The Stella D'Oro cookie factory workers--whom we last visited back in February as they toughed it out picketing through the dead of winter--have gotten a summer break. An administrative law judge with the National Labor Relations Board issued a ruling this week ordering that Stella D'Oro reinstate the workers and pay them back wages.

According to the decision, the company, owned by the private equity firm Brynwood Partners, had violated collective bargaining procedures and failed to turn over key documentation to representatives of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers, and Grain Millers International Union.

Brynwood Partners has been ordered to allow the strikers to go back to their jobs, and to pay them retro money from May 6th of this year. Also, the workers will get pension credit for the time they were out. However, Brynwood can appeal the order. If so, the strikers are committed to putting the strongest possible pressure on the company to end the strike by complying with the NLRB's determinations. The workers would return to work under the old contract, and then could begin negotiating a new agreement.

The workers have fought an uphill battle in the Bronx for months, garnering warm local support and national attention. Though they number only 134, they fold into a much larger labor struggle, representing working-class communities of color across New York City and beyond.

The changing nature of America's food industry is evident in the transformation of the Stella D'Oro company—from a Bronx mom-and-pop shop to an arm of the Kraft monopoly to the acquisition of a Greenwich private equity fund. The struggle against the management's move to strip benefits and slash wages reflects the tightening squeeze on the manufacturing workforce nationwide, as well as the weakened influence of unions.

Will old-school picketing, boycotts and strike tactics (albeit enhanced with new media and infused with populist momentum) prevail in a political climate hostile to organized labor? For now, at least the Stella D'Oro workers will have a place at the table again.

Image: Stella D'Oro rally (Eddie C via DailyKos)

The Obama administration's ambiguous promises on immigration reform are confusing enough, but the latest move to crack down on employers of undocumented immigrants may indicate that even if “comprehensive reform” legislation is on the horizon, justice for exploited immigrant workers is nowhere in sight.

The New York Times reports :

On Wednesday, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the federal agency known as ICE, said it had sent notices announcing audits of hiring records, like the one it conducted at American Apparel, to 652 other companies across the country. Officials said they were picking up the pace of such audits, after performing 503 of them in 2008. ...

The Obama administration’s new approach, unveiled in April, seems to be moving away from the raids that advocates for immigrants said had split families, disrupted businesses and traumatized communities. But the outcome will still be difficult for illegal workers, who will lose their jobs and could face deportation, the advocates said.

But American Apparel prides itself on providing employees with decent wages and relatively good working conditions—a counterweight to the sweatshop model that dominates the globalized garment sector.

Even more disturbingly, reform advocates have for years decried employer sanctions as a system that further enables exploitative employers, encourages discrimination, and fails to stem the abuse of workers..

The latest version of employer sanctions, based on the notoriously dysunfctional e-Verify program, threatens to further institutionalize this approach.

Questioning whether targeting companies like American Apparel really serves workers' interests, Daphne Eviatar at the Washington Independent wonders:

"why the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency, or ICE, after promising to crack down on employers who illegally hire immigrants and treat them as slave labor, is going after a company that starts its low-skilled workers at $10 – $12 an hour plus health benefits — far above the legal minimum wage."

Angelica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (which has opposed employer sanctions and e-Verify), told the New York Times, “there is still enforcement of laws that are broken... The workers will still lose their jobs.”

So ICE is threatening to penalize employers that go out of their way to raise standards for immigrant workers, while a two-tiered workforce—and a broad failure to uphold labor standards for all workers—persist. What role would regressive employer sanctions play in a revamped immigration policy? Let's hope advocates are asking that question as they press Obama for action on immigration reform.

Image: American Apparel worker (Madalit del Barco / NPR)

Under the banner of reform and equal opportunity, the country is moving toward national education standards. But in education, a "common" standard isn't necessarily an "equal" one, especially for the communities hardest hit by failures in public schools.

EdWeek reports that Education Secretary Arne Duncan is using the federal stimulus to push states to adopt “voluntary” nationwide standards, designed to “eliminate the patchwork of academic standards across the country that result in students in the same grades learning different things in different states.”

