ag-Mart was ordered by the Florida Department of Agriculture to pay $111,200 in fines in October for pesticide misuse.

These fines were the result of an investigation initiated by the Environmental Protection Agency in connection with the deformities of three children of Immokalee tomato workers. One baby was born with a cleft palate and facial abnormalities, another was born so disfigured that her sex couldn't be determined and died soon after birth, and a baby boy was born in December with no arms and legs. All three of the mothers worked for Ag-Mart during their pregnancies.

Ag-Mart has also hired Yolanda Cuello, wife of convicted slaver Abel Cuello Jr., as a labour contractor. Cuello was convicted of involuntary servitude in October 1999 for enslaving migrants. Workers at Ag-Mart say Cuello is the supervisor they see. Ag-Mart was contacted and directed the Dominion to their lawyer, who did not respond to requests for an interview. Ag-Mart supplies grape tomatoes to McDonald's.

The CIW's campaign for better wages and greater control of their livelihoods began by targeting the tomato growers themselves. With hunger strikes, marches, tours and intensive coalition building, the CIW fought for the improvement of their livelihoods. Despite these efforts, conditions did not change. "The growers are very protected from pressure from traditional labour organizing because farm workers are excluded from the National Labour Relations Act," explains Greg Asbed of the CIW. "Growers don't sell to the public. They were able to ignore us because consumer awareness has no impact on them."

The CIW realized that to change working conditions in the fields, they would have to target the buyers. The result was the Taco Bell consumer boycott, which resulted in increased wages for tomato pickers. This, in the face of extreme poverty, as noted by a United Nations special envoy to the community, is a small but important gain for the Immokalee workers.

Bridrigo Oregon, who left fieldwork for construction in 2002, describes the conditions he worked under. "You work in the sun, you run all day, 12 hours... I look at my people working hard. I tried to find a good job. I can't find a good job. I need vacation, I need benefits, but the company says 'no.' It's a big problem," he says. "One bucket of tomatoes is 40 cents. That's $45 all day! It don't make no sense to work for $45 a day."

Growers are concerned that these penny-per-pound deals, like the one made with Taco Bell, will scare away other large buyers like McDonald's, explains Gilmer. "We're worried [that] if enough of these penny-a-pound deals are crafted, then large corporate buyers will look at the extra money they're paying and see Florida as the higher cost provider. If this is not applied to the entire industry, including Mexico, a corporate accountant can say we need to buy somewhere else, not Florida."

The context for this concern is the North American Free Trade Agreement. Gilmer explains, "Just after NAFTA was signed, the Mexican government devalued the peso. It made it incredibly attractive to buy [in Mexico] and it hammered the industry [in Florida]."

A 2001 USDA report stated that labour costs in Mexico are markedly lower than in the United States. As of 2000, the daily wage rate of a farm worker in Mexico was $3.60 US compared to $66.32 US, earned by the farm worker in the United States.

In 2005, McDonald's revenues reached a record high of over $20 billion.

Carole Ferrari talks to the people at the bottom of McDonald's food chain and investigates a new campaign targeting the fast food giant.

Please Remember Music

Tue, 10 Jan 2006 20:46:20 +0000

Song plays a central role at the School of the Americas Protest

Music has been a key part of the protest's success. photo credit: Carole Ferrari

Please remember that music is a universal language and it comes from the heart, mind and soul to the world. --Llajtasuyo

"Pas, salaam, shalom…"

With thousands of people milling up and down barricaded and police-patrolled Fort Benning Road, a voice sings out the lyrics of the peace song. This voice causes a reaction on the surface of your skin. It has a primordial quality. The song is big and beautiful and travels down Fort Benning Road reaching those that have just arrived in Columbus, Georgia. Pat Humphries continues to sing and is joined by Sandy O, and then the crowd joins in. Pat and Sandy are Emma's Revolution and they sing a song for peace at the School of the Americas Protest.

The arrival of protestors at the gates of Fort Benning is part of a much bigger week-long teach in and non-violent event coordinated by the School of the Americas Watch. 2005 marked the 15th anniversary of the School of the Americas Protest, held annually at the gates of Fort Benning in Columbus, Georgia, where the School of the Americas (SOA), or the Western Hemispheric Institute for Security and Cooperation (WHINSEC) - as it was renamed in 2001 - resides. The purpose of the Protest is simple: to shut down the School, under whatever name it adopts.