Broad national standards would seem to complement No Child Left Behind's stated goal of pushing for equal opportunity in education. But in theory and practice, NCLB has alienated many progressive education advocates, who see it as a vehicle for narrowing the social mission of public schooling.

Bruce Dixon at Black Agenda Report says “the education policies of America's First Black President Obama's education policies are not discernibly different from those of his Republican predecessor.”:

Improving education is not the goal. Privatization is the goal. The targets of school privatization are not supposedly underperforming students and teachers. The target is democracy itself. Private interests are just that – private. Turning public schools over to private interests frustrates even the possibility of democracy. Charter school apologists often claim that greater parental involvement is a hallmark of their model. But to the extent that it is true at all, it's involvement of a select group of parents, and not open to those of the entire community. Charter schools undermine what is left of community.

Though Duncan has argued that the administration would prioritize quality in charter schools, new research reveals decidedly mixed results for charter school performance, with uneven outcomes for students of color. According to a study by Stanford's Center for Research on Education Outcomes:

Black and Hispanic charter students do not fare as well in reading gains as their TPS [traditional public school] peers. Both groups of minority students have significantly lower gains than their TPS comparison students. As with reading, Black and Hispanic students were seen to realize significantly lower learning gains in math.

Bob Peterson of Rethinking Schools said the charter school movement is only as equitable and inclusive as the people and institutions driving it:

… while the charter school movement includes some very well-intended individuals and some quality schools, it’s also become a favorite of conservative forces and conservative foundations that have really championed charterizing and the marketizing, as I say, the whole public sphere of public education....
And the concern I have is that we’re setting up a two-tier system, where there is the most difficult-to-educate kids, a higher percentage of special needs, English language learners, kids who are counseled out of charter schools and voucher schools because of discipline problems—they end up in the public schools, where there’s a self-selected group in the charter schools. That’s not right.

Deborah Meier, a longtime education reformer based in New York City, also commented on Democracy Now! about a corrosive culture of elitism that has continued through the Obama administration:

segregation has been with us a very long time, but it hasn’t changed. And you can send your kid, if you’re an upper-middle-class New Yorker, you can send your kids, for example, to schools in New York City from kindergarten through twelfth grade that have fewer black and Latino kids in it than most private schools. I know this personally.

And we have not—we’re so interested in the best and the brightest, by our very narrow definition of what we’re looking for in this country, what we mean by merit and what we mean by leadership. So I’m also just stunned by the Department of Education that includes virtually no educators, whose definition of being well-educated is that you graduated from Harvard.

There’s something basically missing about what we want from our schools. And if we don’t get that right, and even discuss it, so that the only meaning of achievement now is improving test scores.

Will federal education policy under Obama continue to hold back the most vulnerable students? Even NCLB's harshest critics recognize the deep inequities plaguing conventional public schools. The controversy is perhaps less about the educational format than about how to fix “failing” schools without punishing the communities that rely on them. So far, Duncan gets higher marks for discipline than for playing well with others.

Image: Maria Glod / The Washington Post

That’s the question Chevron is asking Richmond, CA. This Wednesday, a Contra Costa Superior Court Judge sided with environmentalists and community groups in a lawsuit against the refinery to stop the company from manufacturing cruder types of oil until it can get a new environmental impact report that answers key questions and a new permit from the city.

Even though the judge’s ruling didn’t kill the project completely, Chevron responded by swiftly laying off 100 workers right after the announcement with 1,000 more to go that were included under the upgrade, costing the city $50 million to $75 million in possible income. They also took back the promised $61 million to city projects.

The company is playing ugly in this long battle against the Richmond community whose asthma rates in children are twice as high as the national average and whose unemployment rate is 7.4% and growing with the recession.

Greg Karras, senior scientist for Communities for a Better Environment, one of the plaintiffs in the case, told the San Francisco Chronicle, "The workers shouldn't pay for Chevron's mistake. The real solution is to replace the refinery's ancient equipment. Design it right, design it for the same quality of oil."

As Richmond residents continue to suffer from health problems related to the refinery and high levels of unemployment, the company's moves so far haven't shown even the smallest compromise is possible.