The SOA/WHINSEC's mandate is to train soldiers from the Americas. Graduates have been linked to some of the worst atrocities and most repressive regimes across Latin America, including the assassination of Archbishop Romero of El Salvador, the massacre of the community of El Mozote, also in El Salvador, as well as Chile's General Augusto Pinochet's inner circle. Pinochet's sword is encased in glass and is displayed in a hallway of the SOA/WHINSEC. But it is not only Latin America's history that has been affected by the SOA/WHINSEC. A massacre of eight people in February of 2005, including three young children, in the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó, in Urabá, Colombia was linked to the Colombian military's 17th Brigade, which is led by an SOA graduate. It was for reasons like these that 20,000 people from across the Americas came to Georgia for the SOA Protest. The annual call to shutdown the infamous School is relevant, strong, and popular. It is also musical.

Folk singer Pete Seeger has called the SOA Watch movement the "singin'est movement since the Civil Rights movement." Music is omnipresent at the SOA protest. It is structurally imbedded in everything that goes on over the weekend. There are singers and musicians that inflect and punctuate the message of the speakers throughout the day. There are concerts, puppetry with music, and a solemn procession with a mournful melody. Protesters come to Fort Benning with their instruments, and they play everywhere.

"Music is cathartic," says Indigo Girl Emily Saliers, who played at the protest. "Sometimes it's just fun, sometimes you need your spirits lifted or you need to kick up your heels. It actually plays a lot of roles. Music takes us out of our pain, or brings us closer to our pain, reminds us of it, makes us live through it."

Harnessing music's ability to affect us emotionally and move us through emotional levels is why many believe this movement has lasted for 15 years and has been so successful, "Not all movements understand the importance of music the way the SOA Watch does," notes Sandy O, who has played at demonstrations across North America. "SOA Watch uses liturgical sounds for the funeral procession for the folks that have been murdered by students of the school. But it also uses upbeat music and sing along music and dance music and puppetry to keep peoples' energy up." She adds, "This is a very heavy subject and a very intense time in the world, and music and the arts and puppetry and dance and poetry are the kinds of things that keep your spirits up while your mind is saying this is pissing me off and I want to do something about it. The arts get the rest of your body involved so you can do something about it."

Pinochet's sword is displayed in the hallway of the SOA. photo credit: Carole Ferrari

Keeping people positive in the face of torture and atrocity and formidable opposition to change has also been crucial to the success of the Protest. Medea Benjamin, founder of GlobalExchange and CodePink, was a speaker at the protest and is a long time supporter of the SOAWatch movement. Medea believes in humour, positive energy and emotional engagement to bring about positive change in the world. "I believe that we should make the movement fun. I don't want to go to something where you're just brought down and feel like, oh no, isn't it awful and you don't have any inspiration to keep doing it." Medea believes that a movement based on guilt will not last long. "If [the protest] is based on feeling communal bonds with people who think like you and who really believe that life is the most sacred of all concerns and they are able to show that concern in a way that's fun and loving and spirited, I think that's great, and that's important to me."

Music has come to play a central role at the Protest because the SOA Watch movement is inspired by and deeply connected to Latin America where music is also central. Colleen Kattau, a long time musician for the SOA Watch, sings many Latin American songs. For Colleen, Latin America is a source of inspiration for change for a better world, and for the music involved in bringing about that change. "For Latin Americans the music was so much a part of the revolution; the artists were so much a part of the revolution." She explains. At the protest Colleen sang a song by Victor Harra. "He was killed because he was too dangerous because of his 'armed guitar', that's what they called it, the 'gitarra armada.' Music and revolution are really inextricable."

In light of this influence the Protest's main focus is a solemn procession conducted in the Latin American tradition. Throughout the procession the names of the victims are sung out in the Catholic tradition of the litany of the saints, and for each name sung everyone together calls out "presente." "It's part of the Latin American tradition that when people have died they may be gone in body but that their spirits are still here," explains Chris Inserra, music coordinator for SOA Watch, who has been singing out the names of the murdered and disappeared during the solemn procession for the past six years. " We need to call forth their spirits to remind us, not only who they were, but why they are no longer with us, to give name to the horror and the torture that caused their death. Singing out their names calls them forward."

During the procession protesters hold crosses marked with the names of those who have been murdered or disappeared at the hands of SOA/WHINSEC graduates. They slowly make their way towards the gates of Fort Benning. The gates are barricaded with lines of fences that are erected for the protest and the protesters place their crosses on the fence. It is a powerful moment and it is usually during this time that those who choose to commit to non-violent acts of civil disobedience do so by crossing over or crawling under the fence and onto the base. For this they are arrested and fined $5,000 and face six months in a federal prison.