On Sunday, June 28th, major media news outlets were still occupied with the topic of Iran’s sham election results, while a tedious insult against democracy was taking place in Central America. A small segment of the Honduran army, led by General Romeo Vásquez Velásquez, a graduate of the School of the Americas, booted out the democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya. General Velásquez’s force kidnapped President Zelaya from his presidential palace, dragged him to the airport under gun-point, and flew him to exile in San Jose, Costa Rica: “I was brutally taken out of my house and kidnapped by hooded soldiers who pointed high-caliber rifles at me,” said the ousted elected president.

The event that took place at dawn on Sunday in Tegucigalpa, Honduras evokes scenes of Latin America’s past; for decades the U.S. openly supported many of coup d’etats in Latin America against the will and democratically exercised right of the people across the continent.

Hitherto, few voices have risen to condemn the assassination of democracy in the Honduras.

Several questions come to mind when we evaluate our approach to both episodes: Are we still operating in the Cold War mindset? Does the “dogma” of Samuel Huntington’s “The Clash of Civilizations” still thrive in Washington D.C., guiding our selective approach toward global democratic “values”? Do the compromised outcomes of the election in Iran have more value than the attack on democracy in Honduras?

Edward Said was precise when he reminded us that “…we are all swimming in those waters, Westerners and Muslims and others alike. And since the waters are part of the ocean of history, trying to plow or divide them with barriers is futile. These are tense times, but it is better to think in terms of powerful and powerless communities, the secular politics of reason and ignorance, and universal principles of justice and injustice, than to wander off in search of vast abstractions that may give momentary satisfaction but little self-knowledge or informed analysis.”

The U.S. cannot lead the world unless it stands firmly with the peoples’ choice, no matter how that might seem to contradict our “interests”. Our solidarity with the Iranian people and their plight for democracy is inseparable with our solidarity with the Honduran crisis. At the end, the people of world will judge the U.S. by their solidarity: she must be either with democracy or against it.

The American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES) is the most extensive and, at over 1400 pages long, the largest climate and energy bill that’s ever been introduced onto the House floor. And if you’ve been following the battle to get it there, you probably know now that it’s been an uphill struggle for progressive communities.

What you may not know is that three weeks prior to the House vote, the first draft of the bill contained no opportunity for communities of color and low-income communities in its goals of energy independence, clean energy, lowering carbon emissions, and job creation.

Here it was, the largest climate and energy bill in the history of the U.S., racing at lightning speed towards the critical House vote, with virtually no provisions for marginalized communities, youth of color, and low-income people.

With over 3.8 million youth, ages 18-24, neither in school or jobs, it’s clear we have to provide better opportunities to engage our young people. Particularly for youth of color who have been locked out of the education process and won’t follow a traditional 4-year college path, we need viable alternatives to the streets. We need to scale up healthy, career-track jobs that will allow our youth to advance and not be left behind.

The Center for Community Change, Partnership for Working Families, National Employment Law Project, and Building Trades Department of the AFL-CIO worked with Green For All in developing a proposal for creating local access to quality jobs in ACES. It was then championed by Representative Bobby Rush and members of the Black, Hispanic, and the Asian Pacific American caucuses. This provision will mean that as green job contracts come down the pipe, quality standards will ensure they are good jobs, and local hiring practices will make them available to low-income local communities.

Then groups including Green For All, the NAACP, Democracia USA, Partnership for Working Families, Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, and the League of Young Voters led a big push to have this proposal included in the bill, along with almost $1 billion for green job training.

Thanks to these improvements, ACES will finally provide the opportunity for people without high levels of formal education to gain skills, quality jobs, and careers in the clean energy economy.

For Green for All, the equity provisions in ACES symbolize the possibility of change for our communities. They will expand green job training programs and local access to quality jobs. That means young people of color will have a place in the new clean energy economy.

And the coalition that is developing as a result of this fight is a model for building inclusiveness and equity into the new economy from the beginning.