Because the penalties for crossing the fence are so harsh few people are able to commit to this action. "But crossing the line is not the only way [to have an impact]," points out Sandy O. "There's a bill in congress that has more bi-partisan sponsors than it's ever had and that's why Pam Bowman [SOA Watch legal coordinator] can say we have confidence that we're going to win that vote in the spring. So the sheer number of people that are here who are going to take the message back home and call their senators and representatives and get the School shut down, [that] has a lot of impact."

"It's difficult in this political situation when it's been so partisan and there are conservative factions that seem to have taken over America," admits Emily Saliers. "But then you come here and there are 20,000 people and you realize that – I mean, this is my America. And you've heard witnesses, people who have been tortured in Latin America who brought generals to justice. So victories are being won. I believe in social activism, I believe that it makes change. It's not like music is solely saving the world, it's just something that adds to the spirit of good change."

Thousands sing for revolution at the School of The Americas Protest in Fort Benning, Georgia. Carole Ferrari joins the chorus.

Of Sturgeon and Hydro Québec

Fri, 09 Dec 2005 23:03:28 +0000

Food from the rivers we are losing

Illustration by Sylvia Nickerson

On Saturday, November the 5th, 2005, Hydro Quebec flooded another 600 square kilometres of James Bay territory to fill in a new reservoir across the Eastmain River. Hydro-electric development has destroyed the Eastmain river and with it the spawning grounds of the fish that used to swim there, including the lake sturgeon.

The sturgeon has been called "the most valuable fish in the world." Its eggs, or caviar, sell for an astonishing $7,000 a kilo. Around the world, caviar is considered a culinary delicacy and an aphrodisiac. But there's a lot more to sturgeons than their economic value and powers to increase human sexual confidence.

Sturgeons are known to be friendly and to actually like humans; they seem to enjoy human presence. They grow slowly - lake sturgeons grow to be a metre long - taking seven to eight years to reach sexual maturity. And they eat slowly. They dine on the bottom of lakes, riverbeds and oceans, tasting their way across the muddy bottoms feasting on insect larvae, worms, crayfish, snails, and other small fish as they migrate up to their spawning beds.

The species of sturgeon that inhabited the Eastmain is likely as old as the river itself. The life span of a sturgeon is anywhere from 50 to 150 years long, but sturgeons as a species are so old they knew the dinosaurs. The species is thought to be 80 million years old. They are called living fossils and act as a vital link to our pre-historic past.

Almost all kinds of sturgeon are endangered because of over-fishing, water pollution and hydroelectic development. HydroQuebec is trying to develop new spawning runs for the sturgeon and other fish whose spawning grounds have been destroyed by the Eastmain dam. But previous dam and dike developments for hydroelectricity in the James Bay have lead to unhealthy levels of mercury in the fish in the area.

This sturgeon recipe is an old one from Miss Leslie's Directions for Cookery. Written by Eliza Leslie the cookbook was first published in 1837. I chose this recipe because it is simple and I imagine it to be best enjoyed somewhere between the 51st and 54th parallel, cooked on an open fire near the shores of a mighty river, the way sturgeon was probably enjoyed by the James Bay Cree for so many thousands of years.

Carefully take off the sturgeon's skin, as its oiliness will give the fish a strong and disagreeable taste when cooked. Cut from the tail-piece slices about half an inch thick, rub them with salt, and broil them over a clear fire of bright coals. Butter them, sprinkle them with cayenne pepper, and send them to table hot, garnished with sliced lemon. Squeeze lemon over the fish before eating.

According to Environmental Defense's Oceans Alive, the most eco-friendly sturgeon to eat for its meat and for its caviar is farmed white sturgeon from the Pacific coast.

Carole Ferrari dishes up a recipe for Sturgeon with bittersweet morsels of background on the ancient fish's fate.

Dammed if you do...

Sun, 27 Jul 2003 03:23:18 +0000

HydroQuebec plans diversion of multiple rivers near James Bay

As part of continuing hydroelectric development on James Bay, HydroQuebec has begun the paper work, table talk, and preparatory construction to dam and divert the Rupert River. During a consultation meeting in the Cree community of Chisibi on June 11th, community members spoke out against a plan and process that they feel fails to respect the environment and traditional knowledge of the community.