Serve the people, serve the planet,

The Urban Institute and D.C. Alliance of Youth Advocates have released a databook on youth in Washington, D.C. It offers an up-close snapshot of intense socioeconomic and racial disparities concentrated in a single urban area, where the vast majority of teens are people of color:

Among the findings on demographics and poverty:

Black teenagers were not only more likely to be poor than white teenagers, they were also more likely to be extremely poor. We calculated the share of teenagers who lived in families with incomes less than 50 percent of the federal poverty level and found that almost one-quarter (22 percent) of black teenagers in 2005–06 lived in families that were extremely poor, compared with 8 percent of Hispanic teenagers and 7 percent of white teenagers.

...more than two-thirds (69 percent) of black teenagers Districtwide lived in single female-headed households, compared with 31 percent of Hispanic teenagers and 11 percent of non- Hispanic white teenagers.

On school:

A greater share of black non-Hispanic children (age 0 to 17) in the District had moderate or severe difficulties with emotions, concentration, behavior, or being able to get along with other people than white non-Hispanic children.

14 percent of District high schoolers reported not going to school because they felt unsafe in school or on their way to school, compared with only 6 percent nationally, and 11 percent of District students were threatened or injured with a weapon on school property, compared with only 8 percent of all high school students nationally.

On relationships and violence:

[According to a 2007 federal survey,] 17 percent of District 9th–12th graders were physically hurt (hit, slapped, or something else intentional) by their boyfriend or girlfriend in the 12 months before the survey was taken, 7 percentage points higher than the national rate from the same year. Male 9th–12th graders reported slightly more dating violence than females in the District: 18 percent versus 16 percent. The share of dating violence for African Americans was also slightly higher than Hispanics teenagers, 17 percent versus 15 percent.

On health:

With a little over 100,000 youth in the District age 13–24, roughly one in every 100 young people age 13–24 in the District is HIV infected or has full-blown AIDS. The D.C. Department of Health refers to the rates of infection in the District as an epidemic, especially for African American youth. According to available surveillance data for 2001–05, the estimated rate of HIV incidence among teens and young adults has almost doubled in five years. In addition, the rates of HIV infection for young black men in the District who had sex with other men increased 900 percent between 2000 and 2005.

Most of those figures parallel grim statistics and trends aired in the media from time to time. But the report also contains an appendix that profiles several community-based initiatives and positive interventions that are making a difference for the city's at-risk youth.

The D.C. Alliance of Youth Advocates has partnered with the media activist organization Critical Exposure to launch STEP Up DC (Success Through Educational Progress), a program that “works to boost graduation rates in the District by empowering young people to share their ideas—through photography, surveys, and advocacy—on why youth drop out and what keeps them in school.”

The Metro TeenAIDS initiative melds social media with HIV/AIDS prevention. Together with a group of youth advisers, the group is designing a “community-level intervention designed to change youth’s attitudes about HIV testing; increase their access to and use of HIV testing; and enhance the capacity and expertise of HIV counseling, testing, and referral service providers serving high-risk heterosexual adolescents and young adults of color in Wards 5, 6, 7, and 8.”

The District of Columbia Primary Care Association's Adolescent Wellness Initiative works with teens to improve mental and physical wellness through one-on-one counseling. In addition to basic health, the staff and volunteers also focus on personal development, helping youth develop their goals, and tackling social justice issues like racism, poverty, gentrification, school reform, and police-community tensions.”

The data in the report paints a bleak picture for youth of color in the District. It's easy to get absorbed into the antiseptic charts and graphs. The appendix to the Urban Institute's report may be the most important part: a good indicator that the community members who live with these statistics every day, who try to improve their neighborhoods from the ground up, see more than just numbers: they see themselves.

Image: D.C. student protests (commonroman, via Artnet)

Is gay rights a white, middle class issue? Not if you're a gay, poor person of color. Emerging research around socioeconomic status and the LGBT community underscores how the movement for LGBT equality operates neither in isolation nor at the expense of other civil rights struggles.

The Center for American Progress notes that in civil-rights debates around same-sex marriage and anti-LGBT hate crime, access to these rights is seldom discussed in relation to how it impacts people's everyday lives. “Despite recent advances,” writes Nico Sifra Quintana in a new issue brief, “LGBT civil rights are rarely addressed in policy debates surrounding poverty.”