The Rupert is one of the major rivers that run into the east side of the James Bay. It flows by the Cree communities of Nemiska and Waskaganish, 730 km across the breadth of northern Quebec into the southern end of the Bay.

The James Bay Project continues as part of HydroQuebec's Strategic Plan for 2002-2006, "...to develop competitive hydroelectric projects, [which] reflect both the economic benefits of hydroelectric projects and the environmental advantages of hydropower." The project, officially called the "Eastmain-1-A Powerhouse and Rupert Diversion," involves diverting the waters from the Rupert into the Eastmain River which has already been dammed, building another powerhouse on the Eastmain 1 reservoir, and making modifications to the control structure on the Opinaca reservoir to increase power generating capacity at the site. The project also entails the diversion of two other rivers, the Lemare and the Nemiscau. This will require four more dams, another spillway, approximately fifty dykes, two diversion bays with a total surface area of about square 400 kilometres, control structures between the forebay and tailbay of the Rupert, and a network of approximately 12,000 metres of canals to direct the water's flow. 230 square kilometres of land will be flooded. In effect, the Eastmain-1-A Powerhouse and Rupert Diversion will change the Rupert's direction. Instead of flowing west into James Bay, the Rupert will be redirected north into reservoirs on the La Grande River, 363 kilometres off course.

The project comes in the wake of HydroQuebec's other damming projects in the region. The La Grande Phase 1 flooded 11,500 square kilometres of traditional Cree territory. It created the world's largest underground powerhouse, a spillway on the La Grande River three times the height of Niagara Falls, and five mega-reservoirs. Phase 2, by which the Eastmain, Laforge and Caniapiscau Rivers were diverted into the La Grande, will soon be completed after being suspended due to fierce protests from the Cree and environmentalists.

The project has recently concluded its public consultations for the directives of the environmental impact assessment. The directives instruct the project`s proponents (HydroQuebec and its subsidiary, La Societe d`energie de la Baie James), on how to conduct its impact assessment. The public had a consultation period of sixty days to comment on the directives. Official consultation meetings were held in Montreal and the Cree communities of Mistissini, Waskaganish, Nemeska and Chisasibi. These communities are either directly affected by the project and/or have been impacted by previous HydroQuebec projects.

The community of Chisasibi has twenty-five years experience with HydroQuebec. Relocated in 1980 from Fort George Island to make way for the first set of dams, Chisasibi has been fundamentally impacted by the damming projects.

Chisasibi community members spoke out against the current project at their consultation meeting, held on June 11th in Chisasibi. They objected to the 6 month timeline of study period for the assessment, calling it too short. They argued that the native lifestyle and mindset are not the same as that of mainstream North American society, and that full understanding of impacts will take more time. "We will miss a lot of things and in the future we will realize the negative impacts ... this happens all the time". It was felt that more time is needed to share the process with the elders, and to translate proceedings into the two dialects of Cree spoken in the region. "'Biodiversity'; how do you explain that in Cree? We need time to fully participate in the process."

The beginning of another project so soon after the completion of the previous project also raised concerns, "There are physical impacts, but also mental and spiritual...we haven't finished grieving yet [from the previous project]. And now another process - a civil process, but with very uncivilized impacts - the destruction of a river."

Community members also raised the issue of changes in water purity. Previous damming projects increased mercury levels in the waters of the La Grande and contaminated fish, a staple of the Cree diet. "We want good water, all the time, for everything that drinks the water." Concerns for winter travel on the river because of potential ice level changes, for the loss of medicinal plants, spawning grounds and the effects on migrating goose were also expressed.

The Crees wondered how traditional knowledge, a mandatory element of the impact assessment, could be attained with the process proposed by HydroQuebec. Some questioned how well HydroQuebec can honour and respect traditional knowledge without understanding what it is. "How can I expect to fully assess the impact on a culture without understanding it, especially if I'm expecting to profit?" "We are asked, `What do you know? Give me your knowledge,' that must be respected... but the white man has the last say and usually what he says, goes."

The community appealed to panel members responsible for formulating the directives to take a personal approach to their task and conduct their work with honour. "There are different kinds of listening: with a pen, ears, mind, heart. It's not just words in speaking, it's spirit too. Sharing is a sacred process we don't understand fully. Sit by the river, experience it - please do that. It's not the same as flying over it. I'm sure it's not written in your mandate, but please do it ... Water is sacred. Because it is sacred we cannot take what we do lightly. Don't let this process be a rubber stamping process. Please do this in honour."

HydroQuebec plans diversion of multiple rivers near James Bay