In a recent analysis of census data, the Williams Institute at UCLA law school examined the socioeconomic status of same-sex couple households along racial and gender lines. The study found that "After adjusting for a range of family characteristics that help explain poverty, gay and lesbian couple families are significantly more likely to be poor than are heterosexual married couple families." Lesbian couples and families face especially high rates of poverty.

Poverty rates are higher for children living in same-sex male and female households. Compared to a child poverty rate of about 7 percent for white heterosexual couples, about 28 percent of children in Black male same-sex households are impoverished. For children in Black lesbian couple households, the rate is 32 percent.

We can make some educated guesses about why poverty, race and sexual orientation overlap. The Williams Institute points to a litany of social and political factors:

--LGBT people are vulnerable to employment discrimination, and they have no legal recourse in most states.

--Most same-sex couples are shut out of some institutions that enhance the economic position of families, such as marriage.

--Lesbian, gay, and bisexual people are more likely than heterosexuals to lack health insurance coverage, making them vulnerable to the economic consequences of a health crisis.

--LGBT families are less likely to receive family support, which could translate into greater economic vulnerability.

--Family conflict about coming out and violence in group homes results in high rates of homelessness for young LGBT people.

A separate report by the Transgender Law Center found that transgender people in California experience disturbing rates of workplace harassment and discrimination in getting medical treatment. About one in five people surveyed said they had experienced homelessness since first identifying as transgender.

“The myth of gay affluence” encircling the LGBT community is a powerful and divisive one, driven by media portrayals and underlying patterns of social stratification. A closer look reveals that, even within a community that struggles with unequal treatment, race and gender privilege determine political visibility.

Last month, the Oakland Police Department took the first disciplinary action in five years against an officer involved in the shooting of a suspect.

Officer Hector Jimenez was terminated for the fatal shooting of Mack “Jody” Woodfox in July 2008. Woodfox a 27-year-old Oakland man, was unarmed. Jimenez, a rookie officer who graduated from the academy in February 2007, was involved with another officer in the fatal shooting of 20-year-old Andrew Moppin-Buckskin on New Year’s Day, 2008. Moppin was also unarmed. Both incidents occurred in the flatlands of East Oakland, where tensions between the police and the community abound.

Police officials said Jimenez’s shooting of Woodfox violated the department’s use of force policies because the 27-year-old was unarmed and posed no threat to the officer. Jimenez was cleared of any wrongdoing in the death of Moppin-Buckskin. In both incidents, Jimenez believed the men were reaching for waistbands as if to draw a weapon.

According to statistics submitted by the Oakland Police to Civilian Police Review Board, between 2004 and 2008 there were 45 officer-involved shootings. The overwhelming majority were men of color: 36 were black and 7 were Latino. None of the victims were white.

Both the Moppin and Woodfox families have filed multi-million dollar civil rights suits against Officer Jimenez, the City of Oakland and the police department.

Police shootings are a particularly sensitive issue in Oakland at the moment. Former BART police officer Johannes Mehserle is set to stand trial for the murder of Oscar Grant in October. A wrongful death suit filed by the family of Gary King Jr, who was shot in September 2007 by Sgt. Patrick Gonzales of the Oakland Police, will also go to trial in September.

_________________________
Ali Winston is a freelance writer based in Berkeley, California. Earlier this year Winston wrote "Targeting Another Generation of Black Men" for ColorLines Magazine.

Safe Haven in Peril?
Rody Alvarado filed for asylum in the US after years of domestic violence at the hands of her husband while Guatemalan police stood by idly. Ten years later, Alvarado's case is still in limbo.

Karen Musalo, Alvarado’s attorney, believes the case has taken so long because many within the government fear that if asylum is expanded to include domestic violence cases, there will be thousands of applicants. “They also view domestic violence asylum as a cultural matter that the U.S. should not be handling,” Musalo said.

Home Lending That Works
A new bill in Congress would expand the Community Reinvestment Act to further protect Blacks and Latinos from discriminatory lending practices.

While the original act has had a profound impact, supporters say more work needs to be done around closing the racial disparity in lending practices. “It’s not enough to just break it down by household income; banks have historically not loaned to communities of color. Not because of their income, but because of their race,” said Jim Carr chief operating officer of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, which helped Johnson introduce the bill.

Lil' Wayne Meets John Donne
What happens when rap meets literary analysis?

It’s not often that Lil’ Wayne and John Donne are mentioned in the same discussion of poetic meter, or that Biggie’s sexual innuendo is pitted against Shakespeare’s 17th-century puns. Then again, it’s not often that rap music is given a thorough literary analysis. Adam Bradley, professor of English at Claremont McKenna College, does just that in Book of Rhymes: The Poetics of Hip Hop (Basic Civitas).

NYC City Council Passes Muslim Holiday Resolution
Religious, labor and immigrant groups are calling for Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg to rescind his rejection of a City Council resolution to close school for two important Muslim Holidays. The Mayor says the city is too diverse for schools to observe every holiday.

Quincy Jones May Try to Buy Back VIBE
A report published by EbonyJet.com said Jones intends on buying back the magazine after its shut down on Tuesday saying the magazine might have an “online-only” future.

Stimulus to Help American Indian State Banks
Obama’s stimulus plan will distribute $8 million dollars to 10 U.S. bank institutions that serve American Indian communities.

Border Patrol Agent Shoots Suspected Immigrant
A border patrol agent in South Texas shot an immigrant man after a brief altercation at a convenience store because he feared for his life.

The New York City Council is considering a resolution to promote environmental and social justice in the city's food system through a "foodprint" initiative. The goal is to “encourage the maximum local food production, maximum sustainability and to involve the citizenry in the process,” said Council Member Bill de Blasio on the local WBAI news.

The idea stems from a report, "Food in the Public Interest," issued earlier this year by the Manhattan Borough President's office. While environmentalists have been discussing the concept of a community's “food print” for a while now, New York City may be among the first municipalities in the country to try to implement a coherent food policy that tackles climate change, economic development and public health together. It's far from a done deal, but the recommendations of the report center on key themes of local self-reliance, racial equity and food justice:

A food policy that harnesses regional agriculture for urban consumption and encourages local farming would address three of the most pressing challenges facing the city and the nation – the environment, public health, and the economy.

• The environment: Common commercial farm practices, such as using chemicals and raising large numbers of livestock in confined spaces, can contribute to air pollution. Further, food that travels extraordinarily long distances from farm to plate requires more fuel, storage and refrigeration, all of which consume energy.

• Public health: Locally grown and distributed food is likely to be fresher, more nutritious, less subject to intensive pesticide use, and less processed....

The city and state must work together to promote greater urban and regional food production. ...In addition to creating necessary manufacturing and distribution infrastructure, this means supporting urban farms, community
gardens, greenhouses, and backyard and rooftop gardens.

Equitable food distribution in marginalized communities:

Many residents in low-income neighborhoods are suffering from diet-related illnesses. In response, community leaders and health advocates have demanded that fresh produce be available throughout the city, either through traditional outlets like grocery stores and bodegas or new models such as green carts.

Integrating workers' rights and food justice:

there is a shortage of healthy food outlets in low-income communities and communities of color. Some three million New Yorkers are caught in ‘food deserts’ - areas with limited access to fresh produce....

The benefits of healthy food outlets should prompt government intervention, and like most market failures, there must be ways to correct these problems in order to ensure that healthy food is available in every neighborhood. At the least, food outlets funded by the government, must accept food stamps and WIC....

Many of the policies needed to strengthen the local food economy require government investment and regulation. To maximize government subsidies, private companies must consult with and be held accountable to the local community.... In addition, community benefits agreements should be required for new food retail developments of a certain size, to address the need for living wage jobs, benefits, and local hiring practices.

Some grassroots initiatives are already working to encourage local food sustainability. The city is dotted with Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) programs, which create partnerships between responsible farmers and neighborhoods, ensuring a steady supply of quality food and stable business for growers.

At the Bushwick CSA, community members pool money on a sliding scale to purchase food from the farm of Sergio Nolasco. With roots in Puebla and Queens, the father of four graduated from a local program to help immigrants start-up small farms, and he brings his family's long farming tradition to Latino communities in the Bronx and Brooklyn.

A sustainable urban food system may sound radical, but the basic idea is pretty simple: you are what you eat.

Image: Bushwick CSA